The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear ladies and gentlemen! With your permission, I will expand on and supplement what I have already said during the tour of the Goetheanum, and present a summary of our building here today.

For many years, our anthroposophical movement worked by holding its meetings in ordinary halls, as can be found today. And even when we were able to present dramatic performances based on the impulses of the anthroposophical worldview, starting in 1909, we initially had to limit ourselves to having these performances in ordinary theaters and under ordinary theater conditions. As our anthroposophical movement grew, a large number of our friends came up with the idea of building a house for anthroposophy. And now I was given the task, so to speak, of creating a home for the anthroposophical movement. I would like to make it clear that the commission to build did not come from me, but from friends of the anthroposophical worldview.

The question now arose: how should the construction of such a house be approached? If any other society, an association with any task or goal, builds a house for itself today — and today there are all kinds of associations with all kinds of goals — then it consults with some architect. They agree on the style in which such a house is to be built: Greek, Gothic, Renaissance or some other style. This is the usual process today. If Anthroposophy had been a movement like all the others, it could have proceeded in this way. But Anthroposophy takes into account the great demands of our time for a thorough renewal of our entire culture, and therefore it could not be built in this way. Furthermore, Anthroposophy is not a one-sided body of ideas, but the ideas of Anthroposophy arise from the whole of human experience, from the deep sources of the human being. And that which lives in the ideas of anthroposophy has arisen from a primeval source, just as it was the case with the older cultures. And just as the words of Anthroposophy can be proclaimed by human mouths and given as teaching, so too can that which flows from the sources from which the Anthroposophical ideas also flow be given on the other side for direct artistic insight. It is not a translation or transposition of anthroposophical ideas into art that is at issue here, but rather a different branch that can develop as art from the same source of life from which anthroposophical ideas come.

What Anthroposophy has to reveal can be said from a podium in words that signify ideas. But it can also speak from the forms, from the plastic forms, from painting, without sculpture or painting becoming symbolism or allegory, but rather within the sphere of the purely artistic. This means nothing other than that if anthroposophy creates a physical shell in which it is to work, then it must give this physical shell its own style, just as older worldviews have given their physical shells the corresponding style. Take the Greek style of architecture, as it has partly been realized in the Greek temple: This Greek temple has grown entirely out of the same world view that gave rise to Greek drama, Greek epic, Greek views of the gods. The Greeks felt that in creating their temples they were building a dwelling for the gods. And this corresponds to what earlier cultural views saw in the further development of the human soul that had passed through death; there is a certain qualitative relationship between the Greek god and the human soul that has passed through death, as it was felt in earlier cultural currents. And something similar to how in ancient times dwellings were built for human souls that had passed through death, while still believed to be on earth, was later shaped by the Greeks in their temple. The temple is the dwelling of the god, that is, not of the human soul that has passed through death itself, but of that soul that belongs to a different hierarchy, a different world order.

Those who can see forms artistically can still feel in the forms that have been created by carrying and burdening and other things for the Greek temple, as in older times the dead, who still remained on earth after death, who, as a chthonic deity, as an earth , this house was formed out of the earth, so that the temple was built as a continuation of the gravitational forces of the earth, as they can be felt by man when he somehow looks through his limb-being, as such a connection of forces. A Greek temple is only to be considered complete when one views it in such a way that the statue of the god is inside. Those who have a sense of form cannot imagine an empty Greek temple as complete. They can only imagine, they can only feel, that this shell contains the statue of Athena, Zeus, Apollo, and so on.

Let us skip ahead in art history and look at the Gothic building. When you experience the Gothic building with its forms, with its peculiar windows that let in the light in a unique way, you always feel that when you enter the empty Gothic cathedral, it is not a totality, not complete. The Gothic cathedral is only complete when the community is inside it, whose souls resonate in harmony in their work. A Greek temple is the wrapping of the god who dwells on earth through his statue. A Gothic cathedral is in all its forms that which encloses the community in harmony and with thoughts directed towards the eternal.

The Greek worldview, or the worldview that took shape in the Gothic period, are dead worlds for today's humanity. Only the degenerate forces of decline that stem from them can still live today. We need a new culture, but one that is not only expressed one-sidedly in knowledge and ideas, but one that can also express itself in a new art. And so the development of art history also points to the necessity of an architectural style of its own for anthroposophy, which wants to bring a new form of culture.

The way anthroposophy is to be lived is based on the fact that, to a certain extent, a higher being in man, but which is man himself, speaks to the person who lives in ordinary life, which takes place between birth and death. By feeling this, the two-dome structure presented itself to me as the necessary building envelope for this basic impulse of the anthroposophical world view. In the small dome, what is inwardly large and wide is, as it were, physically compressed; in the large dome, what is inwardly less wide is spatially expanded, what inwardly belongs to the life that we lead between birth and death. And when a person enters this building in the sense of such an anthroposophical world view, they must find their own being. This is based on what has just been said. And while he is inside, he must feel the structure in such a way that he, as a human being, as a microcosm, does not feel constrained by the structure, but is externally connected to the universe, to the macrocosm, through the entire structure. But if you look at the structure from the outside, you must have the feeling: Something is going on in there that brings something unearthly, something extraterrestrial to earthly existence. Something is going on in there that is hidden in the earthly itself. So it must be possible to look at the building in terms of its overall form and also in terms of the sculptural extensions, which, as I said over there, must represent organic structures.

Emil Grosheintz: Does anyone wish to speak about the treasurer's report and the statement of accounts?

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to ask a question. So, this devaluation, which is calculated at 23,354.65 francs, is that an approximate equivalent or does it have a completely different context? We have always indicated the Swiss franc amounts corresponding to the German mark amounts, which is now a purely illusory thing. Is there now something that corresponds to the equivalent, or is there a different context?

Mr. Lupschewitz: The loans were originally valued at 123 per 100 marks. We have reduced all our mark amounts to 100, and that is why this exchange rate adjustment has been made.

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, but that is not what I mean. I mean whether the two items are equivalent to each other, whether they have a connection.

Mr. Englert: No, these 23,354.65 francs are the compensation because these loans were calculated at 123.

Mr. Lupschewitz: The conversion of this sum is already included in this amount.

Mr. Englert: The connection lies in the number 100.

Rudolf Steiner: Certainly, but I mean, if we don't have the francs 23,354.65 here in the balance account on the left side, we would have an illusory balance account because of these francs 23,354.65.

Mr. Englert: That is the balance of debit and credit.

Rudolf Steiner: The other thing I would have liked to ask is this: an account has been opened at the Munich branch, has it not? “The German marks in the account are a reserve for us for a later date under the current circumstances.” Are they not usable for the present, and can they not be redeemed at all?

Mr. Englert: Yes, but then we would have a valuta loss.

Rudolf Steiner: So legally it would be perfectly possible to transfer this account, and it is only because of the valuta loss?

Mr. Englert: Yes, up to 2,000 marks at a time. I was at a branch office in Berlin and that is where I was told.

Rudolf Steiner: I just wanted to say this so that the members are aware that this bank balance will remain in Munich for the time being, not because it is legally impossible to transfer it, but only because of the exchange rate.

Emil Grosheintz: Does anyone else wish to speak? If not, I will give the floor to the auditors.

[...]

Emil Grosheintz: Does anyone wish to speak about the chairpersons' report?

Rudolf Steiner: What I want to say, dear friends, is not to be understood as if I wanted to somehow supplement the reports of the esteemed chairperson or find them incomplete, but I just want to make a suggestion about something that has been on my mind for a long time. Anyone familiar with the research that is done on what has happened in such areas in the past and is still happening today, for example in our construction, knows how great the difficulties are for later analysts to get hold of some details and to establish the history correctly. I emphasize that, for example, even today it is not possible to state with complete certainty when Raphael moved from Florence to Rome. In the books, the dates vary between 1505 and 1508. But in such matters, one can get a little help from the future – and objectivity alone would require that.

I would like to suggest that in the reports that will be given at our general meetings and that will form the basis for the history of the building movement, the names of our loyal supporters should really be listed in detail, along with the movement of funds and other matters. Anyone who is aware of the endless labor that has gone into the great building work will actually consider it a matter of course that all the loyal contributors appear in the reports in the first place, with a description of their work and so on. Perhaps this will be of particular importance and significance under the current circumstances, quite apart from the fact that, in my opinion, objective reporting has to pay tribute to those who have done a truly invaluable and immeasurable amount of work to complete the group and our construction.

If, for example, it has been emphasized how hard we have worked on the group, I would like to stress that one thing must be kept in mind: this group could not have been created without the loyal cooperation of those who have dedicated their labor to the cause; it could not have been created at all, least of all under the present conditions. You know how often I was unable to be here on the spot, and how much work had to be done without me being able to be there in any way. The sentence, for example, that Raphael would of course be Raphael even without hands is a very beautiful paradox, but I would ask you to consider more carefully whether we would have any paintings by Raphael if Raphael had been born without hands. Likewise, I ask you to consider more carefully how much of the entire structure would be there, despite all the ideas and so on, if we did not have such a large number of loyal, dedicated employees, truly dedicated not only with their physical labor, but dedicated with their whole soul, their powers of invention and their entire artistry.

My dear friends, we have much to complain about, especially in view of the actions undertaken by some members against our society and our movement. This may also seem paradoxical, but it is not without connection to the fact that it is compensation for some things that are somewhat lacking in our movement. And that is: in our movement, we do not understand how to be grateful enough for achievements; we do not understand enough how to recognize the achievements of others. And if we want to improve the karma that brings us such strange, irresponsible, even unbelievable opposition from our own members, then a great deal can be done to improve it if we understand how to be truly grateful for such loyal service to the movement. I ask the chairpersons not to take this as a criticism of their reports, but only as a suggestion that I would like to make. I would very much like to see an appreciation of the loyal service of our members included in our reports.

Following the discussion of Mieta Weller's motion to rename the Johannesbau at the Goetheanum:

Emil Grosheintz: According to our statutes, we cannot make a decision today; we can only express our views, we can only explore whether it is desirable at all to change the name, and if so, when it could be changed. Or perhaps someone would like to suggest a different name? After all, Goethe used the name “Humanus” in his secrets. Could we not tie in with this name?

Albrecht Wilhelm Sellin: Dear friends, this is also new for us who are present here. Those out there in the branches don't know anything about it yet. But it seems to me that it would be more considerate to first spread the word in the branches about what has been discussed here, namely that we intend to call our building the “Goetheanum”. If we were to take a decision now, we would be presenting the members outside with a fait accompli. I therefore propose that we do not take a decision until next year and in the meantime work in the branches to prepare the understanding for this decision.

Rudolf Steiner: There is certainly no need to rush into a decision right away. And besides, it would be desirable for statutory matters not to play too great a role in such things, so that it is not something regulated that plays into these things, but the living life. You see, my dear friends, a decision would be extremely difficult today anyway and, under the current circumstances, would have to be very one-sided, because it seems to me that if the decision were taken today, a large number of members would not be able to vote. Under the present circumstances, only the members of neutral countries and the Entente powers could vote today; the German members would, of course, be excluded. A very one-sided decision would have to be taken, would it not? But it is not a matter of taking a decision, but rather of knowing whether you really want to accommodate the intention that I have expressed in the last few days in the public lecture, which is my subjective intention, my subjective conviction, because I never express anything other than my intention, than my conviction. If one wants to accommodate this, then it will be more a matter of making this thing popular so that it becomes established.

This corresponds more to the sphere from which this suggestion comes – if one wants to call it a suggestion, because, isn't it true that Goethe, in addition to being international, is also a German, and that is very important under the current circumstances. And, isn't it true that one might also say that one makes such a proposal not out of German chauvinism – which has to do not with attitude but with origin – but out of German spirituality. And here I must confess that when one really says something like that out of the German temperament, it is already linked to a certain quality in the German that is less well known. The true German character is an enemy of all organization, an enemy of all organization, an enemy of all regimentation, because [true] Germanness does not correspond to regimentation, to the ubiquitous drawing up of statutes and so on. I consider the existence of statutes, of statutory matters, to be a necessary evil in relation to the outside world, but as a curse on any social activity, which must be based on living together. And this is actually the German view, because to say that the German is based on regimentation, on organization and so on, is one of the most incredible defamations of the German character, which in reality is based in its depths on precisely the opposite qualities.

Therefore, I personally do not really care whether the statutes, which after all are not made for us but for the external representation of the matter, state the name “Johannes-Bau” or “ABC-Bau” or “Goethe-Bau” or any other name. I believe that what matters is how we see things and what we are able to do for ourselves and for the cause, not for the statutory, in order to make it popular in this way in the world.

Have we not unfortunately always distinguished these two things far too little, kept them far too little apart? The anthroposophical movement only gains in significance when it is based on living activity, on direct living activity. My dear friends, it makes no difference to the anthroposophical movement whether it has these or those statutes, whether it bears this or that name, but it is of the utmost greatest conceivable value for the anthroposophical movement if it has valuable members who, with full hearts and full understanding, intervene wherever they can, wherever it is in their power and karma, in the current cultural currents. Our movement is actually based on the human personality of our members. And that is what must be taken into account: that everyone carries the matter in their hearts, regardless of what name it has. There are difficulties associated with changing the name “Johannesbau” and difficulties associated with keeping it.

Unfortunately, not all of our members have a clear idea of the difficulties that will arise for the anthroposophical movement in the near future and how they will manifest in all their details. There are certainly difficulties such as those mentioned by Mademoiselle Payen. On the other hand, powerful difficulties will certainly arise if we retain the name “Johannesbau”, if only for the simple reason that in the near future - I am only drawing attention to one point among many - it may be very important to have a name that does not cause any misunderstandings in public. The name “Johannesbau” not only gives rise to the misunderstanding that it takes its name from Johannes the Baptist, Johannes the Evangelist or even Johannes Thomasius; above all, a large number of people associate the name “Johannesbau” with the Freemasonry of Johannes. And the fact that we differ from St. John Freemasonry and have nothing to do with it may, under certain circumstances, be something that has great significance for the near future, especially in the current war conditions. The things that are developing out of our present cultural porridge and cultural chaos will play a much greater role than one might think. Of course, some difficulties may arise if the misunderstanding persists that some kind of offshoot of St. John's Freemasonry has been established on this Dornach hill, which is not the case given the nature of our movement.

All these things are only intended to show that difficulties will arise whether we leave the name or change it. Much is being done to keep our cause out of misunderstanding, if such things do not recur as I had to fight against four years ago in a way that was so unpleasant and unappealing to me. At that time, articles about our, as it was called there, “temple building” came from a certain quarter and were published in the entire European press. The tendency to create misunderstanding after misunderstanding, to press the whole thing into a sectarian hustle and bustle - unconsciously, of course, with the best will in the world - this tendency, which was the basis of those articles at the time and which I had to fight hard, this tendency must not be repeated. If at that time the action against these things had found more support - of course all this should have been done in a friendly way - that would have been very good. It was very unfortunate that at that time these things about the 'Dornach Temple' and so on went around the whole world.

So, what we can do personally to put things in their proper perspective, to give everyone a clear idea, that is what we should do. But this has by no means happened everywhere in our circles, because there were really quite different tendencies in many cases. How often I had to say – which I don't really like – that someone here or there represents something with which I strongly disagree, but which he says I myself would have said. These things are related to a certain trait in the members: they want to represent something, but not take responsibility for it.

Our task should be to create clarity. Perhaps the whole thing can be brought to a favorable conclusion if we do not focus, as if hypnotized, on bringing about a change of statutes and name, but rather concentrate on creating clarity personally in all areas and, above all, on putting this fact into the proper perspective, namely that it really corresponds to the matter when we speak of the “Goetheanum”. This occurred in the most unbiased way, for example, in the report of our dear and esteemed Mr. Sellin, in which the name 'Goetheanum' appeared [as a matter of course]. And if this wish is not forgotten the day after tomorrow, but if we work in this direction, we will serve the cause much better than if we were to make a decision right now. Otherwise, we will only provoke one person saying 'Johannesbau' and another saying 'Goetheanum', while a third person will think: 'Yes, I no longer know what the name actually is, one person says one thing and another says another. It will be much more useful if we imprint the matter into life than if we organize and regulate it, which would not be in Goethe's sense at all, but if we try to bring it to life.

I think that is how it was actually meant, what has been suggested here, otherwise it would be really difficult to find the right thing today. For it is also a matter of tact as to who can vote and who cannot, because the different regions of the world naturally have very different views and feelings about these things. I imagine, for example – and I do not wish to offend anyone – that if a Goethe Society did not yet exist in the British Isles and one were founded there today, it would perhaps not find too many members. But if a Shakespeare Society were founded in Germany today – it is already there, of course – it would have no end of work filling its membership lists, because people in Central Europe today would join a Shakespeare Society in huge numbers.

Of course, there are different feelings and opinions about such things, and stirring up these wasps' nests naturally causes all sorts of difficulties. That's just the way it is. But, as I said, if a Shakespeare Society were established in Germany today, it would be very popular and would find numerous supporters. But it no longer needs to be founded, because it has been in existence for decades.

Emil Grosheintz: Does anyone else wish to say something about this matter? In any case, we have come so far today that no one should be prevented from donating a “Goetheanum” in our “Johannesbau”. If no one else wishes to speak on this matter, I would like to ask if anything else needs to be said under “Miscellaneous”. If this is not the case, I declare today's meeting closed and ask Dr. Steiner to say a few words.

Rudolf Steiner: It has been requested that I say a few words about the purpose of the group, which has been mentioned in the various reports.

Perhaps the best way to understand the thoughts that express the meaning of this group and, ultimately, the meaning of our entire structure, is to continue the train of thought that I expressed just last Monday in connection with the artistic development of Europe in the period of transition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantic era. The aim has been to carry out this construction in such a way that it presents a unified whole in all its parts and components. And if one disregards the fact that this unity has been somewhat compromised by the history of the building, then one will be able to see this unity when it is finished, and also notice that this unity has been somewhat compromised by the vicissitudes that have taken place around the building. This is also something that should of course be made a little more popular by our members.

You have to remember: the building was originally supposed to be constructed in Munich. As it was conceived in Munich, the idea was that it should be built in a city, among other building complexes and the like. Of course, it was out of the question to connect such a building idea with current architectural styles and forms. Therefore, it was necessary at the time to think of the building primarily in terms of interior design, and to make it as simple as possible on the outside, inconspicuous. I often said during the Munich period, when the building was still conceived in Munich – of course such things are paradoxical, but it does not matter – that I would have liked most of all to see the building in its basic idea as interior architecture after entering through the gate, and if it appeared as a hill on the outside, covered with grass, so that you could walk over it; on the outside you would only have a hill, you would not see anything at all, and inside you would only have interior architecture. This was, of course, not feasible, if only for the reason that one cannot allow something hidden to become overgrown with grass, and because of the effects of the weather, of course. And so attempts were made to do it in a somewhat modified way, in that they wanted to place the building in the middle of the terrain and erect tall apartment buildings around it, so that actually nothing of the building would have been seen from the street, from the surrounding area, in terms of the external architecture.

As I said, this and many other related aspects were justified at the time when it was intended to erect the building in the middle of a city. When the necessity arose to transfer the building to Dornach, to erect it as a building on a hill that can be seen from afar, it was necessary to at least create some kind of exterior architecture for the interior architecture. For now the building was visible from all sides; now it was necessary to demand that the building be in harmony with the landscape in a certain sense.

Our members at that time naturally had a tendency, in the most commendable way, to stage the matter as quickly as possible. Rethinking the idea of interior design in such a way that there would now be complete unity between interior design and exterior design was not possible at that speed. Therefore, the original interior design concept remained essentially unchanged, and the exterior architecture was then designed around it. Of course, if you look at the building with an artistic eye, you can see this today, and it must be emphasized that the unified concept is compromised as a result.

However, it is always good to make it clear to people who approach this building with an artistic mind that it is intended to provide a starting point, that we do not intend for this building to represent the completion of some kind of idea. A suggestion should be given. If later times express in similar buildings what was inaugurated here in terms of architectural style – perhaps the expression is not correct – but rather in terms of building forms and building ideas, then of course some things will appear infinitely more perfect than they could ever be in the first attempt. In this respect, of course, the unity has not been fully expressed; but one can already see the intention; because it has of course been tried later, with various difficulties, to maintain the unity in some way.

If it is said that the group is in a sense a kind of crowning of the whole structure, then that is absolutely right. Only one must bear in mind that precisely in the design of this group the whole basic impulse of our movement comes into consideration, that therefore precisely in this group everything traditional, everything merely historical must take a back seat to the future-oriented, inspiring. Those who wish to give a group the name of a Christ-Group must do so out of their own personal conviction, if the matter makes an impression on them, so that they can address the central figure as Christ. Here too, it is not good to set anything in stone from the outset.

What one encounters at first is the representative of humanity, the all-spiritual, internalized humanity. Of course, some will immediately associate this internalized humanity with the Christ presence. They will be right. But to stigmatize again, to call the group the Christ group and the like, that will not be good. Leave it to each person who wants to interpret this group, who looks at it, to decide what name to give it. The works of art are always the less good ones that need names to make them clear. A work of art must speak for itself. This work of art should also – it is quite paradoxical for me to say this, of course it cannot be, but it is good for characterization if I say it – this work of art should also have an effect if the history of Christianity were not there, if one did not know it through history, only through what is placed in the room. As a work of art, it must have an effect. It must speak for itself. Any interpretation is already a mistake.

Therefore, of course, all traditional Christ physiognomies and the like had to be avoided, which have changed a lot over time - I have often spoken about this in lectures. Above all, one thing had to be taken into account for the whole group, which is closely related to the impulse of our movement. The representations of Christ have increasingly taken on a form that places Christ in the midst of the physical hustle and bustle of people. Especially in recent times, in the age of naturalism and materialism, it has been welcomed everywhere as appealing to bring Christ as close as possible to humanity. “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest": People are sitting around the table, Jesus enters as a human being among humans, distinguishing himself as little as possible! After all, this is what theology strives for: the ‘simple man from Nazareth’ who has as little of the divine as possible. For the divine disturbs people of the present.

In the case of our figure, the exact opposite had to be aimed for in the representative of humanity. We are dealing with something that takes place purely in the spiritual. We are dealing with the representative of humanity's struggle with Ahriman and Lucifer, with something that is deeply rooted in human existence, and that is therefore going in the opposite direction to what is currently popular. The times we live in are characterized by a desire to reduce everything to naturalism, to the immediacy of everyday life! In keeping with the impulses of the anthroposophical movement, we had to get as far away as possible from the sympathies of the present day, we had to embody a narrative, an action, an event that completely eludes external sensory observation, and we had to do it in sculpture. It would have been impossible to try it with a material other than wood. For some truly secret and mysterious reasons, the spiritual and soul-like can best be shaped in wood, can best be expressed in wood. And what might have to be considered rules for sculpture, as it is often done today, had to be broken, had to be replaced by something else when creating this group.

Figures such as Ahriman and Lucifer, and to a certain extent the figure in the middle, must be created from within, from the self-creative spiritual-soul, disregarding any model in the usual sense of the word.

But this is the hope for art in general. Because enough models have already been created. And the fact that contemporary art repeatedly goes back to models is precisely what makes it dead. I have already explained in my considerations that the Greeks did not rely on models, but created from other sources. Creating from a model is only a transition, an intermediate state of artistic development. And so, with this group in particular, a start had to be made on creating out of living spirituality itself, overcoming everything naturalistic.

Perhaps these things contain some of the main values of this group's attempt. But this is the case with the whole building. If you consider that the whole idea of building is based on something opposite to what has been valid so far in building ideas, you will have a basis for what you as members of the anthroposophical movement should actually popularize in relation to this building.

You see, I have expressed this wish today out of a truly heartfelt desire to take into account the achievements of the individual contributors to the artistic works, because in the work, in which positions were available for the work on this building, a great deal of selflessness was really necessary, and it was most necessary for the artists. In a sense, everyone who provided their labor had to make sacrifices in relation to everything else that is demanded of them, for example, when they work as artists or otherwise in the external world.

Take just one thing: every building from the architectural point of view that has been valid until now is based on the fact that an interior space has walls and these walls close it off. This enclosure, whether in ancient times the image of a god or the god himself was enclosed in the temple, or in the Middle Ages the community was enclosed in the Gothic building, it was all based on enclosure, on the concept of the wall as an enclosure, as a covering to the inside, to cover the space. For us, of course, only when you are inside the room, the opposite is the case: for us, the walls, with everything that is sculpturally and architecturally intended for these walls, do not give a conclusion, but a self-abolition. So that when you are inside, you get the feeling through the walls of being connected to infinity, not closed off from the outside by a wall, but of being continued into infinity through the wall. The wall cancels itself out; the wall destroys itself in itself through its forms.

Once you understand this, in the forms, then you will know what the building idea actually rests on in this case. It is the opposite of how such building ideas were before. It will also be possible for other buildings. If you look at the basic forms of the house Duldeck, you will see that once it is inhabited, it will also give a feeling of merging with the world, of striving out of being locked up, out of being closed off.

Our principles are not at all in line with certain aspects of the most immediate present. The experiences of the immediate present are very much taken from the past.

Not true, you couldn't even see through the old walls with your eye, with an “eye pass” through the old walls, you just had to stop at the “border” with your eye. Such were the forms, everything that was appropriate. Well, that is common practice today, isn't it: people seal themselves off from each other. Naturally, our movement cannot agree with these things; it breaks through everything through the form itself. It does not stop the eye, but if you understand the forms that are on the building, you will see everywhere: you can imagine such a form where it is, but you can just as easily imagine it fifty miles further on, only it may be a little larger in perspective, you can imagine it in outer space. When you place it in outer space, you can suddenly get the thought: It grows and grows and actually only stops growing at the firmament, and starts there in the appropriate size. The forms do not prevent you from using them as you like to fill the macrocosm, to fill the universe. That is how the forms are conceived. And so, of course, everything is placed in these forms.

If you look closely at the glass windows, you will see that they already express this interweaving with the world. This is because the glass windows, as they stand, are not finished in themselves by their material, nor by what the artist has done to them, but the artist has created in a confederation, in the confederation with the sun! The sun must come and shine through, then the work of art is finally complete. The artist and the sun together do what actually makes an impression on us in the glass windows! There you see how the sun is invoked through every single form, how one creates together with sunlight, how one truly regards light as one's ally.

Look at the dome paintings. All these dome paintings do not have the tendency to respect the space on which they are painted, but they have independent,

macrocosmic entities. And selflessness on the part of the artists was present because something completely new was considered. These figures had to shine from within, by their own light. While one is accustomed to reproducing the striking light, which is then reflected, in the picture, here the auric self-illumination had to be envisaged, which is again something that contemporary art does not consider to be its task at all. For example, for today's painter, it is not the human being who glows aurically, but sunlight falls on him, reflects him, and he paints the reflected sunlight. The model human being is always only the opportunity to paint this reflected sunlight. We paint the glow of the human being from within, and the connection of this glow with the movements of light, with the light impulses of the cosmos.

Hence the endeavour to make the things that occur on the human being in terms of lighting effects and so on grow together with what is in the environment. The light approaches the human being and forms his hair, as was really the case during the solar age. For the hair has not grown out of the human being, but into it – I have often explained this – it is actually crystallized sunbeams that have been placed into it. All these secrets of the world are, of course, not to be expressed dogmatically or scientifically, but in a lively, artistic way, as attempts to be carried out in art. And so it is really intended in all its details in this middle group.

The difficulties that the individual artists had to take on are truly enormous. For example, on the one hand we needed to realize the principle of painting with plant-based colors. Now, one can certainly say that it would, of course, be much easier to achieve certain effects if one could paint with traditional painting materials and colors. Many things cannot be expressed in this way because the preparation of the colors is not yet as advanced as it should be. One must selflessly accept the challenge of painting worse than one could actually paint. It does not only depend on how well one paints or can paint, but on how far our means have been developed, and so on.

So these things just prove the tremendous debt of gratitude one has towards those who have worked with us, who have really put their art and skill at the service of this cause, who have necessarily had to compromise themselves for the outside world, because the outside world does not recognize such things from the outset.

What I hope for most of all from the Christ Group, though I also hope for the whole building, is that it is seen as a first attempt. It was intended to be made in different wooden forms and types of wood, but because of the war we could only make it in one type of wood. I hope that people will see this group of Christ sculptures as a first attempt to artistically depict spiritual realities and to create such things on a larger scale in all their aspects. If they can provide any kind of artistic inspiration in this direction, then they will have done the world a service, quite apart from the contribution they are intended to make to the Bauhaus.

I believe that when this group is installed in the building, some artistic prejudices will have to be abandoned, which are still perfectly understandable and comprehensible today in view of this sculpture, because after all it is not what one imagines a work of art must be. But of course in earlier times people also did not imagine what later artistic forms of creation in the course of human development would become.

With these few words, I would like to conclude today's meeting on behalf of our esteemed board. There would, of course, be much more to say about this group, but we can postpone that until a later occasion.

Dear attendees, first of all, before answering the discussion, some questions have been received, and I would like to answer these questions first. Some of these questions are also related to what was said during the discussion, and so I may summarize some of them in my concluding remarks, which will not take long.

First of all, there is the question: “Isn't it a big mistake for social democracy to deny the spiritual and the soul and to recognize only the body [and the corporeal]?”

Now, it is not so easy to deal with this comprehensive question in just a few words, for the simple reason that what is often described and represented in the vaunted scientific circles as spiritual and soul life is actually not something that is in the process of ascent for the discerning person, but something that is basically undergoing its last phase of development, its full descent. When speaking of the spiritual, one should not speak in general terms of the spiritual, but one should always be clear about the fact that the spiritual is undergoing descending developments, ascending developments. And those who today reject the current, conventional spiritual life, which I also characterized in the lecture, which is a result of the leading class in the last centuries, when this spiritual life, which has become great through the state and economic development, especially of the last centuries, particularly of the nineteenth century, is rejected, then one can understand that this must be rejected. The important thing is to find a real spiritual life, a spiritual life that retains its own reality.

And then I must say that, above all, it is necessary today that the one thing I dared to say in my lecture be fulfilled: that people really learn from events. And then I must say; above all, it is necessary today that the one thing I dared to say in my lecture be fulfilled; that people really learn from events. You see, with reference to some of the things that the various speakers have said, I would like to say the following: One gentleman spoke very beautifully about an eternal word, which he described as a Christian word, and which of course could not be more beautiful in its meaning: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Yes, but esteemed attendees, is it really about simply pronouncing such a word today? (“Very true!”) Is it not also a truth that this word, if we want to acknowledge it as a Christ-word, has been spoken by those who thought they were called for almost 2000 years, and yet we have come into today's circumstances? Do these circumstances prove that the power has been found to really bring this word to life in people? I would like to ask you whether it should not depend on something other than just living in the emphasis of a word, in the hearing of such a word in sermons and the like?

You see, I have often tried to make myself understood in discussions and meetings by pointing out the worthlessness of merely emphasizing a word in the abstract, saying, for example, “Let us suppose there is a stove is here; it is its duty as a stove to warm the room, and I say to it, speaking as the sentence dealing with neighborly love was spoken: Dear stove, it is your real duty as a stove to warm the room! I speak to it warmly, I might say with the most heartfelt tone of preaching – it will never warm the room unless you put wood in it! (Laughter.) But when I heat it up, the room gets warm even if I don't talk to it, but just put wood in it; the room will then get warm. (Lively applause.) I don't want to say anything against the truth of such a word; but the point is to actually put such a word into practice in life, to make it known.

That is precisely the peculiar thing, my dear audience, that within the much-praised civilization, people have found each other who have spoken of love for one's neighbor, of love for God, of brotherhood – spoken, now, from the age of so-called humanity. They spoke very cleverly, very reasonably, often in rooms with mirrored windows, in heated rooms; but the heating was coal-fired, and as inquiries have shown, particularly in the rise of the social movement of recent times, children aged nine to eleven, twelve, thirteen worked in the mining of these coals! Coal that had been mined in mines where naked men stood among half-naked women, where there was truly no reason not to notice even the sense of shame, let alone to stop to consider any other Christian ideas. You really have to bear in mind that it is not just a matter of blurting out such a word. Due to the correctness and importance of the emotional content, one will naturally always make an impression with it. But the point is to find, in a particular age, those things that are as practical as the wood that I have to put in the stove so that it can warm the room, and that may, under certain circumstances, spare us from repeatedly saying the words, “Lord, Lord”! Incidentally, this is also a Christian saying: “You shall not say, ‘Lord, Lord,’ for that end; but to do the will of God, who has sent us heavenward.” You should not always say, “Lord, Lord,” but try somehow to absorb into your mind, into your whole being, what is the inner essence of Christianity.

One has very peculiar experiences in this. I don't think there is anyone in this hall who can surpass me in representing what the true inner essence of Christianity is. But, dear ladies and gentlemen, I have also had my experiences with it. I once gave a lecture on the nature of Christianity, and there were two clergymen present, both Catholic. Since I always speak from the heart, the gentlemen had no real objection to what I said. They approached me after the lecture, and it was even the case that they had to say: There is not much to object to; but – they said – the big difference is this: We, we talk so that all people can understand; you only talk to a few educated people. – So I said to the man who objected to me: Yes, you see, pastor, I will ask you something else: I believe that you believe you speak to all people; every person ultimately imagines that, otherwise he would probably be able to stop talking; but one can also gain experience in this area. It does not matter that you or I imagine that we speak to all people, but we let the experiences speak for themselves, we let the facts speak. And I ask you: Do the facts speak in such a way that they prove you right? Do all people still go to church with you? Yes, you see, you won't be able to tell me that you speak for everyone! And, you see, I speak to those who stay away. - That was when I spoke truly about Christ and Christianity.

Dear attendees, it is not a matter of us repeatedly and repeatedly warming up the old in the field of Christianity, but rather that we can actually hear the signs of the times. And we know that time marches on, and it is not possible to just keep repeating the same thing over and over again; otherwise you end up - I recently heard a Christian speaker in Bern who said something extraordinarily effective; he spoke very humanely; he spoke about the divinity of Christ. But after the words that had earned him the loud applause, I couldn't help thinking: 45 years ago, I read exactly the same words – they had been taken verbatim, in fact – in a Christian Catholic report that the pastor, who is a university professor, I believe, proclaimed to his audience in Bern! I just said to myself: How is it possible not to learn anything from contemporary history in the 45 years since I read those words as a child? And today we have the clearly written, blood-written words of the world war! And people believe that you can only repeat the same thing over and over again!

So, dear attendees, it is better to accept being less understood at first and to present what can serve the new era than to have to repeat the old over and over again. The question must be raised for all those who say: Keep your old religiosity, keep the old belief in God and the like. For all of them, it must be said: Well, you have had almost 2000 years of time after all, and have spent 2000 years trying to achieve something. How much have you actually achieved by opposing that which wants to serve the times? Remember that you would have had enough time! You have been given 2,000 years; now it is necessary that you recognize that something new must break through to mankind, which has been tried and tested and is suffering.

This must be said by someone who stands entirely on the point of view that he alone may cherish the hope, because he stands on the ground of true social thinking, that a new spiritual life will be established through this, a spiritual life that will truly bring people together again with a spiritually alive, not dead, to which the old traditions and the like have already become.

Of course, one can reproach socialism if one wants, for having so far taken little account of intellectual life. But let us wait and see. The intellectual life that can be heard today even from our universities cannot find any particular favor with those people who want something human: the intellectual life that will again give people - all people - the awareness that their [physical] human being is connected with inner necessity to the human being's soul and spirit. Let us wait and see whether it is not precisely the socialist-minded people who will be the next to turn to the actual spiritual life and no longer oppose it without understanding! And if one raises the question: One cannot say that one finds particular favor in today's bourgeois circles when one tries to bring them this school of thought - well, dear attendees, it is extremely difficult to talk about this question, for the reason that it seems necessary to the factually thinking person, and above all to me, to know: Whoever does it, it is essential that the right thing can be done! And when asked how some of the things that could develop out of this world war could be averted, I had to tell some people: It is not at all important to me to think that I am smarter than other people; rather, it is important to me to provide a stimulus for reality!

Do you, dear attendees, notice how what I have said differs from what many others say? People come and want to have programs. They have all kinds of desires, beautiful goals for the future, and the like, and they see these expressed in this or that word. Programs are as cheap as blackberries these days! Societies are founded, programs are written, and so on and so forth. But that is not the point. The important thing is to grasp reality.

I am convinced that if we can say: we must organize ourselves in a healthy social organism – and I see something healthy in the threefold social organism – then people will find what is good for them. I would even say that if they can only find the form, the structure of the social organism in which people can appropriately realize what must come for humanity. That is what I must always say to people. Perhaps no stone of what I have to say today will remain standing; that does not matter; what matters is that if things are approached in the way I mean, then something quite different may come of it, but is a matter of the suggestion to seriously do something in the realm of reality, something that has been thought out of the threefold social organism, out of life experience, not out of some dull theory or out of some selfish prejudice. That is what is important.

That is why my program is the one that calls on people, above all, to have the opportunity to realize this in a certain sense. What I have just expressed differs significantly from the usual programs. And that is why I believe that time will take its course, of course. And basically, what is being said so often today is not so very new. One of those who have inspired the most, Karl Marx, the socialist confessor, spoke the following words in the first half of the nineteenth century, when he was still young: Should all enlightenment and persuasion rebound off the stubbornness of the propertied class, then it is the most sacred duty of the proletariat, the fighters for the highest goods of humanity, to storm the bulwark of capitalism, justified before the court – [gap in the transcript]. So, you see, that is how people spoke in the first half of the 19th century. Marx appealed to the most influential circles for understanding and enlightenment for the propertied classes!

It cannot be said, dear attendees, that much of this has been fulfilled so far. But that is not the issue now. Rather, the issue is that at least the most necessary things must be done for the future. And so I think it is necessary, above all, to spread enlightenment to the widest circles; for it is out of enlightenment, out of social understanding, that something will come about that can never come about through force, whether it comes from above or from below. Through force, you can destroy a lot; but through that which can be brought into the world in a fruitful way, you can build. Therefore, I see something successful only if, within the proletariat in the broadest sense, efforts are made so that the individual, as far as possible, increasingly strives for social understanding. And then he can want to penetrate to the highest philosophical problems of life, strive to climb as many rungs of social conduct as possible: he will then be able to work fruitfully. First and foremost, we must imbue ourselves with social understanding! For it is the lack of social understanding that has brought about the present terrible situation. Therefore, I expect the proletariat, in particular, not to commit the mistake of lack of understanding, not to want to avoid enlightenment in social matters! Even if this or that particular measure should still be necessary, the best and most effective way forward is to continue along the path of enlightenment.

And in answer to the question, “Is it really so easy to put the threefold social order into practice when the hand is offered to do so?” the following should be said:

Dear attendees, I certainly said: You can start at any point – but I don't know what it means to “offer a hand”. Who should offer a hand? I think it is more important that, above all, minds are offered; the mind of each individual. And it is reckoned that now more and more people will be found who will thoroughly immerse themselves in all the consequences, in that which can improve the social structure of the social organism.

Then here is the remark: “The capitalist soul has no feeling for the proletarian soul,” an experience that, well, one can already have plenty of in the present day. Now, various necessary points have been raised today. Above all, because the time is already too far advanced, it is not possible to go into each one individually, and so I would just like to make a few comments on some of the points of view that have been put forward. Above all, it has been said that what I have said contradicts the Social Democratic program.

Ladies and gentlemen, whether or not such contradictions exist is not for me to decide, I believe, on the basis of what I have to say today; that will be decided only by the future.

Thus, I have touched on some of the points that seemed particularly important to me from this discussion.

However, it was also said that “we still lack intelligent people”. I think about the relationship between intelligence and true progress today in the following way. Allow me this historical comparison: Christianity, which has indeed had a great and significant influence on the development of humanity in the form in which it emerged almost 2,000 years ago, spread from Asia through the highly developed Greek world and the highly educated Roman world. There was the peak of intelligence, but it did not take root there! It took root among the people who came down from the north as a result of the mass migration, who were regarded by the Romans as barbarians and by the Greeks as unintelligent people. They had the fresh intelligence; they had the new, then young intelligence. The others had the old, faded, fruitless intelligence.

This is what we recognize again today as the basis of the main movement of contemporary history: we are living, so to speak, in a new mass migration. Those people who are considered intelligent today sometimes say something highly unintelligent. They talk about something that is not at all capable of moving the times forward. We are living in a mass migration of peoples, which is not moving horizontally, but from bottom to top - even if the expressions are meant symbolically, they can still be used for it. It is precisely those people who, with fresh intelligence, emerge from the circles from which the previous civilized outlook has arisen, that they break into. And even if it still has to be said many times today: In these souls there is an underlying understanding of what the future must bring. I believe in this fresh intelligence because it is healthy, not decadent. It is not in a downward spiral like the intelligence of the circles that often lead today.

I see a mass migration in the modern proletarian movement, a mass migration that is only moving in the opposite direction. And it will bring something into the world that will carry humanity upwards again for a long time.

This is what allows one to look into the future, what provides some clues. Even if today there is still inadequacy and unhealthiness everywhere, even in the most hopeful movements, we need not be pessimistic. Rather, it is something that makes one believe that, after all, on the part of those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from those who can feel what the old culture has done, that something will finally be brought from And you may have gathered from my remarks that I have no intention of further dividing people into estates or classes. In older times, a distinction was made between the teaching estate, the nourishing estate, and the military estate. That is not the issue. Precisely that which is separated from the human being in the institutions that we have, I would say, in the threefold social organism: Man is that which unites all three. And he will have his representation in a democratic state, or even stand in it, and he will have to stand in economic life and in spiritual life, and thus stand in the whole threefold social organism – standing out of this threefold nature. Man is that which unites the three separate areas. That is what I meant when I said: to make the human being free. And he will become free when we no longer swear by the abstract unified state.

Interjection: Yes, but there must be laws and courts for all three areas, for example?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, dear attendees, it must be, but the point is that if anything is to live properly in all three areas, it must be generated in one area. Just as the human head is a part of the whole organism and also needs air, it cannot breathe the air itself; the lungs must breathe the air. And the air is then conveyed to the whole organism.

(Regarding the question of milk for the whole family): The whole family needs milk; but it is not necessary that, if the whole is a unit, that is, that everyone gives milk, but rather the whole family will be properly provided with milk if the three members function properly. What matters is that, if all three areas are to be properly lived in, then the law is created in this one area and is fairly administered. What matters is that the right judgment is to be made. What matters is that economic life is structured in the right way, that legal life and spiritual life are also structured in the right way, in the way I have said.

It is precisely this that consistent, penetrating thinking, in harmony with nature, should finally take hold among people; only then will we be in a position to change anything.

Our old habits of thinking have basically brought us into today's situation. These old habits of thinking have basically brought about what we today perceive as pressure and oppression. What we need is to replace these habits of thinking, to replace the old thoughts with new ones! And I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that people will be found, even if today many are still quite hostile, as we have seen; they will recognize this threefold social organism as practical. And the great lesson will have to be learned from the misery of recent years, that those who thought they were practical were in fact the most impractical of all – that from a completely different direction, practice, true life practice, will have to come. And so I am pleased that I have been able to speak to you, to speak to younger people who have their hearts in the right place. It is something very gratifying when a person not only has a faith but also a certain strength in his heart. For it is from these strengths that unspent intelligence will be able to arise.

I would like to call out to everyone who thinks like many of you: Very well, even if some things may remain incomprehensible to some today – if your hearts are in the right place, the time will most certainly come when you will be able to understand what still had to remain somewhat incomprehensible to you today!

Dear attendees, I will soon be entering my sixth decade, have grown old in the meantime and have seen the social movement come of age for the most part. I know how much still needs to be overcome. But that is also why I have the opportunity to rejoice in what is happening today, especially among young people. And if young people hold fast to what can be expressed in words as “having one's heart in the right place,” then the time will come that must come, because otherwise all of humanity will end up in a terrible situation!

Let us believe in this time; because we must believe in it, because we cannot do otherwise if we really want to live properly, my dear attendees.

And today we can have a certain hope that things will come to pass that have not yet come to pass, simply because so much disaster has been wrought in recent years. Humanity must, if only as atonement, want this, must want to do something to ensure that things that could not be realized before are gradually resolved in a possible way. That is what I wanted to say in conclusion.

Many reasons have led us to consider how the age of intellectualism—which we have often also called the age of the fifth post-Atlantean culture—begins in the transition from the thirteenth to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In this age, human beings come to regard the intellect as the dominant factor in all their endeavours. We have often spoken of the way in which this intellectualism has come to develop in the various realms of inner life. Everything that is characteristic for human evolution has its more inward aspect through which it live:, more expressly in people's feelings, in their views, in their dominant will impulses, and so on. At the same time it also has an outward aspect which manifests in the conditions and circumstances which arise historically in human evolution. In this connection it has to be said that the most significant expression of the intellectualistic age so far has been the French Revolution, that great world-wide movement of the end of the eighteenth century.

For long ages before it took place, much in the life of mankind pointed to ways of striving for the very kind of social community which then came to be expressed so tumultuously in this French Revolution. And since then much has remained of the French Revolution, flickering into life here or there in one form or another in the external social conditions of mankind. Only consider that the French Revolution, in the way it manifested at the end of the eighteenth century, could not have been possible previously. For prior to those days human beings did not seek full satisfaction on this earth with regard to everything they were striving for.

You must understand that before the time of the French Revolution there was never a period in the history of mankind when people expected everything human beings can strive for, in thought, feeling and will, to find an external expression in earthly life. In the times which preceded the French Revolution, people knew that the earth can never provide for every single requirement of man's spirit, soul and body. Human beings always felt that they had links with the spiritual world and they expected this spiritual world to satisfy whatever requirements cannot be satisfied by the earthly world.

However, long before the French Revolution expressed itself in such a tumultuous fashion there were endeavours in many realms of the civilized world to introduce a social order which would allow as many human needs as possible to be satisfied here on earth. The fundamental character of the French Revolution itself was the endeavour to found a social environment which would be an expression here on earth of human thinking, feeling and willing. This is essentially what intellectualism seeks, too.

The realm of intellectualism is earthly existence. Intellectualism wants to satisfy everything that is present in the sense-perceptible physical world. So it wants to organize the social situation here on earth to be an expression of the intellectual element. The endeavour to create in social conditions something which man can strive for here on earth, even goes to the extent of the worship of the goddess of reason—which means, of course, the goddess of the intellect. So we can say: In very ancient times human beings ordered their lives according to the impulses which came to them from initiates and mystery pupils; through them they took into their social order the divine spiritual world itself. Then social conditions moved on to those of, let us say, Egypt, when the social order took in what the kings learnt from the priests about the will of human evolution as it was expressed, for instance, in the stars. Later still, in older Roman times, the times of the Roman kings, the endeavour was made to bring about social conditions based on research into the spiritual world. The meeting of Numa Pompilius with the nymph Egeria is an expression of this.¹ More and more out of this interweaving of the spiritual with the earthly, social realm came the requirement: Everything on earth is to be arranged in such a way as to be a direct expression of the intellect.

To express this in a diagram you would have to draw a downward curve. The French Revolution comes at the lowest point (see sketch), and from here onwards things had to start moving upwards once more. This upward movement was indeed immediately attempted as a reaction to the French Revolution. Read Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Aesthetical Essays). There we can see quite clearly, for instance, how he was stimulated by what was expressed in the French Revolution in an external way to seek a new connection to the spiritual world within man's inner being. For Schiller the question arose: If it is impossible to create a perfect social order here on earth, how can human beings achieve satisfaction with regard to their thinking, feeling and will? How can they achieve freedom here on this earth?

And Schiller answered this question by saying: If human beings live logically, in accordance with the dictates of reason, they are servants of the dictates of reason and not free beings. If they follow their physical urges and instincts alone, then in turn they are following the dictates of nature and are unfree. He then came to say: The human being is actually only free when he is working artistically or when he is enjoying something artistic. The achievement of freedom in the world can only come about when the human being works artistically or enjoys art. Artistic activity balances what is otherwise either a dictate of reason or a dictate of nature, as Schiller puts it. Living in the artistic realm, the human being feels the compulsion of thoughts less with regard to an artistic object than he does in the case of logical research. Similarly, what comes to him from the object of art through his senses is not a sensual urge. The sensual urge is ennobled by the spiritual seeing of something artistic. So inasmuch as a human being is capable of working artistically he is also capable of unfolding freedom within earthly existence.

Schiller seeks to answer the question: How can man as a social being achieve freedom? And the conclusion he reaches is that the human being can only achieve freedom if he is a being who is receptive to art. He cannot achieve freedom by being devoted to the dictates of reason or the dictates of nature.

At the time when Schiller was writing his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Aesthetical Essays) this came to expression in a wonderful way in the interaction between Goethe and Schiller. This is shown in the way Schiller perceived how Goethe was rewriting his Wilhelm Meister at that time. Schiller was full of enthusiasm for this way of writing and for this depiction of inner freedom, because Goethe as an artist was a creative spirit—not in his intellect but in the freedom of his thoughts—yet one who, on the other hand, still remained within a sensual experience of art. Schiller sensed this. He felt that Goethe in his artistic activity was as free as is a child at play. We see how Schiller is enthused by a free human artistic activity which is reminiscent of a child at play. His enthusiasm led him to say in one of his letters to Goethe: The artist is the true human being; in comparison even the best philosopher is a mere caricature.² But his enthusiasm also led him to say: The human being is only truly human when he is at play, and he only plays when he is truly human.³ Frivolous or merely entertaining play is not meant, but artistic activity and artistic enjoyment. The human being dwells within artistic experience, which means that the human being becomes truly free: This is what Schiller is saying.

At the point where the line starts to curve upwards from what had been—with regard to a social order—the goal of the French Revolution, towards something for which human beings have to wrestle inwardly and which cannot be given to them by institutions of the state; at this point, what price was the human being willing to pay for this social freedom? He was prepared to pay the price that it could not be given to him through logical thinking and that it could not be given to him through ordinary physical life, but that he could receive it only in the exclusive activity of artistic experience.

These feelings were indeed engraved within the best spirits of that age, in Schiller in a theoretical form, and in Goethe too, who actually practised this life in freedom. Let us look at the characters Goethe created out of life itself in order to reveal genuine humanity, the true human being. Look at Wilhelm Meister. Wilhelm Meister is a personality through whom Goethe wanted to depict the true human being. Yet seen from an overall view of life he is actually a layabout. He is not a person who is seriously searching for a world view which includes the human soul. Neither is he someone who can manage to hold down a job in external life. He loiters his way through life. This is because the ideal of freedom striven for in the work of Goethe and Schiller could only be achieved by people who had removed themselves from a thoughtful and hard-working way of life. It is almost as if Schiller and Goethe had wanted to point to the illusion of the French Revolution, to the illusory belief that something external, like the state, might make human beings free. They wanted to point out that human beings can only wrestle for this freedom within themselves.

Herein lies the great contrast between Central Europe and Latin western Europe. Latin western Europe believed in an absolute sense in the power of the state, and it still believes in it today. In Central Europe, on the other hand, came the reaction that the human ideal can only be found within. But the price for this would have to be the inability to stand squarely in life. Someone like Wilhelm Meister had to disentangle himself from life.

So we see that at the first attempt it proved impossible to find full humanity within a true human being. Naturally, if everybody is to become an artist so that, as Schiller put it, society can become entirely aesthetic, this may be all very well, but such an aesthetic society would not be very good at coping with life. I cannot imagine, for instance—let me be really down to earth for a moment—how in such an aesthetic society the sewers will be kept clear. Neither can I imagine how in this aesthetic society certain things will be achieved which ought to be achieved in accordance with strictly logical concepts. The ideal of freedom shone before mankind, but human beings were unable to strive for this ideal of freedom when they stood fully within life. It became necessary to search once more for an impetus upwards to the super-sensible world, but now this had to be done consciously, just as in former times there had been an atavistic downward impetus. A new upward impetus into the spiritual world had to be sought. It was necessary to hold on to the ideal of freedom but, at the same time, the upward impetus had to be sought. First it had to be made possible to secure freedom for human activity, for active involvement in life. It seemed to me that the only possible way was that described in my Philosophy of Freedom.⁴

If human beings can achieve the impetus to rise up to an inner constitution of soul which enables them to find moral impulses in pure thoughts, in the way I have just described, then they will be free beings even though they remain squarely within full, everyday life. This is why I had to introduce into my Philosophy of Freedom the concept of moral tact, which is otherwise not found in moralizing sermons, the concept of acting as a matter of course out of moral tact, by means of which moral impulses can flow over into habitual deeds.

Consider the role played by tact, by moral good taste, in my Philosophy of Freedom. There you see that in an aesthetic society true human freedom is only applied to the feelings, whereas it actually ought to be brought also into the will, that is, into every aspect of the human being. A human being who has achieved a soul constitution in which pure thoughts can live in his will as moral impulses, can enter fully into life, however burdensome it may be, and he will be able to stand in this life as a free being in so far as this life calls for actions, deeds.

Furthermore, with regard to the dictates of reasoning, that is, the grasping of the world in thoughts, a way also had to be sought of finding what it is that guarantees freedom for the human being, independence from external compulsions. This could only come about through anthroposophical spiritual science. Learning to find their way into what can be experienced in spirit with regard to cosmic mysteries and cosmic secrets, human beings live in thoughts with their humanness into a closeness with the inner spirit of the world. Through freedom they achieve knowledge of the spirit.

What is going on here is best demonstrated by the way in which people, with regard to this, are still strenuously resisting becoming free. This is a point of view from which opposition to Anthroposophy can very well be understood. Human beings do not want freedom in the spiritual realm. They want to be compelled, led, guided by something. And since every individual is free either to recognize or deny the spirit, most deny it and choose instead something which they are not free either to recognize or deny.

No free decision is required to recognize or deny thunder and lightning, or the combination of oxygen or hydrogen in some laboratory process. But human beings are free to recognize that angeloi and archangeloi exist. Or they can deny their existence. But those who truly possess an impulse for freedom come through this very impulse for freedom to the recognition of the spiritual in thinking. In Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Aesthetical Essays), in the whole of Goethe's creative work, the achievement of human freedom through inner effort and struggle was first attempted. But this can only be achieved if we recognize that to our freedom in the realm of artistic experience must be added a free experience in the realm of thinking and a free experience in the realm of the will. These are things which must be properly developed.

Schiller simply took what the age of the intellect had to offer. In Schiller's time art still arose out of this intellectualism. Within this, Schiller still discovered human freedom. But what intellectualism has to offer in the realm of thinking is something unfree, something which is subject to the dictates of logic. And Schiller failed to recognize the possibility that freedom might also hold sway here, just as little as it might hold sway in deeds, in ordinary, hard life. What we have had to achieve through the introduction of anthroposophical spiritual science is the recognition that freedom can also be recognized in the realm of thinking and in the realm of the will. Schiller and Goethe recognized freedom solely in the realm of feeling.

But the path to a full recognition of human freedom can only be trodden if human beings are able to achieve an inner vision of the connection between the spiritual realm they can experience in their soul, and the realm of nature. So long as two abstract concepts, nature and spirit, are seen by human beings as being mutually exclusive, it will not be possible for them to progress to a proper conception of the freedom I have been describing. But even those who do not work their way towards life in the spiritual world, by means of meditation, concentration exercises and so on, can certainly experience something, if they are willing to recognize, simply with their healthy commonsense, what has been found through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. Simply by reading in books or hearing in lectures what is brought to the fore in the world through Imagination—and provided they remain alert—people will soon need to approach these revelations from the spiritual world in a way that differs from their approach, say, to a book on physics or chemistry, or on botany or zoology, even though this different approach can just as much take a course which follows ordinary healthy common sense.

Without developing any great inner activity it is possible to absorb everything written today in a book about botany or zoology. But it is not possible to absorb what I have described, for instance, in my book Occult Science, without inner energy and activity such as that needed also for ordinary healthy common sense. Everything in this book can be understood, and those who maintain that it is incomprehensible are simply unwilling to think actively; they want to absorb it as passively as they absorb a film in the cinema. In the cinema there is certainly no need to think very much, and it is in this manner that people today want to absorb everything. What they find in the laboratory can also be absorbed in this way. But what is said in my book Occult Science cannot by absorbed in this way. Occasionally some professorial souls do attempt to absorb it in this way. In consequence, they then make the suggestion that those who perceive such things ought to be examined in psychological laboratories, as they are called today. This suggestion is just as clever as requiring someone who solves mathematical problems to be examined in order to ascertain whether he is capable of solving mathematical problems. To such a person it is said: If you want to find out whether these mathematical problems have been solved correctly, you will have to learn how to solve them, and then you will be able to check. Only if he were stupid would he retort: No, I don't want to learn how to check on the solutions; I shall go to a psychological laboratory in order to find out whether they are correct! These are the kinds of demands made today by some professorial souls, and their words are taken up by all sorts of ‘generals’⁵ and repeated parrot-fashion with evil intent. Such demands are foolish and stupid, but this does not prevent them from being made with the greatest aplomb.

But those who enter with inner activity into what comes from Imagination will certainly find that something bears fruit in their soul. It is not insignificant for the soul when an effort is made to understand something that has been discovered through Imagination. For instance, it is extremely difficult today to make medicines effective for the treatment of illnesses. But someone who has made the effort to understand something given through Imagination will have reactivated his vital forces to such an extent that medicines will once more be effective for him—provided they are the right ones—because his organism will no longer reject them.

It is stupidly suggested nowadays that anthroposophical medicines are supposed to heal people spiritually through hypnosis and the power of suggestion. You can read this in all manner of magazines which refer to remarks I have made on my lecture tours in recent months. But this is, in the first instance, not the point. The point is that today's medical knowledge needs to be advanced positively through spiritual knowledge. Of course it is not possible to heal somebody by inoculating him with an idea. Yet spiritual life, taken quite concretely, does have significance for the effectiveness of medicines. If a person endeavours to understand something given through Imagination, he makes his organism more receptive to medicines—provided they are the ones needed for his illness—than is the organism of a person who remains in the thought structure of today's external intellectualism, that is, of today's materialism.

Mankind needs to take in what can be given by Imagination, if only for the reason that the human physical body will otherwise succumb more and more to a condition in which it cannot be healed if it falls ill. Healing always requires assistance from the element of spirit and soul. All the processes of nature find expression not only in what takes place on the sense-perceptible plane. These processes on the physical plane are everywhere steeped in the element of spirit and soul. To make a sense-perceptible substance effective in the human organism you need the element of soul and spirit. The whole process of human evolution requires that the soul make-up of human beings should once more be filled with what can be grasped by soul and spirit.

It is true to say that amongst human beings there is certainly much longing for soul and spirit. But for the most part this longing remains within the unconscious or the subconscious realm. Meanwhile, what remains within human consciousness is no more than a mere remnant of intellectualism, and this rejects—indeed resists—anything spiritual. The manner in which spiritual things are resisted is sometimes quite grotesque. Before a performance of eurythmy I usually explain that eurythmy is based on an actual, visible language. Just as the language of sounds develops out of the way the physical organism is arranged, so it is with the visible language that is eurythmy. Just as—sound for sound—all vowels, all consonants struggle to be born out of the experience of the human organism, so in eurythmy is sound for sound gathered together, resulting in genuine language. You would think that on being introduced to eurythmy people might endeavour to find their way into the fundamental impulse which tells us that eurythmy is a language, is speech.

Of course it is perhaps not immediately obvious as to what is meant. But with serious intent it is not too difficult to find one's way quite quickly into what is meant. The other day someone read something really funny in a review of a eurythmy performance. The critic pointed out that the impossible nature of this eurythmy performance was revealed in the fact that the performers first gave a rendering of some earnest, serious items, and that they followed these with some humorous pieces. The extraordinary thing, said this witty critic, was that the humorous items were depicted with the same gestures as the serious ones. That is the extent to which he understood the matter. He thought that humorous things ought to be shown with sound gestures that are different from those used to depict serious matters. Now if you take seriously the fact that eurythmy is a visible language, then what this critic says would amount to saying that any language ought to have one set of sounds for serious things and another for humorous things! In other words, somebody reciting something in German or French would use sounds such as I or U, or whatever, but that on coming to a humorous item they would use other sounds. I don't know how many people noticed what utter nonsense this critic was writing in one of Germany's foremost newspapers; but this is what he was saying in reality. This shows that in such heads every capacity for thinking clearly has ceased; they are entirely unable to think any more.

This is the final consequence of intellectualism, which is gaining ground today in all realms of life. People begin by allowing their thoughts to become the dead inner content of their soul. How rigid, how dead are most thoughts which are produced these days; how little inner mobility they have, how much are they parroted from models created earlier on! There are extraordinarily few original thoughts in our present age. But something that has died—and thoughts today are mostly thoughts that have died—does not remain constantly in the same state. Look at a corpse after three days, after five years or after forty years. It goes on dying, it goes on decomposing. If somebody states that a eurythmy performance is impossible because it uses the same gestures for humorous and for serious items, this is a thought that is decomposing. And if this is not noticed it is simply because people are incapable of schooling their common sense by means of inspired truths such as those arising out of Anthroposophy. If people school their common sense by means of inspired truths, even if they do not undertake any spiritual development, then they acquire a delicate sense for the living truth, and for what is healthy and unhealthy in human thinking and in human endeavour. And then—if you will pardon my saying so—statements such as the one I have just quoted begin to stink. People acquire the capacity to smell the stench of such decomposing thoughts. This capacity, this sense of smell, is for the most part lacking amongst our contemporaries. Most of them do not notice these things, they read them without taking them in.

It is certainly necessary to look very thoroughly into what mankind needs. For human beings definitely need that freedom of thinking in their soul constitution which can only become possible if they raise themselves to a position in which they can take in spiritual truths. Without this we come to that decline of culture which is clearly to be seen all around us today. Healthy judgment, the right immediate impression—these are things which mankind has for the most part already lost. They must not be allowed to get lost, but only if human beings can press through to an acceptance of spiritual things will they not be lost.

We must pay attention to the fact that human beings can find in Anthroposophy a meaningful content for their lives if they turn with their healthy common sense to what can be won through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. By opening themselves to what can be discovered, for example, through Imagination, they can recapture that inner vitality which will make them receptive to medicines. Or, it may be that they will also become free personalities who are not prone to succumb to all sorts of public suggestions.

By entering in a living way into the truths revealed by Inspiration, they can gain a sure sense for what is true or false. And they can become skilful in putting this sure sense into practice in the social sphere. For instance, how few people today are able to listen properly! They are incapable of listening, for they react immediately with their own opinion. This capacity to listen to other human beings can be developed most beautifully by entering in a living way into the truths given by Inspiration.

And by entering in a living way into the truths given by Intuition, human beings can develop to a high degree something else which they need in their lives: a certain capacity to let go of their own selves, a kind of selflessness. Entering in a living way into the truths given by Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, this gives human beings a meaningful content for their lives.

Of course, it is easier to say that people can gain a content for their lives out of what Ralph Waldo Trine⁶ promises. It is easier to say they need only read the content of something in order to gain a content for their lives, whereas it is more difficult to obtain a content for life in an anthroposophical way. For along this path you have to work; you have to work in order to enter in a living way into what research reveals through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. But then it becomes a content for life which unites intensely with the personality and with the whole human being. This secure life content is what is given by what wishes to enter the world as Anthroposophy.

• 1 . Numa Pompilius, 715-672 BC. Roman King. By tradition, the nymph Egeria was his wife and adviser.
• 2 . Letter to Goethe of 7 January 1795.
• 3 . Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letter 15.
• 4 . Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1988.
• 5 . This is a reference to speeches given by General von Gleich.
• 6 . Ralph Waldo Trine, 1866-1958. In Tune with the Infinite, London 1915.

Human existence is at a number of different levels of consciousness today. The ordinary state is the one in which we are from waking up to going to sleep. In this state we perceive things through the senses and develop ideas based on our sensory perceptions. The physical world exists for us because of this, and our powers of soul, our thinking, feeling, will intent and actions relate to this world.

Two other states of consciousness regularly take the place of the one above—dream-filled sleep and deep, dreamless sleep. These are often referred to as ‘unconscious’, but the term masks the true situation. In reality they are merely different kinds of consciousness. We might call them dimmer forms of consciousness.

Dream-filled sleep does not present objects, the way waking daytime consciousness does, but images which arise in the soul and pass away again. In the light of our ordinary consciousness, these images may seem highly confusing, yet if we gain clarity about their essential nature they can take us more deeply into the nature of the world. The way they present themselves in the soul’s night-time life cannot provide a proper basis for perceptive insight into them. This only arises for someone who develops his higher powers of insight, as described in this book,¹ which will give him insight into the worlds that lie beyond the one perceived by the senses. In this chapter, a description will be given of the true facts relating to those higher worlds. Anyone who follows the way that leads to insight into these regions will then also find these facts to be true.

The first thing to strike one when it comes to the world of dreams is the allegorical character of its images. This can emerge clearly if we pay reasonably subtle attention to the colourful richness and variety of dream events. This world, which passes fleetingly through the soul, offers all intermediate stages from simple allegory to dramatic event. You dream of a conflagration; you wake up and find that you had gone to sleep by the lamp. The light of the lamp was perceived in your dream, not the way it appears to the senses in the ordinary world but as an allegorical conflagration. Or you dream that you hear a group of horsemen ride past. You wake up, and the sound of the horses’ hooves merges into the striking of the clock which has thus found an allegorical form. You dream of an animal scratching the side of your face. You wake up and find that you feel pain in that area; this pain had found its own allegory in your dream. A longer dream might be something like this. Someone dreams he is walking through woods. He hears a sound. As he moves on, someone emerges from some bushes and attacks him. A struggle ensues and the attacker shoots. At that moment the dreamer wakes up and finds that he has just knocked over the chair beside his bed. The chair hitting the floor had been transformed into the allegorical action in his dream consciousness. External events or also internal ones, as in the example of the scratching animal, may be perceived as allegories through the dream. Affects and moods may also take this form. Thus someone may have an oppressive feeling that something unpleasant is going to happen during the next few days. In his dream the feeling comes to expression in that he finds himself in danger of drowning.

The above examples characterize two qualities of dream-level consciousness—an image nature and something creative within this. Our daytime consciousness does not have this creative quality. It presents the objects that surround us the way they are in the physical world outside. Consciousness at dream level adds something which comes from a different source.

What causes this source to open up? Nothing else but that the function of the senses, on which daytime consciousness depends, has ceased in sleep. It has fallen silent, which is evident from the fact that the human being no longer has self awareness. This self-awareness is bound up with the function of the physical senses; when these fall silent, it goes down into an abyss. In the science of the spirit we refer to this by saying that the human soul has withdrawn from the physical world. Unless you want to insist that human beings cease to exist on going to sleep and are recreated on waking up, you will not find it difficult to realize that in their sleep human beings exist in a world which is not the physical world. This world is called the astral world. For the moment readers may take this term to be a name for the world of which human beings get something of an idea through their dreams. Other chapters in this book will give the term its full justification.²

In their dreams, human beings are in the astral world. The realities and entities of this world appear in images. The conscious mind perceives these images; but human beings have no self-awareness. An analogy from everyday life can give an idea of what the situation is. Human beings only perceive the world around them in so far as they have the organs for doing so. If they had no ears there’d be no world of sound for them, nor a world of light and colour without eyes, and so on. If human beings were to develop a new organ in their bodies, something completely new would also appear in their environment, just as light and colour appear as something completely new for someone who was born blind and has had an operation.

Just as the human physical body perceives the physical world through its organs, so does another body—a soul body—perceive the other, astral world through its own organs when we dream. It is merely that there is no self-awareness with this body. self-awareness is outside the human sphere when we are in this state.

If it were impossible for human self-awareness to arise in this state as well, we would never be able to see through the conditions which pertain here. It is however possible with the higher training, also called initiation, which has been mentioned above and is described in this book. With it we learn to develop organs in the astral body when we are in the dream state, and these are similar to the organs our physical body has for the perception of the physical world. Once these organs have developed, a self-awareness arises during the dream which is similar to the self-awareness we have in our waking life. Once this level of existence is reached the whole world of our dreams will also change to a considerable degree. It will lose the confusing richness of variety which it has in the ordinary sleeper, with an inner order and harmony taking its place which is not just the equal of our ordinary physical world but goes well beyond it with regard to these qualities. Human beings then realize that another world has always existed around them, just as the world of light and colour exists around someone who is blind. They merely were not able to see it because they did not have the organs for it, just as a blind person cannot see the world of light and colour before his operation. The significant moment when the astral organs of perception begin to function in a person is called the ‘awakening’ or ‘rebirth’ in occult science.

At this moment of awakening the individual finds himself surrounded by a higher world where things he knew before in the world of the senses have different qualities and, what is more, facts and entities exist that were unknown to him before. He will now also realize that this other world holds the images out of which the objects in the world perceived through the senses take form. It is not a bad idea to compare the way in which the physical world arises from the astral world with the way ice forms in water. Just as ice is transformed water, so the physical world is transformed astral world. And just as water is always in a state of flux, so we have the astral world as a constantly changing world of images which lies behind the physical world. The astral forms do not have the firm definition and contours we know in the ordinary world. Everything is in flux and changing. And a physical object or entity only arises as if such a flowing image were to be frozen, in a way, for a moment. Anyone wanting to apply the ideas of the physical world with its clearly defined outlines to the astral region would merely show that he does not have real insight into this world, which is of a completely different kind.

Just as the entities of the physical world are embodied in a physical body, so are the astral images a reflection of entities which do not enter into the physical world. They come to expression in a different kind of matter than does the human being living in the physical world and coming to expression in flesh and blood.

What is the nature of this astral matter? It is indeed a form of matter which human beings also have in them. It is merely that in waking everyday life it is covered over, as it were, by ideas based on the world of the senses. Human desires, wishes and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies relate to the things perceived through the senses. People desire one object and reject another. It is nowhere else but in these desires, wishes and dislikes that the source must be sought on which the state of consciousness we have in our dreams also draws when objects are transformed into allegories. The self-awareness we have by day gives our desires and wishes the nourishment they require, taking it from perceptions gained in the outside world. If the activities of the outer senses fall silent, a different, creative power comes into play and creates the images from material consisting of wishes and desires. In occult science it is said that the dreaming human being is in an astral body woven of wishes and desires and that the physical body is then without self awareness. As to initiates, or those who have been awakened, they, too, have left their physical bodies, but their self-awareness resides in their astral bodies. Just as the physical body is able to convey perception of physical things because its organs are made of the same material as the physical world, so is the initiate able to perceive the entities of the astral world because he has organs made of the material of the wishes and desires in which those entities come to expression.

The difference between non-initiates and initiates is that the astral world does not become visible to the former as an outside world, whilst it does so for the latter. This astral world remains mere inner world for those who are not awakened; they live it in their wishes and desires; but they do not see them. The initiate does not merely feel a wish; he perceives it as an object in the outside world, just as someone who is not awakened perceives tables and chairs.

The ordinary world of dreams is, however, only a faint echo of the world perceived by the initiate. This is inevitable, as there is no self-awareness involved. Yet where is our self-awareness during a dream? It has withdrawn to a higher world where initially the human being does not exist as such. Our relationship to that world may be shown in an analogy. Think of a human hand and a tool held in that hand. For as long as the hand is holding the tool the two are a whole, as it were. The latter does what the former decides. However, as soon as the hand puts the tool aside, this is left to itself; the movements of the hand merely express the will of the individual to whom the hand belongs. The physical body in daytime waking life should thus be seen as the tool of a limb belonging to a higher spiritual entity. If this extends a limb, as it were, into the physical body, sensory functions and hence self-awareness arise in that body. self-awareness ceases when the limb leaves the body. The inmost essential spirit of the human being, which is capable of self-awareness, is thus a part of a higher spirit which is extended, as it were, for periods of time and clothed in the physical body. We can get an even better idea of this if we consider the extension to go hand in hand with a tying-off process, as if a drop were to separate out from the higher spirit in our waking hours which is then absorbed again during sleep. In their waking hours, human beings are not aware of their connection with a higher spirit; they are thus truly cut off from it. During sleep, they have to be without self-awareness, for it then withdraws into the higher spirit; this absorbs it, and it rests within it.

The world of images vanishes in dreamless sleep. The physical body then seems to be lying there wholly without conscious awareness; in reality, however, its state of conscious awareness is merely one that is dimmer than the one it had in dream-filled sleep. The power to produce images has also left the physical body. Because of this, only the insights gained by individuals who have been awakened can provide insight into this state. Those who have not been awakened lack perceptions of it. For someone who has been awakened, however, the image-producing body, which before this was still loosely connected with the physical body, shows itself to have been lifted out of it. And it is not inactive now but serves to restore the energies of the physical body, which show themselves to have been exhausted when we are tired, doing so to the required level. This explains the refreshing effect of sound sleep. Tired, the physical body falls asleep. At this moment it hands its self awareness over to higher spirits. In the in-between state of dream-filled sleep the soul is still loosely connected with the physical body. The characteristic aspect of this soul is its creative nature. From the moment of waking up, it begins to use its creative powers to make perceptions mediated through the senses part of our inner life. On falling asleep, there are no more sensory perceptions of the outside world. In the in-between state of dreaming the creative element is still active, transforming itself into the allegorical images I have described; then the allegorical images also cease to develop; the soul turns the whole of its creative power to the body, on which it now works from the outside.

Anyone wishing to set the insights presented in occult science aside, would have to realize the nature of the soul’s night-time activity simply from the fact that we feel refreshed when we wake up in the mornings. Daytime life has inharmonious, chaotic qualities. Things from the physical surroundings influence human beings from all sides. First one thing enters into their inner life and then another. This brings the inner creative powers out of the order which is theirs by nature. Order and balance is restored during the night. The soul restores order and harmony. With the life we live by day the physical body gradually comes to look like a body of air with wind currents passing through it from all sides, with different parts of that body of air showing irregular relative movements. On waking up, the physical body may be compared to a body of air set in regular oscillation by the rhythm and harmony of a piece of music. And initiates do indeed perceive the work the soul does on the body during sleep as though it were a penetration with sound. In their sleep, human beings enter into the harmony of the inner life. This is the very harmony out of which they were created. Before the physical body first opened up to the outside world through its sense organs, it was wholly under the influence of this harmony which differentiated it. This is the harmony of soul, the music of the soul, which passes through the whole world. Human beings are surrounded by its sounds just as they are surrounded by the images of which I spoke earlier. This image world is the perceived real environment for those who achieve awakening through inner training, and at an every higher level this is also true for this third world. Sounds begin to arise around them. And in these sounds, the meaning of the world becomes apparent to them. Just as the form of the physical world has arisen from the images, so were these forms given their inner meaning and nature out of the sounds I have described. From this point of view all things are sound become form.

When awake, therefore, the human being is made up of three bodies:

1. the physical body, which perceives the physical world through organs implanted in it from the outside world and which encompasses self-awareness;

2. a body which has an inwardly mobile image character; its images are at the same time the archetypes of the physical body, the firmly defined forms of which have arisen, as it were, by becoming still and frozen out of the continually changing images of the second body;

3. both the physical body and the image body are filled with a harmony of sound, which is a third body. In dream-filled sleep the soul withdraws from the physical body; it remains connected with the other two bodies, sounding throughout the sound body and filling the image body with images. The latter influence the physical body and impart to it dream images that are like shades. In dreamless sleep the soul is connected only with the sound body; the part of it which was in the physical body during waking hours is now outside it and works on it from the outside. This activity which flows from the soul to the physical body produces a level of consciousness which is so dim that the human being does not perceive it.

These in fact are three states of consciousness for the physical body—daytime waking consciousness, the dream state and the dreamless sleep state. The dimness of the last two clears for the initiate; thanks to this he lives in higher worlds just as the unawakened live in the physical world around them in daytime waking life. This gives us five states of consciousness, and in progressive order of clarity they may be listed as follows:

1. the dreamless sleep state
2. the dream-filled sleep state
3. daytime waking consciousness
4. the initiate’s image level of conscious awareness
5. the initiate’s level of conscious awareness in sound

If we consider that initiates reach the last two levels as a stage of higher human development with their training in occult science, we realize that daytime waking consciousness is a level which is higher than the two which lie below it and has therefore developed from them. This is taught in occult science. There we learn that in a far distant past the human being went through a stage of evolution where he had only a dim sleep level of consciousness without any dream images; he then rose to a dim state of dream-filled consciousness before he finally arrived at the daytime waking consciousness he has today. Someone preparing for initiation takes this line of evolution further. He develops the two higher forms of conscious awareness.

There is an even higher level of conscious awareness which an initiate may reach. It is evident from the above that at the level of awareness of sound the soul is still connected with the human body. This connection may, however, cease altogether. The soul can leave the body altogether. An initiate learns to do this. If he still wants to perceive something at that point he must have developed organs of a still higher kind. When that is the case, the meaning of the world comes to direct expression in his environment, without sound to mediate it. This level of awareness, which for the time being we’ll call the highest, is called spiritual awareness, or consciousness in pure spirit. If we go back to the list above, this level would have to correspond to a state for the human being where consciousness is even duller than in dreamless sleep. This is in fact the case, in general terms. Human beings of the present age are not yet able to live out this state in reality. The soul would have to be completely out of the body; a wholly soulless state would have to interrupt dreamless sleep. This would in fact mean that the physical body was completely given over to itself, that is, temporarily dead. This is something to which the physical body must not be exposed lest it run the risk of being no longer capable of receiving the soul into itself.

In evolution, however, this state did indeed precede the level of dreamless sleep consciousness. The complete sequence of human levels of consciousness is thus the following:

1. a low level of consciousness, the dimmest of all
2. the dreamless sleep state
3. the dream-filled sleep state
4. daytime waking consciousness
5. the initiate’s image level of conscious awareness
6. the initiate’s level of conscious awareness in sound
7. spiritual awareness

At the present time, the living human body has only advanced to the fourth level. Initiates can reach the higher kinds of consciousness. These also take them into higher worlds. Human evolution should be thought of, however, as the physical body itself evolving in the first three stages, having now reached a level where it still shows two other forms of conscious awareness in sleep which are remnants of earlier stages. The first stage has become completely obscured in the course of evolution. The three higher stages for initiates cannot yet come to expression in the physical body at the present time because it cannot develop organs for it. They are prophetic advance evidence of forms which the physical body will assume in future.

If we take the above as our basis for getting a real picture of the world as it is today, it is seen to be fourfold—firstly the physical world perceived by the physical senses, then a world of images which surrounds and penetrates this, furthermore a world of sound which is present in every part of those other two, and finally a spiritual world which lies behind it all.

This world was preceded by one in which man lived as in a dream. At that time the condition of his physical body was like the one in which he finds himself in his dream-filled sleep today. His surroundings were like a panorama of shifting images. Nothing was clearly outlined. This condition was at the time interrupted by another which is like our dreamless sleep today, and this in turn gave way to one which can no longer be realized today and was filled with the level of conscious awareness given as the first in the list above.

In a world that existed even earlier, man could not rise to living experience of dream images. The highest level of consciousness was that of dreamless sleep. This condition was interrupted by the lower and most dim consciousness which today has already become obscured; this in turn by a condition which has lost all significance where present-day evolution is concerned.

In the first world of which we hear in occult science, man also did not have the dull consciousness of sleep; the first of the states described above was then the highest; two others which do not come into consideration today, alternated with it.

Thus we look back to evolution in a far distant past; we perceive four stages which the human physical body has gone through. We also look into the future, when the three levels of higher consciousness which today can be reached by initiates will come to realization in the physical world. Our world will yield to a future world where human physical bodies will have organs by which a human being will be able to perceive an forever shifting world of images whilst also having self awareness, and will indeed see himself as such a world. Beyond this we perceive a world where the images will be filled with harmonious sounds expressing their inner nature. Finally we perceive a world that is spiritual by nature but will have poured its spirit out into physical nature.

This is how the evolution of the world is presented in occult science, a world in which humanity goes through its consecutive stages.³ These stages are given names which have also been applied to the planets which surround the world.⁴ The stage of development where man was still at the dimmest level of consciousness is called Saturn evolution; the second stage, when man lived in a dreamless sleep level of consciousness, Sun evolution; the third, when the dream level of consciousness arose, the Moon stage; the fourth, which is the present one, with man having fought his way through to clear daytime conscious awareness, Earth evolution. And the stages for the future, when the levels of higher consciousness which initiates are able to reach now will come to physical expression, are consecutively called Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolution.

The distinction between the levels of consciousness initiates have and those which humanity will have during those future Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions lies in the fact that the former must rise to higher worlds in order to live in those states of conscious awareness, whilst future humanity will have them in the physical world. This is because in the case of present-day initiates appropriate organs of perception are created out of the powers of those higher worlds; in future, organs which will be their equal will arise for physical bodies out of the physical environment. The human being can perceive the world around him which provides the material for his organs. In future the physical environment will have creative powers which at present belong only to the higher worlds. We can therefore see the evolution of the world to be such that higher and higher worlds are physically embodied in succession. The Earth is the fourth embodiment. Its physical differentiation is such that it is able to impress the organs for clear daytime consciousness in the organism. In the terms of occult science it evolved from a different physical state where it was only able to impress organs for dream-level consciousness in the body. This state is given the name ‘Moon’. The Earth thus developed out of this Moon by acquiring a new faculty, and that is to develop the organs for daytime waking consciousness. The ‘Moon’ had arisen from the ‘Sun’. What has now become ‘Earth’ was therefore ‘Sun’ at that time. In occult science the term ‘Sun state’ is used for the state where the cosmic body which is in that state is able to create only the organs for dreamless sleep consciousness in a human body. And before the Earth was ‘Sun’ in this sense, it was at the ‘Saturn stage’.

What gives such a cosmic body the power to create the requisite organs in the human body? It would never be able to do this if it were not that these organs were first created in human beings who were ahead of their time with regard to higher worlds. By developing Jupiter organs in advance, today’s initiates are creating the possibility for the image world around us to assume physical character. Images become rigid and assume physical bodily nature because the forms they will assume exist first of all in the spirit. Initiates thus come to reshape the cosmic body on which they dwell. The creative powers which later on will call the objects of humanity’s physical surroundings into existence shine out from them, as it were.

This is how the initiates of the Moon stage created the physical form of the Earth in the spirit before it became physical earth. They perceived the Earth as their object of a higher world.

In occult science, seven great world cycles or periods are known through which the entity is going which at its fourth level is Earth. Each period has to do with a higher development of the human body. From this insight, occult scientists see 'four-foldness’ as something which characterizes the present stage of world evolution.⁵ This refers, for instance, to the ‘four elements’ known to Pythagoras and his school. Four is the number of the ‘macrocosm’, that is, the world which humanity presently inhabits. This has raised humanity to the fourth level of conscious awareness.

The human being is seen as ‘microcosm’ in relation to this ‘macrocosm’ in occult science. His soul already holds the potential for the future physical ‘macrocosm’. He is therefore in the process of expanding his inner ‘microcosm’ into ‘macrocosm’. The creative womb for the latter lies in him. From this point of view, the soul is seen in occult science as a creative seed for the future, an ‘inner’ principle which seeks to come to realization in something that will be something ‘outer’.

To be able to be creative in the outer world this soul must first grow mature. It must have living inner experience of the things to which it will later give outward form. Before the soul had the ability, for instance, of impressing organs for clear daytime consciousness on the physical body, it had to go through a sequence of developmental stages where it gradually acquired this ability. Thus it had to have living experience of the first state of consciousness in itself before it was able to create it; and the same holds true for the other levels of conscious awareness. These stages of development which precede the creation of the different kinds of conscious awareness in the soul are called levels of life in occult science. There are therefore seven levels of life, just as there are seven levels of consciousness. Life differs from conscious awareness in that the former has inner character, whilst the latter depends on a relationship to the outside world.

With reference to the Earth we can say that before the clear daytime state of consciousness developed on it in the human body, this cosmic body had to go through four states which may be seen as four states of life

The levels of the soul’s living experience are found if we think of the outside world as it is perceived in the states of consciousness, being made part of inner life. First we have the dimmest state of consciousness which comes before dreamless sleep. In the latter, the soul works on the body to harmonize it; the corresponding state of life is harmonization of one’s own inner life. It therefore fills itself with a world of sounding movement. Before, in the dimmest state of living experience, it was within an unmoving inner life of its own. It entered wholly into feeling this in an indifference that knew no differentiation. This lowest state of life is called the first elemental world.⁶ Here, matter is experienced in its original nature. Matter begins to stir and move in all kinds of different directions. Self experience of this mobility is the first level of life and the first elemental world. The second level is reached when rhythm and harmony arise in those movements. The corresponding level of life consists in inwardly becoming aware of rhythm as sound. This is the second elemental world. The third level develops as the movements become images. The soul then lives within itself as though in a world of images that take form and dissolve again. This is the third elemental world. At the fourth level the images assume definite form; individual elements emerge from the shifting panorama. This means that it is no longer only inner living experience, but can be perceived outside. It is the world of outer bodies.

In this world we have to distinguish between the configuration which it has for man’s clear daytime consciousness and the configuration which it experiences within itself. The body truly has living experience within itself of its form, that is, of matter in regular configurations. At the next level, this mere experience of form is overcome; its place is taken by living experience of changing form. Configuration arises and changes. It would be reasonable to say that at this level the third elemental world shows itself in a higher configuration. In the third elemental world the movement from one configuration to another can only be experienced as image; in this, the fifth world, image progresses to becoming a solid external object, but this external object does not come to an end in the form, for it keeps the ability to change. This is the world of growing bodies that reproduce themselves. Its capacity for change shows itself in that very growth and reproduction. In the next world the ability is also gained to have living experience of the way the outer influences the inner. It is the world of sentient entities. The final world to be considered is one with not only inner experience of things outside but of sharing in their inner experience. This is the world of shared inner experience. The sequence for the levels of life is thus as follows:

1. dim living experience of matter
2. living experience of inner movement
3. living experience of inner configuration
4. living experience of definite boundaries
5. living experience of changing form
6. living experience of influence of the outside world as sentience
7. sharing in the living experience of the outside world

The living inner experience of the soul has to be preceded by the creation of this life. For we cannot have living experience of anything unless it exists. If living inner experience is called soul element in occult science, then the creative element is referred to as spiritual. The [physical body] perceives by means of organs; the soul experiences itself inside; the spirit directs creative activity to the outside. Just as seven soul experiences preceded the seven levels of conscious awareness, so do seven kinds of creative activity precede these experiences in the soul. What corresponds to the dim experience of matter in the creative sphere is the creation of matter. Matter is flowing into the world there in an indifferent way. This sphere is called the sphere of formlessness. At the next level matter differentiates and its parts enter into relationship with one another. We then have different forms of matter which combine and separate. This is called the sphere of form. At the third level matter no longer needs to relate to matter itself; instead, forces develop in matter, forms of matter attract or repel one another, and so on. This is the astral sphere. At the fourth level matter is configured by forces around it; at the third level these had merely regulated external relationships, and now they work into the inner aspect of entities. This is the physical sphere. An entity which is at this level reflects the world around it;⁷ the forces of that world work on its differentiation.

Further progress means that the entity not only becomes differentiated inwardly in tune with the forces of the surrounding world but also gives itself an outer physiognomy which bears the imprint of this surrounding world. Whereas an entity of the fourth level was a mirror reflection of its surroundings, an entity of the fifth level expressed this surrounding world in its physiognomy. At the sixth level, physiognomy becomes something that flows out. An entity at this level creates things in its surroundings just as it first created itself. This is the level of configuration. At the seventh level configuration becomes creation. The entity which has reached this level creates forms around itself which are on the small scale what that surrounding world is on the large scale. It is the level of creative work.

The evolution of the spiritual principle thus proceeded like this:

1. formlessness
2. giving form
3. embodying strength
4. configuration in accord with the forces of the surrounding world
5. capacity for physiognomic expression
6. power of configuration
7. creative ability

When Saturn evolution began, the human body was at the level of formlessness. It had to struggle through to creative ability before a soul was able to have its first, living experience of matter in it. This means that the body had to evolve through the seven levels of creative activity; after that, its soul was able to live in all parts of it. The soul then had to reach a point where it can impart its inner movement to the seven forms of the body. The first time the body went through its seven forms it was still quite lifeless itself. It was only at the seventh level, where the body became creative, that its life awoke. And it had to awaken now, for the body expended matter in the process of creation. This the soul had to replace. Then a second cycle started. The matter flowing into the body as a replacement itself went through the seven levels from formlessness to creative ability. Once it had reached that point, the soul no longer limited itself to the living experiences that came with the movement of the matter as it came flowing in but began a new level of life. Having become creative itself, the matter flowing in began to fill the body inwardly. Before, it had always only replaced what had been expended; now it settled in the body. And once again it went through all levels from formlessness to creative ability. It would first be formless when deposited in the body, and then gradually progress to forms, develop powers, configuring structures, giving them physiognomic expression, and so on. During the whole of this cycle the soul went through its third level of life. It harmonized this inner differentiation and made good any disorder that had arisen through the inner processes. Having thus created inner configuration, matter then let the outside world influence it at the fourth level. It was able to do this, for the soul which dwelt in it had now become ready to live with dim awareness in impressions coming from outside and thus restore to order any disorder caused by the outside world. In the next cycle the body no longer just differentiated itself; it assumed a new configuration under the influence of the outside world. The soul had gained the ability to regulate the process of transformation. Then a cycle came where the body perceived the influences of the outside world by being sentient of them. The soul was again the regulator at this level of existence. The body had then reached its final level; it was able to have living experience of the outside world. The soul had reached the point where it anticipated a future level, which would be the next level of conscious awareness in what for Saturn existence was a higher world. It was thus going through the dreamless sleep state in this last Saturn cycle. And in the first Sun cycle it transferred this to the physical body.

It can be seen that during the Saturn period the physical human body went through a physical stage seven times. Each time it arrived at such a stage, the soul had reached a higher level in its living experience. At the seventh stage it went beyond Saturn evolution, so that its inner experience pointed to the Sun stage.

When the Sun cycle began, the physical body had reached the point where it was able to take its own configuration in hand. Before, the soul had regulated configuration; now the body had its own configurer in it. This we call the ether body. The soul was then no longer in direct connection with the physical body; between them was the ether body, acting as a mediator. The soul’s experiences were now the ether body’s, just as before they had become the physical body’s. This ether body now must first of all go through the seven form states from formlessness to creative activity. Working to configure the physical body, the ether body was all the time losing tone. And this was continually regulated by the soul. Sun evolution went through seven physical stages in this way. At each stage, the soul had reached a higher level; at the seventh it began to anticipate a new state of conscious awareness. Still sharing the experience of the ether body as it became the creator of new structures which were in the image of the whole Sun world, it did already sense inwardly a world of images surging up and down within it.

In the first Moon cycle it transferred this world of images to the ether body and this then configured the physical body according to those soul images. Whereas at the Sun level the ether body came between physical body and soul as a configurer, so the body of images I have characterized now found its place between ether body and soul. In occult science it is known as the sentient body. For as human inner sentience of the outside world flows inward, as it were, thus making the contents of the outside world something the inner world possessed, so did the images in the body of images act from the inside to the outside, impressing their contents on the ether body which in turn transferred them to the physical body.

During Moon evolution the human being again went seven times through all the form states, letting the soul mature to a higher level in each of them. During the seventh level the soul had the ability to give its images the more perfect form; it was able to enter into the living experience of everything that happened around it on the cosmic body, and its world of images thus reflected the whole Moon world. At the same time it anticipated experience of the highest level of consciousness which would come at the next level; it began to have vision of solid forms within its changing world of images. This made it ready to influence the ether body so that it was able to develop organs in itself that were of a more lasting nature.

With this, it became possible to make the transition to the first Earth cycle. The physical body now received the solid image forms into itself; they became its organs. A fourth body then began to develop in the human being. Perceptions of external objects came in between image body and soul. In a way, the body had now outgrown the soul; it had become independent. Before that the fruits of the images which the soul had gained from the outside world had developed in it. Now the outside world was bringing out direct perceptions in the body. The inner life of the soul then became a sharing of those perceptions. This independent activity on the part of the body came to be reflected in self-awareness. This, however, only matured slowly. First the human being had to go through a cycle of forms during which only a dim life of matter was sensed in his organs; in a second cycle the influence of matter caused internal movement; the ether body was able to share in the experience of the outside world through this, and it transformed the organs to make them living instruments of the physical body. In a third cycle the image body, too, grew able to recreate the outside world. It stimulated the organs to such effect that they themselves produced images which lived in this, though they were not yet reflections of external things. It was only in the fourth cycle that the soul itself became able to enter into every part of the bodily organs; it thus separated the images from those organs and clothed the external things in them. It then had an outside world with which it came face to face as an inner, independent entity.

Now the time had also come when the organs of the body which the soul was using would from time to time become exhausted. The possibility of being connected with the outside world would then cease. Sleep would come, in which the soul would again act to harmonize the physical body via the image and the ether body, the way it had done before. In occult science, therefore, sleep appears as something left behind from earlier stages of evolution. At the present time, the human being has gone some way beyond the middle of the fourth Earth cycle. This is reflected in the fact that he is perceiving not only external objects, doing so in clear daytime consciousness, but also the laws that are behind them. The soul has begun to experience the inner reconfiguration of things.

During Saturn evolution the human body was at the level of dimmest consciousness. One should not assume, however, that other levels of consciousness did not exist in entities which at that time existed in connection with that early embodiment of the Earth. Above all one entity existing at that time had a form of consciousness equal to the waking daytime consciousness human beings have today. Conditions in the Saturn environment were however very different from those we have on Earth, and this meant that that level of consciousness also had to function in a very different way.

On Earth, the human being has minerals, plants and animals around him as objects for sensory perception. These he considers to be at a lower level, with himself at a higher level than they are. The opposite was the case with that spirit on Saturn. It had three groups of entities above itself and had to consider itself to be the lowest of the entities it was able to perceive. In occult science, those three groups of higher spirits are given different names, depending on the language a people have and the age to which their occult teachers belonged. The terms used in Christian occult science are, going from below upwards: Dominions (Kyriotetes), Mights or Virtues (Dynamis) and Powers (Exusiai).⁸ The fourth and lowest spirit followed, just as on Earth the human being is the highest entity above the mineral, plant and animal worlds.

Conditions being so very different, the nature of perception also differed. An initiate knows this from experience. For it is like the spiritual consciousness he achieves as his third level, going beyond waking daytime consciousness. There it seems that impressions do not come to the senses from external objects but move towards the senses from inside, flowing into the outside world from them and out there coming upon objects and life forms, to be reflected in them and then appear to the conscious mind in the reflection.

This is how it was for that spirit on Saturn. It let its vital energy flow to the things on the planet, and their reflection came back to it from all sides in infinitely many ways. It perceived its own life as mirror image reflected from all sides. And the things which reflected its nature back to the spirit were the beginnings of the human physical body. For the planet consisted of these. Anything else that was perceived appeared not on the planet but in its surroundings. The spirits called Exusiai (Powers) appeared as shining spirits which illuminated the cosmic body from all sides. Saturn as such was a dark body; it received its light not from dead sources of light but from those spirits which dwelt around it and shone out to give it light. Their light was revealed to the perception of that Saturn spirit just as today an animal body makes itself perceptible to the human being. The spirits called Dynamis (Mights) revealed themselves in a similar way from the outer periphery by resounding in spirit, and the Kyriotetes (Dominions) through something called ‘cosmic aroma’ in occult science, a kind of impression which we may compare with an odour today.

Just as the human being on Earth rises beyond perception of external things to ideas which live only within him, so that spirit on Saturn knew not only the above-mentioned spirits, which revealed themselves to it as if from inside, but also others which it perceived from the outside; in Christian occult science these are known as Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.⁹ Nothing in the compass of earthly human experience can compare with the sublime characteristics in which they showed themselves at that time.

Finally this spirit on Saturn also knew a third group who also dwelt on the planet. They populated the inner part of the planet. This was entirely made up of human bodies at the level which they had reached at the time. To get an idea of these bodies, we may compare them with automatons consisting of the most subtle etheric matter during the periods when they took physical form. They reflected the life of that Saturn spirit; they themselves were wholly lifeless and had no sentience whatsoever. Two kinds of spirits dwelt in them, however, and these developed their own life and capacity for sentience in them. They needed a basis for such development. For they did not have a physical body of their own and yet were made in such a way that they could only develop their higher faculties in a physical body. They therefore made use of the human physical body.

The bodily, soul and spiritual element was thus present on Saturn in a way similar to the one in which it exists on Earth. Only on Earth it makes up the threefold nature of the human being—his body, his soul and his spirit. Each of these is threefold in turn, with the body consisting of physical, ether and sentient body; the soul of sentient soul, rational soul and spiritual soul; the spirit of Spirit Self, life spirit and spirit human being. On Saturn, the bodily, soul and spiritual elements were not parts of one entity but existed as independent entities, the physical bodily part being the first beginnings of the human body and the actual material basis of the planet itself, the ether body being Angel, the sentient body Archangel; the sentient soul was represented by those Saturn spirits I have characterized, the rational soul by the Powers, the spiritual soul by the Mights, the Spirit Self by the Dominions, the life spirit by the Thrones, the spirit human being by the Cherubim, with the Seraphim above them all.

During the time when it was at its physical level, therefore, Saturn had a differentiated body consisting of subtle ether bodies; Angels and Archangels were active in this just as vital and nerve energies are active in the human body today. And where the latter has its sensory instruments on the outside, so Saturn was covered, as it were, with nothing but senses on its surface; these were not receptive, however, but reflective. They mirrored everything which made an impression in the surroundings of the cosmic body. The luminous Powers shone on to the surface of Saturn, and their light was reflected in many ways by that surface. Sound came to Saturn from the Mights and then went out again into space as a manifold echo; finally the aroma of the Dominions radiated to the Saturn surface, which reflected it in many changed ways. The soul life of that spirit on Saturn consisted in the perception of all those reflections.

We can call that spirit the actual spirit of the planet Saturn. For only one of its kind existed, just as in a human being on Earth there may be a rich variety of parts, senses and so on but only one self-awareness. The whole of Saturn was the body of that planetary spirit.

Saturn evolution proceeded in seven cycles in which soul life unfolded. In each of the seven cycles the planet went through the seven forms from formlessness to creative ability.

In the first cycle the Thrones were the soul element that gave direction, in the second cycle the Dominions, in the third the Mights, in the fourth the Powers and in the fifth the planetary spirit of Saturn itself. This did not have full clear consciousness from the beginning of Saturn evolution but only gained it in the fourth cycle. It was also only then that it was actually able to experience events on the planet as a soul. During the fifth cycle it was then able to be active as soul itself. During that cycle the Archangels developed into an inner life of the soul, the contents of which were taken from Saturn events. They were able to do so by using the human bodies which had by that time developed into appropriate instruments for them. This then enabled them to guide events as independently active souls in the sixth cycle. The same was then the case for the Angels in the seventh cycle.

In the fifth cycle the planetary Saturn spirit would have been unable to be active as soul in the way described if it had remained within the Saturn body. The consistency of that body would not permit this. The Saturn spirit therefore had to leave the Saturn body and act on it from the outside. A separation of Saturn into two cosmic bodies thus occurred in this cycle, though one of them, the one which had gone out, must be called Saturn soul. It was, as it were, a prophetic foretelling of the next planetary embodiment—the Sun. In its fifth, sixth and seventh cycles, Saturn was thus orbited by a kind of Sun, just as Earth is today by its Moon.

Something similar had to happen for the Archangels in the sixth cycle. They left the Saturn mass and orbited it as a new planet, known as Jupiter in occult science. In the seventh cycle something similar happened for the Angels. They withdrew their mass from that of Saturn and orbited it as an independent planet. This is called Mars in occult science.

Similar processes had already occurred during preceding Saturn cycles. In the third cycle the Powers guided soul development. In the fourth, they left the planet and orbited it as a bright, independent planet which is called Mercury in occult science. In the third cycle the same situation occurred for the Powers, who became independent as a planet called Venus. In Sun evolution, the human body which had been automatic came alive in itself. This happened because the light which previously shone on to Saturn from the luminous spirits in the periphery was now being taken up into the constituents of the Sun body itself. The Sun became a luminous planet. The perfected human bodies were developing luminous life. Sound now came in from the surroundings and the cosmic aroma was flowing from the spirits connected with aroma.

A transformation had come for the spirit of the planet Saturn. It had multiplied. One had become seven. Just as a seed is one, and there are many seeds in the ear of corn that grows from it, so did seven scions come from the one spirit of the planet Saturn during the transition to the Sun level. And its life also changed. It developed the ability to gain perceptions of a region that was one level lower. This became possible because a number of human bodies had remained behind in their development, staying at the Saturn level. This made them unable to receive the luminous life of the Sun. They became dark spots within the radiant Sun planet. The seven Sun spirits which had evolved from the spirit of the planet Saturn perceived them as a world of nature which was below them. Thus the seven spirits lived on the Sun’s surface; beneath them they beheld a world with entities which had bodies, only these were one level lower than the human bodies on Sun. The latter, however, gave them the nourishment they needed through the light they radiated. Where the Saturn bodies had only been reflecting the Saturn spirit’s own essential nature back to it, the Sun bodies held the position relative to the Sun spirits which today the Sun with its light holds for the plant world. With regard to bodily organization the human being was at the level of plant nature during Sun evolution. It would not be right to say that he actually went through the plant stage himself at that time. For the kind of plant world we have today could only develop under the specific conditions which we have on Earth. To use an analogy we may think of the Sun human body as a plant form which was turning organs towards its own planet that were similar to those which plants today develop as their flower. And just as today’s plant receives its light from an outside sun, so did the human Sun plant receive its light from its own planet, which, of course, was Sun. Today a plant puts its root down into the soil; on the Sun body this aspect was turned towards the sounds and odours that were coming in; the human being took these in and processed them inwardly. We might call today’s plant a human body which has remained at the Sun level and turned round completely. It is therefore chastely extending its organs of growth and reproduction upwards to the Sun, whilst the human being today hides them and lets them face downwards.

The human body only developed fully in this way during the fourth Sun cycle. The three preceding cycles had been preparatory. The first cycle was really only a recapitulation of Saturn existence. Its seven form levels were seven recapitulations of the levels of life on Saturn. It was only during the second Sun cycle that life flashed up in the human body. This life was not yet so fully developed that the Archangels which on Sun took the place which the planetary spirit had held on Saturn, were able to take satisfaction in it. It was rather the Powers which now sucked the energy which can flow from this life; during the third cycle the seven spirits developed from the Saturn spirit took that place; and during the fourth Sun cycle the Archangels lived in the life of the Earth bodies the way the planetary spirit had been mirrored in the bodies on Saturn. During the fifth Sun cycle the Archangels rose to a higher level of existence, and the Angels took their place on the planet. During the sixth Sun cycle the Angels, too, had developed to a level where they no longer needed the physical parts of the human body; all they still used for their own purposes was the light streaming out and in, and in this they then lived. The human physical body had become an independent entity, a model for the present-day human physical body. It behaved entirely like a physical apparatus at this level; except that it was an apparatus the parts of which were living. It was, as it were, a living instrument for the senses, though it did not take their perceptions into itself, not having the necessary degree of consciousness for this. The body was in a plant-like sleep, as it were, and that was its highest level of consciousness. Any sensory perceptions composed in it went into the consciousness of the Angels, Archangels and so on, depending on the sequence of the different Sun cycles. Those higher spirits were keeping watch over the sleeping human body.

What were the causes, the influences under which Sun evolved from Saturn? We perceive them if we take a look at the final states in Saturn evolution. Let us assume the seventh cycle had reached the fourth form level, which would be the physical one. The human body had developed so far that it was able to serve the Angels as the sense organs which mirror their essential nature for them. These have a kind of human consciousness at this level, though only by using the senses of the human body. They successively developed the higher levels of conscious awareness. The moment the Angels, too, developed to such higher forms of conscious awareness they could no longer use the human body. They therefore left it. It had to die. This meant, however, that that physical Saturn body disintegrated before the physiognomic form of the seventh cycle developed. This physiognomic level was therefore not the least bit physical any more. The planet existed only as a soul planet then. The physical form went down into the abyss. In the soul planet the Angels lived in an image consciousness that was beyond the physical. And the higher spirits were working on it with correspondingly higher forms of consciousness. At the point in time where the Angels, too, had grown beyond image consciousness, the soul planet also had to disintegrate. Its place was taken by another, where the configuring form was developed. It only floated in the world in which an earthly initiate is when he has entered into higher consciousness connected with sound. For the same reasons another planet evolved from this one at the end of the seventh Saturn cycle and this belonged to a yet higher world. The creative form of existence had been brought to realization in this.

It has been shown that as the higher spirits rose to corresponding forms of conscious awareness, satellites of Saturn always separated off and these had to float in higher worlds, for the main form of Saturn was unable to accommodate such forms of conscious awareness. Then, however, Saturn itself rose to such higher worlds. The consequence was that each time it arrived in such a higher world it would unite with whichever satellite was in that world. By the end of the seventh Saturn cycle, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury and Sun had therefore reunited with Saturn. All was one world again.

In that one world, the creative form of Saturn’s vital energy existed. Through it, the world, which had become spiritual in the way shown, was taken down again to the lower levels of existence. This was what happened as the Sun evolved. In the course of its cycles the planets that had originally developed on Saturn emerged again. Each was now, however, closer by one degree to physical existence.

If a human observer gifted with senses in their present form were able to follow the evolution of the planet I have described, he would see the cosmic body emerge from the darkness at certain times, disappearing again from the sight of such an observer for long intervals. During these, it would only be perceptible to an observer whose consciousness was able to be present in higher worlds. Distinction is thus made between twilight or night-time states of planetary existence in physical terms. Do not think, however, that the planet and its spirits grow inactive during those intervals. It merely falls into higher worlds then and thus comes to expression in an existence which is much more real than mere physical existence.

When Sun had completed its seven cycles, a time came when the human body had developed so far that it was not only able to receive the incoming light into itself and be enlivened by it, but gained the ability to let the world of sound created from the Mights continue to influence it and also to reproduce it in sounds. At this level of existence, which is called Moon evolution, the human body itself produced sounds. At the Saturn level, a sound reflected to the surrounding world by the planet was merely an echo of its surroundings; now the sound had changed as it went out into those surroundings. It had changed to such effect that it reflected in a wide variety of ways what was happening in human bodies. These human bodies had thus made the sentient body fully part of their essential nature as a third body. For it was their inner nature, their world of feelings, which was expressed in sound.

The seven spirits which had evolved out of the Saturn spirit during Sun evolution had now become seven times seven. The world surrounding them had become such that they had living experience of their own world of feeling in the sentient bodies which had developed. They then felt themselves surrounded by two worlds which were at a lower level and one which was above them. The world above them made itself felt as cosmic aroma coming from cosmic space; they experienced themselves as entities giving sound, and the two realms which were at a lower level had arisen because a region of human bodies had remained at the Saturn level and another at the Sun level. These Moon spirits were thus surrounded by entities that were like automatons and were continuing their Saturn maturation on Moon under conditions which were very different from those which existed on Saturn, and also by plant-like Sun bodies which were in a similar position.

Three kinds of entities were thus present in the actual Moon mass. The entities which were like automatons, dark in themselves, had still retained the ability from Saturn to let life shine out around them. They were not lifeless the way today’s minerals are. There was no mineral basis on Moon like the one we have on Earth. Instead there was a basis consisting of those entities. You can get an idea of them if you think of them endowed with a life that is present in every part of them, so that the mineral soil of our fields would have been a living, porridge-like mass on Moon; woody parts in this mass were like the rock masses found in softer mineral matter here on Earth. In this living basis, the parts of which may be called vegetable minerals, the Sun entities I have characterized who were at a level between present-day animals and present-day plants, had taken root. The freely moving entities dwelling on Moon were the human bodies, developmentally halfway between animal and human. They provided dwelling places for the scions of the planetary spirit of Saturn. This spirit would not have been able, however, to develop waking daytime consciousness in them. The entities always had to go out of the body to live in such a consciousness. When in the body and therefore sharing its life, they only had a consciousness filled with dream images. In this state of consciousness they would not see anything of their physical surroundings, but they let their inner experiences go out into the surrounding world in sound. The passions and desires of the Moon entities were then coming alive as sound during their sleep.

To consider just one example of this living experience, it should be noted that what we call our love life today, which is the basis of procreation, happened during dream-filled sleep on Moon. Waking daytime life was free from desire and, it has to be said, also loveless, given wholly to vision of the surrounding world. The human ancestor on Moon knew nothing of sexual relationships as yet in his daytime life. The place of the feelings people have in sexual love today was taken by dream images which only showed today’s factual reality in allegorical form.

On Moon, therefore, it was not the human ancestor who lived in the world of images when awake but the spirits who came immediately above human beings—the Angels. The dream world of the human being was clear daytime reality to them, as it were. They watched over the dreaming human world just as the Archangels had been watching over the Sun world when it was in plant-like sleep.

The first two Moon cycles were recapitulations of the preceding states of evolution. The seven forms of the first cycle recapitulated the seven Saturn cycles, and the seven forms of the second the seven Sun cycles.

During the third Moon cycle the human body had developed so far that the spirits which were at the Archangel level were able to experience its dream images as their environment; in the fourth cycle this was then the case for the Angels. The scions of the spirit of the planet Saturn were able to use the human body during this cycle to such a degree that enveloping it from outside they were able to use it to gain clear daytime consciousness. By the fifth cycle these spirits had risen to a level where they no longer had need of the physical human body; this then perceived its environs for itself but only reached a lower level of consciousness for these perceptions. Those spirits only had need of the ether body and the sentient body during this time. In the sixth cycle they also left the ether body to itself and in the seventh the sentient body.

The Moon was a re-embodiment of the Sun planet. At the time when the stage of Sun evolution was recapitulated on Moon, that is, in the second cycle, the Sun body separated from the Moon mass. This separate Sun body was inhabited by the spirits which had assumed a level of consciousness and of life, the conditions for which could not be found on the Moon itself. During the second cycle these spirits were the Powers; they had shared the life of the physical human body during Sun life. Now, on Moon, this Sun level had a limited, retarded existence in the above-mentioned animal-plants. The Powers could not live in them. Instead they gave those animal-plants life from outside by sending the light they needed to them from the Sun. During the third Moon cycle the scions of the Spirit of the planet Saturn had also reached a level where they could no longer exist on Moon. The Archangels therefore left the Moon in the fourth cycle, and in this space of time this was also the dwelling place of the Angels, as the Earth was later to be in its fourth cycle for human beings.

The other planets had emerged step by step during Sun evolution and did the same now during Moon evolution. Only they were closer to physical existence by another level now, when the Moon was at the height of its evolution, that is from the physical form of its fourth cycle onwards. With the fifth cycle, Mars, then inhabited by the Angels, reached a subtle, etheric and physical form; with the sixth cycle this happened for Jupiter, dwelling place of the Archangels. Finally in the seventh Moon cycle the same also happened for Mercury. Mars and Jupiter had grown even denser by then, the density of the former being such that it became possible to develop heat by moving its constituents and letting it flow out into cosmic space.

Earth evolution received the fruits that had ripened on Moon. The human body had by then gone through three levels of evolution. At the first it was able to be like a physical instrument that served as an organ of perception for spirits which had advanced so far at Sun level that they could dispense with any such apparatus. They were spirits already able to dedicate their work as creators to the Sun planet from outside. The spirits of the planet Saturn had had their bodily organization not in the Sun planet but in the creative powers that maintained Sun life.

On Moon, the Archangels had become the creative powers. The Angels of the Moon, which had clear daytime consciousness at the time, were able to look up to their creators and admire their bodily organization.

These three levels of planetary evolution were first of all recapitulated in the first three Earth cycles. This was to prepare the human body so that it could gain living experience in itself of the images which had evolved during Moon consciousness. It had to grow able to have not only a life and an image body in itself but also to reflect the surrounding world inwardly in its images. On the Moon it had come so far that the Angels were able to behold its images. The human Moon body was the world surrounding the Angels. And they had also advanced themselves in beholding the Moon human being; they had won through to a point where they were able to do at a higher level what they had been perceiving on the Moon. Apart from the two worlds which were below them, they also had spirits who were their equal around them. When Moon evolution had come to an end, they were able to impress the nature of those spirits into the human body. Earthly human beings were then able to see in their physical environment, whilst they dwelt in their bodies, what the Angels had only been able to behold on Moon when they rose to a higher world—those of their own kind.

The human body could only be guided upwards to this ability in stages. And this happened during the three Earth cycles. In the first, the human being was able to perceive himself as he had been on Saturn, in the second as on Sun, in the third as on Moon. During the first Earth cycle other human beings were nothing but walking automatons to him; during the second they appeared as plant-like entities; during the third they had animal character.

When the fourth cycle began, the human being was able to perceive the creations of the Angels, of his own kind, around himself. The Angels were three levels of consciousness above him. They were able to create what he perceived.

The human body now had four parts—the physical [body] which became a mirror for the surrounding world, the living [body] which was able to transform things perceived in the surrounding world into inner movement, the image body which was able to transform the inner movements and give them the character of allegories, and finally the body which became the bearer of clear daytime consciousness. This harmonized the inner images with the impressions gained of the surrounding world and thus made the connection between inner experience and the events outside.

Clear daytime consciousness was, however, limited to the physical outside world; vital processes and the images of the image body were inwardly enlivened but not perceived as outside world. The human image body remained the object of the Angels, at the next higher level, and the human life body actually that of the Archangels. All things connected with the human life body, the laws governing its growth and reproduction, were thus hidden from the human being; with regard to them his conscious awareness was at the level of dreamless sleep. For the Archangels, on the other hand, these processes were objects in their outside world on which they acted, which was like the situation a human being faces with regard to working on a physical machine. Everything connected with image consciousness, the laws which are more of a mystery to the human being, giving a particular character and mien to his countenance, specific form to his walk, and so on; everything which came to expression in his character, temperament and so on, was thus governed by the Angels. Only the things he brought about in his outer environment were subject to his own laws.

The human being developed into an entity which we may characterize like this in the fourth Earth cycle.

The Angels, having developed to creative consciousness at the Moon level, were no longer able to find a place for themselves on Earth when the image body began to belong to the human being himself, that is, from the time when the second cycle had passed its midpoint. They then withdrew to a higher community with new conditions of life; the Sun again separated from the Earth and from then on sent its powers to it from the outside.

In the third Earth cycle, the human bodies which had not reached the point in the second cycle where they could have their image body cared for by the powers gathered on the Sun had to fall into a lower form of existence. They went down from the animal and human to the purely animal level. Where could they now find the powers needed for their image body? They were not open to the Sun powers of the perfected Angels. Entities do, however, lag behind in their development at every level. Up to the third cycle, Angels had fallen behind in their evolution which were then unable to find a place on the Sun. During the second half of the third Earth cycle they were not yet able to find the capacity to ascend to the Sun. Yet they also were not able to continue to influence the image bodies of human beings who were advancing in perfection. They therefore withdrew from the Earth mass to become our present-day Moon. This is therefore a cosmic body representing an earlier part of Earth evolution in something of a hardened state. It is the dwelling place of spirits who did not want to be creators of the perfect human body. We find them active in the image bodies of animals; yet they do all the time also direct their attacks against the image body of the human being—though this is a region that has grown beyond them. As soon as the human being deviates just a little from being dedicated to his higher nature, which comes to him through impressions gained through the senses, as soon as he becomes subject to powers that influence his image body, those spirits will be able to influence him. Their activities are evident in dissolute dreams which reflect the animal desires that come from lower human nature.

When the third Earth cycle had passed its midpoint, the Earth having grown physical for the third time, conditions did not exist for a form of the physical human body that was able to take in perceptions from the outside. The physical died off. The result is that the laggard Angels’ sin of omission was no longer felt to be so painful by the entities that had ascended into Sun existence. The Moon was therefore incorporated into the Earth’s body again. When the whole Earth had gone beyond image existence and into a higher world as the cycle continued, it also united with the Sun again. The powers in the human body which in the third cycle were only able to see the image-enlivened body in the surrounding world then gained creative ability. This enabled them to enter into the fourth cycle. There they were initially still in the world which is only perceptible to spiritual awareness, but were descending to progressively lower worlds in stages. Finally the human body had developed so far that it was able to develop organs for the perception of others of his own kind; these had a subtle etheric form. The physical body thus gained the abilities for its earthly form. This was also the time when Earth could no longer be the arena for the perfected Angels; the Sun separated from the Earth with them and shone on it from outside. The physical body continued to develop. The images of the image body developed a liveliness they did not have before; the organs of the physical body provided nourishment for them in the reflected images of external objects. The time had come when the outer Earth environment was taking these images away from the Angels that had lagged behind. These then had to draw the part of the Earth that would be their dwelling place out of the Earth. The Moon once more separated from the Earth, orbiting it as a satellite.

How far had the human body come by this time? It had developed its fourfold nature. Its organization was such that it could support an ether or life body and give a home to an image body. Its sense organs also allowed the earthly surroundings to be reflected in those images. The human physical body had therefore reached a completely new level. It reflected inwards, just as on Saturn it reflected the essential nature of the Spirit of the planet Saturn to the outside. Because of this, the part of that spirit which was then its lowest principle was now able to live in it. This principle had become tied off from the spirit of the planet Saturn; it had lost the ability to receive the revelations of the upper realms and becomes the vehicle for human self awareness. The human being learned to see himself as an ‘I’. From now on he had the nature in which the planetary spirit on Saturn had revealed like an outer environment of the planet.

The human being had thus reached a level where the Archangels revealed themselves in his ether body, the Angels in his image body, and the planetary Saturn spirit in his self awareness. He was then able to advance to the level where the Saturn spirit in him would be able to relate to the image body in a way similar to the way the Saturn spirit itself did when it gradually grew out of its own planetary existence and became an inhabitant of Jupiter. The human being continued to inhabit the Earth, however, and because of this such powers could only influence him from outside. It means that the Earth came into the sphere of influence of Jupiter powers. A similar process occurred at a later level with regard to spirits which were then at a level where they only influenced the ether body from outside, from Mars.

When Sun, Earth and Moon were still one body, the human body was made of a material on that planet which was like air. Apart from human bodies, only the descendants of the human-animals from Moon were present in bodies which were in a fluid state. The descendants of the Moon creatures which had lived there as plant-minerals had reached the solid state. Apart from the liquid human-animals, there were also animal plant-like creatures [at that time] which had evolved from the lunar plant-animals. Yet whilst the former were more watery in appearance, the animal-plant-like creatures consisted of a dense porridge-like mass which when it grew more substantial came close to the material of which mushrooms are made today.

When the Sun withdrew its substance from the Earth, so that the latter had only the Moon mass in it, all conditions changed on the planet. The material of which human bodies were made condensed to become a liquid form of matter which may be compared to our blood today. Creatures which before had been liquid became solid, and the solid plant-minerals had a very dense consistency. Before the Sun separated, the life of the human body consisted essentially in a kind of breathing, taking in and giving off air-like matter. After the separation a form of nutrition evolved out of the liquid surroundings. And reproduction was also connected with this nutrition. The viscid human body was impregnated out of the reproductive material in its surroundings and divided under the influence of that impregnation. Whilst the Moon substance was still within the Earth, the development of the body was such that semi-solid parts developed in the liquid mass, gaining cartilage-like density. It was not yet able to develop solid, bone-like limb inclusions, for the Earth mass was not suitable for this for as long as it still had the Moon in it. It was only when the Moon departed, with the most substantial form of matter removed, that the beginnings of solid skeletal structures developed in the human being.

This was also the time when it became no longer possible to take impregnation material from the surroundings. With the departure of the Moon mass, Earth substances had also lost the ability to impregnate the human body. In the time that had gone before, the human body did not have two genders. The human being was female by nature, with the male principle present in its earthly surroundings. The whole Moon Earth was male in character. When the Moon departed, some of the human bodies changed into bodies of male character. They thus took the impregnating powers into themselves which before had been present in the sap of Earth itself, as it were. The female nature of the human body underwent a transformation which made it possible for the male, which had now arisen, to impregnate it.

All this happened because a form of double-sexed human body changed to become single-sexed. The earlier human body had impregnated itself with substances it took in. Now the one kind of human body, the female one, only had power to let the impregnated principle ripen. The way this happened was that the male power in this body lost the ability to prepare impregnating substances. This power remained only for the ether or life body, which had to effect the ripening process. The male kind of human body lost the potential of doing something with the impregnating material inside itself. Its female principle was limited to the ether body. This is why in present-day human beings the situation is such that in males the ether body is female, whilst in females it is male.¹⁰ A solid bony skeleton developed at the same time.

Another important process came first, however. When the human body changed from airy to liquid consistency, the first beginnings of an organ started to develop which would take in airy matter. This was the beginning of respiration as a separate process. At the time, substances which would later separate out from the general mass and be liquid and solid were still airy, they were part of the air. And when the liquid form of matter began to develop, the human body was not living on solid ground but in a fluid element. Its locomotion was a swimming kind of floating. And the air which was above the fluid element was much denser then. It contained not only everything which later came to be water, but many other substances were dissolved in it. The whole human breathing apparatus was therefore also different.

Before the Sun departed, the function of the whole breathing process was still different. It was to receive and give off heat from and into the environment. We may say that the warmth which human beings still prepare in themselves with their blood circulation was at that time inhaled and exhaled from and into the environment. Once the Sun had departed the process changed so that air will only produce warmth through its activity in the body after it has been inhaled. By breathing air the way it does today, the human body came to generate warmth internally.

This major change in the human body was connected with a cosmic event which in occult terms is called the withdrawal of Mars from the Earth. Mars is the planet which before that withdrawal had with the powers inherent in it brought about the process in the human body that was later taken over by the blood circulation. With the blood taking over the Mars activity in this way, the spirits concerned were able to go outside the Earth, and the influence of Mars on the human being was then such that it influenced him from outside. The way it happened physically was that iron became an important constituent of the blood; iron is the form of matter on which Mars powers have a specific influence. Respiration as it is today thus has to do with the withdrawal of Mars. All this gave the human being something which we may call the inner power of the blood. Ensoulment had become possible. The human being did indeed breathe in his soul when he breathed air.

For as long as Earth was connected with Sun, it was the Sun’s power which regulated the other influences in the human body. In the Sun’s power lay the principle which acted as male and at the same time female principle in the human body. Under its influence, law and order also came into the Mars process of taking in and giving off of heat. When the Sun had departed some human bodies changed and became infertile. These were the precursors of future male bodies. For as long as Moon powers were still connected with the Earth, the rest were still capable of self-fertilization. They lost this when the Moon departed. From then on the Sun took effect, with the spirits that dwelt on it influencing the capacity for reproduction. The male’s ether body came under the influence of these Sun spirits. The female’s ether body, being male, retained its relationship to the spirits who had made the Moon their arena. The female physical body was correspondingly under the influence of the Sun powers. It had developed the form it now had when the Sun was already shining on the Earth from outside. The male physical body on the other hand came under the Moon influence because under the influence of that planet when it was still united with the Earth it had assumed a form which with regard to reproduction was infertile. While all this was going on, the senses also developed, bringing the sentient body’s image world under the influence of the earthly environment and thus the human being under the influence of the scions of the planetary body of Saturn. The pulsating power of the blood also evolved in the body, this led to ensoulment and made it possible, with sensory perceptions available, to develop an inner life and sympathy and antipathy towards the surrounding world.

The human being had reached this level when the Earth emerged as an independent physical planet in its fourth cycle, having separated from sun, moon and mars.

By that time human beings had achieved the division into two sexes. They looked into the surrounding world through the senses. They knew sympathy and antipathy with regard to their surroundings. And by distinguishing themselves from those surroundings they were endowed with the beginnings of self awareness. The human body had become fourfold. And inwardness of soul had arisen in the fourth principle of that body through the blood, for this allowed mars powers to come in.

Human beings had thus developed everything they were able to have as the fruits of the first three levels of planetary evolution. A fourth principle had arisen in their bodies because other influences, which could not play a role in its development, had withdrawn from the Earth.

In occult terms this humanity is called the third main race on Earth.¹¹ We can really only speak of races developing from this time onwards. For it was only then that human reproduction existed and hence also differences within humanity brought about by human beings influencing one another. The principle we may call heredity or blood relationship developed. The Earth as the fourth planetary form of evolution did not yet have an influence. Perceptions of the surrounding world had first taken hold of the images in the sentient body. The ether body was not yet under the influence of the earthly surroundings. The fourth planet did not yet influence hereditary conditions. Only the first three did so. This is why the race where this was the case is called the ‘third’.

It was followed by the fourth, and here the earthly environment began to influence the ether body itself. This could only happen if spirits were able to influence the human being whose evolution was at a level where they did not have the creative ability to influence the ether body to the effect of impregnating it, yet had nevertheless gone beyond merely receiving impressions from the perception of the physical surroundings. These were spirits who had not advanced to creative ability on the Moon, that is, during the Earth’s previous embodiment, which would have enabled them to populate the Sun; yet they had gone beyond the level where inner life depended wholly on the images of the human body. Within Earth evolution they do have the ability to perceive things through the human being’s senses, but not the ability to create those senses. There these spirits can ... the human being ... [manuscript ends here]

• 1. This was not included in the fragment. Instead, a series of essays on ‘How to Know Higher Worlds’ (published in book form in 1909) began to appear in Lucifer Gnosis in June 1904; the inner training is also described in Occult Science.
• 2. Those other chapters were never written.
• 3. Conscious awareness - life - form. These three basic principles, each in 7 stages or metamorphoses, were mentioned here for the first time. See also Cosmic Memory. Atlantis and Lemuria (GA 11), and lectures and lecture courses in the years that followed, up to 1907/08. In a lecture given in Dornach on 27 August 1915, Rudolf Steiner referred to them as follows: ‘Very early on, I drew attention to the fact that to gain an overview of world evolution one must above all consider seven states of conscious awareness—I listed them at the time—as well as seven states of life and seven states of form. There are questions relating to life which can be answered by merely considering changes in form; there are questions we can answer by considering just the metamorphosis of life; but some phenomena, certain facts of life, cannot be answered except by rising to a point where one considers the different states of conscious awareness which apply’ [see Chance, Providence and Necessity, tr. M. Spock; New York: Anthroposophic Press 1988]. See also the lectures given at the end of December 1918, in which the principles of conscious awareness - life - form as shown as stages of initiation. Rudolf Steiner also referred to the way in which the attempt was made to show this in the forms of the First Goetheanum [How Can Mankind Find the Christ Again? tr. 0. D. Wannamaker, F. E. Dawson, G. Hahn; New York: Anthroposophic Press 1984],
• 4. These terms are taken from Rosicrucian occultism. See lecture given in Munich on 20 May 1907 in Bilder okkulter Siegel und Saeulen. Der Muenchner Kongress Pfingsten 1907 und seine Auswirkungen (English in Anthroposophical News Sheet 1948; 16:19-22). In the Theosophical Society people spoke only of seven spheres, rounds and globes. See also Note 18.
• 5. See Special Note (follows), also lecture given in Berlin on 28 January 1907 (in GA 96; The Lord’s Prayer, tr. A. M. W., rev. M. Cotterel; Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1958).
• 6. See chapter on the physical world and its connection with soul land and spirit land in Theosophy, also lecture given in Berlin on 11 November 1903 (in German) in Über die astrale Welt und das Devachan (GA 88) and lecture given in Munich on 4 December 1907 (GA 98; Engl.: The Elemental Kingdoms publ. in Anthroposophical News Sheet 1946; 4: 13-16).
• 7. The image of the mirror (see also lecture given in Cologne on 29 December 1907, publ. in German in GA 101) is one of the most important symbols of the spiritual world. It is used many times in the whole of Rudolf Steiner’s works.
• 8. The terms go back to Dionysius the Areopagite (1st century AD) who is mentioned as a disciple of Paul in Acts 17: 34. Treatises On the Heavenly and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies appeared in Syria in his name in the 5th century; John Scotus
• 9. Middle English cherubin and seraphin later became cherubim and seraphim. The early plural in -ins later became -im (= Hebrew plural). Cherub and in analogy to it seraph, was introduced by Wyclif. Rudolf Steiner used different spellings, often side by side.
• 10. See Steiner’s autobiography (GA 28), chapter 37.
• 11. The Lemurian age. Concerning the term ‘race’, Rudolf Steiner wrote in essays published in 1904 - 1908 (in GA 11, see Cosmic Memory. Atlantis and Lemuria; Tr. K. E. Zimmer; New York: Rudolf Steiner publications 1971), chapter on the life of the earth: ‘We have to be utterly clear about it that the evolutional forms of the far distant past and those of the future are completely different from those of the present time, so much so that the terms we use at present may only serve as emergency solution and really lose all meaning when it comes to those distant ages. Basically we can only begin to speak of ‘races’ when evolution had more or less reached its second third in the third main state (Lemurian). Only then did the principle we call ‘race’ today begin to develop. ... Yet very soon now, at the end of our fifth age, the word ‘race’ will lose all meaning again. Humanity will in future be differentiated into groupings we will no longer be able to call ‘races’. The usual theosophical literature has caused a great deal of confusion in this respect.’ See also lecture given in Berlin on 9 November 1905 (in German) in Die Weltraetsel und die Anthroposophie (GA 54).

Dear attendees! Yesterday I tried to present the real nature of the social question as it arises from the consideration of what has gradually developed over the last few centuries, especially in the last century, in the minds of people, especially in the souls of the proletariat.

Today I would like to attempt to speak of possible solutions to this social question, of such possible solutions, dear attendees, that do not arise from some program, from some party demand, from human emotions; rather, I would like to speak of such possible solutions that arise from the developmental conditions and developmental forces of contemporary humanity.

However, if one wants to speak from such a point of view, then completely different things come into consideration than are considered by those who today are often preparing to comment on what has emerged as a proletarian social movement in the life of humanity.

If one has an eye for the developmental forces of humanity in the present, just as the natural scientist is supposed to have an eye for the developmental forces that a single person has at a certain age, say at the age of sexual maturity, then one must finally, I believe, come to realize that much of what that is currently emerging in an understandable way, in a completely understandable way, here or there, as a theoretical or practical or somehow-conceived attempt to solve social issues, that we are dealing with the revival of what is rightly regarded by many in another field as medieval superstition. It is as if certain superstitious ideas have already been exhausted in the more rapidly developing field of natural science, and as if, unnoticed by human thought because they only masquerade there, because they have taken on a different disguised form, they have been preserved to this day in the field of social life and its problems and its riddles.

To make it easier to understand what I actually mean, I recall the passage in the second part of Goethe's “Faust” where Wagner creates the homunculus, an artificial human being, in a retort. Goethe points to the medieval superstitious alchemy, which believed that a human being could be created in a chemical laboratory by artificially processing certain substances and forces in a thinking way, as an indication of what he wants to represent at this point in his “Faust”. The broadest circles consider such alchemical endeavors to artificially create an organism, a human body, to be a superstition based on the principles of current scientific thought. In the field of social thinking, as I said, this alchemical superstition continues to prevail to this day, without people noticing it because the matter is veiled. For much of what is thought and done to bring about the social structure, the social organization of human society today, resembles the efforts of that Goethean Wagner who wants to artificially create the homunculus in the laboratory. Today, people think they can concoct the social organism from some social materials and forces in an artificial way.

And if we examine more closely, esteemed attendees, what is emerging here and there as a so-called solution to the social question, we find that no attention is paid to the conditions for the solution of the social organism. Even in the experiments that are already being carried out on a large scale, no attention is paid to this. Instead, it is assumed that something artificial can be created in some way.

The spiritual scientific thinking, from which this consideration started and which also takes the method for the social question, this spiritual scientific thinking is based on reality and must therefore proceed in a completely different way than many socialist experiments of today. The question for the method represented here is not: How do you shape the social organism? but rather, how can we create the conditions of life through which the social organism can shape itself as a living being, through which it can come into existence? Just as in nature one does not artificially create an organism by some kind of thinking, but one has to create the conditions under which the natural organism has to form itself, and through which it can then develop out of its own life impulse, so it must also be done for a realistic view of life with regard to the social organism.

However, this, esteemed attendees, requires a radical change in the way many people think today, and that is a very uncomfortable thing for the widest circles today. People may still be willing to accept a change in some institutions, a change in some circumstances, if they are not too sleepy. But people are less willing to accept a different way of thinking, a transformation of their whole view of reality. However, such a reorientation, such a change of thinking, is necessary for the deep social problem that not only cuts into individual areas of life, but into the whole of contemporary life. What is at stake here is that one must, as it were, change one's path from social superstitious alchemy to real social insight, to real insight into the social organism.

Just as one can study and get to know the individual human natural organism by applying the scientific method impartially enough, so too can one, with vigorous thinking and research, see through the social organism in its living conditions. That is what it is about.

I have already taken the liberty of speaking about the individual human organism, the natural organism, here in Basel in previous lectures. Today I would just like to point out that it seems to me that no one will be able to understand the natural organism of the human being, the natural life body of the human being, despite all the progress in physiology and biology in the present day, without studying the three interacting but relatively independent parts of this organism. When I spoke from the same place here in Basel about these three links of the natural human organism, I took the liberty of pointing out that I was giving something - I have outlined it in my book 'Von Soul Mysteries», - something on which I have actually been working for thirty years, trying to justify what has emerged from spiritual scientific documents by all the means that modern natural science can provide in this regard today. So that I can say: anyone who wants to, anyone who does not want to dabble but will approach the subject scientifically, need not shy away from what I will only briefly mention here and what may still surprise some people who believe they have a deep insight into scientific matters.

This single human organism is not centralized in a simple way, but is actually decentralized into three relatively independent parts: one can say, into the nervous sensory system, which is centralized towards the head; one could also say, the head system. Then into the rhythmic system, which encompasses the lungs and the heart life, which has a certain inner independence from the head life. And then again the system of metabolism.

However strange it may seem, these three systems comprise everything that takes place in the human organism. But this is not a centralized administration, so to speak, that takes place in the human body, but rather there are three independent members, each with its own center, so to speak. They work independently. And precisely because they work independently alongside each other, they build on the overall process in this individual natural human organism. Each of these links, these three links of the natural human organism, in turn relates to the outside world: the head system through the senses, the heart-lung system through the lungs, through the respiratory organs, and the metabolic system through the digestive organs, which open to the outside.

And it is precisely on this independence that the harmonious interaction, the possible and purposeful interaction of the individual human organism is based. Anyone who thinks that they can present the human organism as a sum of processes regulated from a single center completely misunderstands the essence of the human organism. The essence of the individual human organism lies in this interaction, not in subordination.

What now comes to light in a healthy observation of this human life body must be transferred to the observation, indeed not just to the observation, but to the living in it, in relation to the social organism, the social life body. And there the matter becomes far more serious.

What is a mere theoretical, scientific matter of knowledge in relation to the human organism becomes a practical matter in relation to the social organism. In relation to the social organism, it becomes a practical matter that concerns every single person. This is not a matter of scientific knowledge, but of certain intuitions, a certain feeling for how to place oneself in human life in this threefold social organism. Just as one learns the multiplication table from childhood on, how to add, subtract and so on, in order to be able to calculate, so one will have to acquire from childhood on a feeling for being part of a human , which, if it is to be healthy, if it is not to resemble a homunculus, an artificially created human being, but rather a homo, a real human being who shapes himself out of his life impulses.

But lest I be misunderstood – nowadays one is almost always misunderstood when one expresses things that are, after all, quite obvious – lest I be misunderstood, I want to point out right away that what I am expounding here has nothing, not the slightest, with any kind of, as one can call it, playing with similes or analogies, which aims to study the human organism and then transfers what it believes it has found in the human organism to the social organism, to the social life body. Such things, as the economist happened to try in his social organism, the economist Schäffle, or as [Meray] has now tried in the so-called, in the so-titled “Weltmutation”, these things are mere playing around before a serious conception of reality. The point is not to carry on such gimmicks, to somehow transfer something from one to the other, but rather that just as healthy as the consideration of which I have spoken here must be for the natural human organism, just as healthy must be - and now not a scientific consideration, but a social feeling, a social understanding of all people for the three-part social organism. If one were to play a mere game of analogy, one might do the following: One would say: Well, the human being has a head; that is the organ for his spiritual. In the outer social organism, there is also something like a spiritual culture. So one compares the opposites that relate to the organ of the part, to the head, with what is found in the social organism as spiritual culture. Because political life, law, and public life have a regulating effect on human activities, one might compare the regulating pulmonary respiratory system with the police system, the political system, and the state system. And because, as people have always imagined, the metabolic system is the coarsest, the most material, it is compared to the materialistic culture of man, to the external economic life.

This would be obvious if one wanted to play a mere game of analogy. If one goes into reality, then one is dealing with the opposite. An analogy places the social organism alongside the individual natural human organism in such a way that both are standing on their own two feet. As paradoxical as it may sound, reality presents itself to us in such a way that, in relation to the individual natural human organism, the social organism is indeed standing on its head, according to human prejudice.

For the lawfulness that must be sought precisely for the so-called noblest system of the human natural organism, for the head system, this lawfulness corresponds to economic life in the social organism. This is found in economic life. The lung-respiratory system as a regulating system is found, however, as we shall see shortly, in the legal sphere, in the political state in the narrower sense. But what spiritual culture is in the social organism is subject, strangely enough, to the same laws or to laws that can only be compared to the laws of human metabolism in the natural organism. So, as you can see, dear attendees, a realistic observation turns everything upside down. This is to be understood in the following way.

In fact, for anyone who wants to examine the living conditions under which the social life body can develop, the healthy social life body is actually divided into three parts, and without life trying to work out these three parts in relative independence, so that they do not live centralized in some centralized state or the like, but each lives independently for itself, so that they have precisely this harmonizing effect on the whole, just as the three members of the human organism, as I have described, without this a healthy solution to the social problem, to the social puzzle, will never be found.

A structure must be created, and not by some abstract theory, even if this abstract theory were a party program, but by life itself, by the real factors of life in the social organism, the social body, in three independent structures: the economic structure, which has its own laws and can only live truly healthy through its own laws alone; a second structure, alongside this, or but developing in relative independence, a link that could be described as the actual political state link, as everything that a system of rights, a system of connections between human and human, has to establish; and a third relatively independent link, which needs its independence, its being based on its very own laws, that is everything that belongs to spiritual life.

Let us consider the economic sphere as the first limb of the healthy social organism. I said that if one wants to compare – but such a comparison must serve the purpose of understanding, not be some kind of arbitrary analogy – if one wants to compare, one can say that in economic life there is something for every limited social organism that develops in any territory, in any country, in any geographic area, there is something for such a social organism that could be compared to the original gifts, talents of the individual human organism.

Just as education – which is not life through mere learning, through mere imparting or any other artificial method – must neither ignore what is inherent in the nervous-sensory organism as an original gift, nor can it, so the economic life, which is the basis of the healthy social organism, is based on everything that constitutes the natural conditions of this economic life: the fertility of the soil, the raw materials available, everything that has to do with how these things can be processed, everything that connects man with the source from which he produces everything that is produced in trade and industry. This is the basis of economic life as a limited area, just as the gifts and talents of the individual human life are the basis of the talents of the social organism.

And indeed, this is where the great differentiations occur. This is where the social organism, as it were, receives something as a dowry. Just as a person receives his or her individual talents as a dowry, let us say a few examples, which I would say have a somewhat radical effect, to show what is actually meant.

Yesterday I spoke of the integration of human labor into the social organism. We will come back to this shortly. It is essential for the social problem of the present that human labor be stripped of the character of a commodity. But just as the rhythms of breathing and blood circulation are stripped bare of the mere metabolic life, so everything that relates to human labor power must be stripped bare in a healthy social organism, of all that springs from the laws that are peculiar to economic life.

But nevertheless, the life of breathing and the life of the heart are related to the life of metabolism. Human labor power is related to economic life in such a way that one can say: Depending on the preconditions of this economic life, human labor power is utilized in very different ways by it. Let us now look at the matter radically; but if it is not too strongly differentiated, the things are there after all; they are then only there to a lesser extent, but they still have an effect in the economic process. But let us look at something radical in order to visualize it. Let us say, for example, that we want to point to a country in which bananas could be a staple food, and want to compare such a territory of the earth, in which people can mainly feed themselves with bananas, with a country in which wheat yields an average harvest, such as in Germany. One can calculate the ratio of human labor required in one territory to that required in the other. The banana is so easy to transport from its point of origin to the point of consumption, and so easy to convert into what is then consumed. So little labor is required to make the banana into a consumer product in the economic process, compared to the labor required to make wheat into a consumer product in a country with an average wheat yield that the labor required for banana cultivation is 1:100 of the labor required for wheat cultivation, that is, one hundred times more human labor is required to make wheat consumable as a raw product for humans than for bananas.

But that also varies from territory to territory within the same article. If we look at the matter from a global perspective, there are major differences. But even on a more limited territory, such differences then arise. In Germany, if you look at the matter with a healthy average yield, wheat yields seven to eight times the yield compared to sowing, in Chile twelve times, in northern Mexico seventeen times, in Peru twenty times. There are regions where it yields twenty-five to thirty-five times as much. This requires a great difference in the human labor expended to bring a product, such as the conditions of the gifts and talents of human beings, that is given to the economic process to the point where it can be consumed, compared to the point of origin for such a product. Production of goods, circulation of goods, consumption of goods: these are the things that live in economic life, but which only economic life can embrace. Man has the need, precisely for such reasons – many similar ones could be added, such as the necessity in the multitude of human labor – man has the need to be connected, to be united with that which concerns the natural foundation, which concerns the other starting points of economic life.

This interconnectedness of human beings in the social organism with the economic conditions is what gives rise to the shaping of the laws that are peculiar to economic life. This economic life can only be based on the interpretation of those laws that arise from what has just been said. What is the basic aim of this economic life? Well, it can be said, esteemed attendees: that which must be active, must absolutely be active in this economic life, without which economic life cannot flourish, that is the human need, that is the need in general. There are also intermediate needs of these human needs: that is what can be called human interest. And certain thinkers in the field of social organization have rightly pointed out that only in the free activity of human interest, of direct human desire and of the interplay of desires and satisfactions in economic life, can the proper development of that economic life lie.

What is the aim of everything that now takes place in the interplay between need and the satisfaction of need in the production, circulation and consumption of goods? It is necessarily all aimed at the purpose of the commodity, at the consumption of the commodity, one could also say, at the most appropriate consumption of the commodity. Look around you wherever you want – if time allowed, I would expand on the concept of the commodity, but everyone feels that – if you want to look around you wherever you can in economic life, you will see that ultimately what matters in economic life is to consume what is produced in the most expedient way – in the most expedient way, I say, to consume.

What does that mean for the human labor force, esteemed attendees? If it has become clear in modern human life, precisely because of the flooding of this modern life with economic life in technology and capitalism, if it has become clear that the proletarian without property, whose own labor is brought to the labor market and is treated, precisely because it is on the labor market, as if it were a commodity, in terms of supply and demand, this is contrary to human dignity. For, in contrast to anything that may be a commodity, a person does not bring their own essence to market. But in the case of his labor power, he markets himself.

It is the abolition of this that the modern proletariat, out of a sense of human dignity, absolutely seeks. Perhaps here and there one will be found who, in full consciousness, can give the correct reasons for this demand; but in the subconscious, in the depths of human souls, in the depths of the proletarian souls, there lives what it is about. There lives a feeling in it: everything that comes onto the market of commodities is ultimately consumed in the most expedient way. But man must resist, absolutely resist, the mere consumption of his labor-power in the most expedient way in the labor-market of commodities. He feels that he has a value in himself, that he has something to preserve in himself, that he carries something in himself, which also lies in his labor-power, which must not be brought to the market of commodities, which must not be treated in the social organism as a commodity. Because in the tripartite social organism everything ultimately boils down to being consumed in the most expedient way, the modern proletariat cries out to the world: I do not want my labor power to become mere consumption for others.

This unconsciously underlies what I tried to work out yesterday as the one main aspect of the social question. And if you look at how it actually came about that, in the course of the development of modern technology and modern capitalism, labor was driven into the economic process, then, to understand this, you have to ask yourself: How did the economic conditions, the satisfaction of economic interests, the whirling up of the economy for the previously leading circles, for the previously leading classes, develop?

This is an essential and important question. They have not developed out of economic life, but precisely because in modern times there has been a fusion of state life with economic life that is no longer appropriate for these modern times; what has developed alongside the economy of humanity as the modern constitutional state, as the modern authoritarian state, is not what the proletariat was initially interested in, but what the so-called leading circles and leading classes were interested in. Within the development of modern technology and modern capitalism, these had an interest in regulating the economic underpinnings from the rights, as they were conceived, within the state adapted to the bourgeois and other ruling classes.

The oppressive aspect of economic life, the aspect that has created an unbearable situation for the proletariat in economic life, my dear attendees, does not come from economic life itself. It is a complete fallacy to believe that. And just as no defect in the metabolism or in the lungs can arise directly from a self-regulating metabolism, but only indirectly, so whatever in economic life has become oppressive for the proletarian world comes from – one need only study history, and one sees this if one is not blinded by prejudice, it stems from the history of conquests, from the history of the power relations and the legal relations that establish the power relations and the laws that oppress the proletariat. As I already mentioned yesterday, property relations are also based on laws. The oppressive nature of the proletariat's situation and the real pulse of the proletarian movement arise from such legal relationships.

Just as legal issues of the old state have worked their way down into economic life, the proletarian labor force, which has been pushed down into economic life by modern technical and capitalist development, must be taken up into legal life, which must now develop as an independent member in the healthy social organism alongside the economic member.

In this context, it really does not matter what they are called. If people prefer, they can call the economic organism the state and the other thing something else – the names are not important; what is important is that these two systems, these two links in the social organism, do not have a single centralization, but that each is centralized within itself, so that they can work side by side and harmonize precisely through their coexistence. That is what matters!

What can be state in the narrower sense can only encompass the regulatory system, that which takes place in the relationship between people. Just as the economic organism has interest in consumption, need and the satisfaction of needs, so the legal organism, the actual state organism, which must not be an economist, which must not engage in any economic activity at all, has the will to right at its core, in the healthy human [social] organism, which has the will to right at its core.

Rights can only exist in a state context. Economic interests can only exist in the economic body. And they must go side by side and together independently. That is it, if you look more closely, however little most people still believe it today, that is it, which has brought about such misfortune in modern life, which encompasses a representative body, an administration, economic life, and the state-regulating legal life. An independent system of representation is necessary for the purely political state. For the legal life, an independent representation, independent administration, for example in the Reichstag or in any ministry, is necessary. An independent administration, an independent ministry, but, to put it bluntly, for economic life, which is inherent in itself in terms of its administration and its perpetual further development, this will arise by itself. While the legal life of the state is concerned with the relationship between people, in that we must all be equal before the law, and while the legal life, if it is properly understood, can only result in a complete democracy, the economic life must be based on independent associations, on such associations that arise from the way people grow together, like the natural conditions previously characterized, in their economic life. Entire systems of associations will develop that, in a corresponding way, interpret the economic organism from the self-regulation of forces in such a way that it must and can be viable for everyone. These things are basically beginnings, yes; but beginnings in which many misunderstandings prevail. We have cooperatives – fine; we have trade unions, we have various other associations; certainly, such things have arisen out of the urge to serve the developmental forces of modern times. But partly from the form that such things have taken, partly from the fact that it is thought that economic life can be handed over to the state, to the community – in all these things it can be seen that in these new structures one does not want to include only what arises from the laws proper to economic life, but what must develop alongside economic life as an independent link in the social organism, namely, the political and legal life of the state, as described in the narrower sense. In contrast to all the concepts of labor and the position of labor in the social organism, as they haunt today, there will be, when these two elements of the healthy organism are juxtaposed, there will be, above all, as there is ownership in the old social organism, such a very different labor law in the new, healthy social organism, which will correspond to the present and the future.

As a result, dear attendees, one thing will happen: the fact that natural conditions are decisive to a certain extent for the formation of economic value in the circulation of goods is already ensured by these natural conditions themselves. But something else must become equally decisive. When what I have described occurs, when the relative independence of the legal sphere occurs, which in itself will comprehend the law of labor, then the value of the goods circulating in the economy will be limited in the same way as the natural conditions. Likewise, this value will be limited and determined by the labor that can be contributed to the economic process according to general human values and humane labor law. No true labor law can ever arise from the mere economic process itself, but only from the separate, relatively independent legal link of the healthy social organism.

This has been abandoned even in the heyday of capitalism, when the state, which is supposed to be merely a constitutional state, stretched its claws over the larger transport companies, especially railways and so on. And while what emerged as a social disease from the delusion of nationalization should be cured, a certain form of modern socialism seeks to continue the disease. That is what matters. For people do not see the following. They do not see what results in this area from a real understanding of the social organism.

Among the various schools that have emerged in modern times, one was already in the eighteenth century for economics. It is called the physiocratic school. This physiocratic school had, but in a terribly one-sided way, we would say today, according to the bourgeois method - it had the principle of the free circulation of economic forces and economic essence. The followers of this physiocratic system, who did not want the constitutional state to interfere in economic life, said the following. They said: Either the constitutional state issues laws that coincide with the laws that economic life already has of its own accord, in which case these laws are superfluous, or it issues laws that contradict the inherent laws of economic life – in which case these laws destroy the rightful existence of economic life; in that case they certainly should not be issued. – So said the physiocrats.

This seems extremely plausible – for what seems more plausible to the superficial person than such an either-or! But when it comes to the reality of life, such an either-or is nonsense, a folly. How so? In the following way: Economic life also develops when man does not want it to, when he interferes with it through all kinds of state laws; it develops independently through its own power, and it always has a certain tendency, always a certain directional force. After all, it tends to bring human coexistence into such a balance that it in turn has to be straightened out.

That is the great error of a certain radical socialism, that one believes that economic life could make people contented and happy if it followed its own laws. No, if it follows its own laws, then it will always end up in crisis-like conditions, which must be helped, and another system must intervene, just as the respiratory-pulmonary system must always intervene in the metabolic or head system to regulate it. Therefore, it is necessary to face reality: the laws of the constitutional state cannot run in the direction of economic laws. But because economic life requires constant correction, because otherwise it would consume people, it is precisely necessary that the laws of the constitutional state constantly limit, regulate, and correct mere economic life, just as metabolism is corrected by breathing. That is what matters.

Today, when we believe we are so practical, we have more and more abstract theories in our heads, not reality. We believe that something makes itself, and laws are there when we just think about what makes itself. Laws, institutions, and forces must often be applied in precisely the opposite sense of what is given from one side, so that a prosperous, healthy development can take place. That is what matters.

Therefore, the healthy spiritual-scientific method, which is based on reality, must not establish any abstract principles - and these are also party programs today - but must point to life. It must point out not how to think up that the labor power of the commodity character is stripped, but it must show what is to be created so that in the emerging social organism human labor power is really perpetually withdrawn from the commodity character. That is what is at stake here: the living shaping of reality. This is what is striven for by the much-maligned spiritual science, and what is most important in the present, what is truly urgently needed in the present: what is important is the living interaction. One cannot push the life of the social organism either economically or in mere rigid conservative legal codes.

Gladstone, one of the most superstitious bourgeois of modern liberalism, once said: “The Americans have such a perfect constitution that it could hardly be more perfect, that it has truly proven itself in all the individual circumstances of the American people.

Another Englishman, who, it seems to me, was cleverer, if perhaps not as great a statesman as Gladstone, said: it is no proof at all that the American administration is a perfect one, that it proves itself, Because if it were less than perfect, it would also prove itself, because the Americans are still such a healthy people – in the opinion of the person concerned – that they would do all this even with a less healthy constitution. And the latter is certainly more right than what Gladstone said, because it points to the living reality, because it really does not matter which laws prevail in a living context, but that people work together in such a way that the necessary damage that arises on one side is constantly corrected by the living forces on the other.

Imagine a homunculus in which the waste products of digestion are not produced inside, which in turn have to be removed by other forces – then you have thought up something that has no breath of life. Spintize, and even if it is in the sense of the most radical people of modern times, about a social organism that does not cause harm to people, that does not consume people, that does not need to have another link of the social organism besides itself other than the constitutional state, as the actual state, then you have thought up an unhealthy social organism. That is it, that one is always pushed again, by the practically minded, but in the most eminent sense impractical way of thinking of modern times, that one again penetrates to a conception of reality, to such thoughts that can submerge into true reality, that can speak of what conditions itself, not what wants to have conditionality out of human prejudices.

And as a third link, alongside the two links that I have mentioned – alongside the economic link and the strictly political or legal link – there must be development of that which encompasses spiritual life in the broadest sense, the spiritual life that exists in education, in all schooling, from the most elementary school up to the university; that which exists in the artistic life, and finally in the religious life, which must also include - this will again seem paradoxical to some today, although it arises from real factual considerations - that must also include [not] public law, the law that is conditioned by the relationship between human beings; it belongs to the second link.

But this third part must include everything that aims at private law and criminal law. There the individual human being is confronted with the individual human being in such an abnormal relationship that the public life of the constitutional state, although it is up to the one who - if I may express myself trivially - has to carry something out; but to pass judgment is the responsibility of a relationship between individual human beings. The execution of the judgment may in turn belong to the constitutional state.

Everything, dear attendees, belongs in this area, in this spiritual area, everything that must be based on the ground of the individual human soul and body, which can only arise from the individual, from the freedom of the human being, how it must be placed on the economic interest of the economic body, the independent one, and how it must be placed on the legal life of the political body, so must it be placed on freedom the body that encompasses the actual spiritual life. Modern social democracy has included a single area in an impulse that goes in the direction described here, but not out of an appreciation of this area, but precisely out of an underestimation of it: religion should be a private matter.

Of course it should be. And anyone who does not underestimate religion, but understands its full value, will demand this all the more! But in the face of the legal and economic state, all of intellectual life must be a private matter. And now that the social question of the present day is coming to a conclusion – for that is what it consists of, the merging of economic life with legal life, of the state with the economic organism – it is precisely through the emergence of the capitalist and technical world order in modern times that the merging has also occurred, which was not there at all before the point in time marked yesterday, before the fifteenth century. The amalgamation of intellectual life with state life. The interests of the emerging bourgeoisie, which were connected with the development of the modern state, also tended to have intellectual life absorbed into the organism of the state. Judges were needed, doctors were needed, theologians were also needed, teachers were needed, and so on and so forth. The state extended its omnipotence over the spiritual life as a result of this impulse.

This spiritual life must be redeemed again, and placed on its own ground, on the free individuality of the human being. Then, and only then, will it develop in a healthy relationship to the other two limbs of the social organism.

Sometimes things are very hidden and masked there. Perhaps only someone who, like the one speaking to you, has spent his whole life has avoided in any way bringing what he has striven for spiritually into any relationship with any state; who can therefore know how this spiritual life must develop when it is freely left to its own devices. And it must be left to its own devices if it is to develop.

The dependence of the spiritual life on the life of the state has not contributed in the slightest to the weakening of the impact of the spiritual life to the point of the dead ideology that the modern social question creates. For it is not only that the personalities who drive intellectual life come to depend on state life and have to serve the institutions of state life. Anyone who can look at these things in depth knows something else entirely: , he knows that the inner form, the content of spiritual life itself becomes dependent on its relationship to the other organisms, which can only be a healthy one if the spiritual life develops in complete independence. Otherwise, dependencies also conceal and mask themselves. If it occurs independently, if it occurs in complete freedom, if it is completely left to its own devices, then a healthy relationship with the legal and economic body will arise naturally in life. How we adjust our own impulses; otherwise, due to certain prejudices, we do not notice things. Let us take a case that could seem radical, but which is quite characteristic. Let us assume that some young student wants to take his doctorate in the field of philology. He is advised to write, say, about feeling words in some old Roman writer or about the [parenthesis] in Homer. Such a task even had to be done by a young friend of mine. For such a work, a young person needs a year of extensive work.

Those who are so asleep in today's scientific life will say: Well, scientific interests. Science demands such an investigation into the feeling words of an ancient Roman writer, or into the [parenthesis] in Homer. In this way, science is served. But there is something else to consider. The healthy relationship of such a work to the whole of human life must be considered. This must become transparent in the entire human [social] organism. The student who works for a year to determine the hidden [parenthesis] in Homer eats, drinks and dresses for a year. That is to say, a number of people have to work for this work, to work for a year to feed him, to clothe him, so that he can do in time that which certainly does not fit into the healthy human [social] organism in a proper interest! Because a spiritual achievement only fits into the healthy human organism with a proper interest if it is desired, if there is a need for it. That is what matters.

And something else is important. It depends on the healthy development of the spiritual part of the social organism that the spiritual part of human culture also has the corresponding momentum, that it really produces what is relevant to reality. From this spiritual life, for example, technical ideas also arise, that which, as a spiritual idea, constantly intervenes in economic life in a productive and creative way. This can only be born in a healthy way in a real spiritual life, not in a spiritual life that has been deadened to the point of abstraction, which can be described by the term ideology.

The important thing is not to fight against the leaders of the modern proletariat labeling spiritual life as ideology, but to recognize that spiritual life, which has emerged from the unfortunate amalgamation of spiritual culture with the other two links of the social organism, has reduced spiritual life to ideology. It is easy to describe modern intellectual life as ideology; but a productive, self-effective intellectual life must in turn occur in a healthy social organism. This will also have a healthy effect on economic and legal life. This in turn must be relatively independent.

That this life in spiritual culture, in the third link of the healthy social organism, must be built on itself, I believe I showed as early as the beginning of the nineties of the last century in my “Philosophy of Freedom” , which, I believe, is now being republished at the right time, and which shows that real freedom can only exist and is only justified where a true spiritual life can flourish.

Now there is far too little time to elaborate here on what I would like to say about the free spiritual life. But I would at least like to hint at it. I will hint at it by saying that a healthy consideration of the threefold human organism shows that what is produced out of the spiritual sphere will then intervene healthily in the other two organisms when the spiritual life is completely self-contained. For then, he who can have a leading position in economic life according to his own conditions will not only need the proletarian who toils and labors, and who will then no longer be there as such at all, but he will need the one who, as a spiritual worker, can be the consumer. But through labor legislation, he can preserve that part of his labor power, that is, of his life force, which must not be consumed in the labor market, but must be regulated by the second link of the healthy social organism. Today, at least within the capitalist economic system, the one who is in a leading - that is, today essentially capitalist - position has only an interest in the consumption of human labor in the proletarian. The healthy three-part social organism will not only have an interest in the working laborer, but also in the resting laborer, in the laborer who can consume what will strive for consumption. This will certainly not be what the young badger will do, spending a year writing about the sensory words of some old writer and doing a doctoral thesis, but it will be what is demanded, what is needed by spiritual life. A full unison, a living unison will arise between spiritual production and general human, spiritual consumption. No one will be excluded from what the spiritual life offers. And precisely because of the interconnection of the three parts of the social organism, which should be independent, so many people are actually excluded from what other people do.

Everything that is produced as the lifeblood of society in a healthy human organism must also flow in a healthy way into the other parts of the social organism. It will not be possible to say, esteemed attendees, that in the future, for example, in a constitutional state that will have a democratically oriented representation, the individual circles will also sit, that they can also form a party, an agricultural party and so on. This will not be the case for the reason that the interests that today develop in opposite directions will then develop in the same direction. Even the antagonism between the Conservative and Liberal parties will not exist in the future if the social organism is allowed to develop healthily, because in a constitutional state, the conditions that always arise concretely will not be oriented objectively towards conservatives, liberals and so on, according to the slogan, I say slogans.

So today I could only sketch for you, dear attendees, what is at stake, in that not only a transformation of circumstances, but a transformation of the whole life for the social organism must occur.

On February 28, I will give another lecture here. There I will give individual evidence and details, and also show that for everything I have hinted at today, only a sketch could be given, that for all this there is a proving, a reasoning science. So that is to take place here in this hall on February 28.

Today, I would just like to point out that this terrible catastrophe that has befallen humanity for four and a half years, as I already mentioned yesterday, has highlighted the social question as a major question of world history, on which every person must take a practical stand based on life.

It is necessary for each individual to take a position on what has happened. One will soon be convinced how the life of each individual depends on the position he will take on the social problem, on the social riddle in the future. That is why it happened that way, because I always these things - allow me here, a personal but in reality not personal, but quite objective remark - because I did not invent these things to make something up, but because I won them from the observation of the present human that I wanted to put them into practice more and more when this terrible catastrophe of war reached a certain point, where one could see that it would develop out of the absurdity of previous forces, that it would develop into the essential social problem of humanity. During that war catastrophe, I tried, for example, to present to individuals, sensed and adapted to the circumstances, that the time demands something like the social impulse, which I have also explained here in yesterday's and today's lecture.

In a sense, I wanted to show personalities who were still active at the time, but have now been swept away, what they need if they are to contribute to changing that which proves to be diseased in the social organism. And so I had to speak to many people, to those who still mattered at the time, about what I am saying here. It is not a program that has been thought out, not something that has been thought out, but reality, in that the forces that are at work within the development of humanity will bring about what will happen in ten or twenty years over a large part of Europe. And to many I said, I believed that their hearts and souls could be stirred by it, to many I said: You now have the choice, if you still want to join in, either to follow that which will happen because it must happen, out of reason, or you wait until social cataclysms and social revolutions come.

People were drawn into what they were drawn into more quickly than could be hinted at in those days. In those days, the word “could” meant “was allowed to”. That was the way one had to speak in those days. But people did not want to listen. We have also experienced similar things in other areas! We have experienced that statesmen, leading statesmen, as late as May 1914, announced to parliaments in the most prominent positions: We are in such a European context that peace is secured for a long time. — This can be proved to them. People are that far-sighted!

However, anyone who is serious about what is really going on would have had to speak differently to people at the time. Before this military disaster, I repeatedly had to hint at what I, in turn before this military disaster, said like the others, like the statesmen: Peace is assured, we now live in one of the best of worlds. I was told in Vienna: This tendency - namely the tendency that lies in the present social life - will become ever greater and greater until it destroys itself. He who has a spiritual grasp of social life sees everywhere the terrible growth of social ulcers. That is the great cultural question that arises for him who sees through existence; that is the terrible thing that has such a depressing effect and that, even if one could suppress all enthusiasm for spiritual science, if one could suppress what would otherwise open one's mouth for spiritual science, which could then lead one to cry out to the world, as it were, for the remedy for what is already so strongly on the rise and will become stronger and stronger if the social organism continues to develop as it has done so far. This is how cultural damage occurs, which can be seen for this, for the social organism, just as cancerous growths can be seen for the natural human organism.

Faced with the social question, we are faced with the possibility that people will continue to sleep through events, that they will not listen to what must necessarily be said to the social organism, just as it can be said to the natural organism when someone has a cancerous ulcer inside.

Not only did people refuse to see the full implications of what I mean in the course of the war catastrophe so far – they took what they understood of it, usually in such a way that it can only be seen as an expression of the internal politics of this or that state. I did not then and do not now mean it only as the domestic policy of this or that state territory, but I do mean it in such a way that I find it rooted in the developmental forces towards which humanity is heading. And I mean it first and foremost as the foreign policy of the various states.

That is what I have emphasized above all: that certain states, to whom it concerns, have to hold these things up to the world as their foreign policy. If we consider that one state is not so closely connected with another as they would have been, for example, these European states in 1914, that the unnatural mixing of the political and state problem to the southeast of Austria, the Austro-Serbian problem, of ill-starred memory, - the states would not have linked their economic and political interests in such a way, the social organisms would not have linked their interests in such a way as they were linked in Europe, and therefore alliances arose that necessarily developed to such an extent after a certain point that ultimately decisions were made from the most one-sided strategic-military points of view.

Let us assume that the states are in a relationship in which the threads are drawn, the legal ones, which will essentially be the same for all states - the actual political relationships will be the same for all states, especially in the case of a healthy organism - then the economic and intellectual threads will intertwine. More and more, the one will be corrected by the other. And precisely where today, at the borders, the contradictions have arisen as a result of the interconnection of the three areas, these contradictions will be corrected when, regardless of the political relationship, the system of economic efficiency extends across the borders.

I can only hint at this here. But it should mean, it should point out, that the various territories of the world, through what is characterized here as a healthy social organism, come into such a system that, in contrast, the League of Nations, as it is conceived today, will be an abstraction, into such a system that is based on reality, so that one reality increasingly excludes the damage of the others. That is what matters today.

Now, esteemed attendees, what I have presented is perhaps more uncomfortable for many than what these same many imagine as the solution to the social question today. Because you can very easily see from what I have presented – as I said, more on February 28 – but you can already see from what I have presented today that one cannot imagine: The social question has arisen, clever people will solve it, and then socialism will be here. But it is not like that. It is contrary to all development.

Of course, the social question is here because human development has entered a new stage of existence, because new forces have emerged. But since it has been here, this social question will not disappear for all time in the future development of humanity. Economic life will continue to be more and more a social question. It will not be possible to invent a socialism that will solve the social question at a stroke. But it will be possible to create a healthy social organism in which the social question will be solved in a living context through the active engagement of people, day by day, year by year, epoch by epoch, in an ongoing process. No solution of the social question that can be thought of today must be allowed to take place. I am not pointing out institutions to you that will eliminate the social question. It is there, it is there as a life force of future humanity. The life of this future humanity will consist in the fact that this future humanity will have to create something through which the solution of the social question will be experienced perpetually. The existence of the social question, the existence of social development, will be enriched, not impoverished; a new element of life will enter into the social organism. That is what matters: the self-regulation of social life through the three relatively independent social links, that is what matters.

When I consider this, and when I consider that the general prejudice that once prevailed against spiritual science is also applied when this spiritual science speaks about the social question, on the one hand it strikes me that a very well-known gentleman had it said to him when a certain goal was explained to him, which I am practically striving for in terms of rebuilding the ailing conditions of the civilized world – in a brief appeal, the person in question was able to read, in a few sentences, what I have explained to you yesterday and today – he replied: he would have thought that I would not point to such economic things for the recovery of the current human situation, but to the spirit.

Now, dear ones, this shows how the minds, how those who have worked with us for a long time, brought about the disaster, and even today do not want to see what is important. It is not enough to just preach: spirit, spirit and spirit. It is not enough to call out to people today: but rather that we use this spirit to immerse ourselves in the actual conditions and to control the actual conditions as they must develop in accordance with reality. It depends on how the spirit is applied in life. It does not depend on repeatedly pointing out in the abstract: Spirit, spirit, spirit must be placed back into humanity, then all will be well.

That is one thing that occurs to me. The other thing that occurs to me in response to what the clever people are saying: what does the spiritual scientist want in the social question? I would like to reply: he wants to adjust human thinking and feeling and willing to true reality, just as he does in everything else. This reminds me of the poor boy who once sat as a servant at a Newcomen steam engine. He had to take out and push in the two cocks alternately, which let in the condensate on one side and the steam on the other. And then this boy noticed that the balancer was jumping up and down. It occurred to him, because he was not forming theories, but was standing at the machine itself, it occurred to him: What would happen if I took two cords, pulled one at a time, and the other at the other? And behold, the balancer went up and down, and all by itself, one tap opened at the right time and came down again, and the other from the other side. And the boy could watch! You see, someone of the ilk of those people who observe everything that is observed from reality poorly and say, “You good-for-nothing boy, what are you doing! Get rid of the cords. – World history has done it differently. World history has allowed the self-control of the steam engine, one of the most important modern inventions, one of the inventions that has most comprehensively intervened in modern technical life, to emerge from this initially poor boy who tied the cockerel to the balance arm.

Not out of immodesty, and not to characterize something for the one who is already established in the teaching represented here, but to characterize those who would like to come, to speak in relation to the social aperçu that I have presented, to speak, so to speak, from the standpoint of their cleverness, as one would have said: “Stupid boy, quickly get rid of what you are doing, what nonsense are you up to?” Leave it alone! I would only like to say to them what occurs to me with regard to the little working boy, as I have told you. For people will soon have to realize, those who cannot do it with their minds will have to realize it with their lives and with their feelings - they will have to realize that they have to approach the reality of the social question in a realistic way. It is there; it has been knocking at the door of human life for long decades and has come in through the door. It will not allow itself to be thrown out again by anyone. The desire to throw it out will be the worst policy. But it will also be bad if people do not listen at the right time to what needs to be said about the social question. Because then it could be that communication from person to person, across class lines, is no longer possible because the instincts have been unleashed too strongly. We need only look at the fire signs that are rising on the world horizon today to realize that we have to deal with the issues at hand, otherwise it could well be too late due to the unleashing of human instincts that can no longer be calmed – perhaps not for decades!

Dear attendees! When I published my “Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and the Near Future” in the spring of 1919, the public life of the West was somewhat different from what it is today. It should actually be made perfectly clear how fast the pace of current events is. We should realize how much the configuration of Western civilization has changed again in the last two years. In the spring of 1919, there was sufficient reason to hope that a sufficiently large number of people would unite in the belief that spiritual impulses could counteract the forces of social decline. The terrible experiences of the war years lay behind the Western world's humanity. These terrible experiences, which at the time many people felt were incomparable in the historical life of humanity. And from these terrible experiences had emerged the opinion that something very drastic had to be done, something that had to be brought about from the depths of intellectual life, so that the forces of decline could be paralyzed in an appropriate way and humanity could be brought out of the rising forces through work.

One would like to say: After only a few months, one could see that this opinion, which was very much present in the broadest circles, had actually receded considerably. Therefore, in February, March, April and May of 1919, one could have believed that by asserting such ideas, as they were presented in my “Key Points of the Social Question” and as they were summarized in my appeal “To the German People and to the World of Culture,” one could have believed that by putting forward such ideas one could reach those people who held the opinion just characterized. It was not necessary to cherish the arrogant opinion that the right ideas had been hit upon if they were put forward in this way. It was enough to believe that the ideas had been honestly drawn from the depths of existence, from the legitimate depths of of existence, such ideas had been brought up, and then one could believe that from the experiences that had just arisen, a sufficiently large number of people would be found to support the whole ductus, the whole will of such ideas, with understanding and energy.

One could see how very soon people again believed that humanity would be helped by first gluing together these or those old impulses that had been torn apart. One could see how the energy that had been noticeable for a while back then was gradually paralyzed and so on. At that time, in the spring of 1919, what I called “The Threefold Social Organism” had to be thrown into the situation, as it were. As I said, it might need to be corrected, as always, but it had to be thrown into the situation because it arose out of two presuppositions.

The first prerequisite is an historical one, a spiritual-historical one, one that is gained from observing the course of human development as it emerges from the spiritual-historical observation that is carried out here as anthroposophical.

The other prerequisite arose from decades of observation of the impulses that were striving from the undergrounds of spiritual, state-political and economic life everywhere towards the surface. The second prerequisite arose from the observation of what actually wanted to be realized, to which one should only help to realize, from this observation, from the directly practical observation of the three different formations of life. The first premise was not theoretical either. The purpose of spiritual science, as it is here, is to lead to full reality. Therefore, all its considerations, including those on the development of humanity, are imbued with a sense of reality. Who could not recognize the democratic principle by an unbiased observation of that which has asserted itself more and more intensely in the emergence of modern humanity?

I do not need to define this democratic principle. Of course, one person understands one thing by it and another person something else. But in general, one has a sense of what has been emerging in recent history as the democratic principle, the principle that man, simply by being man, must assert within the social community, that as much as the judgment of the individual human being is worth, this judgment must also mean in social events. This urge for democracy had been there for a long time, expressed through the most diverse movements and convulsions of the newer historical life of Western humanity, with its American offshoot.

But on the other hand, it could be seen that this democratic life cannot actually be realized in all respects. And it becomes apparent to the unbiased observer of human society that there is only one area of social life that can truly become democratic, and that is the political-state area. But the political-state area, if it wants to become democratic, can only include those matters on which every person who has come of age is capable of judgment. And if you think practically, you can clearly define the area of social life that can be subject to the judgment of every person who has come of age. On the other hand, there are two areas that simply cannot be democratized because they can only develop if they develop in terms of the expertise and specialist knowledge of the people, of the individual human individuality. This is, on the one hand, the entire area of intellectual life, namely that area of intellectual life that is actually public, the area of teaching and education, and, on the other hand, that of economic life.

Spiritual life and its main component, the system of teaching and education, can only develop properly if it arises from the professional judgment and expertise of the individuals active in this field and is also administered, administered in complete independence. Not every person who has come of age can judge in this area. Therefore, in this area there can be no such thing as a democratic constitution and democratic administration. Nor can there be democratic constitution and democratic administration in the field of economic life.

In this connection I should like to call attention to a fact which may be multiplied a hundredfold or a thousandfold by the experiences of life, a fact which has taken place in modern times. About the middle of the nineteenth century and towards the last third of it, the question of the gold standard, the actual gold standard, became particularly pressing, I might say. And one can make a very interesting observation if one considers everything that was said for and against the gold standard by very clever people in parliaments, trading companies, associations of entrepreneurs, industrial associations of entrepreneurs, and so on, up to the second half of the nineteenth century and towards the last third of it. I do not mean any irony when I say that in those days a huge amount of cleverness was raised for and against the gold standard. And in particular, a conclusion-type played a major role back then, namely that if one really came to this unified gold currency, then the pursuit of free trade and the realization of free trade would prevail everywhere. Free trade will finally triumph.

You can tell, my dear audience, when you read what was said at the time, what was said at the time, it is really clever, it was not said by stupid people, but it was said by extraordinarily clever people. But reality soon said the opposite. Reality has shown that everywhere the gold standard has led to efforts to establish protective tariff systems and to close the individual national borders. That is to say, the cleverest people, those people who, out of their industrial cleverness, said the most sensible things, had to be taught by reality that, in line with reality, the opposite should have been said! As I said, I am not being ironic when I speak of “cleverness”; I mean it quite seriously. For this fact - and it could be multiplied a hundredfold - points us in many directions. What does it point us to? That in the economic field the individual cannot be decisive at all, that he can only be decisive if his judgment coincides with that of others who, in turn, are experienced and skilled in another area of economic life, that is to say, that the individual with his judgment has only one value within the association.

And so we have two areas: the spiritual area of teaching and education, which must be placed in the power of the individual human individuality; and the economic area, which must be placed in the power of the association, the association of the appropriate cooperation of the individual economic sectors, of production, consumption, and the circulation of goods. The proper form of interaction that results from all of this, from the judgment within the associations, must shape economic life. So that we have three links, not parts; by speaking of the tripartite division of the social organism, one has given rise to many misunderstandings; one cannot speak of the three-part human being either, one cannot divide the human being into head, trunk, limbs and metabolism, whereas the human being really consists of these three parts; so one cannot speak of the three of the social organism, but only of the threefold social organism, because these three members should not go their own way, as it were, the head, the circulation system - the rhythmic one - and the metabolism system can go their own way, but precisely because of their relative independence, they also work together in the most economical and rational way. If you take this threefold social order seriously, you can be honest as a democrat, because then you can really implement democracy in the area where it should be implemented, in the area of state and political affairs, where the mature human being faces the mature human being, and where only that which can be judged by a mature human being is decided and administered. It is entirely possible to find the detailed, concrete form of how to work towards this threefold social organism.

However, you see, conditions have become so unnatural in this respect that sometimes, even back in the spring of 1919, when the threefold social organism was taken much more seriously than it is today, sometimes you had to give strange answers. In one country, for example, where a so-called Ministry of Labor had been set up, I was asked by the Minister of Labor: “Yes, but if the social organism is to be threefolded, where do I actually belong?” He meant as Minister of Labor. Well, if you think about the necessities very concretely, the Ministry of Labor is a hybrid between economic life and political life. That is why I said to the minister in question: Yes, unfortunately for you, you have to be cut in half. - Like the brave Swabian who was not afraid and cut the Turk in half, so a half labor minister should have fallen out of our unnatural present circumstances on both the left and the right. But it is precisely these things that prove how things are, and how everything is mixed up, confounded.

And so we have to say: the necessity of the threefold social order arose out of the historical, spiritual-scientific observation of the emergence of democracy. If we observe the quite radical change that occurred in the second decade of the twentieth century, we can also see that that experiences are now possible that could lead people to take such a thing seriously and understand it. One could also say that it was basically only the final consequence of what had already emerged at the end of the eighteenth century in the call for liberty, equality and fraternity. This appeal for liberty, equality and fraternity, which emerged from the French Revolution, is such that it cuts deep into the hearts of all unbiased people, that it must be taken for granted, that it must be striven for. But anyone who is even slightly familiar with the cultural-political literature of the nineteenth century knows how much has been said – and again not by stupid people, but by very clever ones – against these three ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Just read the extraordinary multi-volume work of the very talented Magyar [Eötvös] from the 1850s, and you will see how it is proved in a very subtle philosophical that the idea of equality cannot be realized alongside [the idea of] freedom, and that, in turn, the idea of fraternity cannot be realized alongside the idea of absolute equality, and so on. It must be said: what is being put forward here is clever. One sees at last that these very ideas, in the course of the historical development of mankind, well up from the underground to the surface as something quite justified, but that nevertheless the whole of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century were still under the sway of the suggestion of the unitary state. This suggestion of the unitary state was so great that people worked more and more, especially in Central Europe and also over Western Europe, with the exception of England, to shape the unitary state more and more intensively in terms of its agents. One was under the suggestion of the omnipotence of the unitary state, which had to extend over everything. And into that one could not then fit the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity.

If we recognize that this unified state is striving towards threefold order, then we also very soon realize that spiritual life is striving towards freedom, state and political life towards equality of all mature human beings, and economic life towards true brotherhood in associations, and from there out into all of life.

As soon as one has the idea of threefolding, one also has the agent for realizing freedom, equality and fraternity. Now, of course, there have been many people, my dear audience, who, when they heard something like the threefolding of the social organism, spoke of utopia. But it is not utopian. Just as it emerged from a spiritual-scientific-historical observation, on the other hand, it emerged from a practical observation of life itself, and it is simply not true that this threefold social order would be about imposing over humanity, which has become somewhat chaotic, but rather it is a matter of the fact that for the person who understands this threefold social order, it can be tackled from every single point of life. You can start anywhere, and then the individual beginnings will flow together into a whole by themselves. This is how we started with the threefold social order in the realm of spiritual life.

We started at our Stuttgart Waldorf School, because it is just a school like any other, but a school that has been created out of a truly free spiritual life, I want to mention it first. However, it is difficult to get through today, especially with views on the school system. In this regard, one also experiences strange things. I recently read an article in a magazine that was somewhat critical of the 'National Assembly' that took place in the city of Goethe and Schiller, Weimar, after the so-called German Revolution; of course I have nothing against criticizing this National Assembly, because basically one can say: it is really hardly an exaggeration to describe this national chatter – parliamentarism always has something to do with a chattering association or talkativeness, doesn't it, the special way of talking together! I have nothing against holding up a proper image of this National Assembly. But something strange was said. It was said that this Weimar National Assembly had actually only caused havoc in all areas of public life – with the exception of a single area where it had delivered something useful, namely in the area of schools, through the creation of the so-called primary school, the so-called unified school, and so on.

Now, this essay is based on nothing more than the fact that it is easier to see what nonsense the “Weimar National Assembly” has inaugurated in other areas of life than in the field of education, where everyone can prattle on for a very long time before the nonsense is noticed.

Now, when our “Freie Waldorfschule” was founded in Stuttgart, it was important that the spiritual life itself should be the foundation and soil with its own requirements, from which teaching and education are derived here. Of course, anthroposophical spiritual science is the source of the pedagogy and didactics of the Waldorf School. I gave the seminar course for the teachers of this Waldorf School based on anthroposophical spiritual science before the opening of the Waldorf School. But this Waldorf School was not misused to instill dogmatic anthroposophy into children in a school of world view. The founding of the Waldorf School was quite the opposite of this. The aim of the Waldorf School was to apply a pedagogy and didactics in which anthroposophical spiritual science can be practically demonstrated right down to the skill of the fingers; from the application of pedagogy and didactics and from what one did, one wanted to show the fruits of anthroposophical feeling and thinking, not by instilling any dogmas. That is why they almost, I would even say radically, refrained from making the Waldorf school a school of world view. That is why religious education was separated from the other subjects. Religious education for Catholic children was entrusted to the Catholic priest, and for Protestant children to the Protestant pastor.

And then, in the course of the school's effectiveness, it became apparent that there was a large number of children, dissident children, who did not attend any lessons, neither Catholic nor Protestant. What should be done with these children?

Initially, the children's group at the Waldorf School was made up of the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory; after all, it was our friend Emil Molt in Stuttgart who founded this Waldorf School, and initially the children were “the children of workers” at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. Now, there were a great many parents who did not want to send their children to any of the religious lessons; but they felt that their children should not grow up without religion, without being introduced to spiritual things. And so we were obliged to set up a kind of anthroposophical free religious education alongside the other lessons, which we then also developed in terms of pedagogy and didactics, and which now stands as a third one, on an equal footing with the other two.

The Protestant religion teachers in particular had to state that they feared that the children would run away from them and run over to the anthroposophical religious education, didn't they? But as I said, it was precisely in this treatment of the religious education questions that it should be shown how far the Waldorf School is from wanting to be a school of world view.

On the other hand, anthroposophical spiritual science is able to answer the question: What are the forces that have taken on physical form in the child after it has descended from the spiritual world, and what are the forces that are particularly active in the child up to the year in which the teeth change, around the age of seven?

They are mainly powers of imitation, and everything that is to be brought to the child at this age must be achieved through a certain study of these childlike powers of imitation.

Other powers then emerge from the background of the child's mind around the seventh year. One has to take these powers into account. One then sees how one has to approach reading, writing and so on; from what one knew from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, a pedagogy and didactics were formed, a real art of education that works towards not introducing reading and writing to children in an abstract way, but in such a way that reading and writing are brought out of a certain artistic, holistic humanity.

Between the ages of six, seven and nine, teaching is such that nothing abstract, nothing that engages the mere head, the mere intellect, is presented to the child. Our mere numbers and letter signs engage the mere intellect if they are not taken from the full activity of the human being. And so it was particularly important for this childhood age to have a great deal of light shed on it through anthroposophical observation of human development. The corresponding pedagogy and didactics were based on this.

Between the ages of nine and ten, there is an important point in a child's development that must be taken into account by educators and teachers. Something occurs that usually goes unnoticed. Before that, the child hardly differs from his or her surroundings. It is best to teach the child in a way that appeals as little as possible to its sense of self. But between the ages of nine and ten, something breaks into the child's mind, the main development of which lasts only a short time. One must be grown to observe what is happening in the child's development, because sometimes it depends on a few days to find the right words, the right encouragement for the child, to bring the right thing forward in the right way.

And so it is important to know what human nature wants every year, every week. And so you bring the child up, and we have developed this pedagogy and didactics to bring the child up to the age of 13, 14, 15, where something completely different occurs in child development.

Eight days ago, I was obliged to ensure in an evening course for teachers that our so-called tenth class could now be opened in the appropriate way. This is the class that children enter when they have reached sexual maturity, or, as we say in anthroposophical spiritual science, at the age when the childlike astrality, the astral body, as we say, the actual spiritual-soul body, is born. This requires a very special deepening into this important age. And in opening this class, the pedagogical-didactic maxim had to be found again to guide young people into this age.

You see, you have to feel the full weight of the age on your soul in a certain way if you really want to practice contemporary pedagogy and didactics in this way. Because you have seen it: in the last few decades – I would say it is an international affair – the so-called youth movement has emerged in the most diverse forms. What did this youth movement mean? The young suddenly demanded something completely new and were aware that the old could not give them what they were demanding. The wanderer instinct and so on, as they are all called, have become known to people.

Now this youth movement has clearly shown that the old were no longer able to be the right authority for the young. The young no longer expected what had previously been expected of the young by the old, and a terrible yearning went through the young. I would like to say: In this yearning, however mistaken and nebulous it was in certain respects, the call for a new pedagogy and didactics is clearly expressed. There is no need to [see] whether something that comes up with such elementary power from the depths of life, whether it is more or less right or wrong, but you only have to look at it in its actuality, then it can already prove this or that to you. In particular, anyone who has seen the latest phase of these youth movements, which have only emerged in recent years, must admit that this youth movement first expressed itself in such a way that the nebulous, chaotic urge of one person to join another emerged. I would like to say – the young lived out their lives in packs, in cliques. Then suddenly a strange turn occurred, only in the last few years and especially among the best members of this youth movement a colossal turn occurred. They got tired of connecting one to the other in small cliques. And those who had previously had a strong urge to join one another in small cliques began to feel a kind of disgust for being together. A certain hermit-like behavior asserted itself, youthful hermit-like behavior. They closed themselves off, they encapsulated themselves, the young people. A complete turnaround has taken place. This is also deeply significant. And again, it is not a Central European, but an international issue that has taken hold of all possible youth groups in the civilized world today. It is a matter of the necessity today to provide for spiritual life from the very depths of all of life.

Something like this should be created by the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which, I would like to say, was also created out of social circumstances. All the blustering about the unified school, which arises from all kinds of enmity and antipathy and sympathy, is of course immediately lost in the objective when one teaches and educates out of the nature of the human being. There, of course, people are taught and educated uniformly. But the matter is brought into being appropriately, not out of political proposals or antipathies and ranklings and räsonnements. The fruitful further development of humanity depends on this, that out of the factual the factual be founded.

But to achieve something like this, to really have teachers who can approach young people in such a way with such a pedagogy and didactics, you need a free spiritual life, because you have to be able to use the full power of the teachers. My dear attendees, many a person has thought for a long time, especially in times of liberal ideas, when freedom has been so greatly undermined, many a person has thought: we need programs, we need comprehensive ideas. Many programs have been devised about the best way to teach, especially about curricula.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, when you put five, six, twelve not particularly clever people together – forgive this somewhat delicate or undelicate allusion – when so and so many people sit down and let their abstract minds , then they come up with the most ideal programs, all of it perfect; Clause I, the teacher has to teach this in class, Clause II, the teacher has to treat the students in such and such a way, Clause III, this or that has to happen. For the eighth year, this is how it has to be done, and so on. In the greatest perfection, paragraph I to x, everything can be presented in this way, and you can get an ideal program out of it, with the average intellectual predisposition of the twelve people who sat down together. Not much is needed to define anything in abstracto. Only because these people have the urge to disagree, we have received not one, but many programs. There are programs and cleverness buzzing through the world. When would there have been more programs and cleverness – whereby the word “cleverness” is not even used ironically – buzzing through the world than precisely in the nineteenth century.

But you see, that is not what matters, what matters is what happens in reality. What matters is real, practical life. Well, we have indeed gradually entered into strange realms of abstraction. Today, people even think about very strange theories in theory. For example, they think about the fact that if they travel from point A to point B at ordinary speed, and a cannon is fired at point A and another cannon is fired at point B, they will hear the cannon that was fired later than the one that was fired earlier. But if they move faster and faster, the interval changes; and then they work out that if they move at the speed of sound, they even hear the one cannon that is fired later at the same time. And if they move faster than the speed of sound, they even hear the cannon that is fired later earlier than the one that is fired earlier!

Now, you see, that may seem quite correct in theory, and there is nothing to be said against it. But someone who thinks in a spiritual sense, thinks realistically, not just logically, has something to object to, because that is only one way to get to the truth, and he wants to think realistically, and then he also has to imagine what such a person would look like who would now move faster than sound. Einstein even calculated what a clock would look like if it were to fly out into space at the speed of light and then come back again. Theoretically, all this can be done, and of course it is all theoretically correct. It has been much admired. But just imagine what the clock would look like when it comes back, or what a person would look like if he were to move at the speed of sound! One thing is certain: one would not be able to judge the differences in the speed of sound, because the human being would have to become sound himself. This would lead one to the conclusion that one cannot help but let concrete reality flow into one's soul, not abstract theory. Only then are we on the right path to truth. But then we also realize that a dozen people can work out very beautiful programs. But a dozen teachers can only realize what lies within the power of these teachers. And the most beautiful ideals have no value at all compared to what really lives in people. Therefore, what is to be achieved must be taken from the reality of the human being. You simply have to create this school republic out of the individual personalities of the teachers, you must not want more than the teachers can achieve, who you can put in their place. You have to take the specific teachers into account, and the school program emerges from this specific teaching staff. But this is only possible in a free spiritual life, in a spiritual life such as is striven for in the threefold social organism, where the individual human being is actually directly confronted with the spiritual world, and feels responsible for what he has to achieve in the field of spiritual life, directly responsible to the spiritual world, not to the school inspector, or through him to the minister of education and so on, but directly to the powers of the spiritual world. For an education and training system such as I have just described can only be developed if one does not merely have an abstract, intellectual spiritual life, but a real spiritual life, when it is the spirit itself that reigns on earth through the deeds of men, when one appeals to the living spirit, not merely to concepts and ideas, not merely to the intellectual and the intellectualizing. But you can only bring it out, bring it forth, this living spiritual life, this active spirit, from the individual human personalities themselves. From the teacher of the lowest elementary school class up to the teacher of the highest school system, each one is integrated into the independent spiritual organism, so that each one can only follow himself, and has so much teaching to do that he still has time to perform administrative tasks, so that everything that is administered is done by those who are still teaching, who really still teach, not by those who have retired or been taken out of the school system. The administration of the school system is the responsibility of those who are still actively teaching. There would be no authority, people say. No, that is precisely where the true authority of spiritual life would be found, namely, the self-evident authority. In no other field can authority arise except that which arises of its own accord. I would like to know how authority can fail to arise when someone really has the will to do something beneficial and knows that someone else can give them advice, then it will come, and then the one who can give the advice will have the self-evident authority.

I have the task of running the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Each teacher is independent in his or her class. The person who does something in class does so on his or her own initiative. The opinion has never been expressed that I have ever ordered anyone to do anything at the Waldorf School. On the other hand, everyone seeks advice on all kinds of matters, and there is a unified spirit in this Waldorf School. The authority is there, as a matter of course. And one could see it grow, this self-evident authority, on the spirit of the Waldorf School in the last two years since this Waldorf School has existed. One could start in this school, which started two years ago with not quite 200 children, which now has over 500 children, who are once again facing difficulties because they do not want to increase the size of the classes, the lower four classes, there should only be as many children admitted as were there before the Elementary School Law was passed. Recently, however, it has become clear that parents will not put up with this. Now, [in] this Waldorf School, there is a place where you can actually realize in a certain area what you can know from the free spiritual life. Sometimes one has strange experiences there, which I perhaps, for easily understandable reasons, in so far as they arise from the interaction, in the social interaction that we do not, however, let into the teaching, with the official life, about which I I prefer not to make any comments on now; but it is already possible to see how the individual things that lie in this threefolding of the social organism can be tackled from the practical, concrete point of view, and how one does not have to deal with some utopia.

Likewise, this can be done in other areas of spiritual life. And in fact, the anthroposophical worldview will not impose itself dogmatically, but will prove its right to exist through its viability. Because, my dear audience, one should not believe at all that someone who writes something like 'The Key Points of the Social Question' from such a basis, from a realistic basis, is thinking of anything utopian. There is no question of that, not even in the choice of expressions: threefold social order. In recent years, when many people have made the threefold order into a sect, which of course it was certainly not meant to be by me, I have had to experience it again and again, especially in Germany: how is it to be organized? How this, how that? It is really quite bad when, even in the post-war period, you are always confronted with the word “organize,” and especially when you call something you would like to see realized an organism, and you still hear the words: “organize, organize”; you organize where there is something mechanical; an organism is precisely there so that you cannot organize it. You cannot organize the organic. That must appear as an organism. Where you want to organize something, you only have the [inorganic] at hand. You cannot organize an organism. You have to let it become.

You can see the thoroughly misunderstood nature of things when such things occur. And so the threefold structure of the social organism is based on the fact that things must form, that one only has to develop the formative forces, that the threefold social organism must arise. Therefore, it cannot be described in the abstract. Especially those who have spoken of utopia would actually always like to have utopias. When speaking of such things, one can hear it asked, well: what then will be the position regarding ownership of a sewing machine in the threefolded social organism? This question has been asked here at this place, and so on.

Now, my dear attendees, a free spiritual life is only possible under the condition of a real spiritual life. Once, when I was talking about such things in a Swiss city, a university teacher replied to me: Yes, but we already have the freedom of the spiritual life, because in all state constitutions it says: Science and its teaching are free. But, ladies and gentlemen, the point is that science, which is free, should only be there as a free science. If, from the outset, science is raised in such a way that people are trained who are suitable for this or that office, and who are taught the program of their office, then you can safely decree that science and its teaching are free. If science itself is enslaved, then enslaved science naturally feels very free when it is allowed to develop as a slave.

And so it was often replied: In such and such a country, the state does not interfere in schools at all. That is the worst thing to say, because then you no longer notice it, and that is much worse than when you notice it and rebel against it, than when you no longer even notice how what flows in is only based on state principles arising without factual or specialized knowledge from the incorrect democratic, when one no longer even notices what should arise from the abilities for each new generation, what the human being still brings with him from the spiritual world by entering into physical existence through birth. We simply need teachers and educators who stand with holy reverence before the child and say to themselves: something from the spiritual world has been entrusted to me in this child, which I have to fathom and solve as a mystery. I must inquire what message from the spiritual world they have given him. Knowledge of the spiritual world must be alive in teaching and education; this spiritual world must be real in teaching and education. When the coming generation is tyrannized by that which is already there, by the living generation, then the spiritual life is made unfree. And to a large extent, the question of teaching and education in a free spiritual life is a question of teachers, the question of finding the right teachers, those who stand before the growing children as I have just characterized it.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, I wanted to use a few strokes, which of course must always remain fragmentary, to point out how the free spiritual life is to be thought of in the threefold social organism. As I said at the beginning of my talk, today we are actually facing a different time from that in the spring, in the spring of 1919. At that time one could believe that there would really be a sufficiently large number of people who would support the realization of the threefold social order. Today one would be out of touch with the times if one had the same faith as one had then. Threefolding must not become a sect either, something that one can believe in and advocate everywhere and at all times, theoretically as one's opinion. Today it is quite clear, however heavy-heartedly one has to admit it, that within European civilization the people who actually do the economic work have no sense of progress, no insight into real needs, that one is preaching to deaf ears if one wants to work into economic life with reasonable foundations. Today it is clear that one can present individual productive examples to the world, as we tried to do in “The Coming Day” and “Futurum”. These examples will exist as individual white ravens, they will be careful to survive, and they will fulfill the expectations placed on them, at least as individuals. But today we cannot speak of the fact that one comes across an insight in general economic life in order to be able to grasp such things with such ideas, as one could still believe in the first urge of human experiences and results in 1919. In the meantime, people have become accustomed to glossing over the old declining forces. They are still downward forces, after all, and the collapse is still coming. They have only decided to delay the collapse a little, to let everything slide, so that they do not have to expend the energy to move forward to new ideas. And humanity is largely asleep and does not notice how the downward forces are actually raging, and how, with each quarter, civilized humanity is drawing closer to this decline. People would much rather face the convulsions and terrible upheavals that lie in wait for the future in the present if they cannot warm to ideas in the immediate present that could be properly extracted from reality in a calm development, which will nevertheless be needed in the future.

And so we can say that there is little hope to be placed in economic life today. People will have to be forced to take up the new ideas, through their own need, through the effect of the forces of decline. But in the spiritual life we must work unstintingly to develop the free spiritual life as a member of the threefold organism. This is what must not flag, what must be cultivated unconditionally, because the time in which we live is such that people's souls are becoming emptier and emptier, more and more desolate. They are too lazy to admit this to themselves today, but we are heading for terrible times in terms of people's mental state, which will also be reflected in their physical condition.

I have spoken of this often, including in public lectures. The spiritual life must save us through to the times when reasonable people will also see something on the economic front. It is necessary that this spiritual life be cultivated in its freedom wherever it can be cultivated. Anthroposophical soil is the best soil imaginable for this, because then work must be done out of complete freedom. For what needs to be worked out is not yet there. And since it is spirit, it can only be worked out through freedom. And so, especially in the near future, anthroposophical striving and true social striving will increasingly coincide. And we will have to face the souls with the fact that the economic will have to lag behind, that the spiritual simply has to go ahead today.

This is also shown by the qualities of our opponents; in Central Europe, a strange, well-organized opposition is now asserting itself. This well-organized opposition had already worked its way up to the point that at the time, on printed slips of paper distributed to all the people in this packed, largest Stuttgart hall, it was written, not only in allusions, but quite clearly, that it was actually my fault that the Battle of Marnesch was lost in 1914, and that Minister Simons in England has done poorly in recent times. It was not just in innuendo, but it was written on the slips of paper in a very crude way! You could see how it is here with widely extended parties that do not want to admit what has actually happened, that need scapegoats because it no longer works to say that the stab in the back, with which one first wanted to cover up a really eminently lost war, a war that was lost by every trick in the book, they wanted to cover that up with the 'stab in the back'; now they wanted to cover up the absolute incompetence of anyone who has ever led an army, of Ludendorffism, that's what they want to cover up. Today they want to make great geniuses out of people who are quite incapable. A cultural life steeped in lies is a cultural life in decline.

And the situation is no different in the West, no different in America. There, everything is a little more pronounced, where defeat makes things stand out more sharply. Everywhere we need to extract a real, a true, a free spiritual life from the corruption of humanity, which is suffocating in lies and untruthfulness today. For this is identical with truth, and this is at the same time identical with a striving that is in keeping with reality. Therefore, even if there is little prospect of success today, we may still believe that a sufficiently large number of people can warm to a full understanding of the idea of threefolding. Those who can muster the necessary enthusiasm and courage for a free spiritual life will help the threefold social organism to get back on its feet. Then a truly free spiritual life will become a reality. If it becomes a reality in people's hearts, in their powers and in their actions, then the threefold social organism will most certainly follow of its own accord out of the necessity, out of the need of the time. (Lively applause!)

Discussion

Question: How can an ordinary person, who has no influence on public institutions, work in the spirit of threefolding? Rudolf Steiner: The question that was asked here first is: How can an ordinary person, who has no influence on public institutions, work in the spirit of threefolding? Well, firstly, it is not quite clear to me how someone can be without influence on public institutions. Unless he is in prison or in some other place where he can hardly move, he is actually always subject to a certain influence on public institutions. The outside world ensures that one is never completely without influence on public institutions; one has to pay taxes and so on, so one always has some influence on public institutions. So the question cannot really be put that way.

But then, if perhaps what is meant is: How can one work in the sense of the threefold social order, when one perhaps does not have the opportunity to speak, to speak freely somehow, when one does not have the opportunity to be, let's say, a member of parliament or something similar, how can one work in the sense of the threefold social order of the social organism? Then you have to say: Well, this impulse for threefolding is something very concrete. And that is why you can actually only talk about it in concrete examples. You see, I want to say the following, for example. There are institutions everywhere in the sense of nationalization, partial or more or less extensive nationalization - let's say, of medical matters, of nursing. Now, it has happened time and again that good people – who, in their own opinion, are “good” followers of our philosophy – come and say that they would like to have this or that remedy, and so on! So they would actually like to encourage quackery and to violate the law! They can be won over for that, those people! They don't need to have any influence on public institutions, but when they lack something, they don't recognize - perhaps with more or less justification - the state-recognized doctor and want to cure somehow from behind. I have even known ministers who appeared in public parliament to speak out against quackery and for the protection of the medical profession by law, and afterwards, when they themselves became ill, or anyone else became ill, they turned to someone who was not a state-recognized doctor! It is terribly difficult to persuade people to really join those movements that simply correspond to the introduction of such institutions, which are necessary if one wants to have a free spiritual life, or in general, if one wants that which one professes! Many such examples could be cited, where everyone, in their place, by not being afraid to speak out wherever it is possible for them, takes a stand against what they recognize as evil. If you recognize the state protection of medicine as an absurdity, then speak up for it! Or, ladies and gentlemen, is it not an absurdity that over there, across the border, at Leopoldshöhe, there must be a different art of healing than here just a few steps away? But a doctor who is licensed over there is not allowed to help here. If you give in to reason, you will immediately see the matter as an absurdity. But if, let us say, for example, you are a member of the Federal Council or something similar, then you do not see this absurdity! And if you do see it, then you do not find it opportune to represent it. But if one person finds another, there will eventually be enough people to really come to reason. And instead of asking: How can an ordinary person, who has no part in public affairs, become active in the spirit of threefolding, do what one finds in every step and turn of life, in order to carry it out in the spirit of threefolding. Then one will see that every hour, every day, one finds opportunities to become active in the spirit of threefolding.

Question: In Holland, the constitutional ban on official Catholic processions is now to be lifted, which is causing quite a stir. Would this actually be a question of the free spiritual life or also of the public legal life? Rudolf Steiner: With some questions it is so with the threefold social organism, although the idea is quite right, of course: How does the blood of the chest or the head come to play this or that role in the migraine? The blood simply circulates, and so one cannot say that the blood of the chest organism is different from the blood of the head, but one can only speak of the blood in general. And so it is not easy to categorize things again. The threefold social organism is precisely manifested in the fact that things cannot be categorized. However, one does experience very strange things. In recent years I have always had to speak of the three-part human organism, the sensory organism, the rhythmic organism and the metabolic-limb organism, and in recent years a great deal has been done by myself and our medical and scientific friends to develop this idea of the three-part human being. But recently a book was written by someone called Kurt Leese, I believe. He has now, because I said that things should not be put together in boxes, but that the whole human being is head, nevertheless the human being is mainly head in the head, the whole human being is head. Things go into each other. The head is also taken care of and dependent on the limbs. Things all go into each other. Kurt Leese can no longer think this. He can only think of three if it is nicely next to each other, but he cannot think it when it goes into each other. He says: It's a shocking idea.

But we will have to get used to such shocks, even in the tripartite social organism, if we are to imagine, through the effect of abstractions, what a clock looks like when it flies away at the speed of sunlight and returns after years, is difficult to verify for a variety of reasons: firstly, because of the nature of the clock; secondly, because of the person who would then have to check it when the clock returns, and so on. So the present is not shocked at all by such ideas of the abstract. But it is shocked when something that is in line with reality is placed before it. So it is necessary not to press things so much that one now asks: Is this a matter of the free spiritual life or of the legal life? One can say: If one begins to prohibit any expressions or revelations of the spiritual life at all, to make legal provisions about it, then one is on a slippery slope with regard to the spiritual life. I must say, you see, with regard to those institutions, that I once showed you here – those who were there – a peculiar document, the document that was once issued as a patent in 1847, I believe, in Switzerland, where it says: It was through the power of the Almighty that the brave Swiss general Dufour succeeded in expelling the Jesuits from the country. Then it is explained in more detail. Today, in free Switzerland, it seems a little strange that the eradication of the Jesuits is attributed to the grace of God and the power that God has given! But it is preserved that way; I had the document photographed because it is so beautiful. I will show the photograph again on occasion. It is, after all, quite good to occasionally bring things home to people face to face. But even with regard to Jesuitism, I am not in favor of combating it by law. Those who want to fight it should fight it with intellectual weapons. One should not spare oneself the inconvenience of having to fight against everything intellectual with intellectual weapons, not by making laws. Laws can be made with majority decisions. One does not need to say that the majority is always nonsense, because then reality, social reality, would always be nonsense. Now, as I said, one does not need to go that far, but in any case one cannot say that the majority is always wisdom. And laws can be made in a democratic state, especially with majority decisions. But certain things just cannot be done by majority vote. They have to live out. And so everything that is regarded as the erring spiritual must also live out. Therefore, one must say: It is a matter of freedom and not of compulsion when efforts are made to reintroduce the banned Catholic processions and to lift the bans against Catholic processions. The only remedy is to show that these processions are not reasonable, and to educate people to this effect, so that they do not take part in them; then they will stop of their own accord! This is the only remedy in spiritual life, just as one can teach a person good taste and he will do the right thing of his own accord, but not by passing laws against it.

That is what a free spiritual life must demand. The one who has to resort to laws in the spiritual realm is on the path that I once described in Nuremberg in 1908 in a lecture cycle, where I said - it is not said without significance, using strong inks, but these strong inks should characterize adequately – I said at the time: Actually, today's humanity no longer strives to go out on the street without a doctor on the right and a police officer on the left, the doctor for physical protection, the police officer, well, for protection in materialistic times, yes, for physicality too! That has gradually become the ideal. I have heard many things in my life, but time and again I had to shrink back a little inside when I heard, with increasing frequency, over and over again: “That should be prohibited by law.” That had gradually become an awfully common saying – instead of taking the trouble to teach people good taste themselves, so that these things would stop of themselves – 'it should be banned by law', 'by majority decision' or something like that should be done. That is the one thing that must be asserted in principle. Therefore, all prohibitions against processions and the like should be lifted, and things should be allowed to run their course. Then spiritual life will also be able to express itself freely

It is absolutely essential that stupidity, folly and evil be conquered by cleverness and kindness, that ugliness be conquered by beauty, and that nothing be legally eradicated in the realm of spiritual life.

Question of the youth movement: The speaker explains that the individual members of the youth movements want and need to experience truth and reality; the economic sphere seems to them to be the area where everyone has a say, where everyone should be active and engaged. Later, the individual often withdraws again to reflect or simply to get away from society. It is almost impossible to reach a solution. Soon it is the economic that provides a value system; there is no recognition of the state or the political, but everything is conditioned by the economic. Individuals are diverted from their spiritual nature by economic life - or they withdraw into solitude].

Rudolf Steiner: In essence, the Lord has characterized what I have already said in the lecture: the phenomena of the youth movements of recent decades. But it would not be entirely correct to stop at this phenomenon of the youth movement. I have already found some understanding among members of this youth movement when I have struck what lives in the deeper foundations of the whole development of time. I had to say to some members of the youth movement, to which you yourself seem to belong and know very well: Yes, the year 1899, for example, is an extraordinarily important one for the development of humanity as a whole, and in particular for the development of Western civilization. And anyone who has an eye for such things knows how fundamentally different those people are who either lived through their childhood before 1899 was around, so they were a few years or ten years old, or those people who, let's say, were even born later, so they are hardly in their twenties now, and those people who were born before 90 and so on. At the bottom of their souls, very important things were going on, I would say, from the very source of existence, and that is connected with the fact that at the end of the nineteenth century, gates to the supersensible world were opened for the first time in the Western world. It was no longer possible, let us say, in the 1880s, to lead a different life, even with a powerful urge for the spiritual life; the Nietzschean life is more or less that life, which one must present as one that has become ill from the decline of Western culture because it could not find what it was looking for: the spiritual basis in everything phenomenal, in everything external, in everything sensual. The life of Nietzsche is therefore extraordinarily interesting to study from this point of view. He participates in Schopenhauerism, becomes ill from Schopenhauerism; he participates in historicism, becomes ill from historicism; he participates in Wagnerism, becomes ill from Wagnerism. He participates in naturalism, in positivism, becomes ill from it. He participates in the Darwinian molding of the idea of humanity, becomes ill from it, and so on, and so on. Instead of the idea of repeated earthly lives, he comes to the idea of the return of the same, becomes ill from it. Nietzsche could not help but fall ill from his urge for the supernatural world. It was simply not possible to achieve this directly and fundamentally at the end of the nineteenth century or before the end of the nineteenth century. The gates have opened, and today we cannot help but turn to the revelations of the spiritual world if we want to achieve an inwardly satisfied existence. Speaking of nature in the way that was justified in the 1880s is no longer justified today. Today we can point out how there was a current of opinion favoring an 'ignorabimus', how a naturalist, Du Bois-Reymond, spoke of 'ignorabimus', how Ranke, the historian, by seeking to present history as an event with the exception of the Christ event; that this comes from the primal forces, that history does not belong there - so 'ignorabimus'. Today we cannot do that. Today we are on the threshold of the supersensible world wanting to enter, and it is only the dull reluctance that is still bracing itself against the acceptance of a spiritual world view. And what is rumbling in the youth, that is the deeper thing, that is rumbling inside. And therefore, no matter how much individual members of the youth movement may say, “We do not want the abstract, we want the emotional,” they will still have to realize: What spiritual science in anthroposophy wants to be is precisely not something abstract, it is the full human being, it is what comes out of the whole human being, it is what expresses itself as art and as religion and as science, and it is the point at which the whole, full human being can come to his inner realization. And today we are only suffering from the fact that economic routine does not want to take leave of economic reason and that we must first begin to work on the recovery of spiritual life, until the unreasonableness of economic life must follow through necessity. And I am convinced that something good and right will come out of the youth movement, just as I do not despair when people keep saying, for my sake, that they cannot distinguish between expressionism and a windmill, a towel just pulled out of the water and hung up to dry, or a human portrait, say, for example, a boot heel. Of course, sometimes you can't distinguish that with the expressionists, but nevertheless, there are approaches to something in it, which, if it is refined in the most diverse places where it appears, will lead to that in which spiritual science, as it is represented here, only wants to be a guide and a leader and to work from the very most elementary.

But of course, sometimes you experience the fact that, despite the fact that you mean it to be so concrete, the opposite is held against you. I just want to say that last as a joke. The day before yesterday I had a lecture in Zurich. I spoke with slides about this building here. Then afterwards, one of the audience stood up and said: Yes, why do we need such a building, why do we need a Christ's head and Christ at all, why do we need it today? I was walking on the street this afternoon, there was a very drunk person, I followed him, and I joined him. This is a temple of God, this is a real temple and we do not need built temples. — On this occasion, I only regretted that no friendly spirit was found to find the right door with the person in question. But in view of the unnatural conditions of the present time, one may meet people who do not mean, as I say, that we should not build temples, but who mean that we should follow drunkards. They really want to work from the elementary, and they deserve, so to speak, to have spiritual science brought to their full understanding, because they can understand it. For the youth movement is connected with a very great change that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century and that is actually based not only on superficial historical forces but on profound cosmic forces.

On New Year's Eve it is always fitting to remember how past and future are linked together in life and in the existence of the world, how past and future are linked in the whole life of the Cosmos of which man is a part, how past and future are linked in every fraction of that life with which our own individual existence is connected, is interwoven through all that we were able to do and to think during the past year, and through all that we are able to plan for the coming year.

The thoughts which, almost in answer to an inward need, we call up before our souls in reviewing what we have done during the past year, and what we intend to do next year, should be pervaded with adequate earnestness and dignity, in accordance with the spirit of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, so that we may illumine these thoughts with the Higher Light which we can receive from Spiritual Science, through contemplation of the great Cosmic events. How does this human life of ours stand with regard to past and future? It is like a mirror. Indeed, comparison with a mirror approaches reality far more than it may seem to do at first. Striving a little to attain self-knowledge is indeed like standing before a mirror. We stand, looking into a mirror and there in that mirror lies the past, of which we know its reflection is in the mirror. Behind the mirror lies that into which at first we cannot look, just as it is not possible to see in space, what lies behind a mirror. Perhaps the question should be raised here: What is it that corresponds in our world-mirror to the silver covering at the back which turns the transparent glass into a mirror? In the ordinary mirror the glass is coated behind so that we cannot see through it. What constitutes the coating of the world-mirror that reflects the past for us, and at first keeps the future hidden from our gaze? The world-mirror is coated with our own being, with our own human being. We have only to bear in mind that with the usual means of knowledge we are really unable to see ourselves, to see what we ourselves are. We cannot see through ourselves, we see through ourselves just as little as we see through a mirror. When we look into ourselves, many things are mirrored back to us, things which we have experienced, things which we have learnt; but our own being remains hidden from us, because we can see through ourselves at first just as little as we can see through an ordinary mirror. Looking at the matter generally, or I might say, in the abstract, we may consider this comparison with a mirror as I have just described it. But when we come to details modifications are needed. Trying to look back on our life through this mirroring process (for looking back on our life, on what our inner soul reflects, is a mirroring process), we must confess: What we see mirrored there, is only a part of our experiences. When you try to look back on your experiences, you will find that these experiences are continually subject to interruptions. You look back on what the day has brought you; but you do not look back on what the preceding night has brought you. The experiences of the night are an interruption. You look back on yesterday, you do not look back on the night before yesterday, and so on. Stretches of nighttime, not filled in by thoughts upon our experiences, are continually inserting themselves. It is an illusion to think that we survey our entire life when looking back upon it; we only piece together to some extent, what the days contain. In reality, the course of our life comes before us with continual interruptions.

We might now ask: Are these interruptions in the course of our life necessary? Yes, they are necessary. Were there no such interruptions in the course of our life, or, to speak more correctly, in the retrospection upon our life's course, then, as human beings, we should be quite unable to perceive our Ego. We should see the course of our life filled merely by the world outside, and in our life there would be no ego-consciousness at all. That we are able to experience, to feel our Ego, depends on the fact that our life's course is continually being broken up piece-wise. It is precisely with respect to this ego-perception, brought about by interruptions in the course of life, that present-day humanity faces a critical period. When a human being of today looks back on life and, as has just been explained, attains his Ego through this looking back, this Ego of present-day man is, in a certain respect, empty, we only know that we have an Ego. In earlier periods of earth evolution men knew more. Just as in ordinary daily life, the dreams of an individual dimly emerge out of his nightly experiences, so the clairvoyant-atavistic perceptions of the human beings of earlier periods emerged out of the Ego. These clairvoyant-atavistic perceptions were dreams only in their form; what they contained was reality. We may say: The Ego of present-day man has been emptied of the clairvoyant-atavistic content which was the support of men of past ages, permeating them with the conviction that they had something in common with a divine element, that they were connected with something divine. Out of these atavistic-clairvoyant visions, there arose in man's sentient life that which condensed into religious feeling and religious veneration towards those beings to whom religious cult and religious sacrifice were dedicated. How does the case stand today? Today the Ego is empty of these atavistic-clairvoyant visions, and when we look back on the Ego it is more or less only a point in our soul-life. The content of this Ego is a firm point of support, but it is nevertheless only a point. Now, however, we are living in an age in which the point must again become a circle, an age in which the Ego must again receive a content. Since the last third of the nineteenth century, the Spiritual World has made a mighty inroad into our Sense-world, in order that the Ego may again receive a content. This is why, ever since the seventies of the nineteenth century, the Spiritual World has willed to re-enter our physical existence through revelations in a new way. What we are striving for in Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is this: To receive with goodwill all that is seeking to enter through spiritual revelation from another world—from a world, however, which bears within it this world of ours—and to clothe these revelations in terms by which they can be communicated to man. These revelations are nothing less than that which definitely (in a certain respect) guarantees the future of mankind. It is not, indeed, a direct glance behind the mirror, but it is a guarantee for this, viz., that when we as human beings, hasten to meet the future i.e., hasten to step behind the mirror—which means facing the future—then that which we have to do in the future will be able to come to pass in full power, if we have first tested our forces, if we have first strengthened them through that, which, by means of Spiritual Science, reveals itself to us out of the Spiritual World.

Just as in the past, man's Ego was filled with an atavistic clairvoyant content, which guaranteed his connection with the divine, so today our Ego must be filled with a new spiritual content, received in full consciousness, a content which gives us again the link uniting our soul with the divine Soul-being. The men of the past possessed an atavistic clairvoyance. The last inheritance of this atavistic clairvoyance is abstract reflection, the abstract power of cognition possessed by modern men. It is a much diluted remnant of the early clairvoyance. The man of today can feel that this dilution, this logical dialectic dilution of a former atavistic clairvoyance, is no longer able to support his soul. Then the longing will arise within him to receive something new into his Ego. But that which has formed the end in the evolution of mankind from primeval times up to the present, must now be made the beginning. In olden times, man had clairvoyant revelations and did not understand them. Today man must first understand, must exert to the utmost his intellectual power, must exert to the utmost his reason. If he so exerts it through that which lies before him in Spiritual Science, then mankind will again develop the power of receiving the Spiritual clairvoyantly. This is certainly something that most people today wish to avoid, viz., to make use of their healthy human reason in order to understand Spiritual Science. Were it possible to avoid the use of man's reason, it would also be possible to avoid altogether the entrance of spiritual revelations into our earthly world.

Thus past and future are linked together on this New Year's Eve, this Cosmic New Year's Day. For today, what is impending is indeed a kind of Cosmic New Year's Day. The future stands before us as a formidable question, not an indefinite abstract question, but as a concrete question. How can we approach that which, as a question put to mankind, in the form of a spiritual revelation, is striving more and more since the last third of the nineteenth century, to enter our earthly world? And how are we to place it in relation to revelations of the past? These questions should be livingly experienced. Then we should feel how important it is to direct our longings towards that which is presented here as Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Then we should realize the earnestness and the dignity of the striving for Spiritual Science. It is especially needful to have this feeling at the present time. For we are not dealing with any kind of arbitrary human will (“Willkur”); we are dealing with something that as Cosmic knowledge wills to reveal itself to us from out of the world's evolution; we are dealing in very truth with what the gods will to make of man. But here we are faced with the fact that when we on the one hand turn towards the spirit, on the other hand those who wish only to worship the past, are drawn away by the Spirit of contradiction, by the Spirit of opposition. And the more we try with all our might to grasp the spirit of the future state of man, the more surely will the people of the past be possessed by the spirit of opposition. It is to be noticed among people of today that religious feeling is seeking to assume new life. Groping attempts are numerous. The attempts of Spiritual Science must not be groping. Through such attempts the real, concrete world of the Spirit ought to be grasped. Almost like a premonition of what it ought to be, we are faced by those who say: “Mere religious tradition is not enough for us; we want to have an inner religious experience, we do not only want to hear the message that, according to tradition, Christ lived and died in Palestine so many, or so many years ago—we want to experience in our souls the Christ-experience.” In many quarters we find such ideas arising among men, among people who believe that something of the Christ-experience has arisen in the depths of their souls.

These are groping attempts, often even questionable attempts, because at the same time people are content in the egoism of their soul, and then turn away from all inclination to the Spirit. These longings after inner spiritual experience are there nevertheless, and even groping attempts towards such inner spiritual experience, towards a new interest in the spiritual world, should be recognized. But the spirit of opposition will surely arise.

To judge by what he himself has printed, such a representative of the spirit of the past has recently uttered quite remarkable words at Stuttgart, contrasting attempts, groping attempts, to rouse a new religious interest, a new religious experience, with attempts to reach a really new concrete knowledge of the spiritual world, as in the case of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. In the Shepherd-Play, performed at the Waldorf School, one of the shepherds, who has had a spiritual vision, says that he very nearly lost his power of speech. When I read the last page of Gogarten's Spiritual Science and Christianity, I must say that I very nearly lost my power of speech, for it is indeed surprising that anyone should say such things in the present age. It is things such as this that, on the Cosmic New Year's Eve, should stimulate contemplation of the comparison of the past with the inevitable future. What does this representative of religion really say? I do not know if the full import has been realized. He says: “Today—I ought to say at all times—the chief task is to safeguard the elementary feeling of piety of which I have spoken. It is almost wholly lacking today. We are occupied with religious ‘interests’ with religious ‘experiences’. Since Anthroposophy provides such good material for ‘interest’, and is such a good medium for ‘experiences’, people are helpless and without power of resistance when they meet it. People know even less of that fundamental, elementary bond, the bond brought into life by piety, which drives away every religious ‘interest’, and scatters every religious ‘experience’, the bond between God and creature. And because man knows little of this bond, he knows still less of that other bond, the unconditioned direct union between God and man.”

Here in the name of religion we see every religious interest repudiated, every religious experience scattered. A wholly undefined “bond” which cannot of course be differentiated, and which the speaker does not wish to differentiate, takes the place of religious interest, and of religious experience. We do indeed lose our power of speech when a teacher of religion says: “True piety must drive away every religious interest and scatter every religious experience.” We have gone so far that we are unable to realize what it means when an official representative of religion says: “Away with religious interest! Away with religious experience!” You see, apart from the fact that Gogarten does not know that he himself would be quite unable to speak of religion at all, if in the past there had never been atavistic religious interests and religious experience; apart from the fact that he as official representative of religion, could never have stood before an audience had not religion entered into the evolution of mankind, through religious interest and religious experience; apart from all this, everything I have told you just now proves what I told you before, that in the present day the very people who consider themselves the true representatives of religious life, work for the destruction of all that is essential in religion. Have these men lost every possibility of understanding what pertains to the human soul? Can these men no longer understand that when man turns his attention to anything, attention is guided by interest, and that everything entering the consciousness of man is based on experience? It seems as if human beings no longer speak from such consciousness at all, but only from a spirit of opposition. We should bear this in mind in all seriousness when we look into the mirror which so mysteriously unveils the past and conceals the future—though in a certain way the mirror unveils the future, too, in the way I have described.

It is the aim of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science to serve religious interest, and to give a content to religious experience. With what result? In the course of this year (1919) the question was brought forward before the Holy Roman Congregation whether the teaching that is termed theosophical is in keeping with the teaching of the Catholic Church, and whether it is permissible to belong to theosophical societies, to attend theosophical meetings, and to read theosophical papers and periodicals. The answer was: “No”, in every case, No, “in omnibus”. This is the spirit of opposition, of contradiction, and the Jesuit Zimmermann interprets it more particularly by applying this veto of the Holy Roman Congregation to Anthroposophy also. I need not set Zimmermann's writings before you in detail. You all know the wind that blows from a certain quarter against Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, and that it is the breath of the Spirit of contradiction. The Spirit carried in this wind can be felt in the following words, penned by that same Zimmermann, who for years spread abroad the lie that I was a renegade priest: “Through the defection of their General Secretary, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who took along with him most of the members, the Theosophical Society picked up again to some extent in the course of years, and now owns about twenty-five lodges, one-fifth of which are certainly somewhat dormant, and publishes at Dusseldorf, as its official organ, Das Theosophische Streben (The Theosophic Endeavour). The followers of Steiner, who named his theosophy ‘Anthroposophy’ after his exit, complained recently that he was becoming unproductive, that he had no new ‘visions’, that he always lectures upon the same things, that he would soon have to throw himself into something new, etc.” This paves the way for another article dealing in the same intelligent fashion with the “Threefold Social Organism”. You see what Spirit of truth backs up this Jesuit? A Jesuit does not merely represent his personal opinion, but the opinion of the Catholic Church. He speaks only as a member of the Catholic Church. What he says represents the opinion of the Catholic Church. We must judge such things from a moral point of view. We must ask whether anyone who deals with truth as this man does—a man, moreover, held in high esteem by a particular religious community, can be held in high esteem by the true spirit of humanity.

As long as questions of this kind are not considered with due earnestness, we have not arrived at the right understanding of the Cosmic New Year's Eve. At the present moment, it is essential to reach this right understanding. It is essential for us to extend our sympathies—alas, our sympathies often arise from egoistic sources—to the great human relations, and to feel for the whole of mankind that human sympathy which impels us to make a spiritual movement like this effectively fruitful for the evolution of mankind. May you experience, my dear friends, at this very time, that it is the Spirit of the Cosmos itself, which for decades has been seeking entrance. May you experience during the coming night, that this Spirit which seeks to enter humanity, shall here so be served that the souls of those, who will to feel with and who will to think with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, may feel their union with this new Spirit which wills to enter the world—the Spirit which alone can bring to the earthly world, the world that is destroying itself—the new upbuilding impulse out of Heaven. In this hour, a symbolic hour every year, demanding that we experience it as the decisive hour between past and future—in this hour may you unite your souls with the new Spirit; may you so experience in your souls the contact of the past year with the coming year, that the Cosmic Year which is passing away, may contact itself with the dawning Cosmic Year.

But the passing Cosmic Year will still send many an after-effect into the future; destructive forces into the spheres of Spirit, of Equity, of Economics. Therefore it is all the more needful, that as many men as possible shall be seized in the innermost depths of their souls by the New Year of the Spiritual Future, and shall develop a Will which may be the foundation of a new spiritual world, a world to be built into the future evolution of mankind. Those who care for the future of mankind are not those who would kill religious interest, who would do away with religious experience, but those only, those alone who can see how, through the intellectuality of our age, the old religious interest has faded away, the old religious life has been crippled. Those only care for the future, who see how a new interest must seize mankind, how new religious experience must spring up in mankind, so that man may bring into the Cosmos new germs for a future existence.

Most of the friends who have combined their work with the construction here were also united in their work with our friend Fleinrich Mitscher, who recently left the physical plane. They all know that we have lost the third link within that dear and loyal community, after Fritz Mitscher and our dear Mrs. Noss, who have previously passed away into the spiritual world. I do not need to say much in memory of Heinrich Mitscher, because there are a large number of friends here who, from a relatively long and beautiful working relationship, will feel what needs to be said in connection with Heinrich Mitscher.

Heinrich Mitscher was with us here from the very beginning of the construction of this building in Dornach, and how fortunate it was for this building, that for many things – especially the artistic natures united with this building will feel this in the same way – that for the work of this building we were able to have precisely this artistic force. In this incarnation, Heinrich Mitscher was a peculiarly constituted artistic nature, an artistic nature of whom one could say: This personality was first and foremost an artist, not a painter, not an artist in any other specialized field, but an artist first and foremost. Such natures have the peculiarity that within the present-day art world, the present-day artistic endeavor, they sometimes find it very difficult to find the path of life that is right for them. Those who, through a richer spiritual disposition, have artistic impulses in general, artistic impulses of organizational power, sometimes find it difficult to cope with today's specialization. But - and especially when the opportunity arises to develop general artistic skills, as is the case with the performance of this building - then such strengths are in the right place. And we felt that, with Heinrich Mitscher working here among us with his strong organizational skills, with his suggestive power in many respects, through which he knew how to convey intentions to other friends, with his strong will, which is suited to enforce what was intended. Above all, artistic natures are needed here, and Heinrich Mitscher was just that. Therefore, the services he has rendered to the construction cannot be praised highly enough.

In this construction, much has been done by dear, expensive friends, of which the world in general may not know much in the individual, specific case. Much loyal and devoted work is embodied here in what the eye sees. Much of the spirituality of Heinrich Mitscher, which was designed for greatness, is in this building. And his will was undivided in the sense of the building during the time when he devoted his strength to it. He was more inwardly connected with this building than with any other link in the anthroposophical movement. This was a consequence of his peculiarly artistic nature, and it will always be a sad memory for me to see Heinrich Mitscher say goodbye to this place of work here in the first days of the outbreak of the war. During the entire period in which his energies were devoted to the sad events now intervening in the development of mankind, he always knew how to put the right man in the right place. And the esteem in which he is held by all those who have recognized his value within the community that is carrying out this work has also been accorded to him in the circles in which he has then entered to engage in a very different kind of activity. To be known and to be connected in life with such natures is an extraordinary gain of life for those who are. For this acquaintance includes the feeling of a real individuality, inwardly willing and thinking in a certain way. In recent times, the word has been misused many times for all kinds of things, but one can still feel its good content, its good essence. One must then say: Those who have come to know Heinrich Mitscher have come to know a real individuality. Individualities are much rarer in today's world than one might think. Therefore, having the company of an individuality is a blessing and a gain in life. One must only understand correctly in such things. Certainly, some sharp, some cutting words could come from Heinrich Mitscher, but never was such a sharp, cutting word used other than in holy enthusiasm for the cause. And those who knew this individuality knew that behind the sometimes rough form, something tremendously fine, something from precisely artfully formed and artfully willing worlds, actually emerged.

Now, like so many of the present day, whose karma is connected in the narrower sense with these present events, Heinrich Mitscher has also hit the ball and he has left us. We may have the feeling, my dear friends, that just as the other members of the Mitscher-Noss family, this soul can also be a source of help and strength for us, especially from the spiritual worlds. And the sister who is in our midst may know and be assured that those who have recognized her brother's value, have experienced her brother's value and friendship, will feel with her in a brotherly-sisterly way and will faithfully carry the memory of this our dear friend. As I said, I do not need to say much about this, because in this case, too, the best is in the souls that have recognized the value of a friend's soul, an artist's soul, a loyally working soul.

Another thought that I would like to mention must be even briefer, my dear friends, because it is not permissible for me to speak at length when the event I am speaking about is one that is extremely close to me personally. But even in this case, even if I only speak a few words, these words must, as is necessary in this case, be spoken from the most personal feelings and emotions, so that these words, with their personal tone, find an independent echo in the hearts of many friends who are united here. Among the many recent losses in the physical realm, is that of Dr. Steiner's sister, Miss Olga von Sivers, who will remain in the loving memory of many of us as a true friend and a soul most beautifully united with our movement. Whoever saw it will not forget the lovely, beautiful embodiment of the figures that Olga von Sivers was able to portray for our mysteries. Who will not remember the quiet, reserved way in which this personality worked within the circles of our society.

Olga von Sivers was one of those members –– I may say –– who has been connected with our movement in a very specific way from the very beginning. She rejected in the most comprehensive sense everything that did not come from the occult truth, the occult impulse, the occult insight, from that strictness that we strive for, from that purity with which we should look at things. One can say: our movement, my dear friends, was, because one must always tie historical to historical, interspersed with other movements in the most diverse ways. One or the other soul even found its way out of other occult societies and theosophical movements with difficulty.

Olga von Sivers was one of those personalities who were never attracted to anything else. And so one could feel all the more closely connected to her, faithfully. In the place to which she found herself assigned, she cultivated in intimate circles what, starting from this movement, must be considered appropriate for spiritual life in terms of the needs of the present and the near future. She was so quiet in her appearance, so gentle in her actions, and so energetic in her inner life, although she kept to herself, that her connection with our movement was particularly specific.

When the war broke out, she had, in addition to the further care she faithfully provided for the anthroposophical cause in St. Petersburg and in Russia in general, she had devoted her energies to the Samaritan service of war, had had to let the heavy loss of her brother, who fell on the battlefield, pass through her soul, had consumed her energies, was inspired to the end by the hope of the spiritual court, which was almost no longer a hope for her because she no longer considered it realizable: to be united with all that is forming around this structure.

As I said, I am forbidden from saying more by the fact that I myself have lost so much, especially with regard to this personality. And I may also say here: It is my deepest conviction that those who have come to know the value and essence of this personality will keep her in the most loyal memory and will sympathize that it is difficult not to be allowed to know this personality in the future at the side of her sister in our circle here on the physical plane. She too will continue to help us faithfully from the spiritual world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emil Bock asks a question concerning the Quaker movement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A participant: What about the priest's vestments?

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

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

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