The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends,

What I am going to speak about this evening I should like to link on to the scenes we have just witnessed. And what can be said in this regard will fit in well with the whole course of our present considerations.

Now I have often spoken here before about the importance of the ‘Mothers scene’ in the second part of Goethe's “Faust”; this scene, however, is of such a nature that one can repeatedly return to it because through its significant content, apart from the aesthetic value of the way in which it is introduced into the poem, it really contains a kind of culminating point of all that is spiritual in present day life. And if this ‘Mothers scene’ is allowed to work upon us, we shall well be able to say that it contains a very great deal of all that Goethe is wishing to indicate. It comes indeed out of Goethe's immediate soul experiences just as on the other it throws light on the significant, deep knowledge that we are obliged to recognise in him if we are to have any notion at all of what is meant by this scene where Faust is offered by Mephistopeles the possibility of descending to the Mothers. If we notice how, on Faust's reappearing and coming forth from the Mothers, the Astrologer refers to him as ‘priest’, and that Faust henceforward refers to himself as ‘priest’, we have to realise that there is something of deep import in this conversion of what Faust has been before into the priest. He has descended to the Mothers: he has gone through some kind of transformation. Leaving aside what one otherwise knows of the matter and what has been said by us in the course of years, we need reflect only upon how the Greek poets, in speaking of the Mysteries, refer to those who were initiated as having learnt to know the three world-Mothers—Rhea, Demeter and Proserpina. These three Mothers, their being, what they essentially are—all this was said to be learnt through direct perception by those initiated into the Mysteries in Greece.

When we dwell upon the significant manner in which Goethe speaks in this scene, and also upon what takes place in the next, we shall no longer be in any doubt that in reality Faust has been led into regions, into kingdoms, that Goethe thought to be like that kingdom of the Mothers into which the initiate into the Greek Mysteries was led. By this we are shown how full of import Goethe's meaning is.

And now remind yourselves of how the moment Mephistopheles mentions the word ‘Mothers’ Faust shudders, saying what is so full of meaning: “Mothers, Mothers! How strange that sounds!” And this is all introduced by Mephistopheles' words “It is with reluctance that I disclose the higher mystery.” Thus it is really a matter here of something hidden, a mystery, that Goethe, in this half secret way, found necessary to impart to the world in connection with the development of his Faust.

We must now ask, and are able to do so on the basis of what we have been considering during these past years, what is supposed to happen to Faust in the moment that this higher mystery is unveiled before him? Into what world is he led? The world, into which he is led, the world he now enters, is the spiritual world immediately bordering on our physical one.

Please remember clearly how I have already said that the crossing of the threshold into this world beyond the border must be approached in thought with great caution. As I said, this is because between the world that we observe with our senses and understand with our intellect, and that world from which the -physical one arises, there is a borderland as it were, a sphere where one may easily fall into deception and illusion when not sufficiently developed and prepared. It might be said that only in the world comprehended by the senses are there definite forms, definite outlines and boundaries. These do not exist in the world that is on other side of the border. This is something that it is very difficult to get the modern materialistic intellect to grasp—that in the moment that the threshold is passed everything is in constant movement, and the world of the senses rises out of all this continual movement like petrified forms.

It is into this world so penetrated by movement—the imaginative world—that Faust is now transplanted; transplanted, however, by an external cause end not by gradual painstaking meditation. The cause comes from without. It is Mephistopheles, the force of evil working into the physical, who takes him over to the other world.

And now there is something to which we must be very much alive to if we are not to develop errornous opinions in this sphere. We, in anthroposophical circles, are seeking knowledge of the spiritual world. And everything said in the book “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,” and other books of that nature, about the exercises for gaining admittance into those worlds, goes no farther than the means by which this knowledge may be obtained. And here, as far as the present time and necessity are concerned in the giving out of these things to the world, it goes without saying that a halt must be made. Anyone wishing to advance beyond this, will come to the sphere that can be called the sphere of action in the supersensible world. This must be left to each individual. When he has once found the security of knowledge, he himself must undertake the action. But in what is meant to proceed between Faust and Mephistopheles this is not the case. Faust has actually to produce the departed Paris and Helen; therefore he does not only have to look into the spiritual world, he does not have to be an initiate only, but a magician, and must accomplish magical actions. It very clearly shown here in the way this scene is handled by Goethe how deeply familiar he was with certain hidden things in the human soul. The state of Faust's consciousness has to be changed. But at the same time he has to be given power to act out of supersensible impulses.

In his connection with Faust, Mephistopheles, in his capacity as an ahrimanic force, belongs to our world of the senses, but as a supersensible being. He has been transplanted. He has no power over the worlds into which Faust is now to be transplanted. They really do not exist for him. Faust has to pass over into a different state of consciousness that perceives, beneath the foundation of our world of the senses, the never-ceasing weaving and living, surging and becoming, from which our sense-world is drawn. And Faust is to become acquainted with the forces that are there below.

The ‘Mothers’ is a name not without significance for entering this world. Think of the connection of the word ‘Mothers’ with everything that is growing, becoming. In the attributes of the mother is the union of what is physical and material with what is not. Picture to yourselves the coming into physical existence of the human creature, his incarnation. You must picture a certain process that takes place through the interworking of the cosmos with the mother-principle, before the union of the male and female is consummated. The man who is about to become physical prepares himself beforehand in the female element. And we must now make a picture of this preparation that is confined to what goes on up to the moment when impregnation takes place—all therefore that takes place before impregnation. One has a quite wrong and materialistically biased notion if one imagines that there lie already formed in the woman all the forces that lead to the physical human embryo. That is not so. A working of the cosmic forces of the spheres takes place; into the woman work cosmic forces. The human embryo is always a result of cosmic activity. What is described in materialistic natural science as the germ-cell is in a certain measure produced out of the mother alone, but it is a counterpart of the great cosmic germ-cell.

Let us hold this picture in mind—this becoming of the human germ-cell before impregnation, and let us ask ourselves what the Greeks looked for in their three mothers, Rhea, Demeter and Proserpina. In these three Mothers they saw a picture of those forces that, working down out of the cosmos, prepare the human cell. These forces however do not come from the part of the cosmos that belongs to the physical but to the supersensible. The Mothers Demeter, Rhea and Proserpina belong to the supersensible world. No wonder then that Faust has the feeling that an unknown kingdom is making its presence felt when the word ‘Mothers’ is spoken.

Now think, my dear friends, what Faust really has to experience. If it were purely a matter of imaginative knowledge he would only need to be led into the normal state of meditation but, as has been said, he has to accomplish magical actions. For that it is necessary that the ordinary understanding, the ordinary intellect, with which men perceives the world of the senses, should cease to function. This intellect begins with incarnation into a physical body and ends with physical death. And it is this intellect in Faust that must be damped-down, clouded. He has to recognise that his intellect should cease to work. He must be taken up with his soul into a different region. This naturally should be understood as a significant factor in Faust is development.

Now how does the matter appear from Mephistopheles' point of view? We must understand that there is danger in the fact that it is Mephistopheles who has to transform Faust's state of consciousness. And it gives the former himself a sense of uneasiness; in a certain way it becomes dangerous for him also. What then are the possibilities? They are twofold. Faust may acquire the new state of consciousness, learn to know the other world from which he can draw upon miraculous forces, and go to and fro from one world to the other, thus emancipating himself from Mephistopheles for he would then learn to know a world where the latter had no place. With that he would, become free from Mephistopheles. The other possibility would be that all might go very badly and Faust's intellect become clouded. Mephistopheles really puts himself in a very awkward situation. However, he has to do something. He has to give Faust the possibility of fulfilling his promise. He hopes that in some way or another the matter may arrange itself, for he wants neither of the alternatives. He does not want Faust to grow away from him nor does he wish him to be completely paralysed.

I ask you to think over this and then to remember that it is all this that Goethe wants to indicate. In this scene of Faust he wishes to point out to the world that there is a spiritual kingdom, and that here he is showing the way in which man can relate himself to it. This is how things are connected.

Since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the knowledge of these things has to a great extent been lost. I have told you that Goethe applied the knowledge he had personally received through great spiritual vision. The whole connection with the Mothers had entered into Goethe's soul when he read Plutarch. For Plutarch, the Roman story-teller whom Goethe read, speaks of the Mothers; and the following particular scene in Plutarch seems to have made a deep impression on Goethe. The Romans were at war with Carthage. Nicias is in favour of the Romans and wishes to seize the town of Engyon from the Carthaginians; he is therefore to be given over to the Carthaginians. So he feigns madness and runs through the streets crying “The Mothers—the Mothers are pursuing me!” From this you may see that in the time of which Plutarch writes this relation of the Mothers is brought into connection not with the normal understanding of the senses, but with a condition of man when this normal understanding is not present. It is beyond all doubt that what Goethe read in Plutarch stirred him to bring to expression in his “Faust” this idea of the Mothers.

We also find mention in Plutarch of how the world has a triangular form. Now naturally these words ‘the world has a triangular form’ must not be taken in a heavy literal sense, for the spatial is but a symbol of what has neither time nor space. Since we live in space, spatial images must be used for what is nevertheless beyond image, time or space.

Thus Plutarch gives the picture of a triangular world. This the whole world (see diagram). According to Plutarch in the centre of this triangle that is the world, the field of truth is found. Now out of this whole world Plutarch differentiates 183 worlds. 183 worlds, so he says, are in the whole circumference; they move around, and in the middle is this resting field of truth. This resting field of truth Plutarch describes as being separated by time from the surrounding 183 worlds—sixty on each of the three sides of the triangle and one at each angle makes 183. When, therefore, you take this imagination of Plutarch's, you have a world considered as consisting of three parts and in the cloud formation around it the 183 worlds welling and surging. That is at the same time the imagination for the “Mothers.” The number 183 is given by Plutarch.

Thus Plutarch, who in a certain sense held sway over the mystery wisdom, quoted the remarkable number 183. Let us now reckon how many worlds we get if we make a correct calculation up to the time of Plutarch's world. We must do so in the following way:

You see how when we apply our own way of reckoning and correctly calculate the separate divisions and the whole world, as they have made their evolutions up to the time of the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch when Plutarch lived, we can truthfully say that we get 183 worlds.

Moreover, when we take our Earth upon which we are still evolving, and about which we cannot speak as of something completed, and when we look from this Earth to Saturn, Sun and Moon, there we find the “Mothers” that figure in another form in the Greek Mysteries under names Proserpina, Demeter and Rhea. For all the forces that are in Saturn, Sun and Moon are still working—working on into our own time. And those forces that are physical are but the shadow, the image, of what is spiritual. Everything physical is a mere picture of the spiritual.

Consider this. If you do not take simply its outward, gross physical body, but its forces, its impulses, the Moon with its forces is at the same time in the Earth. The being of the Moon belongs to the being of the Earth. If you only want a realistic picture, you need to imagine it thus. Here is the Earth (see diagram); here you have a shaft connected with the Moon, and the Moon is turned round on it The shaft, however, has no physical existence. And all that is Moon-impulse is not only here in the Moon but this sphere penetrates the Earth.

We now ask whether these forces thus related to the Moon have a real existence anywhere. The Greeks looked upon them as mysterious, as very full of mystery. And our modern destiny is connected with the fact that these forces no longer retain their character as mysteries but have been made available for all. If we only concentrate on this one thing, on these forces that are connected with the Moon—then we have one of the Mothers. What is this one Mother? We shall best approach the answer to this question in the following way.

In order to have a picture let us take any river—say the Rhine. What is the actual Rhine? On reflection—I have already spoken of this here—no one is really able to say what the Rhine is. It is called the Rhine. But what actually is it when we look into the matter? Is it the water? But in the next moment that has flowed away water has water has taken its place. It flows into the North Sea and other water and follows it, and that goes on continuously. Then what is the Rhine? Is the Rhine the trough, the bed? But no one believes that, for were the water not there no one would think of the bed as the Rhine. When you use the word ‘Rhine’ you are not referring to anything really there but to something in a constant state of metamorphosis—which, however, in certain sense does not change. If we picture this diagrammatically (see diagram) and assume that this is the Rhine and this the water that flows into it—well, now, this water is always evaporating and descending again.

If you consider that all rivers belong to one another, you will have to take into your calculations that the water evaporates and then falls again. To a certain extent the water that flows from its source down to its mouth always comes over again from the same reservoir in its rising and flowing down. The water completes its circulation here. But this water is divided up an extended over the surroundings; naturally you cannot follow the course of each drop. All the water that belongs to the earth, however, must be considered as a whole. The question of rejuvenating water does not come into consideration here, This is what happens where the water is concerned.

Something the same happens with the air, and in yet another case. If you have a telegraph station here and here another, you know that it is only a wire that connects them. The other connection is set up by means of the whole earth, the current goes down into the earth. Here is the place where it is earthed. The whole goes through the earth.

Now if you make a picture of these two things you have the water, the running water that spreads itself out and sets itself in circulation; and if on the other hand you imagine the electricity spreading itself out down in the earth, then you have two things at different poles—two opposed realities. I am only indicating here, for you can piece it together yourselves out of any elementary book on physics. But we are led to the conclusion that in electricity you have under the earth the opposite of what goes on above the earth in the circulation of the water.

What is there under the earth ruling as the being of electricity is Moon-impulse that has been left behind. It definitely does not belong to the earth. It is impulse remaining over from the Moon and was spoken of as such by the Greeks. And the Greeks still had knowledge of the relation between this force, distributed throughout the whole earth, and the reproductive forces. And there is this relation with the forces of growth and of increase. This was one of the ‘Mothers.’

Now you can imagine that all these premonitions of mighty connections did not arise before Faust merely as theories, but he felt himself obliged to seek out—to enter right into these impulses. Knowledge of this force was first of all given to those being initiated into the Greek Mysteries, this force together with the two other Mothers. The Greeks held all that was connected with electricity in secret in the Mysteries. And herein is where lies the decadence of the future of the earth—of which I have already spoken from another point of view—that these forces will be made public. One of these forces has already become so during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—electricity. The others will be known about in the decadence of the sixth and seventh epochs.

All this, even in the decadent new secret societies, is still among the things about which their conservative members will not speak. Goethe quite rightly judged it fit to give out knowledge of these things in the only way possible for him in that age. At the same time, however, you have one of the passages from which you can see how the great poet Goethe did not simply write as other poets write, but that each word of his bore its special impress and had its appointed place.

Take for example the relation of the Mothers to electricity. Goethe belongs to those who treat of such things out of a thoroughly expert knowledge.

“Do you now see what one possesses in it?
The key will ferret out the proper place.
Follow it up, it leads you to the Mothers.”

And Faust:

“To the ‘Mothers’. That strikes me always like a shock!”

as if he had received an electric shock. This is written with intention—not haphazardly. In this scene nothing in connection with the matter in question is haphazard.

Mephistopheles gives Faust a picture of what he is to find as the impulses of the 183 worlds. This picture works in Faust's soul as it should work, for Faust has gone through many things that bring him near the spiritual worlds. On that account these things already affect him.

This is what I wanted chiefly to dwell upon, my dear friends, hew Goethe is wishing to set forth the most significant matters in this 'Mothers' scene. And by all this you can see from what worlds—what worlds of different consciousness—Faust has to bring Paris and Helen. Because Goethe is dealing with something of such supreme significance, what is spoken in this scene is actually different from what it appears at first sight. What Faust brings with him from these worlds—what I have already referred to—is recognised by the others who have assembled for a kind of drama. What makes them see it? It is half suggested: but by whom? By the Astrologer; and for that he has been chosen as astrologer. His words possess suggestive power. This is clearly expressed. These astrologers had an inherent art of influencing through suggestion, not the best kind of suggestion but an ahrimanic one. What then is our Astrologer actually doing as he stands among these courtiers, who really are not pictured as being particularly bright,—what is he doing? He is putting into them by suggestion what is necessary for all that has arisen as a special world through Faust's changed consciousness to become present in their minds. Remember what I showed you, what I once said to you, that nowadays it can be actually proved that spoken words produce a trembling in certain substances. You will surely find it in one or another of the lectures I have previously given here. I have wanted to remark upon this to show you how today the real nature of the conjuration scene can be demonstrated by experiment. Out of the smoke of the incense and the appropriate accompanying word is really developed what Faust brings for his consciousness out of quite another world. But this must be brought to the minds of the courtiers and made fully clear to them through the suggestive power of the Astrologer. What then does he do? He insinuates. He has the task of insinuating all this into the courtiers' ears. But insinuation is devil's rhetoric. So that through the words ‘insinuation is devil's rhetoric’ the devilish nature of the astrologer's art is brought home to us. That is the one meaning of the sentence. The other is connected with what actually happens on the stage. The devil sits in the prompter's box making his insinuations from there.

Here you have a very prototype of a sentence signifying two different things. You have the purely scenic significance of the devil himself sitting, insinuation from the prompter's box, and the reality of this—the Astrologer insinuating to the Court. In the way he does this it is a devilish art. Thus, if you go to work in the right way, you will find many sentences here with double meaning. Goethe employs this ambiguity because he wishes to represent something that actually happened but did not do so purely in a course-grained, material fashion. It can be performed thus, but its reality has nothing to do with the physical. Goethe, however, wanted to portray something that actually happened and was moreover an impulse in modern history and played a part there. He did not intend that something of this kind was simply to be performed, he meant to show that these impulses had already flowed into modern history, were already there, were working. He wanted to represent a reality, and to say that, in what has been developing since the sixteenth century, the devil has definitely played a part. If you take this scene seriously you will got the two sides of the matter, and you will realise how Goethe knew that spiritual beings were playing into historic processes. And at the end you come to what I have so often indicated, namely, that Faust is not yet sufficiently developed to bring the matter to a conclusion, that he has not derived the possibility of entering other worlds from the right source but from the power of Mephistopheles. All this is what forms the last part of the scene.

I shall add more to this tomorrow and bring our considerations further. But you have seen enough to know that in what Goethe wishes to say much of what we have been studying lately receives new light.

We live in grievous, destiny-burdened days. Only few souls wait with full confidence what these destiny-burdened days will bring to us earth people. Above all, the significance of that what expresses itself by the events of these days, does not speak with full strength in the souls. Some human souls attempt to experience the impulses more and more that spiritual science demands to be implanted into the cultural development. They should know being connected with their deepest feeling with that which, on one side, takes place around us so tremendously and, on the other side, so painfully.

Something takes place that is matchless not only according to the way but also according to the degree within the conscious history of human development, that is deeply intervening and drastic in the whole life of the earth's development. One needs to imagine only what it means—and this is the case today with every human being of the European and also of many parts of the other earth population—to be in the centre of the course of such significant events. We have to feel that this is just a time which is not only suitable but also demands that the soul frees itself from merely living within the own self, and should attempt to experience the common fate of humankind. The human being can learn a lot in our present if he knows how to combine in the right way with the stream of the events. He frees himself from a lot of pettiness and egoism if he is able to do this. Such great events take place that almost anybody caring for himself ignores the destinies of the other human beings.

In particular the population of Central Europe—which immense questions has it to put to itself about matters that it can learn basically only now! The human being of Central Europe can perceive how he is misunderstood, actually, how he is hated. And these misunderstandings, this hatred did not only erupt since the outbreak of the war, they have become perceptible since the outbreak of the war. Hence, the outbreak of the war and the course of the war can be even as it were that what draws attention of the Central European souls to that how they must feel isolated in a certain way more or less compared with the feeling of those people who stand on all sides around this Central European population really not with understanding emotions. If anybody could arouse deeper interests in the big events of life in the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science—this would be so desirable, especially now—events that lead the soul from the ken of its ego to the large horizon of humankind! Then one were able to deepen the look, the whole attitude of the souls who recognise the encompassing forces, because they have taken up spiritual science in themselves, and release them from the interest in the narrow forces that deal only with the individual human being! If one hears the world talking today, in particular the world which is around us Central Europeans, if one reads which peculiar things there are written about the impulses which should have led to this war, then one has the feeling that humankind has lost the obligation to judge from larger viewpoints in our materialistic time, has lost so much that you may have the impression, as if people had generally learnt nothing, but for them history only began on the 25th July, 1914.¹

It is as if people know nothing about that what has taken place in the interplay of forces of the earth population and what has led from this interplay of forces to the grievous involvements which caught fire from the flame of war, finally, and flared up. One talks hardly of the fact that one calls the encirclement by the previous English king who united the European powers round Central Europe, so that from this union of human forces around us, finally, nothing else could originate than that what has happened. One does not want to go further back as some years, at most decades and make conceptions how this has come what is now so destiny-burdened and painful around us.

But the matters lie still much deeper. If one speaks of encirclement, one must say: what has taken place in the encirclement of the Central European powers in the last time, that is the last stage, the last step of an encirclement of Central Europe, which began long, long ago, in the year 860 A. D. At that time, when those human beings drove from the north of Europe who stood as Normans before Paris, a part of the strength, which should work in Europe, drove in the west of Europe into the Romance current which had flooded the west of Europe from the south. We have a current of human forces which pours forth from Rome via Italy and Sicily over Spain and through present-day France. The Norman population, which drives down from the north and stands before Paris in 860, was flooded and wrapped up by that which had come as a Romance current of olden times. That what is powerful in this current is due to the fact that the Norman population was wrapped up in it. What has originated, however, as something strange to the Central European culture in the West, is due to the Romance current. This Romance current did not stop in present-day France, but it proved to be powerful enough because of its dogmatically rationalistic kind, its tendency to the materialistic way of thinking to flood not only France but also the Anglo-Saxon countries. This happened when the Normans conquered Britain and brought with them that what they had taken up from the Romance current. Also the Romance element is in the British element which thereby faces the Central European being, actually, without understanding. The Norman element penetrated by the Romance element continued its train via the Greek coasts down to Constantinople. So that we see a current of Norman-Romance culture driving down from the European north to the west, encircling Central Europe like in a snake-form, stretching its tentacles as it were to Constantinople.

We see the other train going down from the north to the east and penetrating the Slavic element. The first Norman trains were called “Ros” by the Finnish population which was widely propagated at that time in present-day Russia. “Ros” is the origin of this name. We see these northern people getting in the Slavic element, getting to Kiev and Constantinople at the same time. The circle is closed! On one side, the Norman forces drive down from the north to the west, becoming Romance, on the other side, to the east, becoming Slavic, and they meet from the east and from the west in Constantinople. In Central Europe that is enclosed like in a cultural basin what remained of the original Teutonic element, fertilised by the old Celtic element, which is working then in the most different nuances in the population, as German, as Dutch, as Scandinavian populations. Thus we recognise how old this encirclement is.

Now in this Central Europe an intimate culture prepares itself, a culture which was never able to run like the culture had to run in the West or the culture in the East, but which had to run quite differently. If we compare the cultural development in Central Europe with that of the West, so we must say, in the West a culture developed—and this can be seen from the smallest and from the biggest feature of this culture—whose basic character is to be pursued from the British islands over France, Spain, to Sicily, to Italy and to Constantinople. There certain dogmatism developed as a characteristic of the culture, rationalism, a longing for dressing everything one gets in knowledge in plain rationalistic formulae. There developed a desire to see things as reason and sensuousness must see them. There developed the desire to simplify everything. Let us take a case which is obvious to us as supporters of spiritual science namely the arrangement of our human soul in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, and consciousness-soul. The human soul can be understood in reality only if one knows that it consists of these three members. Just as little as the light can be understood without recognising the colour nuances in their origin from the light, and without knowing that it is made up of the different colour nuances which we see in the rainbow, on one side the red yellow rays, on the other side the blue, green, violet ones, and if one cannot study the light as a physicist. Just as little somebody can study the human soul what is infinitely more important. For everybody should be a human being and everybody should know the soul. He, who does not feel in his soul that this soul lives in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, consciousness-soul, throws everything in the soul in a mess. We see the modern university psychologists getting everything of the soul in a mess, as well as somebody gets the colour nuances of the light simply in a mess. And they imagine themselves particularly learnt in their immense arrogance, in their scientific arrogance throwing everything together in the soul-life, while one can only really recognise the soul if one is able to know this threefolding of the soul actually.

The sentient soul also is at first that what realises, as it were, the desires, the more feeling impulses, more that in the current earth existence what we can call the more sensuous aspect of the human being. Nevertheless, this sentient soul contains the eternal driving forces of the human nature in its deeper parts at the same time. These forces go through birth and death. The intellectual soul or mind-soul contains half the temporal and half the eternal. The consciousness-soul, as it is now, directs the human being preferably to the temporal. Hence, it is clear that the nation, who develops its folk-soul by means of the consciousness-soul, the British people, after a very nice remark of Goethe, has nothing of that what is meditative reflection, but it is directed to the practical, to the external competition. Perhaps, it is not bad at all to remember such matters, because those who have taken part in the German cultural life were not blind for them, but they expressed themselves always very clearly about that. Thus Goethe said to Eckermann²—it is long ago, but you can see that great Germans have seen the matters always in the true light—when once the conversation turned to the philosophers Hegel, Fichte, Kant and some others: yes, yes, while the Germans struggle to solve the deepest philosophical problems, the English are directed mainly to the practical aspects and only to them. They lack any sense of reflection. And even if they—so said Goethe—make declamations about morality mainly consisting of the liberation of slaves, one has to ask: which is “the real object?”—At another occasion, Goethe wrote³ that a remark of Walter Scott expresses more than many books. For even Walter Scott admitted once that it was more important than the liberation of nations, even if the English had taken part in the battles against Napoleon, “to see a British object before themselves.” A German philologist succeeded—and what does the diligence of German philologists not manage—in finding the passage in nine thick volumes of Napoleon's biography by Walter Scott to which Goethe has alluded at that time. Indeed, there you find, admitted by Walter Scott, that the Britons took part in the battles against Napoleon, however, they desired to attain a British advantage. He himself expresses it “to secure the British object.”—It is a remark of the Englishman himself, one only had to search for it. These matters are interesting to extend your ken somewhat today.

You have to know, I said, that the human soul consists of these three members, properly speaking that the human self works by these three soul nuances like the light by the different colour nuances, mainly in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. Then one will find out that the human being, while he has these three soul nuances, can and must assign each of these soul nuances to a great ideal in the course of human progress. Each of these ideals corresponds to a soul nuance not to the whole soul. Only if people can be induced by spiritual science to assign the corresponding ideals to the single soul members, will the real ideal of human welfare and of the harmonious living together of human beings on earth come into being.

Because the human being has to aim at another ideal for his sentient soul, for that which he realises as it were in the physical plane, at another soul ideal for that what he realises in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, and again another ideal in his consciousness-soul. He improves a soul member through one of these ideals; the other soul members are improved through the others. If one develops the soul member in particular through brotherliness of the human beings on earth, one has to develop the other one through freedom, the third through equality. Each of these three ideals refers to a soul member. In the west of Europe everything got muddled, and it was simplified by the rationalists, by that rationalism, which wants to have everything in plain formulae, in plain dogmas, which wants to have everything clearly to mind. The whole human soul was taken by this dogmatism simply as one, and one spoke of liberty, fraternity, equality. We see that there is a fundamental attitude of rationalising civilisation in the West. We could verify that in details. For example, just highly educated French can mock that I used five-footed iambi in my mystery dramas⁴ but no rhymes. The French mind cannot understand that the internal driving force of the language does not need the rhyme at this level. The French mind strives for systematisation, for that what forms an external framework, and it says: one cannot make verses without rhyme.

However, this also applies to the exterior life, to everything. In the West, one wants to arrange, to systematise, and to nicely tin everything. Think only what a dreadful matter it was, when in the beginning of our spiritual-scientific striving many of our friends were still influenced by the English theosophical direction. In every branch you could find all possible systems written down on maps, boards et cetera, on top, nicely arranged: atma, buddhi, manas, then all possible matters in detail which one systematises and tins that way. Imagine how one has bent under the yoke of this dogmatism and how difficult it was to set the methods of internal development to their place, which we must have in Central Europe, that one thing ensues from the other, that concepts advance in the internal experience. One does not need systematising, these mnemonic aids which wrap up everything in certain formulae. Which hard work was it to show that one matter merges into another, that you have to arrange matters sequentially and lively. I could expand this account to all branches of life; however, we would have to stay together for days.

We find that in the West as one part of the current which encircled Central Europe. If we go to the East, then we must say: there we deal with a longing which just presents the opposite, with the longing to let disappear everything still in a fog of lacks of clarity in a primitive, elementary mysticism, in something that does not stand to express itself directly in clear ideas and clear words. We really have two snakes—the symbol is absolutely appropriate,—one of them extends from the north to southeast, the other from the north to southwest, and both meet in Constantinople. In the centre that is enclosed what we can call the intimate Central European spiritual current, where the head can never be separated from the heart, thinking from feeling, if it appears in its original quality.

One does not completely notice that in our spiritual science even today, because one has to strive, even if not for a conceptual system, but for concepts of development. One does not yet notice that everything that is aimed at is not only a beholding with the head. However, the heart and the whole soul is combined with everything, always the heart is flowed through, while the head, for example, describes the transitions from Saturn to the Sun, from the Sun to the Moon, from the Moon to the earth et cetera. Everywhere the heart takes part in the portrayal; and one can be touched there in the deepest that one ascends with all heart-feeling to the top heights and dives in the deepest depths and can ascend again. One does not notice this even today that that what is described only apparently in concepts one has to put one's heart and soul in it at the same time if it should correspond to the Central European cultural life. This intimate element of the Central European culture is capable of the spiritual not without ideal, not to think the ideal any more without the spiritual. Recognising the spirit and combining it intimately with the soul characterises the Central European being most intensely. Hence, this Central European being can use that what descends to the deepest depths of the sensory view and the sensory sensation to become the symbol for the loftiest. It is deeply typical that Goethe, after he had let go through his mind the life of the typical human being, the life of Faust, closed his poem with the words:

Alles Vergängliche
All that is transitory

Ist nur ein Gleichnis
Is only a symbol;

and the last words are:

Das Ewig-Weibliche
The eternal feminine draws

Zieht uns hinan
Us up to higher levels.

A cosmic mystery is expressed through a sensory picture, and just in this sensory picture the intimate character of the Central European culture expresses itself. We find this wonderfully intimate character, for example, so nicely expressed and at the same time rising spiritually to the loftiest just with Novalis. If you look for translations of this last sentence: “Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan,” in particular the French translations, then you will see what has become of this sentence. Some French did explain it not so nicely, but they do not count if it concerns the understanding of Faust.

The Central European being aims at the intimacy of spiritual life most eminently, and this is that what is enclosed by the Midgard Snake in the East and the West. So far we have to go to combine completely in our feeling with that what happens, actually. Then we gain objectivity just from this Central European being to stand in front of the present great events with the really supranational human impulses, and not to judge out of the same impulses which are applied by the East and the West. Then we understand why the Central European population is misunderstood that way, is hated by those who surround them. Of course, we have to look at the mission of Central Europe for the whole humankind with all humility. We are not allowed to be arrogant, but we must also protect the free look for what is to be done in Central Europe.

The Central European population has always gone through the rejuvenating force of its folk-soul. It arrived at the summit in the ideals of Lessing, Schelling, Hegel, and Grimm. However, everything that already lived there lived more in a striving for idealism. Now this must gain more life, more concrete life. The profound ideas of German idealism have to get contents from spirituality, by which they are raised only from mere ideas to living beings of the spiritual world. Then we can familiarise ourselves in this spiritual world. The significance of the Central European task has now to inspire German hearts, and also the consciousness of what is to be defended in all directions, to the sides where the Midgard Snake firmly closes the circle. It is our task in particular because we are on the ground of spiritual science to look at the present events in such a higher sense. We cannot take the most internal impulse of our spiritual science seriously enough if we do not familiarise ourselves with such an impersonal view of the spiritual-scientific striving if we do not feel how this spiritual-scientific striving is connected in every individual human being with the whole Central European striving as it must be united with the whole substantiality of this Central European striving. We have to realise that something of what we have in mind exists only in the germ, however, that the Central European culture has the vocation to let unfold the germs to blossoms and fruits.

I give you an example. When the human being tries to further himself by means of meditation and concentration, by the intimate work on the development of his soul, then all soul forces take on another form than they have in the everyday life. Then the soul forces become as it were something different. If the human being works really busily on his development, by concentration of thought and other exercises as I described them in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, the human being begins to understand vividly, I would like to say to grasp vividly that he does no longer think at the moment, when he approaches the real spiritual world, as he has to think in the everyday life. In the everyday life, you think that the thoughts start living in you. If you face the sensory world, you know: that is me, and I have the thoughts. You connect one thought with the other and you thereby make a judgment, you combine the thoughts and let them separate. In my writing which is entitled The Threshold of the Spiritual World, I have compared somebody developing thoughts to one putting his head into a world of living beings.

The thoughts start internally prickling and creeping, they become, if I may say so, living beings, and we are no longer those who connect one thought to the other. One thought goes to the other, and frees itself from the other, the life of thoughts starts coming to life. Only when the thoughts start as it were becoming shells and containers which contract in a small room and extend then again largely, bag-like, then the beings of the higher hierarchies are able to slip into our thoughts, then only! So our own way of life, the whole thinking changes when we settle in the spiritual world. Then you start perceiving that on the other planets other beings live not human beings like on the earth. These other beings of the other planets, they penetrate as it were our living thinking, and we do no longer think about the beings of the other worlds and world spheres, but they live in us, they live combined with our selves. Thinking has become a different soul-force; it has developed from the point on which it stood to another soul-force, to that force which surpasses us and becomes identical with that world, the spiritual world.

Here we have an example of that what humankind has to conceive if it should develop the condition in which it now lives to a higher one for the earth future. This must really become common knowledge that such thinking is possible, and that only by such a thinking the human being can get to know the spiritual world. Not every human being has to become a spiritual researcher, just as little as everybody needs to become a chemist who wants to understand the achievements of chemistry. However, even if there can be few spiritual researchers, everybody can see the truth of that using unbiased thinking and understand what the spiritual researcher says. But it must become clear that there are unnoticed soul forces in the human being during life which when the human being goes through the gate of death become the same forces as an initiate has. When the human being goes through the gate of death, thinking becomes another soul-force: it intervenes in the being. It is as if antennas were perpetually put out, and the human being experiences the higher worlds which are in these antennas.

There was a witty man setting the tone in the 19th century, who contributed to the foundation of the materialistic world view: Ludwig Feuerbach.⁵ He wrote a book Thoughts on Death and Immortality, and it is interesting to read the following in a passage of this book. Feuerbach says there for instance: the summit human being is able to reach is his thoughts. He cannot develop higher soul forces than thinking. If he could develop higher soul forces than thinking, some effects and actions of the inhabitants of the star worlds would be able to penetrate his head instead of thoughts.—This seems so absurd to Ludwig Feuerbach that he regards everybody as mentally ill who speaks of such a thing at all. Imagine how interesting this is that a person—who just becomes a materialist because he rejects higher soul forces—gets on that the soul-force is that which represents the higher development of thinking. He even describes it, but he has such a dreadful fear of this development that just because it would have to be that way, as he suspects, he declares this soul-force a matter of impossibility, a fantasy.

The spiritual development in the 19th century comes so near to that what must be aimed at, but it is so far away at the same time because it is pushed, as it were, from the inside to that what should be aimed at, but cannot penetrate the depths, because it must regard it as absurd, because it is afraid of it really, fears it quite terrifically. As soon as it only touches what should come there, it is afraid. The Central European cultural life has to come back to itself, then we will attain that this Central European cultural life just develops and overcomes this fear. That has become too strong what wants to suppress this Central European spiritual light.

Some examples may also be mentioned. Hegel, the German philosopher, raised his voice in vain against the overestimation of Newton. If you today hear any physicist speaking—you can read up that what I say in many popular works,—then you will hear: Newton set the tone in the doctrine of gravitation, a doctrine through which the universe has only become explicable.—Hegel said: what has Newton done then, actually?—He dressed that in mathematical formulae what Kepler, the German astronomer, had expressed. Because nothing is included in Newton's works what Kepler did not already say. Kepler worked out of that view with which the whole soul works not only the head. However, Newton brought the whole in a system and thereby all kinds of mistakes came into being, for example, the doctrine of a remote effect of the sun which is not useful for the judgment of planetary motion. With Newton it is real that way, as if the sun had physical arms, and stretches these arms and attracts the planets.—However, the German philosopher warned in vain that the Central European culture would be flooded by the British culture in this field.

Another example: Goethe founded a theory of colours which originated completely from the Central European thinking and which you only understand if you recognise the connections of the physical with the spiritual a little bit. The world did not accept the Goethean theory of colours, but the Newtonian theory of colours.—Goethe founded a teaching of evolution. The world did not understand it, but it only accepted what Darwinism gave as a theory of evolution, as a theory of development in a popular-materialistic way. You may say: the Central European human being who is encircled by the Midgard Snake has to call in mind his forces. It concerns not to bend under that what rationalism and empiricism brought in.

You see the gigantic task; you see the significance of the ideal. One does not notice that at all because it still passes, I would like to say, in the current of phenomena if one asserts the Central European being. I do not know how many people noticed the following. When for reasons which were also mentioned yesterday in the public lecture⁶ our spiritual-scientific movement had to free itself from the specifically British direction of the Theosophical Society and when long ago as it were that happened beforehand in the spiritual realm what takes place now during the war—and preceded for good reasons,—I have discussed and explained the whole matter in those days on symptoms. There are brainless people who want to judge about what our spiritual-scientific movement is and have often said: well, also this Central European spiritual-scientific movement has gone out from that which it has got from the British theosophical movement.

I say the following not because of personal reasons, but because it characterises the situation, the whole nerve of the matter in a symptom, I would like to remind you of the fact that I held talks in Berlin which were printed then in my writing Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Spiritual Life, before I had any external interrelation with the British theosophical movement. In this writing nobody will find anything of western influence, but there everything is developed purely out of the Central European cultural life, from the spiritual, mystic movement of Master Eckhart up to Angelus Silesius. When I came to London the first time, I met one of the pundits of the theosophical society in those days, Mr. Mead.⁷ He had read the book which was immediately translated in many chapters into the English, and said that the whole theosophy would be contained in this book.—So far as people admitted that they could go along with us, so far we could unite with the whole object, of course; but nothing else was done.

What matters is that we reflect on our tasks of the Central European spiritual culture and that we never deviate from them. The one or the other sent the medals, certificates and the like back to the English. That is, nevertheless, less important. The important thing will be first to send back Newtonianism, the English coloured Darwinism, that means to release the Central European cultural life from it. Something is to be learnt from the way how—free of other influence—the Central European cultural life has made itself noticeable just as spiritual science. But you have to call to mind the essential part once and to stand firmly on this ground. It is very peculiar how mysteriously matters work.

Imagine the following case: Ernst Haeckel has taken care basically through his whole life to direct the German world view to the British thinking. The British thinking, the British empiricism flows into Ernst Haeckel's writings completely. He now rails against England the most. These are processes which take place in the subconscious of the soul of the Central European; these are also matters which are tightly connected in such a soul with karma. Consider please what it means that Haeckel places himself before the world and says, he himself has accomplished the first great action of the great researcher Huxley, while he stamped the sentence of the similarity of the human bone and the animal bone; that he, Haeckel, then has pointed to the big change in the view of the origin of the human being, and that he accepted nothing in the evolution theory but what came from the West.—Then one sees that he is urged now to rail against that what has constituted his whole intellectual life. It is the most tragic event of the present for such a soul which can be only thought. It is spiritual dynamite, because it bursts, actually, all supporting pillars on which such a soul stands.

Thus you can, actually, look into the depths of the present dreadful events. Only if you really consider the matters that way, are you able to consider them beyond a narrow horizon under which they are often considered today. You will be able to learn a lot—and this will be the nicest, at the same time the most humiliating and the loftiest teaching. For this teaching the prevailing active world spirit determined the Central European human being who is now embraced by the Midgard Snake, enclosed like in a fortress, surrounded by enemies everywhere. If the events become a symbol of the deepest world weaving and world being, then only we release ourselves from a selfish view of the present grievous, destiny-burdened events. Then we feel only that we must make ourselves worthy of that what, for instance, Fichte also spoke about in a time in which Germany experienced destiny-burdened days in his Addresses to the German Nation. There he wanted to speak, as he expresses it himself, “for Germans par excellence, of Germans par excellence,” and he spoke like one had to speak of the German par excellence to the German par excellence in those days. But like in those days Fichte spoke of the German mission, of the German range of tasks, we have today to experience the seriousness as the sunrise of the Central European consciousness within the containment by hating enemies. Indeed, a word which is found at the end of Fichte's addresses may be transformed: the spiritual world view must flow into the souls for the sake of humankind's welfare. The world spirit is looking at those who live in Central Europe that they become a mouthpiece for that what he has to say and bring to humankind in continuous revelation.

Without arrogance, without national egoism one can look at that which the sons of Germany and Central Europe have to defend with body, blood and soul generally. However, one has also to realise that. Then only from the immense sacrifices, which must be brought from the sufferings, must that result what serves the welfare of humankind. We stand at a significant threshold. One may characterise this threshold in the human development that one says: in future the abyss must be bridged between the physical and the spiritual worlds, between the physically living and the spiritually living human beings, between the earthly and that what lies beyond the earthly death. A time must come to us as it were when not only the souls are alive to us which walk about in physical bodies, but when we feel being integrated to that bigger world to which also the souls belong living between death and new birth disembodied in our world. The view of the human being has to turn beyond that which sensory-physical eyes are only able to see. Indeed, we are standing at the threshold of this new experience, of this new consciousness. What I said to you of the widening of the consciousness, of the ascending development of the consciousness, this must become a familiar view. The Central European culture prepares itself to make this a familiar view; it really prepares itself for that.

I have shown you how the best heads of the 19th century are afraid even today to get into their consciousness what the soul has in its depths; only its earthly soul forces cannot yet turn the attention to it. That thinking exists, into which the supersensible forces and supersensible beings extend, and this thinking also opens straight away after the human being has gone through the gate of death. The materialists are afraid of admitting that the human consciousness can be extended that really the barrier between the physical and the spiritual experience can fall, between that what lies on this side of death and beyond death. Because they are afraid, they reject it as something fantastic, dream-like, nay as mentally ill. However, one will recognise that the human being when he has gone through the gate of death develops only the forces which he also has now already between birth and death. Only they work in such depths that he does not behold them. They cause processes in him which are done, indeed, in him, but escape his attention in the everyday life. With the forces of thinking, feeling and willing, about which the human being knows, he cannot master the physical-earthly life. If the human being could only think, feel and will, as well as now he is able to do it, he would be never able to develop his body, for example, plastically that the brain matched its dispositions. Formative forces had to intervene there. However, they already belong to that what the soul does no longer perceive in the physical experience what belongs to a more encompassing consciousness than to the segment of consciousness which we have in the everyday life.

When the human being goes through the gate of death, he has not a lack of consciousness, but then he lives at first in a consciousness which is much richer and fuller of contents than the consciousness here in the physical life. Because from a more encompassing consciousness the body cuts out a piece and shows everything that can be shown only in a mirror. However, what is in the body and the human being bears through the gate of death that has an encompassing consciousness in itself. When the human being has gone through the gate of death, he is in this encompassing consciousness. He then does not have not enough, but on the contrary too much, too rich a consciousness. About that I have spoken in my Vienna cycle⁸ at Easter 1914. The human being has a richer consciousness after death. When the often described retrospect, caused by the etheric body, is over, he enters into a kind of sleeping state for a while. However, this is not a real sleeping state, but a state which is caused by the fact that the human being is in a richer consciousness than here on earth. As our eyes are blinded by overabundant light, the human being is blinded by the superabundance of consciousness, and he only must learn to orientate himself. The apparent sleep only consists in the fact that the human being orientates himself in this superabundance of consciousness that he then is able to lessen the superabundance of consciousness to that level he can already endure according to the results of his life. This is the essential part. We do not have not enough, but too much a consciousness, and we are awake when we have lessened our sense of direction to the level we can endure. It is reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the endurable level what takes place after death. You must get such matters clear in your mind by the details of the Vienna cycle.⁹

I want to illustrate that today only with the help of two obvious examples. I could state many such examples, because many of our friends have gone through the gate of death recently and also before. But as a result of characteristic circumstances, just by the fact that it concerns the last deaths, these considerations are more obvious. I would like to take the starting point from such examples to speak to you of that which makes our hearts bleed because it has happened in our own middle out of the circle of our spiritual-scientific movement.

Recently we have lost a dear friend (Sibyl Colazza) from the physical plane, and it was my task to speak words for the deceased at the cremation. There it turned out to me automatically by the impulses of the spiritual world, in such a case speaking clearly enough, as a necessity to characterise the qualities of this friendly soul. We stood—it was in Zurich—before the cremation of a dear member of our spiritual-scientific movement. Because her death occurred on a Wednesday evening and the cremation took place in the early Monday morning, it is comprehensible that the retrospect of the etheric body had already stopped. Actually, without having wanted it, I was induced by the spiritual world to begin and close the obituary with words which should characterise the internal being of this soul. This internal being of the friend deceased in the middle of life was real that I had to delve in this being and to create it spiritually by identification with this being. That means to let the thinking dive in the soul of the dead and that what wove in the soul of the dead let flow into the own thoughts. Then I got the possibility to say as it were in view of this soul how the soul was in life and how it is still now after death. It has turned out by itself to dress that in the following words. I had to say the subsequent words at the beginning and at the end of the cremation:

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

The being of this soul appeared to me that way during the days before the cremation, when I identified myself with it, after the retrospect of the etheric body was over. The soul was not yet able to orientate itself in the superabundance of consciousness. It was sleeping as it were when the body was about to be cremated. The above-mentioned words were spoken in the beginning and at the end of the cremation. Then it happened that the flame—that what looks like the flame, but it is not—grasped the body, and while the body was grasped from that what looks like the flame what is, however, only the ascending warmth and heat, the soul became awake for a moment. Now I could notice that the soul looked back at the whole scene which had taken place among the human beings who were at the cremation. And the soul looked particularly back at that what had been spoken, then again it sank back into the superabundance of consciousness, you may say: in the unconsciousness. A moment later, one could perceive when such a looking back was there again. Then such moments last longer and longer, until finally the soul can orientate itself entirely in the superabundance of consciousness.

But one can recognise something significant from that. I could notice that the words spoken at the cremation lighted up the retrospect, because the words have come from the soul itself which had something awakening in them. From that you can learn that it is most important after death to overlook your own experience. You have to begin as it were with self-knowledge after death. Here in the life on earth you can miss self-knowledge, you can miss it so thoroughly that is true what a not average person, also a not average man of letters, but a famous professor of philosophy, Dr. Ernst Mach¹⁰—not Ferdinand Maack, I would not mention him—admits in his Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, a very famous work: as a young man I crossed a street and saw a person suddenly in a mirror who met me. I thought: what an unpleasant, disgusting face. I was surprised when I discovered that I had seen my own face in the profile.—He had seen his own face which he knew so little that he could make this judgment. The same professor tells how it has happened to him later when he was already a famous professor of philosophy that he got in a bus after a long trip, surely exhausted, there a man also got in from the other side—there was a big mirror opposite,—and he confesses his thoughts quite sincerely, while he says that he thought: what a disagreeable and down-and-out schoolmaster gets in there?—Again he recognised himself, and he adds: so I recognised the type better than the individual.—This is a nice example of how little the human being already knows himself by his external figure in life if he is not a flirtatious lady who often looks in the mirror.—But much less the human being knows the qualities of his soul. He passes those even more. He can become a famous philosopher of the present without self-knowledge. But the human being needs this self-knowledge when he has passed through the gate of death.

The human being must look back just at the point of his development from which he has gone through death, and he must recognise himself there. As little the human being, who stands in the physical life and looks back with the usual forces of life is able to see his own birth, as little this stands before the usual soul-forces—there is no one which can look back with the usual soul-forces at the physical birth,—in the same way it is necessary that the moment of death is permanently there at which one looks back. Death stands always before the soul's eyes as the last significant event. This death, seen from the other side, seen from beyond, is something different than that from the physical side. It is the most beautiful experience which can be seen from the other side, from the side of the life between death and new birth. Death appears as the glorious picture of the everlasting victory of the spiritual over the physical. Because death appears as such a picture, it wakes up the highest forces of the human nature permanently when this human nature lives in the spirituality between death and new birth. That is why the soul looking back or striving for looking back must look at itself at first. Just in these cases which we have gone through recently it was clear in which way the impulse originated to characterise this soul. The so-called living human being works together with the so-called dead that way. More and more such a relation will come from the so-called living to the so-called dead.

We experienced another case in the last time, that of our dear friend Fritz Mitscher. Even if Fritz Mitscher is less known to the local friends, nevertheless, he worked by his talks among many other anthroposophists, by that what he performed wonderfully from friend to friend by the way he familiarised himself with the anthroposophical life. His character has just to be regarded as exemplary, because he whose soul forces were directed to go through a learnt education was keen to take up and collect everything in himself according to his disposition of scholarship, to embrace it intimately in his soul-life, to insert it then in his spiritual-scientific world view. We need this kind of work, in particular, while we want to carry the spiritual-scientific ideals into future in a beneficial way. We need human beings, who try to penetrate the education of our time with understanding to immerse it in the stream of spiritual education; who offer that as it were as a sacrifice. Also there—and I speak only of matters that resulted from karma with necessity—karma caused that I had to speak at the cremation. Out of internal necessity it turned out that I had to characterise the being of our dear friend again in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech. I had to characterise this being:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the following night the soul which was not yet able to orientate itself returned of own accord something like an answer what is connected with the verses, which were directed to its being at the cremation. Such words like those are spoken that the own soul writes them down really without being able to add a lot. The words are written down while the soul oriented itself to the other soul, out of the other soul. It was unclear to me at all that two stanzas are built in a quite particular way, until I heard the words from the friend's soul who had gone through the gate of death:

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

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

I could only know now, why these stanzas are built that way; I spoke them exactly the same:

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

However, any “you” came back as “I,” any “your” came back as “my;” thus they returned transformed, expressed by the soul about its own being.

This is an example in which way the correspondence takes place, in which way the mutual relation already exists between the world here and the world there in the time after death. It is connected with the meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement that this consciousness penetrates the human souls. Spiritual science will give humankind the consciousness that the world of those who live between death and a new birth also becomes a world in which we know ourselves connected with them. Thus the world extends from the narrow area of reality in which the human being lives provisionally. However, this is connected intimately with that what should be in Central Europe. Somebody who has well listened finds just in the words directed to Fritz Mitscher's soul what is deeply connected with this meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement, because the words are spoken from a deep internal necessity:

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

Sometimes one may doubt, even if not in reality but concerning the interim period, whether the souls, which are embodied in the flesh here on earth, do really enough for the welfare of humans and earth what must necessarily be made concerning the spiritual comprehension of the world. However, somebody who is engaged completely in the spiritual-scientific movement may also not despair. For he knows that the forces of those who ascended into the spiritual worlds are effective in the current, in which we stand in this incarnation. In their previous lives those souls felt stronger here because they had taken up spiritual science in themselves. It is as if one communicates with a friend's soul who has gone through the gate of death if one says to him what one owes to the friend's force for the spiritual movement, if one is able to communicate as it were with the soul to remain united with its forces. We have it always among us, so that it always works on among us. We take up not only ideas, concepts and mental pictures in our spiritual science, that does not only concern, but we create a spiritual movement here on earth to which we really bring in the spiritual forces.

It suggests itself to us just at this moment, out of the sensations which perhaps inspire our local friends to turn the thoughts to the soul of somebody who has always dedicated his forces to this branch. We want to feel united also with him and his forces, after he has gone through the gate of death; therefore, we get up from our seats. The Leipzig friends know of which friendly soul I am speaking, and they have certainly turned their thoughts to this soul with moved hearts.

It was my responsibility to bring these ideas home to you today, while we were allowed to be together. These words were inspired through the consciousness that the grievous and destiny-burdened days in which we live must be replaced again with such which will pass in peace on earth in which the forces of peace will work. But a lot will be transformed, nay, must absolutely be transformed by that what happens now in the earthly life of humankind. We who bear witness to spiritual science must particularly keep in mind how much it depends on the fact that must take place on the ground—for which so much blood flows for which so often now souls go through the gate of death on which so many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters are mourning—what can be done by those whose souls can be illumined through the forward-looking thoughts of spiritual science.

Those thoughts which come from the consciousness of the living relationship of the human soul with the spiritual world have to ascend from the earth into the spiritual heights. Souls now enter these spiritual worlds, and there will be spiritual forces which are produced just by our destiny-burdened days. Imagine how many people go through the gate of death in the prime of their lives in this time. Imagine that the etheric bodies of these human beings who go between their twentieth and thirtieth years, between their thirtieth and fortieth years through the gate of death are etheric bodies which could have supplied the bodies still for decades here in the physical life. These etheric bodies are separated from the physical bodies; however, they keep the forces still in themselves to work here for the physical world. These forces keep on existing in the spiritual worlds, separated from the unused etheric bodies of the souls which went through the gate of death. The bright spirituality of the unspent etheric bodies of the heroic fighters turns to the spiritual welfare and progress of humankind. However, that what flows down there has to meet the thoughts coming from the souls which—aware of spirit—they can have by spiritual science. Hence, we are allowed to summarise the thoughts of which we made ourselves aware today in some words showing the interrelation of the consciousness based on spiritual-scientific ideas with the present events. They express how for the next peacetime the room has to be filled with thoughts which have ascended from souls to the spiritual worlds, from souls which experienced spiritual science. Then that can flourish and yield fruit in the right sense what is gained with so big sacrifices, with blood and death in our time, if souls are found, aware of spirit, which turn their senses to the realm of spirits. That is why we are allowed to say taking into account the grievous and destiny-burdened days today:

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

• 1. Serbia refuses the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary
• 2. conversation with Eckermann, 1st September 1829
• 3. letter to Zelter, 20th February 1828
• 4. cf. the lecture On the Mystery Dramas “The Portal of Initiation” and “The Soul's Probation” 19th December 1911, Steiner's Collected Works volume 127
• 5. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872): the censorship confiscated his writing Thoughts on Death and Immortality (Nuremberg, 1830)
• 6. The Bearing Force of the German Spirit. Lecture of the same title in Berlin, 25th February 1915, in Steiner's Collected Works volume 185
• 7. George M. S. Mead: last private secretary of H. P. Blavatsky. He left the Theosophical Society later.
• 8. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 9. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 10. Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Austrian physicist and philosopher

In these days I have tried to show you the conditions of human life from an individual aspect, and also from a wider aspect. You will have noticed that even during the public lectures which I held recently, I was anxious to point out the problems of spiritual science needed for an understanding of mankind. For we must abandon certain vicious circles of thought that are now to be found throughout the world, and are, really, one of the causes which led to the catastrophic events of the present.

Above all, people must understand where the boundary line between the so-called physical world and the spiritual really lies. This boundary-line really lies in the very center of man. In order to understand the world, it is very important to know that this boundary-line between the physical world and the spiritual world can be found in man himself. I have often pointed out, from the aspect of spiritual science, the great importance of scientific methods of thinking, both for the present and for the future, and have shown that scientific thought really stands more or less where it has always stood from its beginnings. One might well say that it is qualified to spread darkness over some of the most important truths of life.

Let us be quite clear that the evolution of the times only begins today to introduce scientific thinking gradually into the conceptions of the universe and of life. Today a few monistic societies, and others too, are engaged in introducing scientific conceptions into the consciousness of the general public—often in a shockingly amateurish way. This is only one of the channels through which scientific thinking will flow gradually into the human soul. A far more effective and incisive way is the one of publicity.

Not by chance, but in accordance with an inner reality, the new scientific way of thinking entered the evolution of mankind at the same time as the invention of printing. All new things that mankind has learnt so far through printed books (with the exception of books containing old things that existed already) came from the scientific consciousness. I mean that the new element came from the scientific consciousness. Above all, the way in which thoughts have been captured came from a scientific way of thinking.

Theologians will of course raise this objection: Have we not printed theological wisdom and all kinds of religious things during the last years, decades and centuries? Yes, this is true, but to what has it led us? The way in which human souls have become conversant with spiritual life under the auspices of printing has brought about this result, that the spiritual element has gradually left the sphere of religious consciousness altogether. Under the influence of scientific thought, even Christ-Jesus has become the “simple man of Nazareth” (you know this already) and although he has been characterized in many ways, he has nevertheless been placed on the same level as other great personalities of history—but for the present at least he still stands above the others. The real spiritual element connected with the Mystery of Golgotha gradually disappeared—at least for those who think that they have advanced in the civilization of our times.

I have already explained that the scientific way of thinking was obliged at first to cooperate in producing a certain darkening of the spirit, in support of what the Spirits of Darkness bring into human thinking, ever since 1879. In the scientific sphere this assumes a very subtle aspect. The scientifically trained thinker, or better, the scientific expert who cooperates in the general education of our age and in the formation of a world-conception, cannot help diverting man from casting a glance at the boundary-line between the physical world and the spiritual world, which exists in him. He cannot help this because science is as it is, and he does his very best (excuse this banal expression) to work in this direction by popularizing the scientific methods of thought. A future age will dawn for human thinking (it is terrible that such things are mentioned today – terrible for those who follow a particular line of thought), an age in which certain ideas will be looked upon as comical—ideas now ruling in science, which have not entered the consciousness of the masses, but influence them, because scientists (forgive me) are considered to be authorities.

I have often pointed out the following thought—even publicly in my book Riddles of the Soul: It is a current scientific idea that in the nervous system (we will limit ourselves to man, for the moment, although this can also be applied to animals) we can distinguish sensory, or sense-nerves or perceptive nerves, and motor nerves. It can be drawn schematically, by showing, for instance, that any nerve, say a nerve of touch, carries the sensation of touch to the central organ—let us suppose, to the spinal cord. The sensations from the periphery of the body reach the spinal cord. Then, from another point of the spinal cord goes out the so-called motor nerve. From there, the impulse of the will is sent on (see drawing).

In the brain this is shown in a more complicated way, as if the nerves were like telegraphic wires. The sense-impression, the impression on the skin, is led as far as the central organ: from there, an order goes out, as it were, that a movement must be carried out. A fly settles somewhere on the body—this causes a sensation; the sensation is led on to the central organ; there, the order is given to lift the hand as far as the forehead to chase away the fly. From a diagrammatic aspect, this is an idea that is generally accepted. A future age will look on this as something very comical indeed, for it is comical only for him who can detect this. But it is an idea that is accepted by the majority of professional scientists. Open the nearest book on the elements of science dealing with these things and you will find that today we must distinguish between sensory and motor nerves. You will find that they mention particularly the very comical picture of the telegraphic wire—that the sensation is conducted to the central organ and that the order is given out from there for the production of a movement. This picture is still very much diffused in popularized science.

It is far more difficult to see through reality than through the thoughts that set up comparisons with telegraphic wires, reminding us of the most primitive kinds of ideas. Spiritual Science alone enables us to see through reality. An impulse of the will has nothing in common physical matter. Nerves—both sensory and motor nerves—obey a uniform function, and this can be seen no matter whether the nerve-cord is interrupted in the spine or in the brain; in the brain it is merely interrupted in a more complicated way.

This interruption or break exists not only in order that something from the external world may be conducted through the one half to the central organ and then, in the form of will, from the central organ through the second half to the periphery—this interruption exists for an entirely different reason. Our nervous system is interrupted in this regular way because at the very point of the interruption, reflected in an image in man, there lies the boundary line between physical and spiritual experience; it is the bodily reflection of a complicated spiritual reality. This boundary exists in man in a very remarkable way. Man enters into a relationship with the world immediately around him, and this process is connected with that part of the nerve-cord that goes as far as the interruption. But man must also have a link with his own physical body as a soul-being. This connection with his own physical body is transmitted through the other nerve-cord. When an external impression causes me to move my hand, the impulse to move the hand already lies here (shown in the diagram), already united with the soul, with the sense-impression. And that which is conducted along the whole sensitive nerves, along the so-called motor nerve, from a to b, is not “conducted as a sense-impression as far as c, where an order is given that gives rise to b”– no, the soul-element is already fructified when an impulse of the will takes place at a, and passes through the entire nerve-path indicated in the diagram.

It is quite out of the question that such infantile ideas should correspond to any form of reality—ideas which presuppose that the soul is to be found somewhere between the sensory and the motor nerves, where it receives an impression from the exterior world and transmits an order from there, like a telegraphic operator. This childish idea, which is met with again and again, is very strange when found in conjunction with the demand that science must at all costs avoid being anthropomorphic! Anthropomorphic lines of thought must be avoided, yet people do not realize how anthropomorphic they themselves are, when they say that an impression is received, an order sent out, etc., etc. They talk and talk and have not the slightest idea what mythological beings they conjure into their dreams about the human organism! They would realize it if they would take things seriously.

Now the question arises: Why then is the nerve-cord interrupted? It is interrupted because, if this were not so, we should not be included in the whole process. Only because at the point of interruption the impulse springs over the gap, as it were (the same impulse, let us say, an impulse of the will, starts from a), because of this fact, we ourselves are in the world and are at one with this impulse. If the entire process were uninterrupted, with no break at this point, it would be entirely a process of Nature, in which we would not participate.

Imagine this process in a so-called reflex movement: A fly settles somewhere on your body, you chase away the fly, and the whole process never enters your consciousness fully. The entire process has its analogy, an entirely justified analogy, in the sphere of physics. Inasmuch as this process demands an explanation by means of physics, the explanation will be only a little more complicated than that of another physical process. Take a rubber ball, for instance: you press it here, and deform it. But the ball fills out again and reassumes its former shape. You press in and the ball presses out again. This is the plain physical process, a reflex movement, except that there is no organ of perception, there is nothing spiritual in the process. But if you interpolate something spiritual at this point by interrupting the process, the rubber ball will feel itself an individual being. However, in this case the rubber ball must have a nervous system, so that it can feel both the world and itself. A nervous system always exists in order that we may feel the world in ourselves: it never exists in order to pass on a sensation along one side of the wire, and a motor impulse along the other side.

I am pointing this out because the pursuance of this subject leads us into one of the many points where natural science must be corrected before it can supply ideas that correspond approximately to the real facts. The ideas ruling today are instruments of the impulses coming from the Spirits of Darkness. The boundary line between physical and spiritual experience lies in man himself.

You see, this piece of nerve that I indicated in red really serves to place us into the physical world, so that we may have sensations in the physical world. The other piece of nerve, indicated in blue, really serves to make us feel ourselves as body. There is no essential difference whether we experience a color consciously from outside, through the nerve-cord a c, or whether we experience an organ, or the position of an organ, etc., from inside, through the cord d b; in essence, this is the same. In the one case we experience something physical is in us, i.e., enclosed within our skin. Not only that which is outside, but also what is within us, places us in the process that can be experienced as a will-process. The strength of the perception varies according to the nerve-cords that transmit it—the cord a c, or the cord d b. Indeed, a definite weakening of the intensity takes place. When an idea is linked up with a will-impulse in a, the impulse is passed on from a; when it jumps from c to d, the whole process weakens to such an extent in our consciousness or experience that we experience its continuation—for instance, the lifting of our hand—only with that slight intensity of consciousness which we possess during sleep. When we lift our hand we are again aware of the will, but in the form of a new sensation from another side. Sleep extends continually in an anatomical and physiological sense into our waking life. We are connected with the exterior physical world, but we are completely awake only with that part of our being that goes as far as the interruption of the nerves. What lies in us beyond this interruption in the nerves is wrapped in sleep, even by day. In the present stage of the evolution of the Earth this process is not yet physical; it takes place on a certain spiritual level, although it is connected to a great extent with the lower qualities of human nature. However, I have often expounded the secret that just man's “lower nature” is connected with the higher manifestations of certain spiritual beings. If we note all the places in the human being where the nerves are interrupted, and jot them down in a diagram, we obtain the boundary-line between the experiencing in the physical world and the experience that comes from a higher world. Hence I can use the following diagram: Suppose that I indicate here all the nerve-interruptions—here is the head and here is a leg. Now suppose that a so-called impression goes out from here and that the interruption of the nerve is in this place. “Walking” will be the result, and the real process consists in this—that everything that we experience through the nerve here, is experienced by day in a waking way. But what we experience here as unconscious will is experienced in a sleeping way, even when we are awake. The spiritual world forms and creates directly everything that lies below the point of interruption in the nerves.

You may find these things difficult if you hear them for the first time, but they should make you aware that you cannot enter into the more intimate questions of knowledge without some difficulty.

When it becomes clear to you that everything above the boundary line connects man with the physical world, and everything below the boundary with a spiritual world, of which he possesses only an inferior kind of physical image, you will be able to reach the following conception:—Think of the plant-world; the plants grow out of the earth, but they would not do so unless they received from the universe forces which are intimately connected with the life of the Sun, and which receive everything that the earth generates in the form of forces. All these cosmic forces, everything that pours in from the universe out of the Sun's life, with all that emanates from the earth, belongs to the life of the plants.

This joint action of cosmic and telluric, or earthly, forces is part of the life and existence in the physical world, as we must understand it. The forces working on the plants below this line, from the earth, together with the plant's germinating force (the seed is put into the earth) are of the same kind as those that we must seek here, where the red lines are indicated [original article notes “This diagram cannot be given.”] You must look for the forces that the plant receives from the earth through its roots, above the boundary-line indicated in the diagram. Man takes from the earth in a more delicate way, through his eyes and ears, and above all through his skin, what the plant assimilates from the soil through its roots. Man is an earthly being through his nerves, and through what he receives in the form of telluric or earthly forces in the air he breathes, and in the food that the earth gives him. What the plant receives from the earth (except that the plant sends its roots into the earth), man receives through organs that he unfolds after death, from the earth; but he receives it in a more delicate way, and the plant in a coarser way through its roots.

The plant receives other forces as well; it receives forces that stream in from the Sun's sphere, from the heavenly sphere—the sphere of the cosmic spaces, or the universe. In my diagram, this sphere is indicated in blue; it represents the forces that the plant receives from the universe. They are of the same kind as those indicated in blue, beyond the boundary line. Man draws out of his body what the plant draws out of the universe. From the earth, man receives in a more refined state the forces and substances which the plant assimilates more coarsely from the soil through its roots. From this body, man receives more coarsely the same forces and substances that the plant draws from the universe in a more refined state. These forces do not exist in the universe in the form in which man draws them out of his own body; they existed as such during the old Moon period. Man has preserved them from that period. Through what lies beyond this limit (shown in the blue part of the diagram) man does not receive his perceptions immediately from the present, but from what he brought over as an inheritance from the old Moon period. He has carried the cosmic conditions of a past age into the present. Man has preserved the Moon-conditions in his body.

You can see, therefore, that we are cosmic to a certain extent and are even connected with the universe in such a way that we bear within us an image of what has already been conquered by the universe outside.

This is again an example of what I mentioned last time, that it will not be of much use if we say, from a general, vague and nebulous standpoint, that man must take up again a cosmic way of feeling and cosmic ideas. These things are only of value if we approach them quite concretely, and if we really know how matters stand, how they are connected. This will place the experimental attempts of the present day on a sound basis, on a really sound basis. If we know that everything in the human body lying beyond the nerve-interruptions is connected with the Moon nature, we shall find in the universe and in the life on earth the forces that make us ill or that heal us. We shall find them through these relationships, and when we know how that which lies on this side of the boundary-line is connected with the conditions of the earth (in a finer way than the plant's connection with the soil through its roots), we shall find, in a really conscious way, the connection between illness and health and the qualities of certain plants.

These things are still in the experimental stage. Man's thinking must first be placed on a sound basis, and then there will also be a sound foundation of knowledge for the conceptions and ideas which he develops, in order that his thinking may regulate, permeate, and give a certain structure to the social, ethical, pedagogic and political aspects of life.

In many realms of knowledge, we perceive that just those people, who in their scientific thought are broad-minded, able experts, begin to romance, to talk absolute nonsense, when they transfer their habitual ideas to the sphere of social life. But the sphere of social life is not an entirely independent sphere. The human being, with his physical soul and spiritual nature, takes his place in social life, and it is not possible to separate these things from one another. We must not content ourselves with the fact that men are made scientifically stupid in the social sphere in order that they may only be able to talk nonsense where the social sphere is concerned!

Today it is quite easy to prove that experienced scientists begin to talk nonsense when they cross the boundary between science and spiritual life. Medical men, especially, are very prone to all kinds of absurdities when they enter the spiritual sphere with the ideas that are gained today in the realm of science. We need not search far afield: any example taken from human life will serve, for wherever we look we shall find confusion in this respect.

For instance, here is a pamphlet by a very good doctor, entitled: “The Injurious Effects of the War upon the Nervous System and Mental Life.” In order not to arouse your prejudice, I will not even say what a good doctor he is. This excellent medical man, however, observed the nervous system, concerning which science has not even a glimmer of a correct idea (this can be realized from the few examples I have given today); he observed to what extent the nervous system has been injured by the present war conditions. We need only consider the most primitive examples, in order to show how really sound thinking ceases when scientific conceptions are transferred to that which is connected, to some extent, with the spiritual sphere—I will not even say, the spiritual sphere itself! The discussion of such a subject as “The Injurious Effects of the War upon the Nervous System and Mental Life” implies the necessity of expressing what is supposed to take place in the nerves, as a result of all kinds of things pertaining to the spiritual (mental) life—naturally, that spiritual life which takes its course on the physical plane—through all kinds of ideas which are taken from this spiritual life.

This man, for instance, brings forward an idea that is supposed to be justified under certain conditions of abnormal life of the nerves, the idea of “over-estimated thoughts.” They are a symptom of diseased nerves. “Over-estimated thoughts”—what does this mean? You see, anyone who brings forward such a conception must make sure that it is really effective in life. What is an over-estimated thought? This doctor says it arises when the feeling, or the sensation, in the thought is emphasized too strongly, when it is a one-sided thought; in fact, he brings forward all kinds of vague ideas. Of course, I cannot give you a precise idea of this, but do not ascribe this lack of a clear definition to spiritual science, for now I am quoting. An over-estimated thought arises, for instance, if one hates a foreign country excessively, owing to the war. A “valued thought” would be real patriotism. But this real patriotism becomes “over-valued” when the nervous system is irritated. One does not only love one's country, but hates the other countries: then the thought has become “over-valued.” The “valued” thought is sound, and from the valued thought one must conclude that the nerves also are sound. But if the thought is over-valued, the nerves are injured. Do we meet reality anywhere, if we characterize, on the one hand a nerve process, and on the other hand a thought which is supposed to have a certain quality? As a thought, it is supposed to be “over-valued”; the nerve process is on one side and the idea “over-valued” on the other. People would do well to think out such things always to the very end, for a thought reveals itself as correct or incorrect, i.e., as real or unreal, only if it is thought to the end. For instance, it would be an over-valued thought if I were to think that I am the King of Spain; undoubtedly this would be an over-valued thought. But it need not be “over-valued” if I really happened to be the King of Spain. In this case my nervous system would be quite sound, although the thought is the same. It has the same content. Hence the thought itself is not over-valued; otherwise we must believe the King of Spain to be afflicted with nerve troubles because he thinks that he is the King of Spain! This is so, is it not? Consequently, this connection is not important, nevertheless there is a great deal of talk about this. There is not only talk: conceptions, definitions, etc., are formed. The results are very strange and not worth more than idle chatter.

You see, now, that this man has formed the idea of over-valued thoughts. The over-valuation of thoughts is a symptom for disturbances in the life of the nerves. Very well. But his sub-consciousness does not feel very much at ease, for sub-consciously he feels that while he is explaining to people all these matters concerning the over-valuation of thoughts, they, too, have all kinds of sub-conscious thoughts, they think there is a flaw in the argument; but this remains, of course, in the sub-consciousness of people, for this person is an “authority”! Hence their impressions must not rise into consciousness , for, with the designation “over-valuation” is expressed not only the vivid and high valuation of the ideas in question, but also their “over-valuation” in connection with the real facts which lie at their foundation. The over-valued thought rules consciousness to such an extent that there is no room beside it for other objective thoughts, which are also justified. The latter are pushed aside and lose their efficacy in consciousness and their influence in bridling and limiting the over-valued thoughts. Thus a one-sided exaggeration arises when judgments are formed, a one-sided tendency in the strivings of the will, and a turning away from all other spheres of thought which are not immediately connected with the center of the over-valued thoughts.

(It is more or less the same thing as arguing that poverty comes from “pauvreté”!)

Certainly, two people may have the same thought substance, but in one case this is Lucifer, in the other case Ahriman, and in a third case it may be in keeping with the normal evolution of humanity. Instead of coining the empty expression “over-valued thoughts,” we must accept the idea of spirituality, such as the luciferic or the ahrimanic spirituality; then we shall know that the important point is to recognize whether a human being wills something out of himself, or whether something else in him wills it. But of course, so-called science still shrinks from such views.

And if we expect real, concrete results from science, things become very amusing! Listen to this:

“First of all, I will define” (he tries to explain himself, because he wishes to show the symptoms of certain nervous disturbances), “first of all, I will define the thoughts that often play the chief role in the nervous disturbances of individuals” (he means also in the modern nationality-mania), “the ideas of despondency, care, fear, lack of courage and of self- confidence.” Very well, these are the things that characterize the nervous system in the life of the nerves that is determined by over-valued thoughts.

Despondency, care, fear, lack of courage and of self-confidence—well, such a lecture is meant to be of help somehow, for this authority does not speak merely to cause vibrations in the air, but because he wishes it to be of use. Hence one would expect this gentleman to tell us how humanity can overcome these handicaps, because he finds, not only in individuals, but also in humanity, lack of courage, care, despondency, lack of self-confidence as symptoms of nervous disturbances; now we should expect him to tell us how to get rid of these things, how to get beyond this lack of courage, care, despondency, lack of self-confidence. One would take this for granted. Indeed he takes it for granted, for he says:

“Thus for a time at least, that discontented, discouraged mood can spread among the great masses of the people, which is to be feared more than anything else. For it leads to the abandonment of strong sound impulses of the will, it loosens the firm, united striving after a goal, and it weakens energy and endurance.”

Now we expect something, and he continues: “Not to be nervous, therefore, means above all courage, confidence, trust in one's own strength, and not swerving from what has been recognized as the right course of action.”

So now we have the conclusion. People are nervous when they are oppressed by care, lack of courage, despondency, lack of self-confidence. How do they get rid of their nervousness? When they are not oppressed by all this! This is quite clear, is it not? When they are not oppressed by all these things!

The worthlessness of thought is carried over into substantiality also in science. Certain authorities have at their disposal all the material, have taken possession of it. It is already confiscated when any attempt is made to work upon it with reason. But when they work upon it themselves, they do so with worthless thoughts. All anatomical, physiological and physical subject matter is consequently lost. Nothing is created, for at the very table where something useful for humanity should be produced, people stand with these worthless thoughts. Certainly nothing can come of the dissection of a corpse, when—forgive the hard expression—an “empty head” dissects. Here already the matter becomes social. Things must be considered from this point of view. And a very promising treatise ends in the manner I have just shown.

I have given you one example. Not be become nervous means above all not to lose courage, confidence and trust. But when today the average reader takes up such a treatise and reads: “The Injurious Effects of the War upon the Nervous System and Mental Life”—and thinks, “here I shall be enlightened, for this is by Professor So-and-so, director of the Medical Hospital in So-and-so.”—well, now he is clear about it, now naturally he is enlightened.

But on page 27, where national hatred is discussed, we read:—“Certainly similar impulses flared up within us, and we found it almost a relief and satisfaction to oppose our greatest enemies with a similar attitude on our side. And yet, only a little quiet consideration is needed to realize that this general national hatred is only the outcome of a diseased, overstimulated attitude of soul, into which the various peoples have fallen through mutually inflaming, inciting and imitating one another.”

How then has the history of national hatred arisen, according to this statement? Here are various peoples: a, b, and c, but neither a, b, nor c is in any way capable of hating, of itself, for the whole history has not arisen thus,—this general national hatred has developed through a diseased, over-stimulated attitude of soul into which the various peoples have fallen through mutually inflaming, inciting and imitating one another. Thus, a cannot bring it about, b also cannot, nor can c; but what each is unable to do, they achieve by mutually provoking one another. Consider how ingenious the thought is. I explain something and have before me a, b, and c. All this is unable to provide an adequate explanation, but does so just the same. I explain something therefore out of nothing at all in the most beautiful manner

People pick up such things and read them without observing that they are simply nonsense.

It is necessary to point out such things for they show how disjointed and worthless the thought is which today assumes authority. Naturally in science, which pertains to what already exists, this does not come to light so strongly and cannot be controlled. But just as people think here in the realm of science, so they also think in social, pedagogical and political life and this has been prepared during the last four centuries. This is the present situation.

So it has come about that gradually out of the disjointed, worthless thought, just such impulses as those which meet us in the present catastrophic events have arisen. Here we must penetrate thoroughly to the roots of the matter. And only when people then come to the surface of things, where the matter becomes actual for the single individual, and may also become so for the social structure of whole peoples, there the matter becomes especially terrible and tragic. It is our task on the one hand to grasp these things, is it not? We must learn to know them within their mutual limits, if we are to understand them. If we wish to understand such an event as the present war, which is so complicated and which unquestionably cannot be grasped in its details from the physical plane, we must—as people say—trace it back to its sources. But everyone believes, when he has traced a matter back to its source, when he has understood it in this manner, that it was a necessity, that it had to happen just as it now is. Today for instance, one does not in the least notice that the one has nothing whatever to do with the other. Because we understand something in its interrelationships, this does not also establish the fact that the event had to take place, that it could not have been omitted. He who tries to make clear to himself, in a more or less intelligent way, why the present war had to come, why it is not something determined by a few people, but something connected with deeper causes in the evolution of humanity—often goes away satisfied and says: Now I understand that nothing else was possible except that this war should come. It is obviously a necessity—in the sense that when we know its causes it develops with absolute necessity out of them, out of these concrete conditions. But this does not mean that we may draw the conclusion that things had to happen just as they have happened. No event arising in world history is necessary in this latter sense. Although in the former sense it is necessary, no event is necessary in this latter sense. Each event might have been different, and each might not have happened at all.

He who speaks of absolute necessity might reflect with the same right: I should like to know when I shall die. Now if I go to a life insurance company, they reckon out—determining the amount of the insurance policies accordingly—how many people out of a certain number have died in a given length of time and how many still live. The insurance money is paid accordingly. I go to a life insurance company for information and it must appear from their calculations whether I shall be dead or not in 1922.

This is naturally complete nonsense. But it is exactly the same nonsense when we try to derive the necessity of one event from another, from the realization of the cause that must lead to it. Here I touch upon a theme which indeed is not easy, for the reason that just in this sphere the most disjointed ideas are prevalent, because very little will to become clear about things exists in this realm today.

If we really wish to be clear on this point, we must recognize that when something takes place, it does so under the influence of certain conditions. In the sequence of circumstances we always come to a certain point where there are beginnings—real beginnings. If today we see a sapling that is still small, later on it will become larger; the largeness of the tree develops of necessity from its smallness. After a short time we may say: It is a necessity that this tree has developed thus. I could see how it developed according to necessity when it was still very small, perhaps while it was unfolding its very first germinating forces out of the earth. If I am a botanist I can see that in time a large tree must of necessity arise. But if the seed had not fallen into the earth at this particular spot—perhaps someone planted it there, but if he had not done so—then here would be a point where necessity would not have been introduced. For necessity must begin here. We have before us a mighty oak, let us say—it is not here in reality—we look at it and admire it; it was once naturally a sapling and has grown from this sapling, according to necessity. But now imagine that a good-for-nothing boy (or girl!) had come along while it was still very small and pulled it up. Because it is pulled up, the whole necessity does not result. In a negative sense also the necessity may be done away with. Starting points, where necessities begin, these reveal themselves to the thought that conforms to reality. This is the essential point.

But we do not reach these starting points when we observe merely the outer course of events. We reach them only when we can at least feel the spiritual foundations. For just as you have here a bunch of roses, and when you form a concept of it, if you are an abstract person, an idea will result which is a copy of the reality (for the bunch of roses is real and the idea of it is a copy of reality)—so for the occultist the bunch of roses is not a reality at all when he conceives it, because the bunch of roses does not exist; the roses can only exist when with their roots they are connected with the earth. The real concept does not result when we form an image of something that is from the outset external, but only when we have formed out of the reality this fully experienced concept. But this fully experienced concept yields itself only to spiritual-scientific contemplation—even in the case of outer sense reality.

A valid concept of a world-historical event is only reached when we can view this event according to the methods of spiritual science. Here we find that it may indeed be traced in regard to its necessity; we find its ramifications, its roots within reality. But something is accomplished only by actually tracing the roots, not by the general statement of an abstract necessity.

Had, for instance, certain events during the eighties of the nineteenth century been different, the events in 1914 would also have been different. But this is just the important point, not to proceed as the historian does, who says: What now takes place is the effect of preceding events, these are in turn the effect of preceding events, which are the effect of still other events, etc. We come thus not only to the beginning of the world, but still farther, into cornplete nothingness. One such idea rolls along behind the other. This, however, is not the important point, but we must follow the matter concretely to where it first took root. Just as the root of a plant begins somewhere, so also do events. Seeds are sown in the course of time. If the seeds are not sown, then the events do not arise. I have touched upon a theme here that I naturally cannot exhaust today. We will have more to say later on this subject that I will describe essentially thus: “In spite of all considerations of necessity, there is not a single event which is absolutely necessary.”

It is really essential that men of the present day should, in their whole attitude of mind, emerge from this frightful dogmatism that permeates modern science, and that matters should be [taken] seriously.

I will give you a good example. At Zurich and Basle I endeavored to explain what nonsense it is to consider a sequence of historical events in such a way that one event must necessarily arise from another. This is the same as if I said: Here is a light that illumines first an object a, then an object b, then an object c. I do not notice the light itself, but merely the fact that first a, then b, then c in turn becomes illumined. I should be mistaken if, on seeing a and then b illumined, I were to say that b is lighted from a, and when I see that c is illumined, I were then to say: c is lighted from b. This would be quite incorrect, for the illumination of b and c have nothing to do with a; they all receive light from a common source. I gave this example in my lectures in order to explain historical events.

Now suppose that somebody found this idea quite a nice one. This is possible, is it not, that an idea which has sprung up on anthroposophical soil should be found quite good? Indeed, here and there even our opponents have taken such ideas to use for themselves. Many indeed have become opponents because such things had to be censured. Thus it is quite possible that an analogy brought forward from an anthroposophical quarter should not be absolutely foolish. Suppose some person took it and used it in a connection differing from that in which I had used it. Suppose that he used it dogmatically, not symptomatically as I did. Suppose that he used it from quite a different attitude of mind, and that I heard a lecture in which he said: “The sequence of cause and effect is quite wrongly explained by saying that effect b is the result of cause a, effect c of cause b, for this would be the same as saying: ‘When three objects, a, b, and c, are illumined, then b is illumined by a, c by b’.”

Suppose I am listening to all this, and that the explanation is not given in the same connection in which I spoke at Basle and Zurich, then I should perhaps object to the lecturer's conclusions, arising from his connection. I should perhaps say: “Supposing that a, b and c are luminescent substances—there are such substances; when exposed to light they become luminous and can give light even when the source of light is removed—suppose that a, being luminescent, actually illumines b, and that b, being luminescent, illumines c, then b would in truth be lighted by a, and c by b. In this way the whole analogy can become very brittle, when it is used by someone who, in the course of his lecture, has not explained that concepts for the realities in the spiritual life are like photographs, which differ when taken from different points of view. If this is not said at the outset, if the lecturer does not lead up to ideas that conform to reality, so that these ideas are always ideas from a certain point of view, then what has been said quite rightly from a certain perspective may become nonsense when used in an absolute sense.

The difference lies in this: Does the speaker start from reality or ideas? If from the latter, he will always be one-sided. If he takes as his starting point reality—since he can only bring forward ideas and nothing else, and every idea is one-sided—he may and must produce one-sided ideas, for that is quite obvious. You will now understand that a complete, a fundamental alteration of the soul-life is essential. For this reason it is easy for people to criticize many ideas of which I am the author. I do not know if anyone has hit upon this particular criticism. I have myself already made all the criticisms that are necessary.

Men must now realize in what way the idea is related to the reality. Only then shall we be able to penetrate into reality. Otherwise we shall always quarrel about ideas. Today the whole world is fighting about ideas in the social sphere, even when this fight has been transformed into external deeds. The fight about ideas changes very frequently into external deeds. These things lead into the intimacies of the spiritual life. Those who would understand existence must reflect on such things.

I have called your attention to these matters today in a more theoretical way. Next time I will speak of contemporary history from this standpoint and will show how far certain events have been necessary, and how far they were quite unnecessary, how quite different events might have happened, and how the catastrophes under which we all suffer need not have happened at all. We shall speak of these important questions in the next lecture.

What I am going to say today is intended to deal with primary and secondary education, and to deal with it in such a way that what is of essential value can be useful for the present time, the grave times, in which we are now living. I believe you will have seen for yourselves that what could be given only as outline in my book The Threefold Commonwealth has many deep contributing factors—indeed very many, if we take into consideration all that arises from the new shaping of the world. So that actually in everything that must be said on this subject, preeminently where fresh activity has to be aroused, only guiding lines can be given to begin with instead of anything of an exhaustive nature.

When we look at the times in which we are living—and we need to do so for we have to understand them—it must constantly strike us what a gulf there is between what must be called a declining culture and a culture that may be described as chaotic, but all the same on the up-grade. I expressly draw attention to the fact that today I am wanting to deal with a special aspect of my subject, and therefore ask you to take it in connection with the lectures as a whole, once they are brought to completion.

I should like to start by drawing your attention to something that is clearly noticeable, namely, how the culture based on bourgeois social contract is in rapid decline, whereas we are witnessing the dawn of another culture based on what is largely not understood and represented by the proletariat. If all this is to be understood—it can be felt without being understood but will then lack clarity—we must grasp it in its symptoms. Symptoms are always a matter of detail; I ask you to remember this in what I am saying today. I shall naturally be forced by the subject itself to take details out of their context, but I shall take pains so to shape this symptomatology that it will not be able to work in the way of agitators or demagogues, but will really be shaped by the relevant circumstances. We may meet with much misunderstanding in this direction today, but that we shall have to risk.

Now in the course of years I have often asked you to bear in mind that, on the ground of the world-outlook represented here, it is perfectly possible to be a real upholder and defender of the modern natural scientific approach to the world. You know how frequently I have referred to all that can be said in defense of this approach! At the same time, however, I have never failed to point out what a fearful counterpart it has. Quite recently I reminded you that this can be seen at once when anyone, as a result of what we call here the symptomatic method of study, points to some particularly telling example and goes to work quite empirically. Now in another connection I have had to sing the praises of a recent remarkable work by the outstanding biologist Oskar Hertwig, Das werden der Organismen—Eine Wiederlegung der Darwinischen Zufallstheorie. Then, to avoid misunderstanding after the publication of a second book of his, I have had to remark how this man has followed up a really great book on natural science with a quite inferior work on social conditions. This is a fact fraught with meaning for the present time. It shows that even on the excellent foundation of the natural scientific approach to the world, what is pre-eminently necessary for an understanding of the present times cannot arise, namely, knowledge of the social impulses existing in our age. I want today to give you another example to bring home to you with greater emphasis how, on the one hand, bourgeois culture is on the decline and can be saved only in a certain way; how, on the other hand, there exists something that is on the ascent, something that must be carefully tended with understanding and judgment if it is to be a sarting point for the culture of the future.

Now I have before me a book that is a symptomatic and typical product of the declining bourgeoisie. It appeared immediately after the world war with the somewhat pretentious title The Light Bearer. This light bearer is admirably adapted to spread darkness over everything which today is most necessary for social culture and its spiritual foundation. A remarkable community of people have foregathered, who in separate articles have written remarkable things about a so-called rebuilding of the social organism. Naturally I can quote only certain passages from this rather voluminous work. To begin with we have a scientist named Jakob von Uexkull, really a good typical scientist who—and this is the important point—has not only a certain knowledge of natural science, is not merely well versed in it, but in his research work is recognised as an accomplished scientist of the day. He feels impelled, however, like others bred in the scientific tradition, to treat us to his views upon organising the world socially. He has learnt about the 'cell-state' as the organism is often called in scientific circles. He has certainly learnt to develop his mind, with which he then observes the social life. I want to refer you just to a few instances from which you may be able to see how this man, not from his knowledge of natural science but as a result of his scientific method of thinking—really quite correct but wholly absurd for practical life—how he now looks at the structure of modern society: he turns to the social organism, to the natural scientific organism, the organism as it is in nature, and finds that "the harmony in a natural organism can at times be disturbed by processes of disease"—and referring to the social organism goes on to say:

“All harmony can be disturbed through disease. We call the most terrible disease of the human body cancer. Its characteristic is the unrestrained activity of the protoplasm which, without considering the preservation of the organs, goes on producing more and more protoplasmic cells. These press upon the bodily structure; they cannot, however, fulfil any function themselves for they are lacking in structure.

“We recognise the same disease in the human community at large when the people's motto: liberty, equality, fraternity, replaces the motto of the state: compulsion, diversity, subordination.”

Now here you have a typical scientific thinker. He looks upon it as a cancerous disease when the impulse towards liberty, equality and fraternity arises out of the people. In place of freedom he wants to put compulsion, in place of equality, diversity, in place of fraternity, subordination. This is what from the 'cell-state' he has learnt to adopt as his method of viewing things, and which he then applies to the social organism. The rest of what he puts forward too is not without significance when considered from the symptomalogical point of view. He goes so far as to find something in the social organism that corresponds in the natural organism to the circulation of the blood, not at all in the way I have described it in various lectures, but as he himself pictures it. He goes to the length of looking upon gold as blood circulating in the social organism and says: “Gold possesses the faculty of circulating independently of commodities, finally reaching the collecting centres represented by the great banks (Gold heart)”. Thus this scientist seeks a heart for his social organism and finds it in the collecting centres of the great banks, “which can exercise an overwhelming influence on the movements of both gold and commodities”.

Now I particularly stress that I have no intention of making fun of anything here. I want just to let you see how a man, who from this point of view has the courage to think things out to their logical conclusion, is actually obliged to think. If today many people deceive themselves about our having during the last three or four centuries brought evolution to the point of making this kind of thinking quite intelligible, then it is evident that these people are asleep in their souls, that they give themselves up to cultural narcotics which prevent their looking with wide awake souls at what is concealed in bourgeois culture. For this reason I have shown you a symptom that sheds light on this light bearer, sheds light on the elements of present-day culture, in so far as, out of the scientific method of thinking, this culture understands the social life. In a further examnple I want to show you how different a result we experience from what we meet within the spiritual sphere.

Among those belonging to the society just mentioned there is a man with a more spiritual bent, by name Friedrich Niebergall. Now this Friedrich Niebergall is quoted because his attitude towards certain things we consider of value is most sympathetic. But I should like to say here that what matters is the nature of the sympathetic attitude with which from such a side certain matters are approached. If we know this, and if we are not mere egoists but understand the great social impulses, perhaps we do not value this sympathetic attitude very highly; and it would be good if in these matters we were not to give ourselves up to illusion. We know, some of us at least could know, that what we carry on here and call spiritual science, or anthroposophy, we have for some time considered to be the true spiritual foundation of what today is on the ascent. Here, it is true, extremes meet; and I have always been forced to experience how some of those very people who participate in our anthroposophical endeavors turn to other movements they feel to be closely akin, but which differ from our endeavors in that they belong to the worst phenomena of the bourgeois decline, whereas spiritual science has from the first been strongly opposed to all that is behind this. So we find confused together in a certain Johannes Müller, who has no power of discriminating the different streams—like Niebergall for example—we find in this Johannes Müller a phenomenon showing just the characteristics of our decadent culture; and on the other hand (you know I do not say these things out of mere foolishness) you find mention of my name. It is true that all kinds of elegant things, most elegant things, are said about what I try to accomplish. You must, however, realise how in all that is put forward in anthroposophy my every effort is directed towards taxing man's understanding and fighting in a pronounced way against anything in the way of nebulous mysticism or so-called mystic theosophy. This could be done only by approaching the highest spheres of knowledge with clear insight, lucid ideas, which will be striven for when through natural science we have learnt, not the natural scientific outlook of today, but true thinking. After the gentleman in question has declared how fine much of anthroposophy is, he adds: “Round this basis of practical truth there then springs forth a confused medley of alleged knowledge concerning the life of the soul, of mankind and of the cosmos—as once was the case in the all-embracing gnostic systems offered out of the secret wisdom of the East to an age seeking in like manner inner depths and peace of soul.” It is not possible to say anything less to the point than this. For the fact that the author describes this as confused nonsense, a confused medley, rests solely on his lacking the will to adopt the mathematical method of our spiritual science. This is generally the case with those wishing to gain conceptions from a knowledge that is on the decline. The result of disciplining inner experience by mathematical method appears to this author therefore to be a confused medley. But this conf used medley that brings into the matter mathematical clarity, perhaps indeed mathematical dryness, is what is essential, for it preserves what is meant to be pursued here from all fantastic mysticism, all nebulous theosophy. Without this so-called confused medley there can be no real foundation for the future life of spirit. It is true that by reason of our social conditions there had to be a struggle to make it possible for spiritual science to be carried on in the very modest dimensions it has reached today. We had to struggle with what very often appears as a result of most people—who now have time, and nothing but time, for the affairs of spiritual science—still having those old habits of thinking and perceiving which are on the decline. Hence, we have to struggle so hard against what easily spreads in a circle such as ours, namely, sectarianism, which naturally is the very opposite of what is meant to be cultivated here, and against every kind of personal wrangling which, it goes without saying, leads to the systematic slandering that has flourished so exuberantly on the soil of this movement.

Now whoever studies the life of spirit today from symptoms such as these will soon come to the point of saying: What is particularly needed in the sphere of spiritual endeavour is a return to original sources. The clamor for a new form of social life is always heard at a time when people harbor the most widespread anti-social impulses and anti-social instincts. These anti-social impulses and instincts are particularly evident in people's private intercourse. They are to be seen in what men give or do not give—to each other. They are to be seen in the characteristic way people ignore the thoughts of others, talk others down, and finally pass them by. In our day the instinctive capacity really to understand the people we meet is extraordinarily rare. The following also is a disappearing phenomenon—the possibility of people nowadays being convinced of anything unconnected with their social status, education or birth. Today people have the most beautiful thoughts, but it is very difficult for them to be enthusiastic about anything. In thought they pass by all that is best, and this is a deeply rooted characteristic of our age. As consequence of this fact—you know that recently I have talked of logic based on fact as being important for the present time in contrast to mere logic of thought—as consequence of this a longing exists in men today to have recourse to authority and the pronouncements of feeling rather than by their own inner activity to work through to things. Those today who talk a great deal about freedom from authority are the very people who, at heart, believe in it most firmly and long to submit themselves to it. Thus we see, only it is generally unnoticed because most people are asleep, a rather questionable tendency among those who, without finding any way out of it, are involved in this cultural decline, namely the tendency to sink back into the bosom of the old Catholic Church. Were people to realise what lies in this tendency to return to the Catholic Church they would be much astonished. Under the present conditions, if this tendency were to increase, at no very distant date we should have to witness a mighty swing over to the bosom of the Catholic Church by masses of the people. Whoever is able to observe the special features of our present culture knows that this is threatening us.

Now whence does all this arise? Here I must draw your attention to an essential phenomenon of our present social life. The special feature of what in the last few centuries has increased to ever wider dimensions, and will increase further in those lands which will preserve their civilisations throughout the present chaos—this special feature is the technical coloring of the culture, the particular technical shade taken on by the culture of recent times. Were I to speak exhaustively on this subject, I should have to point in detail to all that now is referred to just in passing; and one day I shall do so. This technical culture has indeed one quite definite quality; this culture in its nature is through and through altruistic. In other words there is only one favourable way for technical accomplishments to be wide­spread, namely, when the men actively engaged in them in contrast to egoism, develop altruism. Technical culture makes it increasingly necessary—and those who are able to observe these things see the necessity on every fresh advance of technical culture—for work organised on a technical basis to be entirely free from egoism. In contrast to this there has developed at the same time what has had its origin in capitalism, which must not necessarily be linked to technical culture or remain so linked. Capitalism, when it is private capitalism, cannot work other than egoistically, for its very being consists in egoistic activity. Thus in recent times two streams meet in diametrical opposition to one another: modern technical life which calls upon men to be free from egoism, and, coming from the past, private capitalism, which can prosper only by the assertion of egoistic impulse. This is what has made its way into our present situation, and the only means of extricating ourselves is to have a life of spirit which has the courage to break away from the old traditions.

Now today there are many people concerned with the problems of future primary and secondary education, school education, and of professional training for human beings. Especially when we are studying the question of primary and secondary education we must say to these people: Well and good, but with the best will in the world, can you interest people at large in primary and secondary education if you do nothing to change present conditions of education and matters of the spirit? Have you the material for the work? What actually are you able to do? With your principles—perhaps socialistic in a good sense—you may be able to found schools for a great mass of the people and to found institutions for their higher education. You may organise everything of this kind to which your good will impels you. But have you the material really to organise for the benefit of the people what you want with good will to extend to them? You tell us that you found libraries, theatres, concert halls, exhibitions, lecture courses, and polytechnics. But the question must arise: What books do you have in your libraries? What kind of science is dealt with in your lectures? You place on your library shelves those very books which belong to the bourgeois culture that is on the decline; you hand over the scientific education in the polytechnics to men who are products of that bourgeois culture. You give the nature of education new forms, but into these new forms you cast what you have absorbed of the old. For instance you say: For a long time we have been trying to give primary and secondary education a democratic form; up to now the various states have been against this for they want to educate men to be good civil servants.—True you are opposed to this education of good civil servants; you allow the people to be educated by them, however, for up to now you have nothing else in mind but these civil servants whose books are on the shelves of your libraries, whose scientific method of thinking you propagate by means of your lectures and whose habits of thinking permeate your colleges.—You see from this that in these serious times the matter must be taken far more profoundly than it generally is today.

Now let us just look at certain details to have at least something clear before us. We will begin with what we may call primary and secondary education. Under this heading I include everything that can be given to the human being when he has outgrown the education to be acquired in his family, when to this must be added the education and instruction obtained at school. Those who know the nature of man are clear that school education should never be a factor in the evolution of the human being until approximately the change of teeth has taken place. This is just as much a scientific law as any other. Were people to be guided by the real nature of human beings instead of by mere dummies, they would make it a regulation that school instruction should not begin till after the change of teeth. But the important question is the principles upon which this school instruction of children is to be based. Here we must have in mind that whoever is able to bring his thoughts and efforts into harmony with the ascending cultural evolution can really do nothing today bµt recognise, as inherent in the principles holding good in school education and instruction, what lies in the nature of the human being himself. Knowledge of human nature from the change of teeth until puberty must underlie any principles in what we call primary and secondary education. From this, and from a great deal of the same nature, you will realise that, if we take this as our basis, the result will be the same education for everyone; for obviously the laws which hold good in human evolution between approximately the seventh and fifteenth years are the same for all human beings. The only question we need answer concerning education and instruction is: To what point have we to bring human beings by the time they reach their fifteenth year? This alone may be called thinking in terms of primary and secondary education. At the same time this alone is thinking in a modern way about the nature of instruction. The consequence of this today will be that we shall no longer ignore the necessity of making an absolute break w1th the old school system, that we shall have in all earnest to set to work on organising what, during the years specified, is to be given to children in accordance with the evolution of the growing human being. Then a certain basis will have to be created—something that , when social goodwill exists , will not be a nebulous idea for the future but something practical which can be immediately acted upon. The basis for this will have to be created in the first place by a complete change in the whole nature of examination and instruction of the teacher himself. When today the teacher is examined, this is often done merely to verify whether he knows something that, if he is at all clever and doesn't know it, he can read up in a text book. In the examination of teachers this can be entirely omitted, but with it will go the greater part of such examinations in their present form. In those that will take their place the object will be to discover whether the man, who has to do with the education and instruction of the developing human being, can establish with him a personally active and profitable relation; whether he is able to penetrate with his whole mentality—to use a word much in fashion—into the soul of the growing human being, into his very nature. Then the teacher will not just teach reading, arithmetic or drawing; he will be fit to become a real moulder of the developing human being.

Thereupon, from all future examinations, which will take a very different form from their present one, it will be easy to discover if the school staff are really creative in this sense. For this means that the teacher will know: I must help this pupil in some particular way if he is to learn to think; another in another way if he is to unfold his world of feeling.—For the world of feeling is intimately bound up with the world of memory, a thing few people know today, most modern professors .being the worst possible psychologists . The teacher must know what to give to his pupil if the will is to unfold in such a way that the seeds, sown between his seventh and fifteenth years, may bring about the strengthening of the will for the whole of his life. The cultivation of will is brought about when everything that has to do with practical physical exercises and artistic pursuits is adapted to the developing being. Whoever is a teacher of those who are in process of development will concentrate all his effort on enabling the human being to become man. In this way he will discover how to utilise all that is conventionally called human culture—speaking, reading and writing. All this can best be utilised in the years between seven and fifteen for the development of thinking. However strange it may seem, thinking is the most external thing in man, and it must be developed on wha tever establishes us in the social organism. Consider how the human being on coming into the world through birth lacks any propensity towards reading and writing and how these belong to his life as a member of a community. Thus, for the development of thinking we must, comparatively early, have good instruction in languages, naturally not in what was spoken formerly but in languages as used today by the civilised peoples with whom we have contact. This efficient teaching in languages would naturally not consist in teaching the grammatical anomalies as is done today in the grammar school; it must be started in the lowest classes and continued. It will be important too that teaching should be given in a conscious way to unfold the feeling and the memory bound up with it. Whereas everything relating to arithmetic and geography—of which children can absorb an extraordinary amount when it is given them rightly—stands between what has to do with thinking and what has to do with feeling, everything taken into the memory has more to do with pure feeling, for instance, the history that is taught, the myths and legends that are told. I can only touch on these things.

But it is also necessary in these first years to give particular attention to the cultivation of will. Here it is a matter of physical exercises and artistic training. Something entirely new will be needed for this in these early years. A beginning has been made in what we call eurythmy. Today we witness a great deal of physical culture that is decadent and belongs to the past; it pleases many people. In its place we shall put something that so far we have had occasion to show only to the employees of the Waldorf—Astoria factory through the sympathetic help of our good Herr Molt; we shall put what—if it is given to the growing human being instead of the present gymnastics—promotes culture in both body and soul. It can so develop the will that the effect remains throughout life, whereas cultivation of the will by any other means causes a weakening of it when vicissitudes and various experiences are met with in the course of life. In this sphere particularly, however, we shall have to go to work with common sense. In the way instruction is given, combinations will have to be made little dreamt of today; for instance drawing will go hand-in-hand with geography. It would be of the greatest importance for the growing pupil to have really intelligent lessons in drawing; during these lessons he would be led to draw the globe from various sides, to draw the mountains and rivers of the earth in their relation to one another, then to turn to astronomy and to draw the planetary system. It goes without saying that this would have to be introduced at the right age, not for the seven-year-olds but certainly before they reached fifteen, perhaps from the twelfth year onwards, when if done in the right way, it would work on growing youth very beneficially.

What in a didactic and pedagogical way I have just now been discussing concerning primary and secondary education will, in accordance with the logic of facts, have a quite definite consequence, namely that nothing will play a part in teaching that is not in one form or another retained for the whole of life. Today, as a rule, only what is included among the faculties plays its part rightly—what is done by learning to read is concentrated in the faculty of reading, what is done in learning to count is concentrated in the faculty of arithmetic. But just think how it is when we come to things having rather to do with feeling and memory. In this sphere children today learn a great deal only to forget it, only to be without it for the rest of life. In future, stress must be laid on this—that everything given to a child will remain with him for life.

We should then come to the question: What is to be done with the human being when having finished with the primary and secondary school he goes out into life? Here it is important that everything unsound in the old life of spirit should be overcome, that at least where education is concerned the terrible cleft made by class distinction should be abolished.

Now the Greeks, even the Romans, were able to devise for themselves an education that had its roots in their life, that was bound up with their way of life. In our time we have nothing which binds us in our most important years with our quite different mode off living. Many people, however, who later take up positions of authority, learn today what was learnt by the Greeks and Romans, and thus become divorced from life today; added to which this is spiritually the most uneconomical thing possible. Besides, we are today at a point in human evolution—if people only knew it—when it is quite unnecessary for preserving our relation to antiquity that we should be brought up in their ideas. What people in general need of the old has for a long time been incorporated in our culture, in such a way that we can absorb it without years of training in an atmosphere foreign to us. What we should imbibe of Greek and Roman culture can be improved upon, and this has also been the case; but that is a matter for scholars and has nothing to do with general social education. What is to be imbibed from antiquity for our general social education, however, has been brought to such a stage through the work of great minds in the past, and is so much in our midst, that if we rightly absorb what is there for us we have no need to learn Greek and Latin to deepen our knowledge of antiquity; it is not in the least essential and is no help at all for the important things in life. I recall how, to avoid misunderstandings, I found it necessary to say that, though Herr Wilamowitz is most certainly a Greek scholar of outstanding merit, he has nevertheless translated the Greek plays in a way that is really atrocious; but, of course, these translations have been acclaimed by both the press and scholars. Today we must learn to let people participate in life; and if we organise education so that people are able to participate in life, at the same time setting to work on education economically, you will find that we are really able to help human beings to a living culture. This, too, will enable anyone with a bent towards handicraft to take advantage of the education for life that begins about the fourteenth year. A possibility must be created for those who early show a bent towards handicraft or craftsman ship to be able to participate in what leads to a conception of life. In future, pupils who have not reached their twenty-first year should never be offered any knowledge that is the result of scientific research and comes from scientific specialisation. In our day, only what has been thoroughly worked out ought to have a place in instruction; then we can go to work in an out-and-out economic way. We must, however, have a clear concept of what is meant by economy in didactic and pedagogical matters. Above all we should not be lazy if we want to work in a way that is economic from the pedagogical point of view. I have often drawn your attention to something personally experienced by me. A boy of ten who was rather undeveloped was once given over into my charge, and through pedagogical economy I was enabled to let him absorb in two years what he had lacked up to his eleventh year, when he was still incapable of anything at all. This was possible only by taking into account both his bodily and his soul nature in such a way that instruction could proceed in the most economical way conceivable. This was often done by my spending three hours myself in preparation, so as in a half-hour or even in a quarter to give to the boy instruction that would otherwise have taken hours—this being necessary for his physical condition. If this is considered from the social point of view, people might say that I was obliged in this instance to give all the care to a single boy that might have been given to three others who would not have had to be treated in this way. But imagine we had a social educational system that was reasonable, it would then be possible for a whole collection of such pupils to be dealt with, for it makes no difference in this case whether we have to deal with one or fourteen boys. I should not complain about the number of pupils in the school, but this lack of complaint is connected with the principle of economy in instruction. It must be realised, however, that up to his fourteenth year the pupil has no judgment; and if judgment is asked of him this has a destructive effect on the brain. The modern calculating machine which gives judgment the place of memorising and calculating is a gross educational error; it destroys the human brain, makes it decadent. Human judgment can be cultivated only from and after the fourteenth year when those things requiring judgment must be introduced into the curriculum. Then all that is related, for example, to the grasping of reality through logic can be begun. When in future the carpenter or mechanic sits side-by-side in school or college with anyone studying to be a teacher, the result will certainly be a specialisation but at the same time one education for all; but included in this one education will be everything necessary for life. If this were not included matters would become socially worse than they are at present. All instruction must give knowledge that is necessary for life. During the ages from fifteen to twenty everything to do with agriculture, trade, industry, commerce will have to be learnt. No one should go through these years without acquiring some idea of what takes place in farming, commerce and industry. These subjects will be given a place as branches of knowledge infinitely more necessary than much of the rubbish which constitutes the present curriculum during these years. Then too during these years all those subjects will be introduced which I would call world affairs, historical and geographical subjects, everything concerned with nature knowledge—but all this in relation to the human being, so that man will learn to know man from his knowledge of the world as a whole.

Now among human beings who receive instruction of this kind will be those who, driven by social conditions to become workers in a spiritual sense, can be educated in every possible sphere at schools specially organised for such students. The institutions where people today are given professional training are run with a terrible lack of economy. I know that many people will not admit it but there is this lack of economy; above all validity is ascribed to the most curious conceptions belonging to the world-outlook that is on the decline. Even in my time I have experienced this—people have begun to press where it is a question in the universities of historical and literary subjects, for fewer lectures and more "seminars"; today we still hear it said that lectures should be given as little space as possible on the programme but seminars encouraged. One knows these seminars. Faithful followers of a university tutor gather together and learn strictly in accordance with the ideas of this tutor to work scientifically. They do their work under his coaching and the results of the coaching are forever visible. It is altogether another matter if a man, in the years when he should be learning a profession, goes of his own free will to a course of intelligent lectures, and then has the opportunity of embarking upon his own free exposition—though certainly this would be connected with what the lectures contained. Practical application can certainly be included in the programme but this exaggerated emphasis on seminars must be stopped. That is just an undesirable product of the second half of the nineteenth century, when the emphasis was on the drilling of human beings rather than on leaving them to develop freely.

Now when we are discussing this stage in education it must be said that a certain educational groundwork ought to be the same for everyone, whether he is destined to be a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher; that is one aspect of the matter; in addition to this, everyone must receive what contributes to the general culture of man, whether he is to become a doctor, a machine maker, architect, chemist or engineer; he must be given the opportunity of receiving general culture, whether he is to work with his hands or his head. Today little thought is given to this, though certainly in some places of higher education many things are better than they were. When I was at the Technical College in Vienna a Professor was giving lectures on general history. Each term he started to give his general history; after three or perhaps five lectures he ceased—there was no longer anyone there. Then, at this college, there was a Professor of history of literature . Thus there were the means to receive what was universally human besides specialised subjects. To these lectures on the history of literature, which included exercises in rhetoric and instruction on how to lecture, like those given, for example, by hand—to these lectures I always had to drag someone else, for they were held only if there was an audience of two. They could be kept going, therefore, only by a second being dragged in, and this was someone different practically every time. Except for this, the only attempt to provide students with the information they needed about conditions in life was by lectures on constitutional law or statistics. As I said, these things have improved; what has not improved is the driving force that should exist in our whole social life. This will improve, however, when there is a possibility for all that constitutes the universally human not to be made intelligible only to those with a definite professional view but intelligible from a universally human aspect. I have often been surprised how distorted my lectures on anthroposophy have been by my audience; for if they had taken them in a positive way they could have said: we won't bother about the anthroposophy in these lectures, but what is said about natural science, which receives great praise when coming from the ordinary natural philosopher—that is enough for us. For as you all know these lectures are always interspersed with general information about nature. But there are many people who are not interested in taking things from a positive angle, preferring to distort what they have no wish to accept. What they refused to accept, by the very way in which the thoughts were formed, by the whole mode of treatment, as well as the necessary interspersing of natural science, could be taken as contributing to universal human knowledge, which the manual worker could receive just as well as the scholar, and which was also generally intelligible as natural science. Just consider other endeavors towards a world-outlook. Do you imagine that in monistic gatherings, for instance, people can understand anything if they have not a scientific background? No, and if they have not, they merely gossip. What here we pursue as anthroposophy is something that can change all knowledge of nature, and even of history, so that everyone will be able to understand them. Just think how intelligible to everyone what I have shown to be a great leap historically in the middle of the fifteenth century can be. That, I think, is intelligible to everyone. But it is the groundwork without which there can be no understanding at all of the whole social movement in our time. This social movement is not understood because people do not know how mankind has developed since the middle of the fifteenth century. When these things are mentioned people come forward and declare: Nature does not make leaps, so you are wrong to assume there was such a thing in the fifteenth century. This foolish proposition that nature never makes a leap is always being harped upon. Nature continually makes leaps; it is a leap from the green leaf of a plant to the sepal which has a different form—another leap from sepal to petal. It is so too in the evolution of man's life. Whoever does not teach the history that rests on senseless conventional untruth, but on what has really happened, knows that in the fifteenth century men became different in the finer element of their constitution from what they were before, and that what is brought about today is the development of what they have grasped in the centre of their being. If there is a desire to understand the present social movement, laws of this kind in historical evolution will have to be recognised. You have only to call to mind the way in which matters here are dealt with and you will say: To understand all this no special knowledge is necessary; there is no need to be a man of culture; everyone can understand it. This indeed will be what is demanded in the future—that no philosophies or world-conceptions should be propagated which can be understood only by reason of a form of education belonging to a certain class. Take up any philosophical work today, for example, by Eucken or Paulsen, or anyone else you want information about, take up one of those dreadful works on psychology by university professors—you will soon drop it again; for those who are not specially trained in the particular subject do not understand the language used. This is something that can be set right only by universal education, when the whole nature of education and instruction will be absolutely changed in the way I have tried to indicate today.

You see, therefore, that in this sphere too we can say: here we have a big settling-up—not a small one. What is necessary is the development of social impulses or, rather, social intincts, through instruction, through education, so that people do not pass by one another. Then they will understand each other so that a practical living relation is develcped—for nowadays the teacher passes his pupil by, the pupil passes his teacher. This can happen only if we run our pen through what is old—which can be done. The facts of the case do not prevent this; it all goes back to human prejudice. People cannot believe that things can be done in a new way; they are terrified that their life of spirit may lose what was of value in the old way. You have no idea how anxious they are on this score. Naturally they are unable to take all this in; for instance they cannot see all the possibilities created by having an instruction that is economical. I have often told you that provided this is done at the right age it is possible from the beginning of geometry—the straight line and the angle—up to what used to be called the pons a sinorum, the Pythagorean theorem. And on my attempting this you should have seen the joy of the youngsters when, after three or four hours work, the theorem of Pythagoras dawned upon them. Only think what a lot of rubbish has to be gone through today before young people arrive at this theorem. What matters is the enormous amount of mental work wasted, which has its effects in later life; it sends its rays into the whole of life, right into its most practical spheres. Today it is necessary for people to come to a decision in these matters—fundamentally to re-organise their way of thinking. Otherwise—well, otherwise we simply sink deeper into decline and never find the path upwards.

At the General Meeting last year you heard a course of lectures on Anthroposophy. This year I shall deliver a series entitled, Psychosophy, from a similar point of view, and later on it will be necessary to give a third course on Pneumatosophy. In this way the three cycles will combine and form a bridge connecting the three worlds in which we live. This will close the circle that takes us in a roundabout way back to our starting point.¹

Psychosophy is intended as a study of the human soul starting with what it can itself experience here in the physical world, but then ascending to higher realms in order to show that the life we encounter and can observe in the physical world leads up to glimpses of a higher soul life, from which the light of theosophy will come to meet us, as it were. A variety of considerations will occupy us during these lectures. Beginning with apparently simple matters, we will ascend to a contemplation of those phenomena of the soul life that we call attention, memory, passions, emotions. We will consider the realms of the true, the good and. the beautiful. Then we will examine the phenomena that affect human life beneficially or harmfully, out of which arise actual causes of sickness that at the present time intervene and influence our soul lives. This will bring us to the point where the psychic element enters our physical life, our daily work. We shall have to study the interaction of bodily weal and woe, and the forms of the soul life. Our observations will lead us up to the high ideals of human society, and we will consider phenomena of our daily life, such as the origin of means for passing the time and how these, in turn, affect the soul life and reveal themselves in manifold concatenations. Then the curious effects of boredom and much else will be presented, as well as remedies for poor memory, lack of forceful thinking, and the like.

You will readily understand that a detailed exposition of the soul life calls for consideration of the adjacent realms. Theosophy, of course, has provided you with ready mental images for relating the soul life of man to other realms. You are familiar with the organization of the nature of man as body, soul, and spirit, from which it is natural to infer that the soul life comes in contact on the one side with the bodily life and on the other with the spiritual life. This is the step that leads up from anthroposophy to psychosophy, and at some future time we must ascend from psychosophy to pneumatosophy.

If we would study this soul life by itself, within its two boundaries, we must ask what it is. Well, all that we are accustomed to call the outer world, all that we see before and about us—animals, plants, minerals, clouds, rivers—whatever we encounter on the physical plane, we do not include in our soul life, no matter what mental pictures we may add to our perceptions.

A rose, when encountered on the physical plane, is not a part of our soul life, but when the rose gives us pleasure, when it stimulates something like gratification in our soul, this fact then pertains to our soul life. To meet a person and to form a conception of his hair, his expression, etc., is not a function of the soul life, but to take an interest in him, to feel love or antipathy for him, that is an experience of the soul. That is the way in which matters pertaining to the soul must be characterized.

Now let us turn to something different. Suppose we are watching a man carrying out some action that induces the feeling in us of a good deed, morally laudable. A psychic experience of that sort comprises something more. Here it is not a question of how the action arose, nor even of whether we were moved by love or hate in estimating it; we find something beyond what has thus far been characterized. As soon as we judge an act to be good or bad, higher interests play a part. When we call an act good, we know that it would be wrong for this quality to depend upon our verdict. We must dissociate our personality from the question of whether an act is good or bad. True, the verdict must arise in us, but independent of ourselves. Nothing in the outer world can tell us that the act is a good one; the verdict must come about within ourselves, but uninfluenced by love or hate. In all such inner experiences that nevertheless have a significance independent of our inner frame of mind, so that it is immaterial whether we pass judgment or not—in all such experiences the spirit plays a part in the human soul. Thus we have characterized the relation of the soul to the outer world by reviewing these three cases precisely from the outer world.

Summing up, first, we observe something as pertaining to the outer world: the rose. Second, we experience something in connection with it: pleasure. Third, something arises in us, but something that must be independent of us: judgment (good or evil). The outer world must reveal itself to the soul by way of the body. Soul experiences take place wholly within us, and the spirit declares itself within the soul. The point is to keep firmly in mind that the soul flows and ebbs in inner facts.

It now remains to find something through which the character of our soul life is brought to our consciousness from within as well. Thus far we have considered the soul life as it is bounded from without. Now we shall see how it can be characterized from within, disregarding what is adjacent, and clearly expressing in a conception what we mean by the pure soul principle. We must acquire a mental picture of the nature of the soul as it has its being on the physical plane.

The basic character of pure soul, of pure psychic experience, can be described in two ways. Speaking accurately in regard to earthly conditions, and indicating the inner phenomena of the soul life exactly as far as its boundaries, there are in the first instance two conceptions that we can apply to man's pure soul experiences and to nothing else. The inner phenomena of the soul life—its inner fluctuation—clearly indicate its boundaries, and the attributes of these boundaries must be mentioned. My next task will therefore be to characterize these inner phenomena of the soul life, and this, as I said, can be done in two ways. We will devote today's lecture to gathering conceptions, but never mind; it will greatly help us to understand phenomena that concern us intimately. It is a matter of gleaning hints that are extraordinarily important in connection with the soul life, whether healthy or diseased.

One conception by which the pure soul principle can be characterized is reasoning. Reasoning is one activity of the soul, and all remaining psychic experiences can be summed up in what we may call the inner experiences of love and hate.

Rightly understood, these two conceptions—reasoning, and love and hate—comprise the entire inner soul life. Everything else denotes something that derives from without through the body or from within through the spirit. We shall see how fruitful a careful study of the two psychic activities can become. Everything pertaining to the soul, then, is either reasoning or living in love and hate; at bottom these two conceptions are the only pure soul activities. Reasoning on the one hand, loving and hating on the other—these are the forces of the soul life exclusively pertaining to it.

If we are to understand each other aright with regard to these two basic forces of the soul, it behooves us to visualize clearly first, the significance of reasoning within the soul life, and then, the role played in the soul life by love and hate. I refer to reasoning not from the standpoint of logic, but of the activity comprising the inner soul process of reasoning; not judgment, but the activity, reasoning.

If you are led to concede that the rose is red, you have reasoned; the activity of reasoning is involved. If you are inwardly constrained to say that the rose is red, that man is good, the Sis-tine Madonna is beautiful, that steeple is high, you are dealing with activities of the inner soul life that we designate as reasoning.

Now, how about love and hate? A little introspection will show you that we do not pass by the outer world in such a way that our soul remains untouched by the majority of external phenomena. Passing through a landscape you see cloud-capped mountain peaks, and you experience joy in your soul. What underlies this is that you love what you experience through this landscape. Whatever exists of joy or horror in an experience, that is love or hate. If love or hate hides in many kinds of soul experiences, that is merely because these accompany us incessantly from morning to night. If you see someone committing an evil deed and are repelled by it, you have a hidden experience of hate, exactly as you have when you turn from a malodorous flower. Love and hate accompany the soul life continually and so does reasoning.

If we now observe an important concomitant of reasoning, we can learn to know the phenomena of the inner soul life better still. It is this, that all reasoning has an effect in the soul life, and this fact is the key to the soul life. By forming the judgment, “the rose is red,” “that man is good,” you retain a result in the soul. It can be characterized this way: When you have given the verdict, the inference is the conception, “the red rose,” “the good man.” The verdict “the rose is red” has been transformed into the conception “the red rose.” As a being endowed with soul, you then continue to live with this conception. Every judgment is a confluence of conceptions. Here we have, on the one hand the rose, on the other, red. These flow toward each other and combine in the conception “the red rose,” which you carry with you in your further soul life.

This may sound dry, but it is indispensable for an understanding of the soul life. Neither the soul life nor its relation to the higher planes could be accurately comprehended without the knowledge that judgments converge into visualizations.

Experiences of love and hate, on the other hand, do not give rise to the question of how do they converge, but rather as to where they arise. In the case of reasoning, the question is, Whither? and the answer is. Toward the conception. But with regard to love and hate the question is. Whence? We will always find one impulse in soul experiences themselves that gives rise to love and hate, an impulse that breaks into the soul life from another quarter, as it were. All love and hate can finally be traced back to what within the soul life we call desire. Entering from another direction and underlying love and hate, as these manifest themselves in the soul, desire can always be found streaming into our soul lives. Into one side of it flows desire, manifesting itself in love and hate. On the other side the activity of reasoning leads to visualization.

Desire is something you can easily recognize as arising naturally out of the inner soul life. The external cause of it may not at all be known to you, but you do know that it appears in your inner soul life, and that invariably love and hate result. In like manner you realize that your verdict “the rose is red” arises in the soul, but when this verdict has culminated in a visualization, the latter must have external validity. Reasoning takes place in the soul; it arises out of the inner life. We can put it this way: primarily, desire—for reasons not known to us today—manifests itself in the soul and expresses itself in love and hate. But in the same way—also for unknown reasons—the soul is impelled to permit judgment to enter from the wellspring of its own being, and provided the verdict has been arrived at in a certain way, the visualization must be valid for the outer world.

It will seem strange to you that I should be so prolix in expounding the elementary concepts of the soul life. You may think that these matters could be skipped over more rapidly, and indeed, they could, but just because these relationships remain largely unnoticed in scientific circles, error after error is committed. I will mention one prime error common today. By drawing far-reaching conclusions, those guilty of this error become entangled in misconceptions; they start from entirely false premises. In many books on physiology you can find the statement that the raising of a hand or leg is brought about by the fact that we have two kinds of nerves. Those that run from the sense organs to the brain or the spinal cord and that transmit messages to the brain, so to speak, are supposed to be contrasted with another set, called motor nerves, as against the sensory or perceptive nerves. According to this theory, when an object is seen, the message of the sense organ is first carried to the brain, where the stimulus thus exerted is supposed to stream out into a nerve that leads to a muscle, and only then does the impulse arise that entails motion. According to spiritual science, however, that is not the case. What is called the motor nerve does, in fact, exist as a physical unit, but it does not serve to instigate the motion. It serves only to enable us to perceive the motion ourselves, to check up on it, to bring our own movement to consciousness. Just as the optic nerve, through which we perceive an external event, is a sensory nerve, so the muscle nerve leading to the hand is also a sensory nerve, whose function is to keep track of the movement of our hand. This example of faulty scientific thinking is a prime error that has poisoned all physiology and psychology.

Our task is clearly to understand the role played by these two elements of the soul, reasoning, and love and hate. They play an enormous role, for the entire soul life runs its course in manifold combinations of these two elements. We should misconstrue this soul life, however, if we failed to allow for extraneous forces, not properly psychic, that constantly enter in across the border. The first example that occurs to us, to be met with everywhere in daily life, around which, indeed, our everyday soul life is built, is that of sense experiences. These are the various experiences brought about by the ear, the eye, the tongue, the nose, etc. What we experience through our sense organs we take into our soul, in a way, and there it lives on. With this in mind we can actually speak of our soul reaching as far as a certain boundary, which is the boundary of the sense organs. We have posted sentinels, as it were, at the boundaries of our soul life, and what these sentinels report of the outer world we take into our soul life and carry further.

We can now ask about those impressions in the soul that we experience through our sense organs. What is represented within the soul life by what we experience through the ear as tone, through the eye as color, through the nose as smell? Well, the study of these sense experiences is as a rule pursued in a lopsided manner. Science fails to face the fact that the processes taking place at the boundaries of the soul life are composed of two factors, two elements. One element is perception, our immediate experience of the outer world. You hold the tone, the color, the smell, and so forth—that is, the impression of these—only as long as you are in contact with the external stimulus. The impression, the interaction of inner and outer factors, ceases at once when you turn away, close your eyes, or the like.

What does that prove? If you consider the immediate perception in conjunction with the fact that later you know something (you know the tone, the color, etc.), it proves that you have retained something of your experience of the outer world, even though the experience has ceased. What does this imply? That something has completely entered your soul life. Something that has become part of your soul life must inevitably run its course there because you carry it with you. If it were part of the outer world you could not carry it with you. You can continue to hold the impression of color, the perception of the color impression, only if it has remained within your soul.

It is necessary to distinguish between a sense perception proper and what you continue to carry in the soul, what you detach from the outer world. The experience you thus derive from objects we will call perception, and what you continue to carry in the soul, sensation. As a foundation, then, for subsequent expositions, keep in mind the sharp distinction between sense perceptions and what we retain as sensation (sentience). The perception of color ceases when you turn away; the sensation of it remains. Ordinarily such fine distinctions are unnecessary, but for these four lectures they are apposite.

So we continue on our way, carrying these sensations about with us in our soul. We now ask if it could be that these sensations, derived from external objects, constitute a new element of the soul life, as opposed to reasoning and the phenomena of love and hate, which we termed the exclusive elements? If that were the case I should have been guilty of omitting to name something that also constitutes an inner experience, namely, sentience. But that is not the way matters stand; sentience is not a separate element of the soul life.

If you have sensed the color red, the color red is not an inner soul experience, for it is the object that is red. If “red” were an inner soul experience your whole color-perception of red would avail you nothing. The quality “red” did not originate in your soul life. What did arise there was the activity in which you engaged for the purpose of carrying away with you something of the red. What you did while confronting the rose, that is inner soul life. This activity of your inner soul is in reality nothing more than a fusion of what I have described to you as the two basic elements of the soul life.

But then we must consider the following. If what I have told you of the two elements is true—if love and hate, deriving from desire, and reasoning lead to visualization—then what was characterized as sentience would have to be related to those two elements in the case of a sense experience as well. A sense experience must be accompanied by love and hate, and reasoning. Imagine you have a sense experience of color, and observe closely what happens:

Desire and reasoning flow to the boundary of the outer world and become visualization of the material object.

Above the heavy line is the outer world, below it the world of the soul. The line is the boundary. When at this boundary an object makes an impression upon the sense organs and induces an experience—for instance, of color, this experience must be met by the result of love and hate and of reasoning, emanating from the soul as visualization. Nothing else can flow out of the soul.

Note, however, an important distinction that can exist between different kinds of desire, different kinds of reasoning. As an example, let us assume that while you are waiting for a train, day-dreaming, the visualization of a disagreeable past experience appears in your soul life, and side by side with this appears another, namely, everything unpleasant that has happened to you since then as a result of that experience. Then you can sense how these two visualizations combine into a more intensive visualization of that distressing event. During this process nothing related to it has occurred in the outer world. A judgment has been reached that remains wholly within psychic experience. Nevertheless, love and hate appeared in the soul life; they amalgamated with the visualization, as it were. As you sit there dreaming, your environment need show nothing of all this; your surroundings are of no consequence; yet something occurs. A visualization comes about through love and hate, and reasoning, without any stimulus from without.

That is quite a different thing from confronting a sense experience. When we perform such an inner act—let judgments arise, provoke love and hate—we remain within the sea of our soul life. But when a sense experience arises we must advance to the boundary of the outer world, and there it is as though the currents of the soul life were directly stopped by the outer world.

Whenever a sense experience is involved we are stopped by the outer world. Desire, love and hate, flash to the boundary; the capacity for judgment flows there too, and both are obstructed at that boundary. The result is that reasoning and desire are checked. They are there, but the soul does not perceive them, and the sense sensation is brought about by this flowing to the boundary and there being stopped. The sense sensation is nothing but a phenomenon of love, hate and reasoning that remains unconscious, though these are obstructed and held fast from without (cf. previous diagram).

We can put it this way. Ebbing and flowing in the sea of our soul life, psychically substantial, is what can be designated love and hate, and reasoning. This manifests itself in various ways.

When a judgment is reached within the soul itself, the soul is aware of the activity of reasoning as visualization.

When the soul directs the activity toward the outer world, it must stop at the boundary and it perceives the outer world: perception.

When, however, the soul directs the activity toward the outer world but stops before it is reached, sensation arises. Sensation is the confluence of desire and reasoning within the soul life.

If we consider what the soul life ordinarily comprises, we find that our inner experiences really consist, as a rule, of what we have carried away with us from sense experiences. A little introspection will convince you of this. If you want to create higher visualizations for yourself, you will notice how helpful it is for your inner soul life to try to substantialize what is not of the senses, to imagine it pictorially, to clothe it in a garb that is faintly a sensation of color or tone. Speech itself could teach us how extensive is the soul's need to express higher things in such a way as to symbolize them in sense sensations. As a rule, the symbol is a necessity, though people usually have no inkling of the fact, because in symbols the likeness is shadowy, nebulous.

Try, for a moment, to imagine something without the aid of a symbol—a triangle, for example; a triangle without color or any link with any sense sensation. Just try it, and you will see how difficult it is to visualize a triangle un-symbolized, that is, a visualization not associated with any sense picture. Most people are quite incapable of accomplishing this. Symbols alone provide the possibility of rising to higher visualizations. Even language is aided by symbolization. Observe how we are forced at every turn to symbolize speech. I said that a symbol must be verknüpft (linked) with the visualization of a triangle: what a crude conception, knüpfen!¹ Even words themselves disclose the prevalence of symbols, and we see to how great an extent the soul life consists of products of sensations.

We have just one conception that cannot be directly classed as an outer sense experience, although it keeps recurring as an inner soul experience and we must continually relate it to the outer sense experiences: the conception of the ego. If we face the purely psychic state of affairs, we must concede that man lives largely in a world of sense sensations. In this world the conception of the ego keeps bobbing up and crowding forward, but this ego is not always present as a conception. It would be foolish to assume that the ego conception could be present continually or for a prolonged period. Fancy what it would be like to keep saying to yourself, to keep visualizing incessantly, I, I, I ...! No, that is not what you do. You have other conceptions, such as red, blue, tone, large, small. Nevertheless you know that your visualizing occurs in your ego, that your ego must participate whenever a sense experience takes place. What we call soul experience is in a sense at the same time ego experience. You know that soul experiences—desire, reasoning, etc.—must always be opposed by the ego, but no matter how insistently visualizations are stimulated by the outer world, the conception of the ego can never possibly be created merely through the outer world. It does not enter from without. True, the ego sensation, the ego conception, invariably accompanies these sense conceptions that originate in the outer world, but it does not itself arise there. It emerges from the sea of the soul life and, as a visualization, joins the other visualizations, as it were.

Out of the sea of soul experience the other sense experiences emerge as well, but only when outer causes are in question. In this fact is to be seen primarily the sole difference between the ego sensation and sensations consequent upon sense perception. A significant phenomenon thus confronts us. In the midst of our soul life there appears a conception that joins the others coming from without. How is this to be explained?

Among present-day philosophers and psychologists, even outside the anthroposophical movement, there are some who point out the importance of the ego conception, but strangely enough these psychologists, no matter how well-meaning, invariably overshoot the mark. The French philosopher, Bergson, was one who emphasized the significance, the distinctive character, of the ego conception. From this the philosophers infer a permanence of this ego conception, or at least, that it points to something permanent, and they substantiate this view as follows. The ego differs from all other experiences of the senses and the soul by participating, as it were, in the other experiences and conceptions in such a way as to lend them their true form; ergo, it must be of a permanent nature.

Here, however, a grave error appears, and a certain objection that must be raised against Bergson's argument proves quite fatal for his inference. Let us assume that the ego conception yielded something that constitutes the soul within itself. The question would then necessarily arise as to what happens to this during sleep at night. The ego conception ceases entirely, of course, during sleep.

All these concepts concerning the participation of the ego in visualizations apply only to our waking life. They merely appear anew every morning. If the ego conception were to prove anything concerning the permanence of the ego, it would have to remain present during sleep. From the absence of the ego conception during the night it follows that after death it need not necessarily be present either. Thus there is no testimony available for the permanence and the immortality of the ego. It might be lacking, for it disappears every day.

Hence we must keep in mind that, on the one hand, the presence of the ego conception without external stimulus is significant, but that, on the other, this presence in no way proves the permanence of the ego, as the latter is away during sleep. In this way we have today reached an inference upon which we shall build further.

We have seen that two elements emerge from the surging sea of the soul life: reasoning, leading to visualization, and love and hate, deriving from desire. At the boundary of our soul life is the confluence, of which we are not aware, of desire and reasoning. An ego conception appears without external stimulus, but it shares its destiny with the other visualizations of the soul life; just as tone, color, and so forth, come and go, so does the ego conception emerge and disappear.

In the following lectures we will examine the connection of this ego conception, this soul center, with the other conceptions of the soul life—sensation, desire, reasoning, love and hate.

• 1. A transcription by Dr. Steiner of Goethe's youthful poem. The Wandering Jew, referred to by Frau Marie Steiner toward the end of her Preface, was recited at the beginning of this lecture, following a few explanatory remarks. The original is little known in Germany and entirely unfamiliar to American or English readers, and it is unthinkable that Dr. Steiner's transcription of it could have any meaning for those unacquainted with the original. The extraordinary experiment, however, is so fully explained in the course of the lecture that both the object and the method are wholly clear, even without a knowledge of the poem in either version. Since Frau Marie Steiner was herself in doubt about the advisability of having it appear in the published version of the cycle, she would surely approve of omitting it in the translation.
• 1. Knüpfen means literally to knot together.

In the course of the preceding lectures I have had to say some things that could with justification be called paradoxical. For these things may well sound paradoxical when they are set against the materialism of our day. But that is how matters stand: what calls itself science today is only concerned with the facts that are available to the senses; but knowledge from the other side of the threshold is related to a different region of the world—perhaps it would be better to say, to a different form of the world—from that in which these facts lie. Remember some of the things that we have needed to discuss. Remember how the external human form led us to a description of man's relation to the cosmos. It was said that the structure of the human head—the head as it actually is—could not have developed within the bounds of a life on Earth, and could not even have begun there. It is the result of Moon forces which have been specially adapted to the case of each individual person so that it also refers back to his preceding incarnation. And the rest of the human body, excluding the head is, in turn, to some extent being prepared to become the head of the next incarnation. Thus, the human head refers back to a previous incarnation; the human body anticipates the next incarnation when it will have undergone a transformation. The human Gestalt really does connect directly with the previous incarnation and with the incarnation to come. A great cosmic relationship is revealed when the human being is considered in this light.

As you know, the rudiments of an understanding for the relation of the external human Gestalt to the twelve signs of the zodiac has been preserved from an earlier, wiser age. Although we naturally do not want to speak in the manner of the dilettantism that is so typical of contemporary astrological investigations, something needs to be said about the deep cosmic secrets that lie behind this way of apportioning the parts of the human body to the cosmos.

You know that astrology assigns the human head to the sign of the Ram, the throat and larynx to the Bull, the part of the body where the arms are attached and also what the arms and hands express to the Twins, the circumference of the chest to the Crab, everything to do with the heart to the Lion, the activities contained by the abdomen to the Virgin, the lumbar region to the Scales, the sexual region to the Scorpion, the thighs to the Hunter, the knees to the Sea-Goat, the calves to the Waterman, and the feet to the Fishes.

In this manner, the whole human body, including the head, is related to the forces that rule the cosmos and are symbolised by the fixed stars of the zodiac.

Now we have also spoken of how the head itself is actually a transformation of the whole body—namely of the body of the preceding incarnation. And we find another twelve-fold division in the head, where the principal representatives of the sense organs come together. That, too, is a genuine twelve-foldness. The following diagram shows how matters stand.

We will let this (see drawing) represent the whole human body, dividing it among the twelve signs of the zodiac so that the head is given to the Ram, the throat to the Bull, and so on. And now, bearing in mind what has been said about the composition of the whole of the sense organism, this part here, which has been allocated to one sign, must be divided again among all twelve signs. Thus, here the whole process must be repeated again. I urge you to take note of this characteristic, which is true of all the great laws of the cosmos. Whenever there is a twelve-fold order, one part of it will have an independent existence as well as being just one part of the whole. In this case it is the head which, as a part of the whole, is allocated to one constellation, but also, as the unique, special case, is allocated to all twelve constellations. If what has been said is true, one must presuppose that the body of one incarnation becomes the head of the next incarnation. In the next incarnation, what is now the whole head must serve a single sense. A second sense will be formed out of what at present is manifest as the organs of speech, the larynx and everything in its vicinity. This will be metamorphosed and transformed in the next incarnation. A third sense will be formed from the expressive capacities of the arms and so on. The whole of the body that we bear in this world will become the head of our next incarnation; it will undergo a systematic metamorphosis so that the present twelve-fold order of the body can reappear as the twelve-fold order of the head.

One can certainly look for clues that indicate whether a twelve-foldness really is to be found in the head. Now most of you will be aware that there are twelve principle nerves that originate in the human head. When they are properly interpreted—rather than in the pitifully confused fashion of contemporary physiology of the brain—one can recognise that what was distributed over the whole body in the preceding incarnation reappears in these twelve nerves. So the apparent paradox of, for example, the reappearance in the head of what today is in the hands need not cause us to falter. In fact, one may even find it quite easy to grasp such things in their broad outlines. For if we thoroughly examine the physiology of the hands and arms do we not truly see that they already show a disposition to become organs of speech? Do not the hands and arms speak their own eloquent language? Why, then, should it be so difficult to believe that the situation might at some time be quite altered, so that the same things reappear at a different level of being, as sense organs within the head? Only those who have no inkling of what a true metamorphosis of being involves can laugh at the idea that what is now expressed in the body through the knees is being prepared so that it can reappear distributed over the entire body as the sense of touch, as the organ of touch. Our human knees, with their wonderfully constructed kneecaps are highly sensitive in some respects. This characteristic is being prepared to become our sense of touch in our next incarnation; then it will the organ of touch for the whole body. This is the kind of metamorphosis experienced by our various parts, and deep secrets of existence are revealed to us by such matters. But in order to come to a right view of these secrets of existence it is also necessary for us to approach them with reverence. We must not fall into the cynical mood prevalent in current science. In order to listen in on the secrets of being, we must approach them with reverence. For a considerable time now, the prevailing views of the world have reflected humanity's terrible pride and megalomania. The extent of the pride and megalomania at work in contemporary intellectual and scientific life generally goes unrecognised. But for anyone who is aware of it, the megalomania that sometimes emerges in particular individuals comes as no surprise.

In the pursuit of spiritual science it has often been necessary for me to draw attention to the terrible presence of this pride, a pride that has become especially evident during recent phases of human development. Frequently I have spoken about the way men write about human deeds. Just read what the textbooks and other books have to say about the human spirit of discovery. Look, for example, at what is said about the discovery of paper—this same paper about which one can become so despondent these days when one sees all that is printed on it. But just look at all that is said about the capacity that enables a human being to discover such things! I have often pointed out that a wasp's nest consists of the very same material; it is made of genuine paper. The elemental beings who govern the building of wasps' nests really discovered this substance millions of years before humanity discovered it. Other examples can be found-thousands of them. Look at a telescope. It can be turned in two different ways; it can be rotated as well as adjusted up and down. The example of the telescope has already been noted by Schraieg, an author who made several attempts to draw our attention to such things. Look at what man has made here! He has built it with two different devices for rotation: above there is a device that is called a hinge-joint in mechanics, and below is a device called a tenon-joint. These make it possible to rotate the telescope in two different ways and provide the twofold rotation that is required. Now, as you can easily test for yourselves with a telescope, it would be mad to reverse their positions and put a tenon-joint above where the hinge-joint is, and a hinge-joint below instead of a tenon-joint. That would not be advantageous. This invention, this mechanical device, can be held up as an example of the kind of significant discovery of which mankind is capable. But each of you is carrying about a much more ingenious version of this same device. In the back part of your head, where it sits upon a vertebra of your neck, you have a hinge-joint above and a tenon-joint below. That is why you are able to turn your head up and down, as well as to rotate it sideways. So you can find in the human organism the very same thing that is the object of present-day human thought.

There is nothing that has ever been discovered—or ever will be discovered—that cannot be found somewhere in the human organism. All the mechanical devices men have ever discovered or will discover, everything capable of contributing to human evolution, is to be found in the human organism. A human being only lacks the things that have nothing to contribute to human evolution; they are either lacking, or are included in a form very different from the form in which mankind has introduced them into its evolution. Considering the whole nature and spirit of evolution, there must have been a time, far, far back in an early age, when this extraordinary mechanical joint, and many other things as well, first came into being. Now it exists. And we will find that this formation is always present, no matter how far back we trace what we refer to as the course of human development—namely that part of it in which humanity possessed its present form. And however could it have developed through purely mechanical means? Just consider how this device is especially suited to certain purposes—so well suited, in fact, that it is well-adapted for use on a telescope. Any other device would be useless. Could it have come about through that fundamental law applied by the superficial Darwinians—the most superficial, I might add—namely, that something well-adapted to a purpose must have developed out of what is less well-adapted? But what could be less well adapted in this case. Anything less well-adapted would make it entirely impossible for man, in his present form, to live. A man simply could not live as he now lives, and so it is impossible to imagine that there has been a transition from the less-adapted to the better-adapted in such a case. Those who have developed the critique demanded by popular, superficially-grasped Darwinism have always drawn attention to such truths.

How will mankind's relationship with the cosmos be explained in future ages? My answer to this question will also sound somewhat paradoxical. You will recall that I have explained how the current belief that the heavens will reveal their own nature is just an empty phrase. Copernicus investigated the secrets of the heavens in the belief that the heavens would reveal themselves to him. In truth, however, the secrets of the heavens explain what lives on Earth and, conversely, the secrets of the Earth explain the secrets of the heavens.

Paradoxical as it may sound, people of the future will study embryological development and find great cosmic laws revealed in what they can observe. Universal secrets will be revealed to them as they watch how the embryo develops out of the cell and its surroundings to become a whole human being. And what can be observed in the heavens will be received as the principles in accordance with which one explains what happens here on earth in the plants, animals and, particularly as regards embryology, in man. The heavens explain the earth—Earth explains the heavens. You have heard me explain that before. A real and serious principle of knowledge of the future, one that must be expanded, still sounds like a paradox to us today.

Today I would still like to speak about a third, similar paradox. It is related to what we have just said about Lucifer and Ahriman in connection with Goethe's Faust. There is a certain justification in our seeing everything that is expressed in human emotions, passions, feelings, and so on, as the revelations of Lucifer. We can observe that the luciferic realm works more from within. Lucifer has to be there alongside Eve as she sets about making herself beautiful. She must appear beautiful to herself so that she can become the being who finds herself essentially beautiful and whose beauty brings about the Temptation. In order for the counterpart of this to enter into the course of Earth evolution, Ahriman must act: he must act so that the sons of the gods will find the daughters of mankind beautiful, that is, so that they see beauty in objects. Lucifer had to act in order to influence Eve so that she would feel herself beautiful and could bring about the Temptation. In order for it to become possible to behold an object as beautiful, and possible for beauty to become an external cause, Ahriman was necessary. The former happened in the Lemurian period, the latter, in the Atlantean period.

But one must become more and more familiar with the agency of Lucifer and Ahriman. Naturally, I can only describe individual details regarding the manifestations of Ahriman and Lucifer. But you should try to collect all the individual characteristics I have described into comprehensive pictures of them both.

Some of you might well be acquainted with the paradoxical events that are typical of what can be encountered if one moves in circles which engage in occultism, quasi-occultism, occult fraud, and all that is connected with these. In such circles there is something one can experience again and again. Suppose some prominent celebrities were among the members of a society which claimed to be occult. Such groups always include some such celebrities. They are believed. They are the authority upon which one swears. And now something emerges that is promulgated as a dogma. Now, suppose there emerged the dogma that a certain person in the group is the reincarnation of a great and towering individuality, someone who had accomplished things that would have been impossible for other men, someone who followed a path, let us say, and wrote down great truths, thousands of copies of which are spread across the globe. These writings are greatly admired, even though all they contain may be generalities. But that does not matter. Repeatedly this happens: precisely those things that are the most superficial will be regarded as ‘utterly profound’ by thousands upon thousands of people, provided they are served up with the required sentimental ‘soul-sauce’.

I will describe something typical, rather than single out a particular case. The first thing you will often observe when something like this occurs is that various persons will rise up in terrible revolt against what is happening. They will say, ‘We want nothing to do with dogma. Such a thing is nonsense and we do not want any of it; we shall never believe it.’ They instigate a kind of campaign against it. Then some celebrity or other appears to defend the matter in question, and has a meeting with one of the rebels. Then you can observe how, in the space of a few hours, the rebel does a complete about-face and becomes the most rabid of the followers. Sometimes it does not even last an hour—not even a single hour is required. Such things can be experienced repeatedly. Others come along thereafter, asking themselves, ‘How can it be? These women, or men—and, as a matter of fact, it does not just happen with the women, but with the men as well—were thinking quite clearly about the situation a short while ago. Now, after just a short conversation with this occult celebrity, they have been transformed and seem to believe the whole thing.’ Some of you sitting here know that these things do happen. Has the person really been convinced in such cases? No, there can be no question of conviction in the sense in which we usually speak of it, referring to the consciousness of normal waking life. Matters have to be understood in an entirely different light. And for the sake of understanding them, let us consider Ahriman's character for a moment.

One of the chief characteristics of Ahriman, you see, is that he has not the slightest acquaintance with the impartial relation to truth that a human being experiences here on earth. Ahriman knows nothing about this impartial relation to truth, nothing about striving for truth by simply trying to arrive at ideas that accord with an objective world. Ahriman knows nothing of this. He is not concerned with such things.

Ahriman's fundamental place in the cosmos, which I have often described, means that it is a matter of complete indifference to him whether an idea he has formulated is in accordance with reality. Although we would not call them true in the human sense, the truths Ahriman constructs are always determined by their effects. He never says anything just to be in accord with something else, but only in order to achieve some end. What he says is said in order to achieve some effect or other.

It would be ahrimanic, for example, if I were to tell someone something about our building in order to get them to undertake a certain task—saying things that I know will influence the person to undertake the task without any regard for whether or not what I say is true.

I believe you will be able to imagine that such a thing is possible-to calculate what to say to a person in order to create a certain effect while remaining indifferent to the objective truth of what is said. There are all kinds of minor instances of such things happening to people. One could recall various things, but just imagine all that the aunties say when they are trying to be matchmakers and bring two people together. They will say that it is the bride or the bridegroom who are doing things. They are not really concerned whether what they say is right, only with the influence it has on bringing about the match. That is just one little exemplary illustration! Ahriman, of course, does not bother himself with such insignificant cases. But everything in human life provides us with analogies.

Thus, when Ahriman speaks he is interested in the effects of what he says. And when this kind of thing is going on, he helps by formulating his statements to assist the process. Now, suppose it were useful for Ahriman to produce a group of people on earth who believe in some particular thing—in the kind of thing I was just now talking about. The ability to win people over to ahrimanic truths can be acquired by someone who has been sufficiently initiated into corrupt occultism, provided that this form of initiation has not awakened in him the impulse to replace that occultism with the rightful kind. He can link himself to Ahriman so as to be able to convince people of ahrimanic truths—if I may use this paradoxical turn of speech-truths that are not true at all in the human sense, but which will have their effects! That is what is always at the root of such events as I have been describing: in the space of a brief hour, ahrimanic arts are employed to influence the person who has been a thorough-going rebel. In association with Ahriman it is possible to influence a person and bring him to believe that some human being or other is the reincarnation of a particular, towering individuality. All that one has to learn is how to inject truths into some sphere of life—in this case, into the human sphere—while taking account of their effect, but not their objectivity.

To be sure, there are some men who are so ignorant and foolish that they simply take on ahrimanic influences unconsciously, without any other person having to resort to the ahrimanic arts. But the ahrimanic arts are also being practised among mankind—arts which are directly applied and are achieved through association with Ahriman. And these things resulting from the association of men with Ahriman have an especially great significance for our times. For a considerable time now, things have been happening to humanity that can only be understood by someone familiar with the secrets to which we have just been ever-so-lightly alluding.

Ahriman never concerns himself with whether or not an idea agrees with the objective world. He is only interested in its effects and in how it can be used.

Other matters are important to Lucifer. He possesses different qualities, which have already been mentioned. But in order to better acquaint ourselves with these matters, we need to pay special attention to one particular quality of Lucifer. For neither is he concerned with whether an idea accords with the objective world. Most emphatically not! He wants those ideas to be evolved which will generate the greatest possible human consciousness. Understand well what I am saying: he wants to generate the greatest possible amount of human consciousness—as intense and as widely spread as possible. This widespread consciousness that interests Lucifer is also connected with a certain human inner sense of gratification, which accompanies it. And this kind of gratification also belongs to Lucifer's domain. Perhaps you will remember me describing how, until a certain phase of the Atlantean epoch, everything to do with sexuality happened unconsciously. Various peoples have beautiful myths pointing to the unconscious nature of the sexual process in earlier times. It only became conscious during the course of time. Lucifer played an essential role in bringing this unconscious sphere more and more into the light of consciousness. This is what Lucifer wants: his goal is to bring about a human consciousness that is not right for its time; at the wrong period of time he wants to give men consciousness of something—conscious to a degree that could only be rightly developed at another point in time. Lucifer is not willing, without further ado, to allow mankind to be determined by anything external. He wants everything that affects consciousness to work from within. This is what gives all visionary life, which is pressed outward from within, its luciferic character. One must get to know Lucifer, for as spiritual forces working in the cosmos it is, of course, necessary for him and his powers to be put to work in the proper place. But as one gets to know him, one can be especially struck by Lucifer's dreadful lack of the slightest understanding for even the most harmless of delights, if they apply to something external. Lucifer has not the slightest understanding of man's harmless delight in what is around him. He understands what can be kindled by all manner of inward things. He has a great understanding for how a person can develop a passion in which he indulges and which gives him pleasure, so that as much unconscious material as possible is drawn up into consciousness. But in spite of his wisdom—for, naturally, Lucifer possesses a lofty wisdom—he cannot understand the innocent jokes that people make about external events. Such things lie entirely outside Lucifer's domain. And one can protect oneself from luciferic bombardment—which he is exceedingly ready to attempt—by learning to live in the innocent delights, delights that come to us innocently from without and entertain us. When we take pleasure in a good caricature, Lucifer gets incredibly angry.

These are the kinds of relationships that are revealed when one leaves behind the concreteness of the sense world and steps across the threshold. There, in that sphere, all possesses the character of living being; nothing has the character, typical of the physical world, of being just a thing. As soon as one enters even the elemental world, everything is alive. So you can see that we can pretty well say that it is a matter of indifference to both Ahriman and Lucifer whether or not an idea is in harmony with the objective world. Ahriman is interested in the effects of what he says; Lucifer is interested in expanding human consciousness in certain situations where man should not be conscious. Such awareness is accompanied by a kind of inner pleasure, although it is not right for the present cycle of time.

In both cases things are achieved that ideas, formed solely on the basis of their agreement with the external world, could not achieve. For the reasons I have described, malicious occult circles cultivate an alliance with Ahriman. They also cultivate an alliance with Lucifer in order to find pleasant methods for bringing about visionary experiences—in other words, methods that kindle visions from within.

Of course, Lucifer and Ahriman also work in the human unconscious. There they accomplish the same things that the malevolent occult circles deliberately set about doing, the same things in which these circles are engaged, in alliance with Lucifer and Ahriman. And much of the criticism that must be levelled against the way our own fifth post-Atlantean epoch is unfolding in that great world out there, can be traced back to luciferic and ahrimanic impulses. At present, luciferic and ahrimanic streams have a strong grip on the world and their effect is chaotic. This is shown not only by the great amount of lying and falsification that goes on, but also by everything that is said, simply because it corresponds to emotions and passions without any regard for justifying it by showing how it accords with objective reality. For, in the present phase of human development, if we want to be in the exclusive care of benevolent powers we cannot disregard the objective truth of our assertions and mould them to the shape of our passions. Atlantean humanity was capable of inwardly determining truths that would accord with the corresponding objective reality. This capacity persisted into the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, at the latest. But, as we know, it exists no longer. It is precisely for the purpose of allowing mankind to learn to observe and investigate the external world without basing its assertions on subjective passions, that we are going through our present cycle of development.

Thus, today, when truths are nevertheless formed on a subjective basis without any attempt being made to bring them into agreement with the external world, there is a luciferic stream at work. This luciferic stream has allied itself with ahrimanic streams. One brings about a form of consciousness that is wrong, the other brings about falsehood or lying. And what we are describing is already very, very widespread at the present time. These days, many souls have been lured away from a right awareness for whether an idea harmonises with the objective world. They are not in the least concerned about it. And if someone does show concern for whether his ideas agree with the objective reality, he is not understood. In such cases, a person is met on all sides by a distinctive attitude—it is difficult to find the right word for it, an attitude of surprise—people are surprised that it is even possible to think in this fashion. In such circles one meets the least agreement precisely when one is attempting to point to characteristics of reality by simply drawing attention to the things of the world and repeating them in one's ideas, basing everything one says on what is there. Sometimes this is scarcely understood. It is not understood that this is radically different from what happens when someone simply shapes his assertions to match one or the other of his passions, be these personal or national. Therein lies a radical distinction of which people of today are not even aware. Many is the time that people fail to consider whether their assertions are in accordance with the facts; they simply form them in accordance with their own preconceptions and along already-established lines of thought. But what matters today is whether or not our assertions are in accordance with the facts. Otherwise we cannot hope to accomplish the transition to an epoch in which the spiritual world can be seen in the proper light. We will never be able to discover the facts of the spiritual world unless we develop an attitude that acknowledges the facts of the physical world. The right way of experiencing the spiritual world must be developed here in the physical world. That is why we have been placed in the physical world: it is our task here to seek for ideas that are in harmony with objective reality, so that we acquire this ability and so that it becomes a habit we can carry with us into the spiritual world.

But today so many people base their assertions on nothing but emotion and are not in the least interested in whether they agree with objective reality. This is precisely the opposite of the direction in which humanity must move if it is to progress. And, especially in our materialistic age, the notion of thinking in accordance with reality has been so frightfully distorted by the influences we have been describing; thinking that is in accord with reality has become a rarity. And an honest attempt to think in accordance with reality today collides with all the contemporary thinking that is at variance with reality. A dreadful example of this is the way in which our anthroposophical Movement again and again collides with thinking that has not been measured against reality. But the facts are there, and in the end one cannot remain silent if one is sincere about this Movement.

These collisions between attempts to think in accordance with reality and thinking that is an enemy of reality show what is involved in standing up for the truth today. That other thinking is opposed to reality in the manner we have described. It is true that every age must fight with the forces of opposition; but in every age it is necessary to get to know them in the particular shape and particular metamorphosis they have assumed. The stream of the Pharisees, for example, has not died out; today it is present in another form. And we will only be able to proceed with the necessary clarity if we really understand this distinction between thinking that is in harmony with reality and thinking that is an enemy of reality.

(For a different translation of this lecture, see: The Proclamations to the Magi and the Shepherds)

Let us begin to-day by considering certain questions connected with this time of festival, with this season which yearly renews the memory of the Mystery of Golgotha, renews also a direct experience of it in our feeling.

We really have three such times of festival in Christian tradition: the Christmas, the Easter and the Whitsuntide festivals. And we may say that, each in a different way, these three festivals bring man into connection, into relationship, with that in which the Christian tradition sees the meaning of all earth-evolution. These three festivals also differ as regards the human soul-forces. Christmas appeals more to the feeling and in a certain sense is the most popular festival, because to understand it requires a deepening of the feeling-life, and because it is the most readily approachable for the large masses of humanity. The Easter festival, which requires that we raise ourselves to an understanding of the real Mystery of Golgotha, of the entrance of a super-sensible Being into human evolution, is the most challenging to the human powers of understanding. It is a festival which lifts human understanding to the highest level, and which, although it is also generally celebrated, cannot however be popular in the same sense as the Christmas festival.

The third, the Whitsun festival, establishes a relationship particularly between the human will and the super-sensible world, the world to which the Christ-Being as such belongs. The carrying over of will-impulses into execution in the world is brought to human consciousness through a right understanding of the Whitsun festival.

Thus what we may call the secret of Christianity is given form in these yearly celebrations. The way in which the Christmas mystery touches man can be brought before our consciousness in the most manifold ways; and with the recurrence of the Christmas festival during the course of the years, we have considered the Christmas-Thought from the most varied standpoints. This time let us call to mind something which can become clear to any one who considers the Christmas mystery in the light of the Gospels.

In the Gospels we find a twofold announcement of the birth of Christ Jesus. One annunciation is made to the poor shepherds out in the fields. An Angel announces the birth of Christ Jesus to them—in a dream, or however one may wish to call it. Here we have to do with the perception of this event through inner soul-forces, soul-forces which, in the case of these shepherds in the vicinity where Christ Jesus was born, were in a special condition. And a second annunciation is set forth in the Gospels, the annunciation to the Three Kings, the Three Wisemen from the Orient. We are told that they followed a star which announced to them the advent of Christ Jesus on the earth.

Thus we are shown two ways by which this earlier humanity reached what we may call its higher knowledge. This is another example of something which is never properly grasped in the present age. To-day we usually conceive of human beings as possessing thought and perception, and we imagine this thinking and perceiving, in fact, all use of the inner soul-forces, to have been in all past centuries and millenia essentially the same—only more primitive—as it is to-day. We know from anthroposophical spiritual science how the soul-constitution of man has changed with the passage of time; how differently in ancient times—for instance, seven or eight thousand years after the beginning of the post-Atlantean period, or even earlier—humanity regarded its own life and the nature of the surrounding universe. Moreover we know how this soul-constitution underwent many changes before it became that reasoning analytical faculty existing to-day, which in its approach to the outer world knows only the purely sense-perceptible aspect of things. This evolution takes its starting-point from a certain ancient instinctive clairvoyance and proceeds through the state found in our modern soul-condition, to return again in future to a clairvoyant perception of the world which will be permeated by full human consciousness.

At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on earth the ancient instinctive clairvoyance was already greatly dimmed. Men's souls were indeed differently constituted than they are to-day, although they no longer had the old clairvoyance; gone also were their old wise ways of fathoming the universe. The ancient wisdom-teachings as well as the old instinctive clairvoyance had grown very dim as the Mystery of Golgotha approached humanity. But remnants of both still existed, and we are clearly shown in the Gospels, if we rightly understand them, that this was the case. Such remnants were still present among single favoured individuals. We may recognise as such the poor shepherds out in the fields, who in the piety of their hearts possessed a certain clairvoyant capacity of a dreamlike nature. And we also recognise as such the Three Magi from the East, who are pictured as standing on the topmost rung of human society, and had retained from ancient times a capacity gained from a certain stream of wisdom, giving them insight into the course of world-events. Thus, on the one hand, the poor shepherds could be approached in a kind of dream-experience, in inward perception, by the event of Christ Jesus' birth, while, on the other, the Three Magi from the East developed a science which enabled them, by the study of world-phenomena, the appearances in the heavens, to be aware of significant events taking place open the earth quite beyond ordinary human ken.

Thus there are pointed out to us two quite definite, but widely differing, modes of knowledge. Let us turn our attention for the moment to what was present as the last remnant of an ancient stream of wisdom in the Three Wisemen from the Orient. We are shown clearly that these Wisemen were able to read the riddles in the movements of the stars. In the existing descriptions we are made aware of an ancient knowledge of the stars whereby access was gained to the mysteries of the starry worlds and wherein the secrets of human events were also revealed. This ancient knowledge of the stars was something quite different from that of to-day. Our astronomy is in a certain sense also prophetic; it can prophesy eclipses of the sun and moon and so on, but it is merely mathematical and mechanical. It only speaks of space and time-relationships in so far as these may be represented mathematically, whereas the ancient wisdom of, the stars perceived in these movements something of higher significance, remote from space and time, taking place in the inner life of man. If we examine the science of humanity in olden times, we find its content essentially one of this wisdom of the stars. Men sought in the stars for a deeper understanding of earthly happenings. For to them the starry world was not the abstract mechanical thing it has become for modern humanity. For them the starry world was something full of life. They felt the presence of an essential Being in the universe, in the case of every planet. By means of an inner soul-language, in a certain sense, they even spoke with the individual planets, as we to-day speak merely from man to man in external words. People were conscious of inward soul-experience which was a reflection of what was going on out in universal space in the movement of the stars. This was a living, spiritualized way of looking at the universe. And man felt himself connected as a soul and spirit with this universe. This wisdom of the world was fostered in schools, in what may be described as Mystery schools, where the pupils were prepared in a careful, intimate and inner way to gain an understanding of the movements of the stars such as might illuminate human life upon the earth.

Of what nature were these preparations? These preparations for a knowledge of the starry heavens and their influences were of such a character that, even then, in the age of instinctive clairvoyance, the pupil was led to develop a more wide-awake life than normally. The large mass of mankind had a kind of instinctive clairvoyance, corresponding to a state of soul which was less wide awake than the one normal for us to-day. In ancient periods of human evolution people were not able to think as clearly as we can now. Geometry and mathematics as we know them could not then exist. The whole of life between birth and death had more of a dreaming character; but just because it was dreamlike it had a far more lively way of perceiving the surrounding universe than does our waking life to-day. And the strange thing was that the pupils of those ancient Mysteries existing 2000 years, or even 1000 years, before the Mystery of Golgotha (such men as the Magi may be counted among the last remaining disciples of this training), were trained in a knowledge which was very similar to our geometry and mathematics. Euclid was the first to give geometry to humanity; but he merely communicated it to humanity in general. What Euclid gave in the way of geometry had already lived in the Mysteries for thousands of years as something communicated only to the most carefully selected Mystery-pupils. It had a different effect then than in later times. It may seem strange and paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true, that what our children learn as arithmetic and geometry was taught in the Mystery-schools to selected individuals who were considered specially endowed and so accepted in the Mysteries.

To-day we often hear reference made to the mysterious matters supposedly taught in the Mysteries. Actually, in their purely abstract content, these mysterious matters are none other than those taught to children to-day. They are nothing else; and their Mystery-character lies not in the fact of their being unknown to us, but in the different way in which at that time they were taught. It is quite a different matter to call upon the reasoning of children through the content of geometry in an age in which, from the moment of awaking until falling asleep again man lives in a wide-awake consciousness, than it was to present these matters to specially selected human beings, whose consciousness was more mature, during the age of ancient instinctive clairvoyance and dreaming consciousness.

Our modern conceptions of these things are by no means always accurate. For example, there is a poem to Varuna in Oriental literature describing Varuna as appearing in the air, as wafting like the wind through the woods; Varuna appears in the lightning flashing out of the dripping clouds; in the human heart when the will is roused to action; in the heavens when the sun moves across them. Varuna is to be found on the mountains in the juice of the Soma.

What the juice of the Soma is, modern books profess not to know. To-day in our great learning we agree that we do not know what the juice of the Soma is, although there are people who drink it by the quart, and certainly know it very well from a certain standpoint. But it is a different matter to know these things—from the standpoint of the Mysteries than from the standpoint of waking consciousness in profane feeling.

You can read to-day of the Philosopher's Stone, which was accounted precious in an age when the nature of substance was somewhat differently regarded than it is to-day. Again the historians of alchemy will tell you that the Philosopher's Stone is quite unknown. Here and there in my lectures I have indicated that the Philosopher's Stone is quite familiar to most human beings; they simply do not know its qualities, or why it is so named. But since it is used by the ton, it is very familiar to most human beings.

The facts are simply upon occasion quite different from the concepts we hold of them with our present-day abstract, theoretical grasp of things, so remote from life and reality. There is not even a true grasp of what it might mean to take in the sciences of arithmetic and geometry with quite another soul-constitution than we have to-day, with a mature soul-condition. I have referred to this particular type of Mystery-schooling in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”; but just such important things as these are usually not properly understood, they are not ordinarily understood in their real significance. The fact that the way in which people were approached with things constituted the very kernel of the Mysteries in ancient times is something which should be grasped. And it was thus also in the case of such purely mathematical considerations, the content of feeling and the human fullness of which Novalis still sensed when he felt mathematics to be like great poetry—something which most people now-a-days will not agree with. And it is to such grasping of the world, permeated as it was with feeling, but poured into mathematical mould, that the pupil of the ancient Mysteries was led. And when the pupil of the ancient Mysteries was thus brought to a mathematical understanding of the universe, he developed just such a world-outlook as that possessed by the Wisemen from the East, as they are described to us.

The mathematics of the universe, which have become so thoroughly abstract to us, revealed at that time something really living, because the revelation found completion in what was brought to understand it. Thus what sprang as science from an ancient culture, and was still preserved in its last fragments to the Magi, made possible the one annunciation, through the channel of the teachers of wisdom, through external science, the annunciation experienced by the Magi.

On the other hand, it was possible for the inner experience of the secrets of humanity to develop in human beings who, like the shepherds in the fields, had a special predisposition in this direction. In such cases the inner forces of man had to reach certain heights; then what took place in the world of men became direct imaginative perception, an instinctive, imaginative picture-perception. Thus, through inner vision, the poor shepherds in the fields partook in the annunciation: “God makes revelation of His Being in the heavenly heights, and His peace shall be with all men of good will.” Thus did the secrets of the universe speak to the innermost being of the poor shepherds in the fields, as well as to the utmost heights attainable to human wisdom at that time, to the Wisemen of the East. Thus the great mystery of earthly life was imparted from two different sides.

What did these Wisemen of the East experience? What was the special development brought about in the souls of these pupils through the introduction of mathematics into their soul-condition, when this was found especially mature and ready? Kant speaks of mathematics as being “a priori” truth. With “a priori” he means a truth which is present within us before our external, empirical knowledge, before our experience of it existed. This is mere word-wisdom; nothing at all is said with this “a priori”! A meaning attaches to it only when it can be shown by spiritual science that mathematics is something that rises up within us, that rises to consciousness out of man's inner being.

Whence does it come? It proceeds from the experiences we went through in the spiritual world before birth, or conception. There we lived in the great wide universe. There we experienced what could be experienced before we had bodily eyes and ears. There we had “a priori” experience, when considered in relation to our life on earth. These “a priori” experiences rise in an unconscious way out of our inner being into the sphere of consciousness. Unless modern man has a premonition of this, as had Novalis, he does not know that when he does mathematics, experiences of the time before conception and birth are rising up within him. But for a person with true insight into these matter the mathematical capacity is in itself a proof of man's life in the spiritual world before conception. As far as those are concerned for whom this is not a proof of pre-natal existence, the fact remains that they do not think thoroughly enough about life's phenomena and have no idea what the true origin of mathematics is.

The pupils of the ancient Mysteries who possessed that wise outlook, still extant in its last fragments in the Wisemen of the East, had the clear impression: “When we study the stars and apply our mathematical forms and reckoning to them, we are spreading out again over the outer reaches of universal space what we actually lived in before our birth.” And it seemed to such a pupil of the ancient Mysteries as though he must say: “Now I am living on earth; my eyes look out into universal space and see my spatial surroundings. In these same phenomena of the spatial universe I lived before my birth; there I myself counted from star to star what I now merely copy and symbolize in mathematics. With my innermost forces I moved from star to star, living in what I now merely draw.”

Thus they experienced again all they had gone through before birth, or conception, and consequently it was holy to them. They realized that they had lived in a spiritual world before they walked on earth. This knowledge of the world in which man lives before he descends to the earth was present in its last remnants in the Wisemen of the East, and by its means they knew of the advent of the Christ-Being.

Whence came this Christ-Being? He came out of that time which we live through between death and rebirth, and He united Himself with the life we live through between birth and death. For this reason the science that concerns itself with the world we live in between death and rebirth can unveil such a mystery as the Mystery of Golgotha. And out of this science announcement was made to the Magi of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christmas Mystery.

As man lives here on the earth and concerns himself with gaining knowledge of his surroundings, with developing impulses for his actions, for his social life, he has still another unconscious experience. He knows nothing of it; but just as he experiences the after-effects of his pre-natal life, so does he also experience what passes through the gates of death and becomes the content of life after death, namely, the forces already present like a seed between birth and death, which only come to their full blossoming in the life after death. These forces worked with great intensity in the ancient instinctive clairvoyance. And they worked in their last remnants in the poor shepherds in the fields because of their special piety. Moreover, it is in these forces especially that we live between falling asleep and awaking, when our souls are outside of our bodies in outer space. The soul then lives as it will live consciously in future when it has laid aside the physical body after death. These forces, which under special conditions can penetrate from the world of sleep and dream into waking life, were once very active in the ancient instinctive clairvoyance. And these the poor shepherds experienced, receiving through them a revelation of the Mystery of Golgotha from a different quarter than that from which the annunciation came to the three Magi.

What does one experience by means of the forces peculiar to man between death and rebirth when, as in the case of the Wisemen from the Orient, they are kindled in the life between birth and death? One experiences what takes place beyond what is earthly. One is borne away from the earth out into the world of the stars where we live between death and rebirth. This was the world into which the Wisemen of the East were led away from the earth out into cosmic space.

And what does one experience by means of the forces which rise up from the inner being of man, especially in the world of dreams? One experiences what goes on within the earth. Here the Tellurian forces, the forces of which we partake because we live in our bodies, are at work. These forces work particularly in what we live through between falling asleep and awaking. Here, too, we are in the outer world, but essentially in that outer world belonging to the earth.

You will say that this is a contradiction of the truth that we are outside of our bodies. But it is not a contradiction. We always perceive only what is external to ourselves; that wherein we live is never perceived. Only people who are especially ignorant about certain subjects, and who are bent on establishing a knowledge consisting solely of phrases, are capable of skipping lightly over such matters with their phrases and of saying, for example, that the point is not to found a science of the spirit upon knowledge gained outside man, but to add to natural science a science derived from man's inner being.

With such a torrent of phrases Darmstadt wisdom-schools may indeed be founded, but one may still remain a mere phrase-maker even when founding schools of wisdom. For rightly understood, the matter is as follows. We may indeed say that, to arrive at the super-sensible, the world must be described from within; but we must first get into the inner being and then look at what is external from outside the body, by looking back upon the body. Keyserling's talks concerning observation from the standpoint of the soul do not attempt to enter man's inner being, they merely use phrases.

The fact really is such that when we are in the condition experienced between falling asleep and awaking, we look back, we feel our way back, as it were, into our bodies. We feel what is of the earth in our bodies; for they are of the earth. The poor shepherds in the fields really, felt the revelation of the earth through their bodies when in a dreamlike condition, they perceived what was happening in the form of the perception of an angel's voice.

These are the two absolute contrasts: the Magi with their knowledge of the heavens, and the shepherds with their earth-revelation. And it corresponds completely to the Mystery of Golgotha that the revelation came from two such different quarters. For a heavenly Being, as yet untouched by earth, was descending to it, and this descent had to make itself known by means of the wisdom of the heavens, which knew that something heavenly was descending.

In the shepherds' wisdom we learn to know the earth by feeling our way into its weaving life as it perceived the descent of the heavenly Being. It is the same annunciation, only from another side. Wonderfully unified, we thus see what, although it was one and the same event, was announced in a twofold way to men.

And when we see how humanity received the event of Golgotha, we must say that, in regard to this and other matters, there were only the merest remnants of the ancient wisdom left to man. I have already shown how the Mystery of Golgotha was grasped in the first centuries of Christianity with the help of the fragments of an ancient wisdom known as Gnosis. From then on it became more and more a matter of trying to penetrate into the nature of the event of Golgotha with analytical reasoning powers alone. And in the 19th century naturalism gradually made its appearance in the confessional sphere. The super-sensible content of the event of Golgotha was no longer grasped at all, Christ became merely the “wise man of Nazareth”, naturalistically conceived. A new, spiritual grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha became necessary. The fact of the Mystery of Golgotha must not be confused with the way in which human understanding has dealt with this fact.

Now a soul-constitution such as the shepherds in the fields and the Wisemen of the East possessed still existed in its last fragmentary form at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred. But all this changed in the course of human evolution. Everything changes and undergoes metamorphosis. What then became of the wisdom of the Eastern Magi? It has become our mathematics, with its knowledge of the heavens! The Magi possessed a super-earthly science based on sublime recollections of pre-natal life. All this has been shrunken and cramped into our mathematical, mechanical grasp of the heavens, so that we apply nothing but the laws of mathematics and mechanics to their phenomena. What we have in the way of mathematical astronomy is all that still rises up out of our inner being as the modern metamorphosis of what the Magi once possessed.

And looking at our external sense-knowledge, which is merely a perceiving with eyes and ears, we find it to be the externalized inner knowledge of the shepherds in the fields. What could once convey to the shepherds in the fields the inner secrets of earthly existence now permits only of that cold, natural-scientific observation of the outer world which is the offspring of the shepherds' wisdom. The child bears but slight resemblance to its mother. And our mathematics, our astronomy, are the offspring of the wisdom of the Magi.

Humanity had to go through this development. Our scientific researchers, sitting in their laboratories and clinics, have very little in common with the shepherds but theirs is a direct metamorphosis of the shepherds' wisdom. And our mathematicians likewise are in direct line of descent from the Eastern Wisemen. The outer has become the inner, and the inner, outer. And so we have indeed grown remote from the Mystery of Golgotha. We must become aware of this fact. We have become far removed indeed from such understanding. Perhaps many of those who call themselves preachers and ministers of Christianity in the official sense are the most remote from it of all.

The forces of knowledge, faith and feeling that live in man to-day can never penetrate through to the true being of the Mystery of Golgotha. It must be found entirely anew.

The wisdom of the Magi too has become dry mathematics, perceiving the heavens only in designs. It has become an inner thing. But inwardness must take on life once more. What was once outer must be built up again from within.

And now let us try to understand the content of a book such as my Occult Science from this standpoint. The Magi had a real penetration into the starry heavens; they saw what was spiritual there because they had insight into human pre-natal experience. This has become abstract in our mathematics. But the very same forces out of which we develop mathematics can be brought back to life, and intensified as imaginative vision. Then there is born from out our inner being a world which, although we create it within us, we see as the outer world, as though: containing Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. We see the heavens in inner vision just as the Eastern Wisemen externally perceived the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. The external has become an inner thing, has become mathematical abstraction; and in like manner the inner must be widened out until it becomes a universe around us, until inner vision leads us to a new astronomy experienced within.

Only by thus reaching out for a new understanding of the Christ can we fill the festival of Christmas with a certain meaning. Has the Christmas festival any meaning for most human beings nowadays? It is a very beautiful custom, scarcely 150 years old, to have the Christmas Tree as a symbol of the Christmas festival. The custom of having a Christmas Tree came into being only in the 19th century. What is this Christmas Tree really? It is not so easy to find its meaning. In making the effort to find it, and by discovering how the Christmas Tree gradually came into use, how it grew from being the little branch, carried on St. Nicholas' arm on the 6th of December, into being our Christmas Tree, we come to realize that this Christmas Tree is also directly connected with the Tree of Paradise.

Human consciousness thus looks back here to the Tree of Paradise, to Adam and Eve. What does this signify? This is one aspect of the way we make the Mystery of Golgotha known to-day. We turn back from the Mystery of Golgotha to the creation of the world, to the beginning of the world. We fail to grasp the meaning of the world's redemption, and instead turn back to the God who created the universe. This is expressed in the gradual disappearance of the real Christmas symbol, of the manger—so sublime a part of the Christmas plays of earlier centuries—and in the appearance of the Christmas Tree which is really the Tree of Paradise.

Thus the old Jehovah-religion again took the place of the Christ-religion; the Christmas Tree is the symbol of the reappearance of the religion of Jehovah. This Jehovah-religion makes its appearance in many shapes and forms to-day. For Jahve was once rightly worshipped as the one and only God in an age when his people felt themselves to be a unified folk, content within their limits, and living in the expectation of some day filling the entire earth. In our age people talk of Christ Jesus, but really worship only Jehovah. For, as we saw during the war, the people of the various nations talked of Christ, but were really concerned with the original God, Jehovah, who lives in the forces of nature and heredity.

On the one hand, the Christmas Tree, on the other, the national gods so remote from Christianity—with these humanity has turned back from grasping the Mystery of Golgotha to lay hold again on something belonging to a much earlier period. There has been a retrogression into the ancient Jehovah religion in the adherence to the nationalistic principle, in the announcement that the various peoples would follow their national gods.

You see, what must be taken into consideration is that in the annunciation, to the shepherds, and in the annunciation that came to the Magi, there is a human element common to all men. For the earth is the common property of all. The earth-annunciation received by the shepherds was one which could make no national distinctions and differentiations. And the Magi, who received a sun-annunciation, an annunciation from the heavens, also received a purely human element. For after the sun shines upon the lands of one folk, it shines on the lands of others also. Heaven and earth belong to all in common. With Christianity, a common human element is roused in all humanity.

This fact is pointed to in the twofold annunciation of the Christmas story. Such matters which were fully understood when man's soul-constitution was an entirely different one, will only be comprehensible to-day with the help of spiritual science.

We should inscribe this into our hearts to-day when we think of the Christmas festival. To-day, in thinking of the Christmas Mystery, we have need to look for a birth. We should not merely busy ourselves with idle talk about the Christmas festival and our own feelings, but should look for what must be born anew in this our age. For truly, real Christianity must be born anew. We need a cosmic Christmas festival for humanity.

From the two lectures I gave yesterday and the day before yesterday, you will have seen how important it is from an anthroposophical point of view to build on what happened in Europe in the course of the 19th century in the right way. And we were indeed able to link the phenomena that we have placed before our minds to many of the things that have emerged as the actual characteristic of the modern era, which we consider to be the actual characteristic of the spiritual and other historical developments in Europe from the mid-15th century onwards.

Today, precisely because I regard yesterday and the day before as a kind of substructure, as a kind of starting point for a perspective, I would like to look a little further ahead, and also a little further back in time.

We must be clear about the fact that in the course of the 19th century, materialism emerged in European development on the one hand. And I count as materialism everything that can only turn to material phenomena if it wants to say something about the world that does not feel the need to turn to a spiritual thing when it is about that which sustains man in the world, which instructs man in the world about his path. On the other hand, added to this materialism was what may be called intellectualism, rationalism, the view of the intellect, which only, I might say, wants to live and weave in logical concepts.

Now do not take this as if I meant that this logical way of thinking should be opposed to another non-logical or even anti-logical one. Of course that does not occur to me at all. But the logical alone is to reality what the skeletal system is to the human being, and in all things the logical actually represents not the living but the dead. And so what man had naively arrived at, this mere intellectual logic that contains dead concepts, promoted materialism, which only tied in with dead substance.

Now, nothing less than a completely disillusioned looking into the true reasons that, on the one hand, brought forth materialism and, on the other, rationalism, can help us today to further develop human civilization. And here we must also reach a little further back in time, so that yesterday's and the day before yesterday's description has an even broader background.

I have often pointed out the deep rift that exists between everything that was once Greek culture – let us say, the culture that developed partly in the Greek language – and what then gradually developed to the west as Roman, as Latin culture. Attention has often been called to the view of Herman Grimm, who says: Today's man can still understand the Romans, because he basically still has the same concepts as the Romans; the Greeks appear to him like the inhabitants of a fairy-tale land. Well, I have indeed spoken about this fact in more detail in the essays that recently appeared in the “Goetheanum”.

But now we must be clear about the fact that the East of Europe, which I tried to describe yesterday, so to speak, only as an appendix and perhaps in a way that is contestable for some of those sitting here, experienced a wave of civilization that was strongly influenced by Greek in later times. In the East of Europe we find the late forms of Greek feeling, of Greek sensibility. In the west and also in central Europe, on the other hand, Latin culture is developing in a very intensive way. And the very differentiation across Europe that I have described to you over the last two days is fundamentally under the influence of what existed in the east as a continuation of Greek culture and in the west as a continuation of Latin Roman culture.

We must not forget the following. We must be clear about the fact that the West was in a very different position to digest the Latin-Roman essence inwardly, spiritually, than Central Europe. The West has absorbed the Latin within itself. Central Europe has become ill from the Latin. And only those who are able to properly consider this phenomenon, which is currently showing itself in its last stages in the most intense way imaginable, actually know how to find their way around within the current concepts of education.

Let us first look at the matter from a Central European point of view. I would like to draw attention once more to what Fritz Mauthner, who died recently, asserted from the point of view of language, from the criticism of language. Fritz Mauthner did not want to write a critique of reason, that is, actually, a critique of concepts, like Kant, but rather a critique of language. He had made the supposed discovery that when people talk about higher things, they are really only talking in words and do not realize that they are only talking in words. But if you look at how people use words, for example, God, spirit, soul, good and so on, you can see that when people use words, they believe that they are dealing with a thing, but they are just using words without pointing to a real thing.

Now, as I have already indicated, I believe that Mauthner's entire view does not apply when it comes to natural things, because then people can distinguish quite well between the word and the thing. At least I have never yet heard of anyone who, for example, had the intention of mounting not a real white horse when he wanted to ride, but merely the word “white horse”! So in relation to things of nature, people can distinguish the word and its content from reality.

But the situation changes – and this gives Fritz Mauthner a certain semblance of justification – the moment we enter the realm of the soul on the one hand and the ethical-moral realm on the other. In relation to the soul, words from ancient times have been preserved that people continue to use, but the views on the matter have not been preserved. So that people use words like soul and spirit, but do not have the view of the matter. And since Mauthner noticed this in the realm of the soul, he thought he could generalize. But in the realm of the soul, and also in the ethical-moral realm, it is the case that, for example, in the ethical-moral realm, moral impulses have gradually lost their factual content for man and actually figure today only as external commandments or even as external laws.

Thus, for a good part of the vocabulary, the view of the matter has been lost. That is why it takes so much effort today to work on the most important abilities of the human soul - thinking, feeling and willing. Because thinking, feeling and willing are things that everyone discusses today, but people do not really have a view of the corresponding things. And it is a matter of coming up with what is actually behind it.

Now we must be clear about the fact that education, which actually led to intellectual life, was carried by the Latin language for many, many centuries in the Middle Ages, and that the Latin language really became a dead language not only in the sense of an external designation, but in a very inner sense. The Latin language, which one had to acquire in the Middle Ages if one wanted to access higher education at all, became more and more a, if I may express it thus, mechanism in itself. And it became precisely the logical mechanism in itself.

This process can be easily followed if you look at history the way we did yesterday and the day before yesterday for the 19th century. If we look at the inner life in the continuation of human existence, we see that in the fourth century AD the Latin language gradually ceased to be experienced inwardly, that it no longer embodied the logos but only the shells of the logos. What then remained of the Latin language as a latecomer, the Italian language, the French language, they have indeed absorbed much of the Latin language. In this way they participated in the dying process of the Latin language. But they also took in what was transmitted by the various peoples who moved from east to west and inhabited the west. So that in Italian and French the completely different element lives on, not only in the words, but above all in the shaping of the language, in the drama of the language. In contrast, the real Latin has died out. And in this deadness, where gradually the views have fallen away, it has become the all-dominant scientific language. And one must inquire precisely about language if one wants to understand: Why did the medieval world view take the form that it did?

Just think that the human being was pushed into this Latin during his boyhood, so that the process was not such that he shaped the language from the living soul, but the language was poured into him as a finished logical instrument, and he learned logic, so to speak, from the way the words were grammatically connected. Logic became something that filled man from the outside.

And so the connection between the human soul and spiritual education became increasingly loose and loose, and one did not grow into education with enthusiasm from what one already had within oneself, one was absorbed by a foreign element of education, by the foreign element of education that had been perverted in Latin. It radiated out, so to speak, into the soul and drove what one originally had out of the person or deeper into the person, into such a region where one made no claim to logic.

Just think how it was for many centuries in the Middle Ages and how it was in our youth, in the youth of those who are now creatures as old as I am. It was the case that if someone had expressed something in their mother tongue and it did not appear clear in the society in which one was, one quickly translated it into Latin, because then it became clear. But it also became cold and sober. It became logical. You immediately understood when something was expressed in a Latin case; you immediately understood exactly and precisely how the matter was meant.

But that was always done through the centuries of the Middle Ages. People allowed themselves all kinds of sloppiness in the spoken language because they attributed exactness and precision to thinking in the Latin language. But that was something foreign to man. And because it was foreign and man can only come to the spirit through his soul, the Latin language became so fossilized that you could no longer use a word in any way if you did not have the thing out there in physical sensuality. With the horse, it would not have worked if you only had the word, because you could not ride on it. But with those things that are supersensible, the content gradually evaporated from the word, and people only had the word. And then later, when their mother tongue emerged, they also only said the word in the mother tongue, the simply lexicographically translated word. In doing so, they did not bring in the idea. By putting anima and soul together and anima having lost its reality as content, the content of the soul was also lost. And so it came about that the Latin language was only applicable to the external sensual.

From the language you have one of the reasons why, in the middle of the Middle Ages, theology said: One can only understand external sensual things through science, and at most their context, and one must leave supersensible things to faith. If these people had developed the full strength to express what is true, then they would have said: Man can only recognize as much of the world as can be expressed in Latin, and the rest he must leave to a not quite expressible, only felt faith.

You see, in a sense that is the truth, and the rest is just an illusion. The truth is that over the centuries the view has taken hold that only what can be expressed in Latin is scientifically true.

And only in the 18th century did the pretension of the vernacular actually come into play. But at that time, when the pretensions of the vernacular were emerging, the various regions of Europe had a very different relationship to the vernacular. Where Latin still had an effect, the vernacular was more easily combined with education. Hence we have these phenomena in Western Europe, which we described the day before yesterday, that actually the connections in social life, the social bonds, as I have called them, develop in a way that is popular, in which everyone participates, because in the West, when folklore emerged, to a certain extent this folklore snapped into a related form in Latin.

In Central Europe this was quite impossible, because there the vernacular had not adopted anything Latin. There the vernacular was something quite different from Latin. And on top of that was the layer of education, which learned Latin if it wanted to be educated. So here the difference was enormous. Yes, it is precisely from this difference that the tragedy for Central Europe, of which I spoke yesterday, stems, the tragedy that existed between the people of the broad masses, who did not learn Latin, who therefore had no science either - because science was what could be said in Latin - and those who acquired science, who simply switched over the moment they acquired it. In their everyday lives, when they ate and drank and when they were otherwise with their fellow countrymen, they were unlearned people, because they spoke the language, which did not have any learning in it at all. And when they were scholars, they were something quite different; then they donned an inner robe. So that basically a person who was educated was actually a divided person.

You see, this had a particularly profound effect on the intellectual life of Central Europe. For in the vernacular, through all kinds of circumstances, which we will also touch on one day, there was actually only what I hinted at yesterday, on the one hand as an astrological element, on the other as an alchemical element. This was already alive in the vernacular, and the vernacular actually had an inner spirituality, an inner spirituality. The vernacular had no materialism in Europe. Materialism was only imposed on the vernacular from the materialism of the Latin language, in that the Latin language, when it was no longer the language of scholars, still left the people with the airs and graces that had developed when it became the language of scholars. And so the Central European language could not find a way to balance or harmonize with what had become established in Latin as education.

This is an extremely serious matter. It can be seen in an intensive way to this day. I will give a concrete example in a moment of how intensely this can be seen. You see, so-called political economy is also taught at various universities today. This political economy has actually grown out of legal ideas, and these are entirely a child of the Latin world. To think legally is to think in Latin, even today. And the ideas of political economy – yes, in an unfortunate way for the Latins, one comes down to things. Just as you can't ride the mere word Schimmel, you can't eat the mere economic terms. You can't do business with the mere economic terms. But since science has only developed from Latin - it's just that people don't realize the context - the economic sciences of the present have no content at all. Political economy, as it is taught today, actually only understands something that no longer has anything to do with reality because it comes from Latin, but it has not found the connection to present reality at all, instead spinning everything out of concepts.

One could say that it is precisely in the field of economics that a contrast becomes apparent. Yesterday I spoke to you about the fact that in Central Europe there were people going around among the people who were called thinkers – they worked from the folk tradition, which is why they had the old astrology, the old alchemy – thinkers, that is, those who reflect. Those who then carried Latin in that sublimated form into political economy are not those who speculate, but those who spin yarns. Yes, really, I am not joking, but am quite serious, because a mere logical web, into which the Latin language has been transformed, is spun out to form what is developed as a single science.

Last fall, I taught a course in economics here. It was based on facts, not on a web of words. And because it was based on facts, because it was based on the realities of economic life, it became more and more apparent that Students of political economy cannot reconcile this with what is mere fiction! The one does not flow into the other. And now someone could suggest that a supplementary course should be held to concretize the conceptual framework of today's political economy with what has been drawn from reality. But that would be like explaining the fertility of an orange to someone looking at discarded orange peel, and that is simply not possible. When it comes to gaining knowledge from reality, you cannot draw parallels to what is mere fiction. You have to start from scratch and work from the original, elementary level if reality is to have an effect.

And because in the education of the people, which was not interspersed with Latin, even if the old celestial and terrestrial knowledge, astrology and alchemy, lived on in a form that was no longer contemporary, the feeling that knowledge is that which one can say in Latin was gradually joined by the other feeling: superstition is everything that cannot be said in Latin but must be said in the vernacular. Only people do not express it that way because they add all kinds of embellishments. But our entire education is permeated on the one hand by the sentence: everything that can be expressed in Latin sentences is scientific; and on the other hand: everything that cannot be expressed in Latin sentences but must be expressed in the vernacular is superstition.

This is something that has been experienced much less in the West, but which has been experienced in a terribly tragic way, especially in Central Europe. In the East, again, to a lesser extent. Firstly, the East had allowed Greek, which was still imbued with the juice of reality, to flow into its civilization in many ways, and secondly, it did not take to heart what became the terrible inner struggle of the soul between the lively, popular and the dead dead Latin, did not take it very much to heart, but sat down and said to himself: “Oh, come now, only people who have fallen out of paradise get into such struggles in life; but we in the East have actually remained in paradise.” It is only an outward appearance that we have fallen out of paradise; we are inward people - inward; inward people!

You see, these things must be thoroughly understood if we are to comprehend the terrible split that exists today between people who live in what has been built in the Latin way and people who, as homeless souls – I used the expression here recently – want to seek the path to the spiritual from the elementary nature of their own being. And then the tremendous authority of something that is a branch of Latin confronts them. The respect for Latin is contained in the belief in authority that is shown towards our present-day science.

Just think what it meant over the centuries when a farmer's boy went to a monastery grammar school and learned Latin there! Then he came home during the holidays and knew Latin! Nobody understood anything of what the farm boy had learned, but all the others knew, well, that one must not and cannot understand anything that leads to science, to knowledge. They knew that now. Because the peasant boy who had come to the monastery school spoke in a language in which one seeks knowledge, and the other peasant boys who were peeling potatoes – well, that was not the case in earlier times – who were, let's say, somehow working in the meadow or in the fields, they had tremendous respect.

For one does not have respect for what one knows, but for what one cannot know. And this settled as a tremendous respect for what one cannot know, where one refrains from it from the outset. Yes, that then continues, and such things take paths that one can only follow if one really has the goodwill to follow the spiritual paths of humanity. The peasant boy in the 13th, 12th century, who only held the plough outside and otherwise helped, perhaps at most helped to crush the bacon into greaves and so on, the peasant boy knew: we cannot know anything, we will never be able to know anything, because only those who learn Latin can know something. The country boy says that, and then it goes the secret ways, and then, in more recent centuries, a naturalist gives a speech before the enlightened naturalists' assembly, and it culminates in the same words that the monastery farmer's boy said in the 12th century: We will not know ignorabimus! If one had the sense today to go back over historical facts, then going back centuries, one would find the origin of the Du Bois-Reymond impulse in the farmer's boy who did not learn Latin, compared to the farmer's boy who did learn Latin.

Now, when a language becomes dead, a language that undergoes the same regression as Latin has, tends to incline towards the dead in its words as well. But the dead in the world is the material. And so the Latin language, even where it was particularly dominant, drove things towards the dead, namely towards the material. Originally, as I have already mentioned, people everywhere knew what the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ meant because they still knew the facts from living experience. The people could have known it too, but popular alchemy was considered superstitious, it was not in Latin. But the Latin language could not capture the spiritual. And so the trivial belief arose that what was imagined under the matter of bread and wine should change, and all the discussions about the doctrine of the Lord's Supper actually arose in such a way that those who discussed it proved nothing other than that they had adopted this doctrine in Latin. But there the words had only a dead character, and one no longer understood the living, just as today's anatomists no longer understand the living person from the dead corpse.

Central Europe has gone through this in a deeply tragic way, in that its language had nothing of what the Latin language brought forth. Central Europe had a language that would have been dependent on growing into the living. But thinking was dead because, after all, this thinking was also a dependency of Latin. And so the concepts did not find the words and the words did not find the concepts.

For example, the word “soul” could have found the living just as the word “psyche” once found the living in Greek. But the previous education was in Latin, and there was no knowledge of this living, and the living that was in the folk words was also killed off. That is why it is so important today to look again at the deep rift that had occurred between Greek and Roman civilization. And this deep rift is particularly evident when we look into the mystery being.

If we go to Greece, I would like to say that the most popular mysteries are the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Mysteries of Eleusis. They were the mysteries that had, so to speak, made the path to the spiritual most popular. And those who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries were the Telests; they were initiated into Eleusis. Let us first look at what is meant by the term “Eleusis” and then at what is meant by the term “Telests”.

Eleusis is only a linguistic transformation of Elosis and actually means: the place where those who are to come are, those who want to carry the future within themselves. Eleusis means: the future. And the Telests are those who are to come, the Eleusinian initiates are those who are to come. This indicates that people were aware that they are more of an imperfect being as they stand, and that they must become a coming being, one who carries the future within themselves. Telos anticipates the future, that which will only gradually be realized in the future. So that in the Eleusinian Mysteries, in the place of the coming, the coming ones, the imperfect human beings were trained to become perfect. They were telestai.

The whole meaning of this initiation was disrupted when it came to Romanism. In Greece, everything in the initiation pointed to the future, to the end of the earth. One should shape oneself with a strong inner impulse so that one would find the way after the end of the earth in the right way. Then one was a telest, one who should develop in the right way after the end of the earth.

When this came to the Romans, the expression of the Telesten gradually became that of the initiates – Initium, beginning. The goal was, so to speak, moved from the end of the earth to the beginning of the earth. The Telesten became initiates. Those who were initiated into the secrets of the future became knower of the past. The Promethean striving became Epimethean, striving for knowledge of the past. But only abstract knowledge of the past can remain; if one wants to penetrate into the future, one needs a living knowledge borne by the will, for there the will must develop itself into. The past is past. One can gain a higher knowledge by going back to the initium, to the past; but it remains knowledge; it becomes more and more abstract.

And with that, the impulse towards abstraction, that is, towards the reification that occurred from the 4th century AD and then more and more, moved into the Latin language. People wanted to return to the past, when ideas were still connected to life, because they knew that now they were no longer connected to life, that now one enters into inanimate speech when one rises to the level of ideas. And to be initiated in Greece meant to receive a higher life in one's soul. To be initiated in Roman times meant to resign oneself to a higher activity for one's life on earth and only to think about it: At the beginning of the world, man once had a higher activity, but from that he has descended; one cannot be a doer, at most a knower in relation to the higher knowledge.

You see, these are the difficulties we face today. When we use the word “initiation”, for example, it is so terribly vivid, because “initiation” is part of the whole concept: to immerse a person under water, to take them away from the sharp contours of physical life, to bring them into the liquid element of the world, so that they can move with their soul in the living, breathing, fleeting, fluid spiritual realm. To initiate is to introduce someone into the mobile, fluctuating, fluid world of life. Now this has to be translated somehow. And it is translated into the opposite. For example, one must say: initiation for the initiation.

It is necessary to know that such contradictions and difficulties are inherent in our present civilization. We must be clear about these skewers, I would say, that hurt us so much in our present civilization. Only then can that which really advances humanity come to life.

It is, of course, very far from my intention to turn these lectures into a diatribe against learning Latin. On the contrary, I would like people to learn even more Latin so that they can also come to feel that only the dead can be designated with Latin, that Latin quite rightly belongs in the dissecting room, but that if one wants to get to know what is not dead but alive, one must resort to the living element of language. Today, we cannot enter the future with some abstract intention, but only with an understanding, free of illusions, of what can again beat the life of the spirit out of the dead. And we are indeed living at a moment when the matter has actually been pushed to a decision in the spiritual life. We are living at an extremely important moment.

I don't know how many of you took seriously what I said in the last few issues of the “Goetheanum”, that only twenty, fifteen, ten years ago one could quote a person like Herman Grimm as a contemporary. Today he is a man of the past and one can only speak of him as of a man of the past. I meant what I said in these four articles in connection with Herman Grimm with immense bitterness. As you know, I myself used to quote Herman Grimm in a completely different sense than I quote him now. I quoted him where he could be used in his expression as a spirit that leads into the future. Today he is a thing of the past, belongs to history, and at most one can quote in such things, where he refers to ancient Greece and Rome, that which was still present only recently; that is already past today.

But I admit that this strange survival of a time that is quickly becoming the past demands something quite different in our time – and much of it is gently overslept! Because gently oversleeping is something that people love so much today.

But anthroposophy is the kind of knowledge that one does not merely collect in ideas, but that one should awaken to. That is why there are so many arguments, and also the one I have just given, is meant to have an awakening effect.

Compiled by

PAUL M. ALLEN

1.David Friedrich Strauss, Der alte und neue Glaube, The Old and New Faith, publ. 1872. Born in 1808, appointed professor at the University of Zurich, Strauss became a center of controversy, the intensity of which has been likened to that of the Thirty Years' War. This began with the appearance of his Life of Jesus (1835), in which he questioned the sources of the New Testament, and continued with his Doctrine of the Christian Faith (1840). From this time until his death in 1874, Strauss became world-famous as one of the most frank critics of Christianity.

2.Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, Part IV, Chapter ix, par. 219. Rudolf Steiner consulted the German edition, translated by Dr. B. Vetter and published at Stuttgart, 1882. Spencer, born 1820, an engineer by training, sought to explain “the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of matter, motion, and force.” At first strongly influenced by Coleridge, Spencer placed evolution as the first and most universal principle, influencing all the sciences. To him, evolution was synonymous with progress. In his later development, Spencer championed rugged individualism, and became an outspoken opponent of socialism, upholding what he considered the absolute rights of private enterprise against any form of governmental control. Before his death in 1903, Spencer's optimistic view of human progress collapsed, and he fell prey to marked pessimism regarding the future of mankind.

3.Benedictus de Spinoza (Baruch de Spinoza), born 1632 in Holland of a Jewish family that had been exiled from Spain and Portugal. He early showed great powers as a student, and in 1656 was banned by the Jewish community at Amsterdam because of his views. His chief work, which had a lasting influence upon future generations of thinkers, long after the author's death in 1677, is The Ethics, which has recently appeared in a new edition titled The Road to Inner Freedom, New York, 1957.

4.Eduard von Hartmann, Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, German ed. p. 451. Born 1842, von Hartmann was originally an officer in the Prussian army. Because of an illness, he retired from military service and took up an intensive study of philosophy. In 1869 his Philosophie des Unbewussten (Philosophy of the Unconscious) appeared, and made him famous almost overnight. Of the many other works he wrote, this book remained his most famous. Rudolf Steiner describes a personal impression of von Hartmann, whom he visited in Berlin in 1888 following a philosophical correspondence with him over some years. This account may be found in Chapter IX of Steiner's autobiography. Steiner's Wahrheit und Wissenschaft (Truth and Knowledge), published in this present volume, was dedicated to von Hartmann. The latter died in 1906.

5.In his Atomistik des Willens, Atomic Theory of Will, Ger. ed., Hamburg, 1891, 2 vols. p. 213. Robert Hamerling, the Austrian poet-philosopher was born March 24, 1830. He early showed ability in poetry, and although from poor parentage, the generosity of friends enabled him to attend the gymnasium in Vienna, and afterward the University there. In the revolutionary movements which swept Europe in 1848, Hamerling joined the student legion in the Vienna revolt. The collapse of the uprising in 1849 made it necessary for him to hide for a long time in order to escape arrest. Later he studied natural science and philosophy. In 1855 he was appointed master at the gymnasium in Trieste. Many years of ill health caused him finally to retire on a government pension in 1866. In comparatively comfortable circumstances, Hamerling spent the remainder of his life in his home near Gratz, devoting himself to writing until his death on July 13, 1889. He is referred to as “one of the most remarkable poets of the Austrian school; his poems are full of life and color.” His most popular work was Ahasver in Rom, Ahasver in Rome (1866), with Nero as principal character. Der König von Sion, The King of Zion, (1869) is generally considered to be his masterpiece. In 1888 his Homunculus appeared, and was reviewed with extensive comment by Rudolf Steiner. His Amor und Psyche was published in 1882; his novel Aspasia (1876), described Greek life in the age of Pericles. In 1870 his drama concerning the French Revolution, Danton und Robespierre, was published. Rudolf Steiner commented on this drama in his Speech and Drama Course given in 1924, and in fact, many references to Hamerling and his work appear in books and lectures by Rudolf Steiner, including the latter's autobiography.

6.Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, The Illusion of the Freedom of the Will, by Paul Rée, publ. 1885, p. 5. Paul Rée (1849–1901) was a German positivist philosopher, known widely as an editor of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Rée met Nietzsche in 1876, as Rudolf Steiner relates in his Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, p. 159–60. Steiner refers to Rée in the preface to this book, written in Weimar, 1895: “Such an average brain as that of Paul Rée could make no important impression on Nietzsche.” (op. cit. p. 40).

7.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). A voluminous literature on Hegel and Hegelian thought exists in English, including biographical studies, translations, and commentaries on his writings. Consult any standard encyclopedia for details.

8.Goethe's Faust, Part I,—

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Burst,
Die eine will sich von der andern trennen;
Die eine halt, in derber Liebeslust,
Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen;
Die andere hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust
Zul den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.

(Lines 1112–1117)

The translation is that by George Madison Priest: Faust, Parts One and Two, publ. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1941, one of the best of all English translations of this work.

9.monism: the teaching of one ultimate substance or principle, as mind (idealism) or matter (materialism), or of something which is neither of these, but is the foundation of both; the point of view that there is but one reality.

10.dualism: from a philosophical point of view, the theory which maintains that there are but two fundamental and irreducible principles, for example, mind and body.

11.Here Rudolf Steiner speaks of spiritualism in a philosophical sense, and not in the sense of any relationship or communication with the dead as in mediumism, etc.

12.materialism: the philosophical teaching which sees the entire universe, all creation and its activities, including the human mind, as the result of material causes and powers.

13.Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Born in 1762, Fichte studied at Meissen, Pforta, Jena, and Leipzig with the intention of becoming a clergyman. After a teaching position in Switzerland, and enroute to another in Poland, he met Kant, under whose influence he wrote his Study for a Critique of All Revelation. The printer neglected to place his name on the title-page, and people thought the work had been written by Kant. When the true identity of the author became known, Fichte was hailed as a philosopher of outstanding merit. He lectured at Jena, Berlin and Erlangen. In 1807 he was made Rector of the University of Berlin. His death in 1814 occurred when he was at the height of his fame. Rudolf Steiner made extensive reference to Fichte, basing his doctoral thesis (published in enlarged form in the present volume as Truth and Knowledge) on Fichte's scientific teachings, but perhaps his most memorable study of Fichte's life and thought was contained in a public lecture given in Berlin on December 16, 1915: The Spirit of Fichte Present in Our Midst. See also note 77, below.

14.Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875), author of Geschichte des Materialismus, History of Materialism, publ. Iserlohn, 1873–5. When professor at the University of Marburg, 1865, Lange issued his study on the workers' question. This made him famous in the circle of students of social problems in Germany at that time. A friend of the working classes, Lange strove for social justice, betterment of labor conditions, and for universal education. His life, marked by his utter sincerity and devotion to his ideals, is an outstanding example of selfless dedication to the well-being of mankind.

15.Karl Friedrich Hieronymous, Baron von Münchhausen (1720–97). In 1785 a little book of 49 pages appeared in London, titled Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, and an enlarged edition appeared in 1786. A translation into German by G. A. Bürger was published at Göttingen, 1786. Many editions followed in English, and the book was published in numerous languages, illustrated by a number of famous artists. For some time the identity of the author was unknown, but finally it was established that the book was written by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737–1794), traveler, scholar and professor at Cassel. While at Göttingen, where he was secretary of the university library (1764–7) he made the acquaintance of Freiherr von Münchhausen of Bodenwerder in Hanover. The latter had been in the Russian service, had fought against the Turks, and finally had retired to his estate in 1760, where he became famous for his “tall stories.” Later, Raspe, in poverty in London, recalled the Baron's tales, and wrote the book in English, which appeared in 1785. Tall tales from other sources were added by publishers of later editions, so that the stories as we have them today are really a composite work, for which, however, Raspe provided the original nucleus from his memory of the evenings spent with his erstwhile friend.

16.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born Frankfurt a.M., August 28, 1749. Poet, dramatist, scientist, traveler, state minister, etc., author of Faust, Wilhelm Meister, and many other works. Died in Weimar, March 22, 1832. In August 1781 the Grand Duchess Amalia of Saxe-Weimar founded the Tiefurter Journal, the Journal of Tiefurt, to which Goethe contributed at her invitation. When Rudolf Steiner was active as editor of the natural scientific writings of Goethe at the Goethe-Schiller Archives in Weimar, he published proof that the Fragment über die Natur, The Fragment concerning Nature, which had appeared in the Journal of Tiefurt was definitely to be attributed to Goethe (Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Publications of the Goethe Society, ed. by Bernhard Suphan, Weimar, Vol. VII, 1892, article by Rudolf Steiner). Thus, just 110 years after the Fragment had appeared, Rudolf Steiner showed its importance and its relationship to Goethe's work. In the edition of Goethe's works published by Prof. Joseph Kürschner (1853–1902) (the volumes of Goethe's natural scientific writings edited by Rudolf Steiner), the Fragment appears at the beginning of the essays “On Natural Science in General,” Vol. XXXIV, p. 1. The Fragment appeared in an English translation with notes by George Adams under the title, Nature—An Essay in Aphorisms, Anthroposophical Quarterly, London, Vol. VII, No. 1, Easter, 1932, pp. 2–5. In his Goethe's Conception of the World, Rudolf Steiner describes this Fragment as “the essay in which the seeds of the later Goethean world-conception are already to be found. What is here expressed as dim feeling, later developed into clear, definite thought.” In similar vein, George Witkowski in his well-known biography of Goethe (Leipzig, 1899) describes this Fragment as “the seed from which came all of Goethe's great thoughts about nature.”

17.See Ziehen, Theodore, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Guide to Physiological Psychology, Jena, 1893, p. 171 of the Ger. ed.

18.Pierre Jean George Cabanis (1757–1808), French physiologist. A precocious child, Cabanis was enrolled at the age of 10 in the College of Brives. Later studied in Paris, afterward traveled widely in Poland and Germany. In 1789 he was appointed administrator of hospitals for Paris, and in 1795 became professor of hygiene and history of medicine in the medical school of that city. In 1799 he was made professor of legal medicine and history of medicine. He was an intimate friend of Mirabeau, and attended him as physician in his last illness. He had a deep interest in medical and psychological problems. Active in the cause of the French Revolution, Cabanis was a member of the Council of Five Hundred. Though Napoleon Bonaparte repeatedly offered him governmental positions, Cabanis declined them, since he was a foe of the former's policies. Cabanis died at Meulan on May 5, 1808, principally honored for his contributions to medical science, and especially for his main work, Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, a series of papers read to the Institute in 1796–97. The sentence quoted is probably from Cabanis' book, written in 1802, translated into German, 2 vols., 1808, under the title, Verhältnis der Seele zum Körper, Relationship of the Soul to the Body. The thought has also been paraphrased: “Just as the stomach and intestines receive food and digest it, so the brain receives impressions, digests them, and has as its organic secretion, thought.”

19.Renatus Cartesius, Rene Descartes (1596–1650). The father of modern rationalism, soldier of fortune, scholar, pilgrim, traveler, and firm adherent of the Roman Catholic faith. His philosophical work, which has often been summed up in his words, J pense, donc je suis (Cogito ergo sum), “I think, therefore I am,” was given significant impulse by a dream he had on November 10, 1619. This revealed to him the method of philosophical speculation he was to follow, and his subsequent work is said to have stemmed from this experience. An extensive literature on Descartes and his teachings exists in English translation. See any standard encyclopedia for further details.

20.Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854). Often referred to as the Proteus among philosophers, Schelling was noted for his ever-changing alertness and brightness of mind and expression. Goethe (see note 16, above) had a very high regard for him, and spoke of him as “the most congenial philosopher I know.” Schelling had a profound influence among the thinkers of his time, including philosophers of France and England. His last years were dedicated to what he termed “positive philosophy,” radically different from the philosophy of identity, the transcendental idealism, and the pantheistic tendencies of his earlier time. Rudolf Steiner made extensive reference to Schelling in his writings and lectures, on various occasions praising that philosopher's “important inspirations and suggestions for what must afterwards be said by Anthroposophy, directly out of spiritual vision, on many points of Christianity.” Steiner further spoke of Schelling, “who really always made a significant impression whenever he appeared in public—the short, thick-set man, with the extremely impressive head, and eyes which even in extreme old age were sparkling with fire, for from his eyes there spoke the fire of Truth, the fire of Knowledge.” (From a lecture given at Dornach, Switzerland, Sept. 16, 1924) Perhaps Steiner's greatest study of Schelling is to be found in his Die Rätsel der Philosophie, The Riddles of Philosophy, Vol. I, Ch. 7. For English translations of Schelling and further details on his life, see any standard encyclopedia.

21.Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). Known as one of the greatest of mathematicians and physicists, Pascal's tame long ago spread far beyond the confines of his native France. His contributions to the establishment of the mathematical theory of probability, to the science of hydrodynamics, to the study of gravity and the vacuum, and his elaboration of the theory of conic sections have given Pascal a lasting place among the great men of science. As a Christian thinker, his devotion to truth and piety, and his acceptance of mystical experience have made his name revered. His philosophical speculations and deep psychological insight, as well as his remarkable gifts as a writer of French prose have secured him a leading position among philosophers and literary historians. Pascal's Pensées, Thoughts, is one of the great books of the world. For details on Pascal's very eventful and highly interesting life, as well as an account of his fundamental ideas, see any standard encyclopedia.

22.Archimedes (c 287–212 B.C.) Greek mathematician and inventor. He was born at Syracuse in Sicily, and studied at the famous university in Alexandria. Archimedes spent the remainder of his life at Syracuse, where he engaged in constant mathematical research. He is noted for his many mechanical inventions, but his first love was mathematics. His work as a pioneer in mechanics is illustrated by his famous remark, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth!” During the sack of Syracuse by the army of the Roman general, Marcellus, Archimedes was discovered drawing a mathematical figure in the sand beside his garden bench. Deep in meditation upon the problem before him, Archimedes was instantly killed when he was run through the body by a sword in the hand of a Roman infantryman. For details on the life of Archimedes, see Plutarch's Life of Marcellus. A complete, standard edition of the Works of Archimedes with valuable notes by T. L. Heath was issued by Cambridge University Press, 1897.

23.See note 2, above.

24.Spencer, First Principles, Part I, Par. 23.

25.Note by the Translator: Just as in English one generally means by “perception” not only the perceived object but also the act of perceiving it, so too, in German the word Wahrnehmung covers both these meanings. Rudolf Steiner, however, as stated in the text, uses this word in the specific sense of meaning the object that has been perceived, and NOT the process of perceiving it. When he refers to the activity, the word used in the original is Wahrnehmen, here translated as perceiving.

25a.Johann Christoph August Franz, M.D., eye surgeon, born 1807, took his medical training at the University of Leipzig. From Germany he emigrated to England, establishing his practice at Brighton, where he worked for some 30 years. He was the author of writings on medicine, particularly on the use of baths in treatment of illness. Two of his works were written for the public: The Eye and a Critique on the Art of Preserving the Organ, London, 1839, and Memoirs of the Case of a Gentleman Born Blind and Successfully Operated at the Eighteenth Year of His Age. Physiological Observations and Experiments. The latter appeared in Philosophical Transactions, Vol. VI, 1841, pp. 59–68. It is probable that Rudolf Steiner's reference to the man who had been born blind is taken from this second work of Dr. Franz.

26.George Berkeley, (1685–1753), Irish bishop and philosopher. Made a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, 1707, he was strongly influenced by the philosophical writings of Descartes, Newton, and Locke. In 1709 his New Theory of Vision appeared, and in 1710 his great work. The Principles of Human Knowledge, was published. In 1712 he visited England and the following year was presented at court by Dean Swift, shortly before the publication of his most popular work, The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous. Berkeley's literary fame rests upon this latter work, which has been described as “among the finest philosophical writings in the English language” on the basis of its “exquisite facility of style.” In 1728 he emigrated to America, where he lived in Rhode Island for three years, hoping for a government grant of funds for the establishment of a college in Bermuda. His hopes disappointed, he returned to Ireland and shortly afterward was raised to the bishopric of Cloyne. In 1752 he moved with his family to Oxford, where he died suddenly in January of the following year, and was buried in Christ Church.

The reference quoted by Steiner is from Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, sec. 6.

27.Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, was born in Königsburg April 22, 1724. He entered the university there in 1740, enrolled for the study of mathematics and physics. His studies were interrupted by the death of his father, which left him in poverty. After he supported himself by tutoring for 9 years, the kindness of a friend enabled him to resume his studies, to graduate as a doctor and to qualify as a privatdocent. He occupied this position for 15 years. His lectures widened from physics to include much philosophy. Finally, after unsuccessful attempts, in 1770 he was given the chair of logic and metaphysics at Königsburg. In 1781 his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Critique of Pure Reason appeared, and in 1783, his Prolegomena. After the appearance of the 2nd edition of the Kritik in 1787, Kant became famous everywhere in German intellectual circles, and his views were regarded as those of an oracle. From 1792–97 he was engaged in a struggle with the government concerning his religious views. In 1794 he withdrew from society, and gave up all teaching except for one public lecture course on logic. In 1797 Kant terminated a teaching activity that had extended over 42 years. He died in Königsburg on February 12, 1804 near the end of his 80th year. Little more than five feet tall, deformed in his right shoulder, his chest almost concave, Kant had a weak constitution. He never married, and followed an unchanging program of activities from youth to old age. For example, he never failed to rise at 5 o'clock, studied for 2 hours, lectured for 2 more, and spent the rest of the morning at his desk. He dined at a restaurant and spent the afternoon in conversation with friends. He then walked for about an hour—a walk which for years followed exactly the same course—studied for 2 hours more, and retired between 9 and 10. He was a prolific reader, especially in history, science, travel, and philosophy. He knew English history and literature intimately, especially in the period of Queen Anne. He read little of Goethe or Schiller, but often re-read Voltaire and Rousseau. He had little interest in nature, and in 80 years never traveled more than 40 miles from his native Königsburg. For further biographical details, works and translations, consult any standard encyclopedia.

28.Otto Liebmann, Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, Contribution to the Analysis of Reality, Strassburg, 1880, p. 28. Otto Liebmann (1840–1912) was well known for his writings on Kant's philosophical world-view.

29.Johannes Volkelt (1848–1930), Immanuel Kant’s Erkenntnistheorie, Immanuel Kant's Theory of Cognition, Hamburg, 1879.

30.See note 4, above.

31.Hartmann, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, The Fundamental Problem of a Theory of Cognition, Leipzig, 1889, p. 16–40.

32.Johannes Peter Müller, German physiologist and comparative anatomist, born in Coblentz, July 14, 1801. He studied at the University of Bonn, and was appointed to a professorship in physiology there in 1826. In 1843 he accepted the call to the chair of anatomy and physiology at Berlin University, which position he held with great honor until his death, April 28, 1858. He did much research in physiology, particularly in relation to human speech and hearing. His great work was the Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen, 1833–40. (The English translation was made by Dr. William Baly, publ. London 1842). This work opened a new period in the study of physiology, and Müller is considered the main figure in the developments in this field in the mid-19th century. In his Handbuch Müller developed an entirely new principle which he called “the law of specific energy of sense substances.” This he expressed as follows: “The kind of sensation following stimulation of a sensory nerve does not depend on the mode of stimulation, but upon the nature of the sense organ. Thus, light, pressure, or mechanical stimulation acting on the retina and optic nerve invariably produces luminous impressions.” It is to this law that Steiner refers at this point.

33.Hartmann, Das Grundproblem, p. 37.

34.Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung The World as Will and Representation, Four Books, publ. 1819 by Brockhaus, Leipzig. (English translation by Haldane & Kemp, 1883) Ref. Book I, par. 1, Ger. ed. Biographical data and translations of Schopenhauer's works, as well as extensive commentaries on his ideas have been published in English translation. Consult any standard encyclopedia for details. Rudolf Steiner edited a collected edition of the writings of Schopenhauer, 12 vols. with introduction by Steiner, publ. 1894.

35.J. G. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, The Vocation of Man, Berlin, 1800, “a book which for richness of content, beauty of style, elevation of thought reminds one of Descartes' Meditations.” (For data on Fichte, see note 13, above.)

36.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Transcendental knowledge, in the sense of this world-view, is a knowledge by means of which—although no direct insight into the thing-in-itself is believed to be attainable—indirect inferences are drawn from the subjective which is known, to the unknown which lies beyond the subjective (Transcendental). The thing-in-itself, according to this view, is beyond the sphere of the directly recognizable world, that is, it is transcendent. However, our world can be transcendentally related to the transcendent. Hartmann's view is called realism because it goes beyond the subjective, the ideal, to the transcendent, the real.

37.See Weygandt, Entstehung der Träume, Appearance of Dreams, 1893. (Reference given by Rudolf Steiner.)

38.See note 34, above.

39.Schopenhauer, op. cit. supra, Book II, par. 18.

40.Note by Translator: The reader's attention is called to the fact that the word Erfahrung is in this context translated as “practical experience” to emphasize the activity of thinking implicit in it, as distinct from the word erleben which also is usually rendered as “experience.”

41.See note 27, above, on Kant.

42.Emil DuBois-Reymond, German physiologist and educator. Born Berlin, November 7th, 1818, in 1836 he entered the University of Berlin, where his teacher was Johannes Müller, above). In 1840 he became the latter's assistant in physiology. His great work was the study of animal electricity, and his famous book was Researches on Animal Electricity, 1848–84. For many years he exerted great influence as a teacher. In 1858, upon the death of Müller, he was appointed to the latter's chair in physiology. In 1851 he had been admitted to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin; in 1867 he became its permanent secretary. His closest friend after Müller's death was von Helmholtz, who also had been a student of Müller. DuBois-Reymond died in Berlin on November 26, 1896. Rudolf Steiner makes many references to his work in lectures and writings.

43.Note by Translator: The reader's attention is drawn to the fact that the word experience, in relation to the kind of mysticism and philosophy of will referred to in this chapter, is translated from the word erleben (as distinct from Erfahrung, see note 40, above) Therefore, what the mystic experiences in feeling and the philosopher of will in the will-element, are experiences which have not been formed into clear representations by the activity of thinking.

44.Thelism—Voluntarism, i.e., any theory which conceives will to be the dominant factor in experience or in the constitution of the world.

44a.Ger. Erlebnisse.—Tr.

44b.Note by Rudolf Steiner: The passage from page 161 to this point was added, or rewritten for the Revised Edition, 1918.

45.See note 4—on von Hartmann.

46.The German text here reads Faktor der Erfahrungen.—Tr.

46a.Note by Rudolf Steiner: A complete catalogue of the principles of morality (from the point of view of metaphysical realism) may be found in Eduard von Hartmann's Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness.

47.Ger. Welterfahrung.—Tr.

48.Immanuel Kant: Theory of Ethics, transl. by Abbott, p. 180. The Critique of Practical Reason, Ch. III. On Kant, see note 27, above.

49.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Ziehen, Theodore, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Guide to Physiological Psychology, 1st ed., p. 207 f.

Concerning the way “materialism” is spoken of here, and the justification for doing so, see the Addition at the end of the chapter.

50.Hartmann, Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, p. 871.

50a.Hamerling, Atomistik des Willens, Atomic Theory of Will, Vol. II, p. 201. On Hamerling, see note 5, above.

51.Paulsen, System der Ethik, System of Ethics, 1889, partial English transl. 1899. Friedrich Paulsen (1846–1908), German philosopher and educator. Educated at Erlangen, Bonn, and Berlin, where he was made extraordinary professor of philosophy and pedagogy, 1878. In 1896 he followed Zeller as professor of moral philosophy at Berlin. He was a pupil of G. T. Fechner, developing his teaching of panpsychism in his Einleitung in die Philosophie, Introduction to Philosophy, 1892, English transl. 1895. His German Education, Past and Present (English transl. 1907) is well known, as are his writings relative to the philosophy of Kant.

51a.Note by Rudolf Steiner: When Paulsen (p. 15 of his System of Ethics) says, “Different natural dispositions and different conditions of life demand not only different bodily diet but also a different spiritual-moral diet,” he is very near recognition of the truth, but misses the decisive point. Insofar as I am an individual, I need no diet. Dietetic means the art of bringing a particular example of the species into harmony with the general laws. But as an individual I am not an example of a species.

52.proto-amniotes: The original form of the innermost of the embryonic or fetal membranes of reptiles, insects, birds, and mammals. This membrane forms a closed sac surrounding the embryo and contains the amniotic fluid.

53.The Kant-Laplace primordial nebula. Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827), was a French mathematician and astronomer who, at the age of 24 was named “the Newton of France” for certain of his discoveries. In the years 1799–1825 his great work, the Mécanique céleste, which, as its author stated, “offers a complete solution of the great mechanical problem presented by the solar system,” appeared in 5 volumes, published in Paris. In his second great work, the Exposition du système du monde, Paris, 1796, appeared his statement of his famous “nebular hypothesis,” the origins of which he seems to attribute to Buffon, apparently unaware that Immanuel Kant had at least partially anticipated him in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, General History of Nature, published in 1755. Rudolf Steiner's criticism of the Kant-Laplace theory of the primordial nebula may be found in various places in his lectures and writings.

54.Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919), German biologist, originally a physician in Berlin, became Privatdozent at Jena, afterward extraordinary professor of comparative anatomy, later professor of zoology, a chair established for him at Jena. This position he occupied for 43 years with intervals for zoological travels to various parts of the world. When Darwin's Origin of the Species appeared in 1859, Haeckel was deeply influenced by it, so that he became “the apostle of Darwinism in Germany.” Among Haeckel's famous books are his General Morphology (1866), Natural History of Creation (1867) and Die Weltraetsel (1899), English title, The Riddle of the Universe, publ. 1901. By his 60th birthday Haeckel had published 42 works of some 13,000 pages, plus many monographs. Rudolf Steiner knew Haeckel personally, and in his autobiography. Chapter 15, Steiner recorded a very interesting and perceptive impression of the great scientist. The “genealogical tree” of Haeckel to which Steiner refers is set forth in its original form in Haeckel's General Morphology and developed in his later writings.

55.Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist, whose voyage on the Beagle to the Southern Seas, recorded in his Journal of a Naturalist (1837) prepared the way for his famous work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, published November 24, 1859. Next in importance among his books. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, appeared in 1868. The Descent of Man, published in 1871, dealt with “the origin of man and his history” in the light of The Origin of the Species.

56.Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646–1716). For data on their lives and philosophical ideas, consult any standard encyclopedia.

57.For data on Schopenhauer, see note 34, above; on von Hartmann, see note 4, above.

58.See von Hartmann's Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins. The Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, p. 866 f. of the German edition.

59.See von Hartmann's Philosophie des Unbewussten, Philosophy of the Unconscious, 7th German ed., Vol. II, p. 290.

60.Hartmann, op. cit. supra. Vol. II, p. 332.

61.Eudaemonism, derived from a Greek word which indicates the condition of being under the protection of a benign spirit, or a “good genius.” In ethics, this name is applied to those theories of morality according to which the main good of man is to be found in some form of happiness. Eudaemonia was one of the keywords in the ethical teachings of Aristotle.

62.German, Erfahrung.

63.Die letzten Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik, Ultimate Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics, publ. in Vol. 108, pp. 55 seq. of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, the Periodical for Philosophy and Philosophical Criticism.

64.For data on Hegel's “universal panlogism,” see any standard encyclopedia.

65.David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher and historian. Albert Einstein wrote, “If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many sometimes highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even to find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him.” Among those influenced by Hume may be numbered Immanuel Kant, William James, George Santayana, and Bertrand Russell. Hume's writings and biographical and critical works concerning him and his ideas can be located by consulting any standard encyclopedia.

66.A note on page 71 of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie (Periodical for Philosophy) Vol. 108.

67.Johannes Rehmke, 1848–1930, philosopher. His principal works are Logik oder Philosophie als Wissenslehre (Logic or Philosophy as Theory of Knowledge) and Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff (The World as Percept and Concept), Berlin, 1880.

68.Karl Julius Schröer was born in Pressburg in 1825. In 1867 he was made professor of Literature in the Technical College of Vienna. In addition to his lectures on the history of German poetry as such, he lectured on Goethe and Schiller, on Walther von der Vogelweide, on German Grammar and Speech, etc. Rudolf Steiner was a pupil of Schröer, and refers to him in detail in his autobiography and in lectures. It was Schröer who recommended Steiner to Prof. Kürschner for the position of editor of Goethe's natural scientific writings. (See note 16, above) Schröer died in Vienna in 1900, and Rudolf Steiner has left an unforgettable word portrait and estimate of him in his Vom Menschenrätsel, Riddles of Man, publ. Berlin, 1916.

69.From July 1884 to September 1890, Rudolf Steiner was active as tutor in the home of Ladislaus (1834–1905) and Pauline (1846–1916) Specht at Kolingasse 19, Vienna IX. He taught their four sons, Richard, Arthur, Otto, and Ernst. Richard Specht (1870–1932) became a well-known author of many works including biographical studies of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Franz Werfel, Brahms, and Beethoven. Steiner gives details of this pedagogical activity in his autobiography. Chapter VI.

70.Rosa Mayreder (1858–1938), Austrian writer, also known as a painter. Her entire life was passed in Vienna and surroundings. She was the author of a number of popular novels. In addition, she was active in the movement for woman suffrage in Austria, at one time sharing in the direction of the movement itself, and editing its periodical. She wrote the libretto for Hugo Wolf's only opera, Der Corregidor (1896). Rudolf Steiner refers to Rosa Mayreder in his autobiography. Chapter IX.

71.See Johannes Volkelt's Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, Experience and Thinking. Critical Foundation for a Theory of Cognition. Hamburg and Leipzig, 1886. (Johannes Volkelt 1848–1930, philosopher, professor at Leipzig.) See also note 29, above.

72.Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller, publ. in English translation by Olin D. Wannamaker, New York, 1950, under the title, “The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception—Fundamental Outlines with Special Reference to Schiller.” The first German edition published Berlin and Stuttgart, 1886, revised ed., Stuttgart, 1924, with new Foreword by the author. Other editions: Dornach, 1924; Dresden, 1936; Freiburg i. Br., 1949; Dornach, 1960.

73.Aristotle (384–322 B.C.): Physica Auscultatio, On Nature as Cause and Change, and the General Principles of Natural Science.

74.Raimon Lull (Raymond Lully), (0.1235–1315) Catalan author, mystic and missionary. Born Majorca. In 1266 a series of visions led to a marked change in his life and purpose. Spent 9 years studying Arabic in order to refute the heretical teachings current in his time. At Ronda he wrote his famous Ars Major and Ars Generalis. He made many journeys in France, Italy, North Africa in a burning crusade against the teachings of Mohammedanism. At Bougie, North Africa he was stoned outside the city walls and died on June 29, 1315.

75.biogenesis, the teaching that living organisms come from other living organisms, as opposed to abiogenesis. The author of the modern formulation of “the fundamental law of biogenesis” was Fritz Müller (1864). Haeckel (see note 54, above) called Müller's formulation “the biogenetic fundamental law,” which can be stated briefly as the teaching that in its development from the egg to adult stage, the animal tends to pass through a series of stages which recapitulate the stages through which its ancestry passed in the development of the species from a primitive form. In other words, the development of the individual is a condensed expression of the development of the race.

76.The earliest statement of the law of mechanical theory of heat was formulated by the French physicist, Sadi Nicholas Lèonhard Carnot (1796–1832) in notes written about 1830, published by his brother in the latter's Life of Sadi Carnot, Paris, 1878. Further work in this direction was done by Ségun, Paris, 1839, by Julius Robert Mayer, c. 1842, and by J. P. Joule, who (1840–43) placed the mechanical theory of heat on a sound experimental basis.

Julius Robert Mayer (1814–1878), German physician and physicist, is the discoverer of the law of conservation of energy, which—within limits of the data he obtained from experiments and reasoning—he applied “with great power and insight to the explanation of numerous physical phenomena.”

77.On Fichte, see note 13, above. Rudolf Steiner's Inaugural Dissertation for his doctoral degree before the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Rostock (Defense, beginning of May, 1891; Promotion, October 26, 1891) was titled Die Grundfrage der Erkenntnistheorie mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre, usw., The Fundamentals of a Theory of Cognition with Special Reference to Fichte's Scientific Teaching. When the thesis was published in book form, as it appears here in English translation, a Foreword and one chapter were added to the original by Rudolf Steiner. These latter are included in the present translation.

78.John Locke (1632–1704), English philosopher, scholar, chemist, student of meteorology, practicing physician, political advisor, traveler, and author. For details on his life and thought, consult any standard encyclopedia.

79.see reference to Volkelt's book in note 71, above, (p. 20)

80.see note 27, on Kant, above.

81.p. 61 ff. of Kirchmann's German edition of Kant's Kritik. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Introd. to 2nd edition. Sec. vi.

82.Kant, Prolegomena, Sec. v.

83.Kant, Kritik, p. 53 f. of the German ed. Introduction, Sec. iv.

84.Rehmke, Johannes: Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, usw., The World as Percept and Concept, etc., Berlin, 1880, p. 161 ff. of the German ed.

85.Refer to title given in note 28, above.

86.Note by Rudolf Steiner: This attempt, incidentally, is one which the objections of Robert Zimmermann (Uber Kant's mathematisches Vorurteil und dessen Folgen, On Kant's Mathematical Notions and their Results) show to be, if not altogether in error, at least highly questionable. (Robert Zimmermann, 1824–1898, was Professor of Philosophy in the University of Vienna, 1861–95. His book on Aesthetics was published in 2 volumes, Vienna, 1870. Rudolf Steiner attended lectures by Zimmermann on fundamentals of ethics at the University of Vienna. Steiner's impressions of this great interpreter of Herbart's aesthetics are contained in the 3rd chapter of the former's autobiography.)

87.Kant, Kritik, Introduction to 2nd edition. Sec. ii.

88.See Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, Theory of Experience, pp. 90, ff. of the German ed.

89.Kant, Kritik, p. 58, Sec. v.

90.Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Kant's Theory of Experience, Berlin, 1871, pp. 90 ff. of the German ed.

91.August Stadler (1850–1910), Die Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnistheorie in der Kantschen Philosophie, The Principles of the Pure Theory of Cognition in the Philosophy of Kant, Leipzig, 1876, p. 76 f. of the German ed.

92.Volkelt, op. cit., p. 21, see note 71, above.

93.Otto Liebmann (1840–1912), Analysis, 1880, p. an ff. (see note 28, above); A. Holder, Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie, Kant's Theory of Cognition, Tübingen, 1874, p. 14 ff.; Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) Phasen der Kantschen Lehre, Phases of Kant's Theory, p. 239; F. Ueberweg, System der Logik, System of Logic, p. 380 f.; Eduard v. Hartmann (1842–1906), Kritische Grundlegung, Berlin, 1875, p. 142–172 of the 2nd German ed. (see note 4, above).

94.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, History of More Recent Philosophy, 1860, Vol. 5, p. 60. Volkelt is mistaken about Fischer when he says (Kant's Erkenntnistheorie, Kant's Theory of Cognition, p. 198 f.) that “it is not clear from the account by K. Fischer whether, in his opinion, Kant takes for granted only the psychological fact of the occurrence of universal and necessary judgments, but also their objective validity and truth.” For, in the passage cited above, Fischer says that the main difficulty of the Critique of Pure Reason is to be found in the fact that “its basic points rest on certain presuppositions,” which “must be allowed if the remainder is to be valid.” For Fischer, these presuppositions consist in that “first the fact of knowledge is affirmed,” and then analysis reveals the cognitive faculties “by means of which the fact itself is explained.”

95.Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761–1833), Aenesidemus, Helmstädt, 1792.

96.On Schopenhauer, see note 34, above.

97.On von Hartmann, see note 4, above.

98.Kritische Grundlegung, by Hartmann, Berlin 1875, Foreword, p. 10 of the German ed.

99.Liebmann, Zur Analysis, p. 28 ff. of the German ed. See note 28, above.

100.Kant's Erkenntnistheorie, Theory of Knowledge, Sec. 1.

101.A. Dorner, Das menschliche Erkennen, usw., Human Cognition, Berlin, 1887.

102.Julius Heinrich v. Kirchmann (1802–1884), Die Lehre vom Wissen, The Theory of Knowledge, Berlin, 1868.

103.E. L. Fischer, Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie, Basic Questions of the Theory of Cognition, Mainz 1887, p. 385.

104.C. Göring, System der kritischen Philosophie, System of Critical Philosophy, Leipzig, 1874, Part I, p. 257.

105.Johannes Müller (1801–1858), see note 32, above.

106.Hartmann's Grundproblem, p. 37 (see note 4, above).

107.A. Döring, article in Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. XXVI, 1890, p. 390. publ. Heidelberg. Philosophical Monthly.

108.Hartmann, Grundproblem, p. 1. See note 4, above.

109.John Stewart Mill (1806–1873). A stern parent, James Mill taught his son Greek at the age of three, and at seven he studied Plato's dialogues. When he was eight he had to teach his sister Latin. His introduction to the utilitarian teachings of Bentham (the greatest happiness to the greatest number) at the age of fifteen was decisive for his life. His great work, System of Logic, 1843, is the analysis of inductive proof. He was a great champion of human rights, and in the second half of the i9th century his influence throughout Europe was very great. Today it is recognized that—to use Mill's description of Bentham—“He was not a great philosopher but a great reformer in philosophy.” For details on Mill's life and thought, consult any standard encyclopedia.

110.Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, P. 71.

111.For fundamentals of the scientific teaching of Fichte, see his Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, p. 97.

112.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 91.

113.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 178.

114.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 91.

115.Eduard Zeller (1814–1908), Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz, History of German Philosophy Since Leibnitz, Munich, 1871–75, p. 605. Eduard Zeller studied and taught at Tübingen, later (1847) becoming professor of Theology at Bern, later (1849) professor of Theology, afterward of Philosophy at Marburg. In 1862 he was made professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, afterward at Berlin to his retirement in 1895. His masterwork is the Philosophie der Greichen, Philosophy of the Greeks, 1844–52. He was recognized throughout the academic world for his learning and contributions to scholarship, and received many distinctions and honors. His Philosophie der Greichen has been transl. into English by S. F. Alleyne, 2 vols. 1881. In addition, an abridged version prepared by Zeller (1883) also appeared in English in 1896, as did a number of his other writings.

116.Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, p. 94.

117.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 98.

118.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 422.

119.J. G. Fichtes nachgelassene Werke, J. G. Fichte's Posthumous Works, Edited by J. H. Fichte, Vol. I, Bonn, 1834, p. 4 and 16. (Einleitungsvorlesungen in die Wissenschaftslehre, Introductory Studies in the Scientific Teachings.)

120.Note by Rudolf Steiner: See his Christliche Dogmatik, Christian Dogmatics, and edition, 1884–85, the epistemological arguments, Vol. 1. A complete discussion of his point of view has been provided by Eduard von Hartmann; see Kritische Wanderungen durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart, Critical Survey of Contemporary Philosophy, p. 200 ff.

121.opus cit., see note 120, above.

If we were not a society whose task it is to observe all things from the point of view of deeper knowledge, indeed of profound spiritual knowledge, I would obviously now bring to a close the discussions we have been having and which were requested from so many different quarters. If it were a matter of anything other than deeper knowledge, then these discussions would of course have to be suspended until such time as the results of the important events now taking place were available.

It is, I believe, without question that every soul who is earnestly and honestly concerned with the welfare of mankind is awaiting with bated breath the outcome of the next few days. The facts will show whether certain sources from what we have called the periphery, the circumference, are capable of coming to their senses sufficiently. If they are not, then the whole of mankind—in the future, too—will be expected to believe that one fights for peace by turning down and excluding the possibility of a relatively early achievement of peace. If matters go in the direction that various voices in the press seem to assume—though no serious observer would still consider such an assumption—then no one would be obliged even to pretend any longer to believe that there is one jot of sincerity in all those declamations which proclaim peace or even the rights of nations. In the near future the world will have the opportunity to decide with full consciousness whether to see the declamations of the will to peace as wrong and untruthful and yet still continue to find them significant, or whether to turn to the truth.

We, however, do stand on the foundation of deeper knowledge, and so there is no need for us to interrupt our observations. We are seeking for the truth, and truth must be found at all costs. For the truth can never be seriously harmful or work harmfully.

Today I intend to put before your soul certain matters which give us the opportunity to make our judgement justifiable in a number of directions. In no way do I want to influence anyone's standpoint, nor their judgement; for we are concerned with looking the facts of the physical plane, as well as the facts and impulses of the spiritual world, calmly in the eye. Some time ago I said that the question of necessity in world events would have to be scrutinized, even in the face of the most painful happenings. But Anthroposophy will never make us into fatalists, in the sense that we speak of necessities as a fate to which we have to resign ourselves. It is justifiable to ask: Did these painful events have to take place? But even if we feel obliged to answer in the affirmative, there is still no question of bowing down to these necessities in a fatalistic way. I should like to start by illustrating what I mean by a comparison.

Let us suppose that two people are arguing about how good the harvest will be next year in a certain area. The one says: The harvest will depend on the constraints laid down by nature. He lists all the constraints—the weather, and all the other conditions that are more or less independent of the will of man. The other, however, might object: You are right, all that exists; but what we ought to do is look at the practical question of how much of a contribution we ourselves can make. Then it is much less a matter of the weather and other things over which I have no influence; my main concern, then, is that I want to play my part in next year's harvest, so on my section of the land I will sow the best quality seed I can find. Whatever the other factors may be, it is my duty to sow the best possible seed, and I will make every effort to do so. The first man may be a fatalist; the second may not deny the reasons for the fatalism of the first, but he will do his best to sow the best quality seed. In the same way, for every person who desires to be prudent it is a matter, above all, of finding out how he can sow the best possible seed.

Of course, for the spiritual development of mankind the expression ‘to sow the proper seed’ means something vastly more complicated than is the case in the comparison I have just cited. It does not mean the application of a few abstract principles. It means taking the demands of mankind's evolution and recognizing correctly what is needed at the present moment for this evolution of mankind. For whatever next year's weather may be like and whatever other hindrances or unfavourable circumstances may apply, if the second person does not sow good seed the harvest will certainly be bad! So it is most important to recognize that at present the salvation of mankind's development demands certain conditions which, at the moment, by far the greatest portion of mankind is resisting. These are conditions which must be incorporated in human development so that a thriving and healthy development can take place in the future. And it must also be realized that man finds himself at present in a phase of development in which, within certain limits, it is up to him to cope with his mistakes.

In earlier times this was not the case. Before the fifth post-Atlantean period, before at least a large part of earthly mankind had come to the full realization of their freedom, divine spiritual powers intervened in earthly development, and it can be clearly perceived that this intervention by divine spiritual powers was sensed by human beings. Today, what matters is to show mankind how it is possible to reach certain insights and, above all, how to form a healthy judgement which coincides with the conditions demanded for man's development. The fact that there is a resistance to this judgement is one of the deeper causes of the present painful events.

Another question we shall have to consider over the next few days is why human beings did not turn to more spiritual inclinations a century ago. For had they done so today's painful situation would surely not have arisen. Let us postpone this a little longer and come to it perhaps tomorrow or the next day. Above all, let us hold to the knowledge that the painful events have come about chiefly as a result of this rejection of man's links with the spiritual world. Present events might therefore be described as a karma of materialism. But this phrase ‘karma of materialism’ must not be taken as an empty phrase; it must be understood in the right way.

Insights that are so deeply necessary have surfaced only sporadically during the years spanned by our lives—the final decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century. Certainly some insights—and much depends on insights—have been cast amongst mankind. Moreover, the attempt was made to cast them in such a way that a considerable number of people might have been included. But, at the moment, for reasons which will be mentioned later, people are still tremendously resistant to any kind of higher, spiritually grounded insight.

I now want to mention a book which appeared years ago. You might of course say: Many books are published, so why is this one so significant? At most, a book can only give people some theoretical instruction, and the salvation of the world is certainly not going to depend on whether they read it or not. Let me tell you that more is at stake than might be expected if certain ideas and insights are disseminated. Look in your soul once more at what I have told you during the last two or three lectures and you will be able to admit that this is so.

The book I mean was published in America and the author is Brooks Adams. When it appeared all those years ago it seemed to me to be one of the most important manifestations of new human insight. Even though the way it was presented to the world was spoilt by the fact that it included a foreword by ex-President Roosevelt, one of the greatest phrasemongers of today, nevertheless the ideas in this book by Brooks Adams could have brought enlightenment in the widest sense of the word. Another factor to be considered in connection with European cultural life was that the German translation of this book was brought out by a publisher of whom it was known that he serves quite particular spiritual streams, streams which are definitely hostile and detrimental, for instance to our Anthroposophical Movement. This is not what matters, however. What always matters is to have a sense for the fact that it is significant if certain ideas are presented to the world under an appropriate flag of this kind. It is quite different if a book is published by, let us say, the Cotta'sche Verlag, a distinguished publishing house which simply publishes books or, as in the case of the book in question, by a publisher who brings out books which serve the purposes of a particular society. There is a great difference between dealing simply with literature and dealing with certain definite impulses!

What is in this book by Brooks Adams? Let me first unfold only the main ideas which are brought forward, I must say, quite generally and abstractly in the most amateurish way and only in so far as their significance could be recognized in America. Yet it is important to know that a bird such as this flies up from this particular spot. Brooks Adams says in effect: There are in the world various nations who have been developing slowly for long ages. In the development of these peoples it is possible to detect both rise and fall: they are born, they pass through infancy, youth, maturity and old age, and then they perish.

This is, to start with, no profound truth but merely a framework. However, what Brooks Adams then develops in connection with the evolution of these peoples in the way of developmental laws certainly has some significance. It can be observed, he says, that in the period of their youth these peoples necessarily develop two tendencies which belong together. To enter properly into ideas such as these of Brooks Adams we must, of course, distinguish strictly between a people as such and the individual human beings; neither must we confuse the concept of a state with the concept of a people. So, Brooks Adams ascribes certain characteristics to a particular developmental period of a people and he also considers that these characteristics belong together. According to him some peoples, in the period of their youth, have the capacity for imagination, that is the capacity to form mental images which are, in the main, drawn from within. They owe their origin to the productive imagination and not to considerations such as those of what we today call science; they are drawn from the creative inner powers of the human being. This characteristic of creative imagination is, according to Brooks Adams, necessarily connected with another: these peoples are warlike. The two characteristics of creative imagination and a warlike disposition are inseparably linked in these peoples. Brooks Adams considers this to be a natural law in the spiritual life of these peoples. Peoples who are both imaginative and warlike are, as it were, a particular type.

In contrast to those peoples who belong to the imaginative and warlike type there are, says Brooks Adams, peoples who belong to another type. Here, creative imagination is no longer predominant, for it has developed into something we can call sober scientific judgement. Peoples who possess this characteristic of sober scientific judgement are not warlike by nature; they are industrial and commercial. These two characteristics—we are speaking of peoples, not individuals—belong together: the scientific and the commercial (for industry is simply a basis for commerce). Thus, there are peoples who are scientific and commercial, and peoples who are imaginative and warlike.

For the moment I do not want to criticize these ideas but merely mention that an opinion is asserting itself, though in a rather dilettante fashion, which years ago fluttered up, as it were, from American soil: Take care not to believe that the whole of mankind can be measured by the same yardstick! Do not imagine that the same ideals can be set for every nation! Note that consideration can only be given to what is founded in evolution, which means that you cannot expect a people like the Slavs, whose character is imaginative, to be unwarlike! Those of you who read Brooks Adams' book attentively, please note this latter example particularly. Judgement must be based, not on external appearances but on inner values, inner affinities.

The book is superficial if only for the reason that such knowledge, if it is expressed at all, should be expressed on the basis of spiritual insights alone. So long as there is a lack of spiritual insights, judgements about the evolution of mankind—which is of course affected by the working of spiritual powers—cannot but be one-sided. Above all, a great truth is omitted: On the physical plane we stand within the realm of maya regarding events as well as the will of human beings. As soon as maya is treated, not as maya but as reality, we must fall into error. And as soon as we fail to pay proper attention to developments within maya and to what resembles development within maya, we are already treating maya as reality.

If it were not nonsensical it would be very nice, for instance, to live in a season of permanent springtime, to be surrounded forever by blossoming, sprouting, burgeoning life. Why did the creators of the universe not arrange things so that we have sprouting, burgeoning life forever? Why do the beautiful tulips, lilies and roses have to fade and decay? The answer is quite simple: they have to fade and decay so that they can bloom again! In so far as we stand on the physical plane it must be clear to us that the one cannot be without the other—indeed, that the one is there for the sake of the other; and there is profound truth in Goethe's saying that nature created death in order to have much life. Since the physical world is maya there is no balance so long as we are in the physical world; a balancing can only come about if we can raise ourselves from the physical to the spiritual world. However, this balance is different from the balance we would expect so long as we hold the physical world to be a reality. So it is necessary to come to know the laws of maya, and to learn that within maya a balance can never be found, either by man or by any other being, if maya is not interwoven with something which lies outside maya but inside spiritual reality.

So, above all, it is always important to come to know maya as maya, to come to understand what it means when sprouting and burgeoning have to be accompanied by decay. In the case of nature it is easy to admit, since we see before our very eyes the facts we have to recognize. It will be easy to make anyone understand that in the summer and autumn of 1917 the fruits will ripen which were sown in the previous year's sowing season. If bad seeds were sown, then of course bad fruits will be harvested. So we will tend to pay attention to the quality of the seed and not allow ourselves to be so easily deceived by maya, as we are in other areas of human life where matters are rather more obscure.

Someone who points in a similar way, in connection with the life of nations, to the effect a bad sowing has on the quality of the ripening fruit, will immediately be met with prejudices. These may, for instance, be expressed as follows: I might suggest to someone that he should not be surprised at his bad harvest since his seed was poor when it was sown; he might then retort that it was his seed and that I am hurting his feelings by saying bad things about it. But I have no intention of hurting his feelings, for the poor quality of his seed might not be his fault at all. It is not a question of hurting a person's feelings but rather of stating an objective fact. It is not for me a matter of judging the connection between him and his seed-corn; that is his affair and I leave it to him entirely. But to know the objective facts it is necessary to inspect the seed-corn very closely and face up to what is really at the bottom of events. If, in doing so, we can maintain a proper objectivity, this might even be beneficial to the sower. Indeed, the benefit to him might be considerable if we succeed in making clear to him the connection between the harvest and the sowing. What I want to make clear to you is the importance of putting forward the thoughts in the right direction, and of seeking them in the right way.

After this prelude, I now want to go back some way in history. The reasons for this will soon be clear to you. I have already drawn your attention during lectures here to a king of England who played an important part for England in the realm of maya, in relation to religious development: Henry VIII. As you know, he was rather good at getting rid of his wives, of whom he had quite a number. He also had—well—let us say, the pluck to break with the Pope who did not want to dissolve one of his marriages. This refusal by the Pope gave Henry VIII the courage to bring about a new religion for the whole of England, inasmuch as it depended on him. We have spoken about this on another occasion.

During the reign of Henry VIII lived the great and eminent Thomas More. He was a man of sublime spirituality, indeed of a spirituality equal, for instance, to that of another great man, Pico della Mirandola, as well as other eminent personalities of that era. Thomas More was an enlightened spirit, even though, despite his enlightened insight, he became Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor and did not despise Henry himself. I shall prove to you in a moment that he did not despise Henry VIII. He was a spirit whose illuminated instinct enabled him to accept maya as maya. Yet, like Pico della Mirandola, he was also a pious man. He was not pious after the manner of Henry VIII, nor after the manner of the Pope; he was a sincere, earnestly pious man and from his point of view rejected all the impulses and attempts at reformation which were already beginning to flicker during his time.

In a certain respect Thomas More was a faithful son of the Catholic church; and although Henry VIII, whose Lord Chancellor he already was, would have loaded him with every honour if he had complied with his wishes, he remained disinclined to turn to a new religion simply because Henry desired to take a new wife. For this he was not only deprived of his position, he was condemned to death, and the record of the court proceedings which culminated in his condemnation is extraordinarily interesting and very characteristic of that time. The wording of the sentence which condemned Thomas More to death is quite remarkable.

Most of you know, since it has long been published in secular books, that in Freemasonry the ascent through the various degrees is connected with certain formulations which also include the manner of death awaiting those who fail to keep the secrets of a particular degree. It is stated that under certain circumstances the candidate will have to die a terrible death; for instance, in the case of one of the degrees, his body shall be cut open and his ashes strewn to the four winds of the earth. These things, as I just said, are now the subject of numerous secular writings. Now the sentence passed on Thomas More coincides exactly with the formulation in respect of a particular degree of Freemasonry: he was to be brought from life to death by a most inhuman method. Yet this alone was not enough. His body was to be divided into as many segments as there are compass points and the pieces were to be scattered in all these directions. Part of this sentence was indeed carried out in this very manner.

Consider that this event took place at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Thomas More was born in the second half of the fifteenth century and died in the first half of the sixteenth century. We may well ask whether all he did was to refuse the king the oath of supremacy—that is, refuse to recognize that the English church was independent of the Pope and commanded instead by the King of England. Is this really all he did?

Let us now turn to the most important thing he did, namely something which, even today, can have the utmost significance for anyone who looks at it squarely. Thomas More wrote the book Utopia. On the Best Form of the State and the New Island of Utopia. The main part of this book deals with the institutions of the island of Utopia, which means ‘not place’, or ‘no place’. If we take the book in the sense intended by Thomas More, we discover that Utopia means much more to him than some imaginary land in the external physical world. We should not be so foolish, however, as to assume that More wrote the book simply as an imaginary story. Thomas More cannot be counted among the Utopians. He did not want to present people with some imaginary tale; he wanted to say far more than this, in so far as this was possible in his day.

The main part of the book deals with Utopia, but it also has a very detailed introduction. This explains to us why More wrote the book. There is an important passage I want to bring to your attention, so that you can see that he did not despise Henry VIII. It begins as follows:

‘There was recently a rather serious difference of opinion between that great expert in the art of government, His Invincible Majesty, King Henry the Eighth of England, and His Serene Highness, Prince Charles of Castile. His Majesty sent me to Flanders to discuss and settle the matter.’

While in Flanders as an ambassador for Henry VIII, whom he calls an enlightened and great king, he meets a man he regards as exceptionally intelligent—spiritually, exceptionally important. So he asks him: Since you know so much and can assess matters so correctly, why do you not place your insights at the disposal of some prince? For More considers that most people in the service of princes are not very inspired, and that much that is good and favourable could ensue for the world if such inspired people were to place themselves at the service of the princes. The other now replies: It would be to no avail, for were I to express my views within some ministry or other, I should render the others no cleverer; instead they would very soon throw me out. In order to stress that this man, with whom he himself cannot agree, did actually exist, Thomas More adds: I met this man in the most varied company and he told us how he had once attempted to put forward his views in another company.

This is not merely an introduction to Utopia; Thomas More means something further. We have the curious situation in which Thomas More wishes to express criticism of the England of that time, the England of the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century; the Lord Chancellor wants to criticize England. It goes without saying that someone who thinks as Thomas More does would not embark on a criticism of something abstract. In speaking of England he knows that the English people are not identical with what is meant by the configuration of the English state. He knows this very well and he also knows that the state is not something abstract but that it is made by individuals, and that the English people are not included in any criticism that might be expressed about the actions of these individuals on whom all the more important aspects of the English state depend. So Thomas More seizes on the best possible starting point for a concrete discussion, for it is certainly not concrete, but mere nonsense, to say: England is like this, Germany like that, Italy like the other—and so on; to say this is to say nothing at all.

Now, within the framework of a larger company, More brings this intelligent, enlightened man into contact with someone who is an excellent lawyer, someone whom the world considers to be ‘an excellent lawyer’, and so these two—the intelligent man and the excellent lawyer in the eyes of the world—enter into a discussion of English jurisprudence. English jurisprudence was then of course not as it is today, but no matter: the fifth post-Atlantean period was just beginning. The intelligent and enlightened man thought that it was extraordinarily stupid to proceed against thieves in the way considered proper in the England of that time. This man, who has seen Utopia and later describes it, thought that the whole way in which robbery and other matters were considered was not at all clever. He thought that the deeper reasons for such behaviour should be investigated. Thus he came to reject all the views of that time concerning people's attitude to thieves. The excellent lawyer, of course, could not understand him at all. Let us now occupy ourselves a little with the arguments of the intelligent man—not those of the excellent lawyer. He says:

‘I once happened to be dining with the Cardinal when a certain English lawyer was there. I forget how the subject came up, but he was speaking with great enthusiasm about the stern measures that were then being taken against thieves. “We're hanging them all over the place,” he said, “I've seen as many as twenty on a single gallows. And that's what I find so odd. Considering how few of them get away with it, why are we still plagued with so many robbers?” “What's odd about it?” I asked—for I never hesitated to speak freely in front of the Cardinal.’

Now let us hear the intelligent man speak!

‘ “This method of dealing with thieves is both unjust and socially undesirable: As a punishment it's too severe, and as a deterrent it's quite ineffective. Petty larceny isn't bad enough to deserve the death penalty, and no penalty on earth will stop people from stealing, if it's their only way of getting food. In this respect you English, like most other nations, remind me of incompetent schoolmasters, who prefer caning their pupils to teaching them. Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody's under the frightful necessity of becoming a thief and then a corpse.” “There's adequate provision for that already,” replied the lawyer. “There are plenty of trades open to them. There's always work on the land. They could easily earn an honest living if they wanted to, but they deliberately choose to be criminals.” “You can't get out of it like that”, I said.’

This is the intelligent man once again.

‘ “Let's ignore, for the sake of argument, the case of the disabled soldier, who has lost a limb in the service of King and Country, either at home or abroad—perhaps in that battle with the Cornish rebels, or perhaps during the fighting in France, not so long ago. When he comes home, he finds he's physically incapable of practising his former trade, and too old to learn a new one. But as I say, let's forget about him, since war is only an intermittent phenomenon. Let's stick to the type of thing that happens every day.

Well, first of all there are lots of noblemen who live like drones on the labour of other people, in other words, of their tenants, and keep bleeding them white by constantly raising their rents. For that's their only idea of practical economy—otherwise they'd soon be ruined by their extravagance. But not content with remaining idle themselves, they take round with them vast numbers of equally idle retainers, who have never been taught any method of earning a living.

The moment their master dies, or they themselves fall ill, they're promptly given the sack—for these noblemen are far more sympathetic towards idleness than illness, and their heirs often can't afford to keep up such large establishments.

Now a sacked retainer is apt to get violently hungry, if he doesn't resort to violence. For what's the alternative? He can, of course, wander around until his clothes and his body are both worn out, and he's nothing but a mass of rags and sores. But in that state no gentleman will condescend to employ him, and no farmer can risk doing so—for who could be less likely to serve a poor man faithfully, sweating away with mattock and hoe for a beggarly wage and barely adequate diet, than a man who has been brought up in the lap of luxury, and is used to swaggering about in military uniform, looking down his nose at everyone else in the neighbourhood?”

“But that's exactly the kind of person we need to encourage,” retorted the lawyer. “In wartime he forms the backbone of the army, simply because he has more spirit and self-respect than an ordinary tradesman or farm-hand.”

“You might as well say,” I answered,’

Now the intelligent man speaks again.

‘ “that for the purposes of war you have to encourage theft. Well, you'll certainly never run short of thieves, so long as you have people like that about. And, of course, you're perfectly right thieves do make quite efficient soldiers, and soldiers make quite enterprising thieves. The two professions have a good deal in common. However, the trouble is not confined to England, although you've got it pretty badly. It's practically a world-wide epidemic.

France, for instance, is suffering from an even more virulent form of it. There the whole country is overrun even in peacetime—if you can call it that—by mercenaries who have been brought in for much the same reasons as you gave for supporting idle retainers. You see, the experts decided, in the interests of public safety, that they must have a powerful standing army, consisting mostly of veterans—for they put so little faith in raw recruits that they deliberately start wars to give their soldiers practice, and make them cut throats just to keep their hands in, as Sallust rather nicely puts it.

So France has learnt by bitter experience how dangerous it is to keep these savage pets, but there are plenty of similar object-lessons in the history of Rome, Carthage, Syria, and many other countries. Again and again standing armies have seized some opportunity of overthrowing the government that employed them, devastating its territory, and destroying its towns. And yet it's quite unnecessary. That's obvious enough from the fact that for all their intensive military training the French can't often claim to have beaten your wartime conscripts—I won't put it more strongly than that, for fear of seeming to flatter present company.” ’

Thus says the Lord Chancellor, Thomas More. We need hardly do more than copy down what he said then about the poor people of France. You could use these words to formulate the most beautiful sentences to present to the English ministers so that they can fulminate againt ‘Prussian militarism’. But these things were said at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, and possibly the juxtaposition of today's chatter with what lay at the beginning of it all might cause hurt feelings in some quarters.

You see, Thomas More lets us listen to the words of a person who endeavours to get to the bottom of things, and, moreover, in a way which could be disagreeable to some, even if matters are only touched upon quite superficially. He continues:

‘ “In any case I don't see how it can possibly be in the public interest to prepare for a war, which you needn't have unless you want to, by maintaining innumerable disturbers of the peace—when peace is so infinitely more important.

But that's not the only thing that compels people to steal. There are other factors at work which must, I think, be peculiar to your country.” ’

Thus speaks the man who has come back from Utopia.

‘ “And what are they?” asked the Cardinal.’

A new participant in the conversation.

‘ “Sheep,” I told him. “These placid creatures, which used to require so little food, have now apparently developed a raging appetite, and turned into man-eaters. Fields, houses, towns, everything goes down their throats. To put it more plainly, in those parts of the kingdom where the finest, and so the most expensive wool is produced, the nobles and gentlemen, not to mention several saintly abbots, have grown dissatisfied with the income that their predecessors got out of their estates. They're no longer content to lead lazy, comfortable lives, which do no good to society—they must actively do it harm, by enclosing all the land they can for pasture, and leaving none for cultivation. They're even tearing down houses and demolishing whole towns—except, of course, for the churches, which they preserve for use as sheepfolds. As though they didn't waste enough of your soil already on their coverts and game-preserves, these kind souls have started destroying all traces of human habitation, and turning every scrap of farmland into a wilderness. So what happens? Each greedy individual preys on his native land like a malignant growth, absorbing field after field, and enclosing thousands of acres with a single fence. Result—hundreds of farmers are evicted. They're either cheated or bullied into giving up their property, or systematically ill-treated until they're finally forced to sell. Whichever way it's done, out the poor creatures have to go, men and women, husbands and wives, widows and orphans, mothers and tiny children, together with all their employees—whose great numbers are not a sign of wealth, but simply of the fact that you can't run a farm without plenty of manpower. Out they have to go from their homes that they know so well, and they can't find anywhere else to live. Their whole stock of furniture wouldn't fetch much of a price, even if they could afford to wait for a suitable offer. But they can't, so they get very little indeed for it. By the time they've been wandering around for a bit, this little is all used up, and then what can they do but steal—and be very properly hanged?

Of course, they can always become tramps and beggars, but even then they're liable to be arrested as vagrants, and put in prison for being idle—when nobody will give them a job, however much they want one. For farm-work is what they're used to, and where there's no arable land, there's no farm-work to be done. After all, it only takes one shepherd or cowherd to graze animals over an area that would need any amount of labour to make it fit for corn production. For the same reason, corn is much dearer in many districts.

The price of wool has also risen so steeply that your poorer weavers simply can't afford to buy it, which means a lot more people thrown out of work. This is partly due to an epidemic of the rot, which destroyed vast numbers of sheep just after the conversion of arable to pasture land began. It almost looked like a judgement on the landowners for their greed—except that they ought to have caught it instead of the sheep. Not that prices would fall, however many sheep there were, for the sheep market has become, if not strictly a monopoly—for that implies only one seller—then at least an oligopoly. I mean it's almost entirely under the control of a few rich men, who don't need to sell unless they feel like it, and never do feel like it until they can get the price they want.” ’

I need read no further, but simply point out to you that in this book Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor, a man who shares the views of Pico della Mirandola, expresses bitter criticism through the mouth of a person who may indeed be fictitious and who has been in Utopia; but the criticism is levelled at something that really happened at that time. For indeed over wide areas the people who had tilled the soil with their hands were driven from their land, which was turned into grazing ground for the sheep of the landowners who sought to make profits in this way from the sale of wool.

Thomas More found it necessary to draw attention to the fact that people exist who drive the rural population from the soil they have tilled in order to turn it over to sheep. Those who are able to link effects with causes in an objective way can pursue, on the physical plane, how the structure of the English state today is intimately bound up with what happened all that time ago and was criticized in this way by Thomas More. And if one pursues the matter with the means of the spirit, which also exist, then one discovers that the English people cannot be held responsible for a great deal for which the England of politics must be held responsible. Moreover, those who are responsible for the England of politics are the heirs—in certain cases, even the actual descendants—of those who are criticized here by Thomas More. There is an unbroken evolution which can be traced back to that point. If we take such things into account we shall discover and know that in speeches such as that of Rosebery, which I quoted to you the other day, can be heard the voices of those who long ago made profits from the sale of wool in the manner described. Everywhere the objective connections must be sought. Above all one must be entitled not to be misunderstood in every possible way.

What does it mean when one is reproached and told to be more tactful because, otherwise, the English will think this or that? This is not at all what matters. What is important is that there are certain things in our life today which can be traced back to certain origins, and these origins must be sought in the proper places. There is no cause for anyone, merely because he is English, to rush to defend the impulses of the descendants of those who long ago drove the peasants from house and home, land and soil, in order to keep flocks of sheep instead of retaining arable land. It is necessary to become familiar with the laws of cause and effect, and not babble about one nation or another being to blame for this or that.

Now that I have endeavoured to demonstrate to you a characteristic link between something in the present and something in the past, let me turn to yet another point, in order once again to make a connection. I shall present you with a number of external facts which shall serve the purpose of giving you a foundation on which to build judgements.

A survey of present-day Europe, with the exception of the eastern part which is inhabited by the Slavs, reveals that for the most part it has emerged from what was the kingdom of Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth centuries. I am not concerned at the moment with Charlemagne himself, nor with the fact that there is much argument about him today. This argument about Charlemagne really has as little point as the argument of three sons about their father. If three sons quarrel amongst each other, the reason is frequently that they are all quite right to call a certain person their father. Indeed, three people would often not quarrel amongst each other were it not for the fact that they do all share the same father; and the object of their quarrel as likely as not is their inheritance!

Out of the realm of Charlemagne have come, in the main, three component parts: a western part which, after various vicissitudes, became the France of today; an eastern part which, in the main, has become today's Germany and Austria, with the exception of the Slav and Magyar regions; and a middle part which has become essentially the Italy of today. Strictly speaking, all three are equally justified in tracing themselves back to Charlemagne. Sometimes people even have strange feelings which determine whether they want to be traced back to Charlemagne or not. For instance, when you consider how many Saxons were slaughtered by Charlemagne, it is not surprising if some people attach no particular importance to being traced back to him. So, these three regions emerged from the kingdom of Charlemagne. In order to understand much of what is going on today we need to take into account that throughout the Middle Ages there existed, between the middle and the western region, certain links which were of an ideal nature, links which today no longer exist at all in such areas, apart from some empty phrases which cannot be taken seriously. For the Holy Roman Empire was to a large extent founded on ideals. If you do not wish to believe other sources which speak of these ideals, then read Dante's De Monarchia, or investigate what else Dante thought about these things. Consider, for instance, that it was Dante who reproached Rudolf of Habsburg for taking too little care of Italy, ‘the most beautiful garden in the Empire!’ Dante was, at least during that part of his life that matters most, an ardent adherent of that ideal community which had come into being and was called Germany-Italy.

Then in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we see that the Venetian Republic began to rebel against what came down from the North. First of all Venice devoured the patriarchate of Aquileia, but the main concern of the Venetians was to gain a foothold on the Adriatic and settle along the coast there. Venice was very successful and we can see how what came from the North was indeed pushed back, particularly by the influence of the Venetian Republic. Then comes the era known as the Renaissance, which flourished in Italy and elswhere, particularly under the influence of the blossoming of the free cities. But this was followed by the Counter-Reformation and the politics emanating from the Pope and Spain, and we see that not until the eighteenth century can Italy begin to think of recovering from centuries of pain and suffering. Since you can read it up in any history book, there is no need for me to describe how the moment at last arrived when Italy found her unity, to the approval of the whole world. Those of us who are familiar with these things know that in German regions just as much enthusiasm was expressed for the unification of Italy as elsewhere.

We might ask how the modern unification of Italy came about. We should look upon the case of Italy as a particularly important example of how unified states come into being. But we must also come to understand the connections between the events in Serbia and Italy which I told you about last week. These are connections which are immensely important for an understanding of the situation today. But first one must consider for a moment how the state of Italy came into being, a state which can surely be recognized ungrudgingly.

We need go back only as far as the Battle of Solferino in which France fought alongside Italy, and where the first step was taken towards the subsequent creation of the modern state of Italy. We are in the fifties of the nineteenth century. How did it come about—for there was a great deal at stake at that time—that the first step on the path towards modern Italy could be taken at Solferino by Italy and France? Read your history books and you will find they fully bear out what I am saying: It came about solely because Prussia and Austria—Austria could only lose—could not reach any agreement!

What happened subsequently is owed to the fact that Italy had in Camillo Cavour a truly great statesman, in whose soul the idea flourished that, from this starting point, something could arise in Italy which would lead to a rebirth of the ancient Roman greatness. But matters took a different turn. Something similar, though perhaps with a very different nuance, occurred; something similar to what we saw in connection with Michael Obrenovich, Prince of Serbia, when he sacrificed his earlier idealistic views to the demands of state necessity. In a similar way the great soul of Camillo Cavour bowed before karmic necessity and made the transition from the ideal to external realism.

I can only give you an outline of these things. Italy proceeded from stage to stage. In the summer of 1871 Victor Emmanuel was able to enter Rome. How had this become possible? It was made possible by Germany's victories over France! From the statesman Francesco Crispi stem the words: Italy went to Rome thanks to the German victories, after France had taken the first initiative at Solferino. But the fact that Rome became the capital of the kingdom of Italy is due to the German victories over France.

Now a remarkable relationship develops between Italy and France. It is interesting to note how to the extent that Italy was able to consolidate her unity, she became at once an opponent and an ally of France. Another factor is that Italy's statesmen set great store by the fact that her state structure was pieced together from the outside and also that she owed to Germany the final great push towards unity. These statesmen also saw that to join forces with France in the way which would have been possible at that time could not be fruitful for her. This stream, however, was in opposition to another, which gained in force from the year 1876 onwards: that of the francophile democratic left-wing party. So now this new state vacillated between an attraction to France which was, I might say, more on the feeling level, and a more practical attraction to Central Europe. The remarkable thing was that in everything that came about at that time it always turned out that the deciding factor was the practical tendency of Central Europe.

A new turn of events came about when France took over Tunisia. It had always been taken for granted that Tunisia would fall to Italy. But now France proceeded to spread herself there. So the practical tendency in Italy began to gain the upper hand, the tendency which leaned towards Central Europe. It is interesting, for instance, that at the Berlin Congress the Italian delegate asked Bismarck, who was quite calmly suggesting that France should spread over into Africa, whether he was really intent on setting Italy and France at each other's throats. Certainly for the Italian statesmen of that time this meant that Italy must turn towards Germany. And since Bismarck had spoken the famous words: ‘The path to Germany lies via Vienna’, Italy had to turn towards Austria too. So the ancient feud, which Austria had taken on as what I would call her tragic destiny, had to be shelved. For everything the Venetian Republic had done meant, basically, that those elements which tended towards Germany had been pushed out of Italy. So Austria had to take on the role of bearing the stream which came down from the North.

As a result of France's actions in North Africa, the francophile stream in Italy had to retreat, and so the connection with Central Europe came to be taken for granted at that time. I am giving you only a sketchy outline of these things since it is, after all, not my task to teach you politics. But it is necessary to know certain things about which, unfortunately, far too little is known these days. Italy joined Central Europe in 1882 in what came to be known as the Triple Alliance. Certain people will always misjudge this Triple Alliance because they cannot accustom themselves to using the valid terms. There really are people who blame the painful events of the present war on the Triple Alliance instead of the so-called Triple Entente, which included the Entente Cordiale. You see, people do not always use the proper terms. Normally you can ask about something which is intended to lead to a particular goal whether it is really getting there and how long it remains valid. Now, it was always said by those who were a party to the Triple Alliance that its purpose was to preserve peace. And it did indeed serve this purpose for many decades; that is, for decades it served the purpose for which its participants said it was intended.

Then came the Triple Entente of which it was also said that its purpose was to preserve peace. Yet within less than a decade peace had disappeared! Anything else in the world would be judged on what it achieves. Yet precisely in this matter people do not condescend to form an objective judgement. Only five years later that secret matter was contrived which gives us the possibility of studying more closely the alchemy of those bullets which were used for the assassination at Sarajevo! The assassination of June 1914 could not possibly fail! For if those bullets had missed their target, others would have succeeded! Every precaution had been taken to ensure that if one attempt failed, the next would succeed. It was better thought out, indeed planned on a larger scale, than any other assassination in the whole of history.

In order to study what our friends have asked us to bring up here, we shall have to discover the alchemy of those bullets. I shall return to this later. For after only five years something had been mingled with the interrelationships of the Triple Entente, something which brought it about that there was a link between every event that took place in Italy and every event that took place in the Balkan countries. The aim was to let nothing happen in the Balkans without a corresponding event in Italy. The passions of the people were to be swayed in such a way that no action could be taken one-sidedly, either in the one country or the other; the people's feelings and thoughts were always to run parallel. For decades there was this intimate connection between the various impulses in the Apennine and the Balkan peninsulas. Sometimes a case of this kind stands out in an extraordinarily symbolic way. It is ‘a beauty’ in the way it conforms exactly to the theory, just as a doctor might find a serious case ‘a beauty’ if it gives him an opportunity of performing a particularly good operation—which does not mean in any way that it is something beautiful in itself.

On a visit to Italy we once called in Rome on a most charming, delightful and friendly gentleman who has since died. He conducted us into his sitting room where we found in a very prominent position the portraits, personally autographed, of Draga Masin and Alexander Obrenovich. This friendly gentleman was not only a famous professor; he was the organizer of the so-called Latin League, which was concerned with the separation of South Tyrol and Trieste from Austria in favour of Italy. Of course I do not want to draw any great conclusions from such an insignificant experience. But it is significant symbolically that somebody who organizes the Latin League—I am not judging or criticizing, merely reporting—and, in connection with this Latin League, causes the students of Innsbruck university to riot, should have in his sitting room, visible to all comers, the autographed portraits of Alexander Obrenovich and Draga Masin. Since the secret threads which link Rome and Belgrade were well known to me at the time, this experience did make an impression on me as being symptomatic in a certain way. Karma does, after all, lead us to whatever is important for us in the world, and if we are capable of seeing and understanding things in the proper way, then we realize that karma has brought us to a point where there is something to be ‘sniffed out’ in the furtherance of our knowledge.

Things now developed in such a way that in 1888, a year in which war could have broken out just as it did in 1914, the crisis was averted because Crispi remained loyal to the Triple Alliance. He remained loyal to the Triple Alliance because France was proceeding to spread herself in North Africa. France embarked at that time on a political tactic aimed at Italy, who was starting to turn away from her. The French themselves said this tactic was intended to bring about the ‘re-conquering of Italy by means of hunger’, that is, a kind of trade war was attempted against Italy, and this trade war certainly played an important role at that time. The consequence was that Italy's practical links with Central Europe were increasingly strengthened. It is perhaps just as well if I give you the opinion of a Frenchman on this, rather than that of a German. He said that modern Italy was economically a German colony.

It has often been stressed, not only by Germans but by others as well, that Italy was saved by her close economic ties with Germany from the danger of being conquered by France through hunger—not a nice prospect. All this contributed to the peaceful settlement of the crisis at the end of the eighties. It is most interesting to study this crisis in all its details. It reveals something quite special to someone who is inclined to take account of interconnections and not be deceived. I did the following: I called to mind the events of 1888 and superimposed on them the date 1914. The events are absolutely identical! Just as in 1914 the incitements in the press were started in Petersburg and then taken up in Germany, so it was in 1888. As then, so also in 1914, a conflict was to be brought about between Germany and Austria. In short, every detail is the same. It is interesting that I have read aloud to various people a speech made in 1888 in which I replaced the date 1888 by 1914. Everybody believed that the speech was made in 1914!

When such things are possible we are not inclined to speak of coincidences. We have to understand that there are driving forces and that these driving forces work in a systematic way. In 1888 the matter was averted in the manner I have described. Then the situation became more complicated. The complication arose particularly because the connection of the Apennine peninsula to Central Europe took on a most peculiar character as far as Italy was concerned. It is psychologically interesting to study these things. It really came to a point where Italy, political Italy, had to be treated like some hysterical ladies are treated. The most unbelievable things developed, particularly because the opinion grew and was propagated in Europe that Austria must break up. I am not criticizing, only reporting.

You may gain an impression of how this opinion was propagated in Europe by reading the publications of Loiseaux, Chéradame and others, all of which treat of the assumption that Austria will be divided up in the near future. Now these judgements of Loiseaux and Chéradame and the others were thrown onto what was smouldering away down in the South. Under these circumstances it was definitely not easy to carry on what is usually known as politics. For instance, Oberdank was much celebrated in Italy. He had attempted to assassinate Emperor Franz Josef. In Vienna, on the other hand, a picture in an exhibition had to be renamed for the visit of the Duke of the Abruzzi. Its title was The Naval Battle of Lissa. This battle had been won by Austria, and so as not to offend the Duke of the Abruzzi the picture had to be renamed Naval Battle. This is just one example among many. I am not criticizing, but I do wonder about the question of give and take. Would anyone in Italy have condescended to be so considerate as to omit the name of a sea battle Italy had won? In Vienna they were. Whether it is right or wrong, it does raise the question of give and take. I mention this in order to characterize the different moods somewhat. For it is these moods which matter when streams such as that of the ‘Grand Orient de France’ come into play and when occult impulses of this kind start to take a hold.

Certain things of which people have taken no note so far will have to become things of which they take a great deal of note in the future, for it is not the case that the ‘Massonieri’, as also other secret brotherhoods, do not notice what is there; rather they set themselves the task of making use of those forces which are indeed there. They know where the forces are of which they must make use. So if on the Apennine peninsula there exists a certain stream, and if on the Balkan peninsula there exists another stream, then suitable use must be made of these two streams so that, at the right moment—that is, the right moment from the point of view of these people—one thing or another can be set in motion.

Let this be a preparation for the alchemical discussion I mentioned, which will take us further along our path. Please note that, in order to meet the wishes of our friends, I cannot but mention a certain amount of what is going on at the present time. What I have to say has to be linked to certain things which do exist, even if not everybody agrees that these should be brought out into the open. I am convinced that one of the chief causes for the painful events going on in the world today is the attitude that a blind eye can be turned to certain matters while others are discussed on the basis of an entirely false premise. Even in the face of large-scale matters of this kind, each individual should start from a foundation of self-knowledge. And a portion of self-knowledge is involved if we recognize that to claim no interest in these things and to want only to hear of occult matters is, in a small way, no different from all that adds up to the events we are experiencing today. For spiritual things are not only those which have to do with higher worlds. These, to start with, are of course occult for everybody. But much of what takes place on the physical plane is also occult for many people. We can only hope that much of what is occult and hidden on this plane may be revealed! For one of the causes of today's misery is that so much remains occult for so many people, who nevertheless persist in forming judgements.