The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends! The last reflections will have made you aware of the position that spiritual-scientific knowledge has to occupy in the spiritual development of humanity. There is, of course, a great deal to be said on this question; we will have more to say about it in the near future. However, it is sometimes necessary to point out the inhibitions that arise from the spiritual life of the present day and that stand in the way of what must be done in the interest of the further development of humanity. And so, in today's discussions, I will have to familiarize you with such thoughts, which are indeed quite common today against spiritual science, by picking out what I would like to call typical examples. I will try to characterize the nature of such obstructive thoughts for you.

It is indeed the case that since spiritual science has recently been given more consideration from this or that side, the voices are also increasing that not only want to put everything possible in the way of this spiritual science, but also want to crush it, so to speak. They must only bear in mind that a spiritual movement in our time will meet with little opposition as long as it can be labeled a sect. However, it would be a great convenience on our part if we were to think about the inhibitions that arise in the same way as we were accustomed to thinking at the time when this spiritual science was practiced in smaller circles like a sect. Personally, I never liked the sectarian aspect, but in view of the present-day habits of thinking, feeling and willing, it is extraordinarily difficult to get away from the sectarian, because it is almost taken for granted that the individual human being seeks points of contact for the progress and development of his soul where he can find them from a spiritual knowledge. But then, of course, there is the outer life, in which one fears nothing so much as the possibility of stumbling here or there, and then the will that has been fought through in the quiet chamber of the soul fades to a great extent when it comes to stepping more openly into the public arena.

The number of hostile writings that are being produced today is so great that I can only pick out something typical, and in doing so I will refer to a brochure that has just been published, 'Rudolf Steiner as Philosopher and Theosophist', by a professor in Tübingen, Dr. Friedrich Traub, who has formed his opposing remarks from the present-day Protestant-Lutheran point of view. The peculiarity that confronts us in such matters in the present day is something that can be linked to reflections that I have been engaging in recently and also here in these days. It must be constantly and repeatedly recalled that a truly fruitful cultivation of a spiritual-scientific movement absolutely requires the assimilation of a completely unclouded sense of truth and the conscientious pursuit of truth in the contemplation and treatment of the things of the physical world. That wisdom can only be sought in truth, my dear friends, should not be an inanimate motto of our movement, it should point to something very essential.

Now, it is a peculiarity of our time, firstly, that people in general tend to retouch what is happening, to retouch it in some way. There is certainly a lot of unconsciousness in such retouching, but even unconscious retouching must be striven for by those who strive for truthfulness in their lives. It is a matter of the fact that when one remembers things, one must endeavor to recall them in their true form. It is so remarkable, as it always happens even in our circles – that must be said – that things are told, things of the ordinary physical plane, which one can then investigate and find that there is nothing to them, that they completely vanish into thin air. These are things that should really be taken more seriously than they usually are. But then it is a matter of observing certain things in the interaction between people, which are necessary if social life is not to degenerate into absurdity.

You see, some time ago in Stuttgart a theologian was severely reprimanded (Dr. Unger did it) for mixing a lot of personal stuff into a lecture about my anthroposophy. Theologians should actually be people with a sense of truth. This personal information was almost completely borrowed from the brochure of the well-known ex-anthroposophist — one is accustomed to such word formations today — Max Seiling. Now, the theologian in question, who wants to be a researcher, that is, a scientist, said, among other things, that these things have not yet been refuted in public. Well, my dear friends, if you wanted to refute everything that comes from such a source, it would be a task on a par with boys throwing dirt at you on the street and you then getting into a scuffle with the boys, wouldn't it? So much for the refutation. But the following should be criticized about the statement of a person who wants to be a scientist.

The one who makes an assertion has the obligation to follow the sources for the evidence, not just to repeat it, but to check the sources first. Where would you end up, for example, in historical research, if you were to regard everything you pick up somewhere as real history, and did not feel obliged to really check the truth of the sources? It is not the person who is being attacked who has the obligation to refute the allegations, but rather the person who repeats them, who uses them to characterize, who would have the obligation to investigate such a matter before repeating it. And this gentleman, who, in addition, in the outer social life may call himself a university professor, should be made to understand that such a person, who works scientifically without examining the sources, simply documents himself before the world in such a way that he can never be taken seriously scientifically in the future with regard to anything.

You see, such things must be stated so categorically today because these things should be investigated in public, because people should actually be tested today for their sense of truth. One would have to investigate whether anyone who is in public life takes the truth seriously or not, that is, whether they also feel the obligation to check the sources of the truth for everything they claim. It is not enough for someone to say that they are speaking in good faith; this faith is worth nothing when it comes to asserting a public judgment. Of value is only the conscientious examination that everyone is obliged to do when making any kind of assertion. If one were to make a habit of this in one's private, personal life, it would not be able to occur in a context like the one I have characterized. And if it does occur, then it is a symptom that in today's world it is common practice in everyday life to blindly assert something without conscientiously checking the sources for any assertion. This is something that must be said in general.

Now, my dear friends, I will start with something seemingly extremely trivial, something that many of you might consider trivial and say: Well, such things, they don't matter, such small oversights, one must forgive. Nevertheless, it is precisely in the – I would say unscrupulous way – in which someone often treats small matters that shows how he acts in matters of importance. You see, the brochure I mentioned, which says in the introduction, in the preface:

The present writing - originally a lecture at the course organized by the Evangelical Federation and held in Tübingen in August 1919 - endeavors to describe and assess Steiner's world of thought as clearly and objectively as possible.

- this writing also contains some biographical information at the beginning, and this biographical information begins:

Steiner was born in 1861 in the small Hungarian border town of Kraljewitz.

Now, my dear friends, if the man were to open any old guidebook – which he would be obliged to do – and look up Kraljevec on the Island of Mur in Hungary, he would find that it is a terrible little dirt hole of a village that is being discussed. So, you just need to look it up. You may find it insignificant and inconsequential, but in research, accuracy is important, in research, an exact love of truth is important, and if someone does such things in small things and does not feel obliged to research the truth, then there is actually nothing to be given in his great things. Then it continues:

But he is still not Hungarian, but German Austrian.

And so on. Then it says:

The intellectual atmosphere in which he grew up is that of enlightened Catholicism, which explains why he is inwardly distant from the intellectual world of German Protestantism.

Now, my dear friends, where did this man get it from? He cannot have got it from a reasonable source, because I truly did not grow up in an enlightened Catholicism, but grew up without Catholicism, even without enlightened Catholicism, in fact in a way of thinking that corresponds entirely to what I would call the most radical scientific point of view of the 1860s and 1870s. One would like to believe that such a man knows nothing at all about what happened in the last third of the last century, otherwise he would not be able to find anything in my writings about enlightened Catholicism. Then just one more sentence of this kind:

He studied natural science and mathematics in Graz and Vienna and later went on to philosophy.

My dear friends, I was in Graz for the first time at Hamerling's funeral in 1889, after I had long since finished all my philosophical studies. I have never seen the University of Graz or any other university in Graz from the inside.

As I said, you may find all this irrelevant, you may say that these are such small oversights that one can forgive. No, my dear friends, anyone who wants to be a researcher cannot be treated in this way; instead, we have to look at the exact truth. If someone claims such things out of some fantasy or other, then we also have to realize that we can't really believe much of what he says otherwise.

But I have studied what the man might actually have thought, how he could have found out that I studied in Graz – I actually studied in Vienna – how does he come up with something like that?

Yes, you see, my dear friends, if you imagine: here the Styrian Mur, so here is the Mur Island, Großmurschen, there the very small village of Kraljevec, Csaktornya is in front of it, then Kottori. Now, if this is Graz, this is Vienna. Now the man said: How did Steiner get from Kraljevec to Vienna? Of course via Graz (see Chart 1). There seems to be no other way of asserting these things. But from this, my dear friends, you can see what the thinking of some people who call themselves researchers from our social background actually is.

Traub's brochure is divided into two parts. The first part deals with “Steiner's Philosophy”, the second with “Steiner's Theosophy”. Now, after the experiences of life, one does not exactly have reason to believe that Protestant theologians understand much about philosophy on average; but if someone writes about it and makes the claim to be taken seriously at least in theology, then it should be possible for him, when he writes about the “philosophy” of a personality, to at least touch on the main point somehow; it should somehow be emphasized what is essentially important. The way he treats my philosophy here, the whole thing is basically a statement that there are indeed many witty remarks in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” but then it culminates in the following sentence:

But then there are also passages that are quite obscure and that leave the reader at a loss.

I believe that Pastor Traub, or rather Professor Traub, is at a loss for words; but it seems to me that in this respect he would do well to consider whether the perplexity might not come from his state of mind. For, after all, what good Mr. Lichtenberg said a long time ago is still true today: When a book and a head collide and it sounds hollow, it is not necessarily the book that is to blame. Now, you see, when someone goes so far as to say:

So here we have a lack of conceptual clarity in Steiner that is disastrous for the justification of his point of view.

- then he would at least have to try to somehow take into account the point of view that matters. Perhaps it would have helped Mr. Traub a little if he had tried to examine the matter conscientiously. But he only cites the “Philosophy of Freedom” and “World and Life Views in the 19th Century” from 1901 among the writings he has read for a description of my philosophy; he does not mention “Truth and Science,” which could have been very helpful to him in not being quite so at a loss in the face of the “Philosophy of Freedom”.

But to find out the crux of the matter - it is as if Pastor Traub really was at a loss in the matter - that would certainly be the most important thing. For this crux of the matter concerns the fact that both in my book “Truth and Science” and in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” a consciously anti-Kantian point of view has been clearly and distinctly formulated. And the important thing about this is that I have shown that one cannot at all place oneself in relation to the outer sense world in the way that Kant and all his imitators placed themselves in relation to this outer sense world, simply accepting it and asking: Is it possible to penetrate deeper into it or not? What I wanted to show at the beginning of my literary career was that the external sense world, as it presents itself to us, is a mere semblance, is half-real, because we are not born into the world in such a way that our relationship to the external world born into the world in such a way that our relationship to the external world is a finished one, but that our relationship to the external world is one that we ourselves must first complete when we think about the world, when we acquire this or that experience of the world. So when we acquire knowledge about the world in the broadest sense, only then do we come to reality.

The fundamental error of 19th-century philosophy is that it always simply takes the sensory world as a finished product. People have not realized that the human being belongs to true reality, that what arises in the human being, especially in thought, splits off from reality, in that the human being is born into reality , that reality is hidden at first, so that it appears to us as an illusory reality; and only when we penetrate this illusory reality with what can come to life in us do we have full reality before us. But from the outset, from the point of view of a certain theory of knowledge, everything that later forms the basis of my anthroposophy would be characterized by this. For it has been attempted from the very beginning to prove that the sense world is not a reality, but that it is an illusory reality, to which must be added what man brings to it, what flashes up in man's inner being and what he then works out. All of Kant's and post-Kantian philosophy is based on the assumption that we have a finished reality before us and that we can then ask the question: Yes, can we recognize this finished reality or cannot we recognize it? But it is not a finished reality, it is only half a reality, and the whole reality only comes into being when the human being comes along and pours into reality that which arises in his innermost being. If one were to characterize as it is given in my “Truth and Science” and what then leads from this “Truth and Science” to the “Philosophy of Freedom”, one would see that the thinking, which is necessary to found an anthroposophy, has already been philosophically characterized by me in its essence. It is interesting that Traub writes:

Anyone who talks about moral freedom cannot, one would think, do so without taking a stand on the fundamental question of “Freedom and Causal Necessity of Nature”. There is almost nothing about this question in this entire book.

Of course, the word 'about' in this sentence allows for a wide range of interpretations. But putting that aside, one might ask whether the author only opened the book halfway through and only read from the middle to the end. In the first chapter, there is a discussion, in connection with Spinoza, of how to understand the idea of freedom in contrast to natural causality. As far as it is necessary for such a book, this question is the starting point. Such a way of thinking as that of Professor Traub overlooks this.

Regarding the “riddles of philosophy,” you need only read what I said at the beginning of that admittedly daring introductory chapter: that it was necessary to let the whole course of philosophy of mankind have an effect on me in order to write these few pages, which are intended to characterize the course of philosophical thought of mankind in the period of seven to eight centuries. When you read this, you will ask yourself: What does such a gentleman want when he says:

But these points of view...

— he means those developed in these pages —

... are so vague and fluid and so poorly aligned with the content they are supposed to summarize that one gets the impression of a schema that has been arbitrarily superimposed on the content, not an order that grows organically out of the material.

It is precisely this that is shown, how the order grows organically out of the material, and every opportunity is taken, in every single chapter, to show how precisely what he calls a scheme here grows out of the real empirical observation of the material. You can say anything to people like that – they then say anything that comes into their heads.

But the most beautiful thing, my dear friends, in this writing are sentences like this:

It would therefore have been of the greatest importance if he had formed a clear and unambiguous concept of science in his philosophical period. Is spiritual science a science of facts like natural science and history? Is it a science of norms like logic, ethics, aesthetics? Or in what other sense is it a science? Nowhere does one get any satisfactory information about it.

Now, my dear friends, what is the basis of such a sentence? First of all, the gentleman in question has the ingrained concepts of factual science and normative science in his mind. He has learned from his compendia, at least in the course of his life, that there are normative sciences and factual sciences. He would first have to educate himself about the fact that these old concepts break down when confronted with spiritual science. But he judges that which he should find his way into according to the concepts he has acquired. No wonder they do not fit into these concepts.

The following is also cute, for example. He says:

A third example. For Steiner, all “riddles of philosophy” are ultimately reduced to one: soul and world. How must the world be conceived in order to accommodate the soul? But this formulation of the problem is extremely vague. The term 'soul' is, after all, ambiguous. Is the soul meant as the psychological, the epistemological, the ethical-religious subject?

First of all, I would like to know where he got this problem from. Yes, my dear friends, soul is meant as soul, as the real soul. The fact that in the compendiums, reflections have been made in the course of time that can be called epistemological, that can be called psychological or that can be called ethical-religious does not imply the nonsense that one should say: I am considering the relationship of the ethical-religious soul to the world, or I am considering the relationship of the epistemological soul to the world, or I am considering the relationship of the psychological soul to the world. It is very difficult, you see: if you wanted to refute such stuff, it would have to be based on something tangible. But you can't really grasp such things, they just vanish in your hands.

Of course, the Protestant theologian is most interested in how I dealt with the concept of God during the period in which my philosophical writings were written. Now, my dear friends, when one writes something, it is not a matter of writing about everything possible, from all possible points of view, but rather of writing from the points of view that are relevant to the content of the writing in question. During the period when I was writing my “Philosophy of Freedom” and also earlier and some later works, I never had any reason to deal with the theological question about God and the world in any way. So it is a strange criticism if one does not see that in a context such as that of “The Philosophy of Freedom”, neither a personal nor a superpersonal God can be found. It is about the treatment of matter, the treatment of substance.

Now you see, it is of course a godsend for people who miss the main point – for Traub has missed the real main point, the determination of the relationship between man and reality, to such an extent that he has not even seen this point, that he has no idea at all that this is the main point – it is always a godsend when secondary matters can be emphasized. It should surprise no one that from the point of view, including the anthroposophical point of view, from which I have to start, only a harsh judgment can be passed on everything that is denominational Christianity of one shade or another in the present day, that a harsh judgment must be passed on everything that is vague ideas about the beyond. For those who have grasped the core of anthroposophy, the latter shines forth upon what I have had to assert philosophically. The point is that, however far we penetrate into the spiritual worlds, we must always imagine them as a unified whole, so that everything that is spirit must at the same time be sought in material existence. The greatest harm that has been done in the development of our modern world view is that people have repeatedly wanted to point beyond what is direct experience to an indefinite, vague beyond. This beyond is to become a here, a real presence here, precisely through spiritual contemplation. Therefore, from the point of view of epistemology, I had to fight all vague ideas of the beyond and had to reject everything that tends to repeat these vague ideas of the beyond from one religious confession to another. In order to gradually ascend to a true understanding of Christ, I had to present everything that actually obscures the real Christ impulse as something to be rejected by future humanity. For it must be clear that the way in which, in more recent times, under the protection of precisely the theological schools of thought, a distinction is made between revelation and external science, that precisely this is of great harm to our spiritual development. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that ordinary Christianity has been rejected by me in my philosophical period, for this ordinary Christianity is to be rejected precisely for the sake of Christ Himself. But for those people who cling to words, who never look at things in context but always cling to words, it is easy to discover apparent contradictions when words are taken out of context. Of course, this is extremely easy for someone who has never been concerned with words but always with the matter at hand.

And so one can take up a sentence like the one I said in 1898:

We want to be fighters for our gospel, so that in the coming century a new generation will arise that knows how to live, satisfied, cheerful and proud, without Christianity, without looking to the hereafter.

Or even earlier:

It is only worthy of man to seek the truth himself, that neither experience nor revelation guides him. Once this is fully recognized, the religions of revelation will have had their day.

This is something, my dear friends, which, if taken literally, can very easily, terribly easily, lead to the construction of contradictions. The conscientious person would, of course, examine the context in which these words were used. For Pastor or Professor Traub, however, this is something dangerous, because his Christianity, his belief in the hereafter, is quite certainly affected.

You see, I have roughly demonstrated the wealth of ideas with which my philosophy is characterized by Professor Traub. Because other ideas are not to be found much in the writing. Everything that matters has been overlooked. The fact that I speak of intuitive thinking in The Philosophy of Freedom is something that Professor Traub does notice, but he cannot form any conception of it because he finds that thinking is merely formal in nature and is therefore actually empty. Yes, my dear friends, there is no talking to such a person, because he has not acquired the very simplest concepts that one could gain right at the beginning in mathematics, for if you only give mathematics a formal, content-free thinking, then I would like to know how one could ever understand something like the Pythagorean theorem. If the aim were to take all content out of experience, then one would never be able to grasp something like the Pythagorean theorem, which presupposes that thinking that is rich in content meets external sense experience, which then, so to speak, comes with intuitive thinking, as characterized in 'The Philosophy of Freedom'. The fact that the development of this thinking, the ascent of this thinking into the spiritual world, is already there, would be something to be emphasized when characterizing my philosophy. Well, after all, one cannot assume that a Mr. So-and-so will find out.

Then he moves on to the characterization of what he calls “Steiner's theosophy.” He has read “How to Know Higher Worlds.” In it, he initially finds some commendable ethical principles that are given. But then he proceeds, as is actually to be expected from his entire attitude, then he proceeds - yes, how shall I put it? — not to understand and to emphasize sharply that he does not understand what astral body, life spirit, etheric body and so on is.

It is difficult...

– he says literally –

... to form a reasonably comprehensible picture of these components of the human being.

Well, he agrees with me that I demand of everyone who has common sense that they should be able to examine things from the point of view of common sense. Of course, Professor Traub has common sense – in his own opinion. But, my dear friends, it is a peculiar way of approaching such things when he finds, for example, in “Theosophy” that the number seven is often mentioned, and when he then says:

Should there really be - this critical question cannot be suppressed here in the presentation - a regularly recurring sevenfold “view”? Can one avoid the suspicion that one has an artificial scheme here, which is arbitrarily grafted onto things?

If he understood anything at all, he would know that it is no more an artificial scheme than it is when you look at a rainbow and say that there are seven colors in it, or when you look at the scale and say that there are seven tones in it and the octave is the repetition of the prime and so on. But, my dear friends, he does not even approach such a thing in a positive sense, but simply raises the question:

Can one avoid the suspicion that one has an artificial scheme here, which is arbitrarily grafted onto things?

Why ask such a question if you are not going to investigate the matter! The whole methodology is something quite impossible.

I would not speak so harshly about this book, my dear friends, because in my opinion the author's limitations are actually largely to blame for the way the book is, not exactly ill will - that emerges from the content. But judging by the terms the man uses, it justifies the use of equally strong terms. I will endeavor not to use harsher terms than those used in the book against my “Philosophy” and my “Theosophy.” This gentleman's way of thinking is indeed quite peculiar. You see, he has grasped how I arrive at a certain corroboration – you know, I try to corroborate everything in the most diverse ways – how I arrive at a certain corroboration of the idea of reincarnation, of repeated lives on earth, by using an example such as Schiller, who, with his genius, could not could not have inherited everything that he carried within him from his father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and so on, and that if one does not want to assume that the qualities that Schiller could not have inherited with his blood were born out of nothing, one comes back to some kind of previous existence.

You know that I don't present such things as proof, but one gathers these things because, when gathered together, they can corroborate a matter. Yes, but how does Professor Traub deal with this example? He says:

So there must have been a soul related to the poet in earlier times, a prehistoric Schiller, so to speak, who died unnoticed and unrecognized and then embodied himself in the historical Schiller in 1759. Of course – to insert this critical remark right here – a hair-raising logic! Otherwise, the explanation is that the unknown is traced back to the known. But here the unknown, the becoming of Schiller, is traced back to something even more unknown, the re-embodiment of a prehistoric Schiller. That is not logic, but a gimmick.

My dear friends! You can declaim for a long time that explanations consist of reducing the unknown to the known. Now, my dear friends, I would first like to know how to do that. How do you get at the unknown? It must first be known; but then, at most, you would only have to reduce the unknown, the seemingly unknown, which must first be known, to the known! So, the “hair-raising logic” seems to me to be more on the other side. But if it is also often proclaimed that the unknown should be traced back to the known in order to provide explanations, I would first like to ask: Why explain it at all? One could stop at the known. But in truth it is not so. Just go through all the explanations that are offered. Explanations always assume that what is being sought is something that is not actually present. In practice, the exact opposite of what Professor Traub's method demands is true. It is not surprising that the old objections arise, that one does not remember previous incarnations, but it is interesting to note that it is stated here:

The return to this earthly world is said to be necessary for the purpose of making it possible for man to make amends in a future life for the wrongs he has done to his fellow men in the present life. But, one must ask, how is he to go about this? After all, he does not know which of his fellow human beings in the present have been harmed by him in a previous life.

Yes, my dear friends, I have certainly never claimed anything similar, even remotely similar, about the average person. But it is really not at all a matter of whether a person A, who is standing in the present and facing a person B, now saying to himself: This person B, I lived with in the year 202 AD; I did him an injustice then, now I have to do this and that to make amends. Professor Traub can only imagine that karma, that fate, unfolds under this assumption. Yes, my dear friends, but it does not matter at all whether person A makes these considerations, because karma is arranged in such a way that he makes amends for what he has done wrong in the previous life, from what is going on in his soul, even without knowing it, without him first reflecting on it. It is indeed the case that when Professor Traub says that he does not know which of his fellow human beings in this life were harmed by him in a past life and how he can make amends, he does it without knowing how. Such gentlemen are completely lacking in the most obvious thoughts.

Now, my dear friends, what are we to do with such an assertion? That this Protestant gentleman does not, of course, like such explanations as I have given about a passage in the Bible: “He who eats my bread tramples me under his feet” or similar - one can believe that, of course. He expressly assures us that he cannot imagine anything at all about the “center spirit” of the earth. But then a series of extraordinarily cute remarks follows. You see, I emphasize from the most diverse points of view that the embodiment of the Christ-being in the man Jesus of Nazareth is not just an earthly, but a cosmic event. That which took place, whether in the great historical context or in the own soul of the man Christ-Jesus, is not to be regarded as merely an earthly, a telluric event, but as an event that concerns the cosmos. The point is to lift the event of Golgotha out of the merely earthly sphere and raise it into the sphere of the world, and I have emphasized this again and again in all possible variations.

Yes, my dear friends, after Professor Traub has expressed his horror at the two Jesus children, which may well be granted him, he goes on to say the following cute sentence, which is all too beautiful for us to ignore:

According to Steiner, however, the crucifixion is a purely cosmic event. Anyone who could have followed the development of the earth through the millennia from a distant planet would have seen not only the physical but also the astral body of the earth, and this astral body would have shown the same lights, the same forms, the same colors for thousands of years. But at a certain moment, this would have changed. “Other forms appeared, other lights and other colors shone - that was the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer at Golgotha. This was not a human event, but a cosmic one."

That's what I say, he even quotes it verbatim. But then he says:

There is no trace of an ethical appreciation of the death on the cross! The astral body of the earth shines in different lights and colors, appears in different forms. The Christ-I, the solar regent descends to the earth, and in the spirit of the earth one now sees the solar-I, the Christ-I. Can these purely cosmic processes simply be added to the moral deed of the historical Jesus? Are the two processes, the cosmic and the ethical, not too heterogeneous to be considered as elements of a cumulative example? One could object that Jesus' ethical deed could be accompanied by cosmic effects, just as such effects are linked to the death of Christ in the letters of Paul. But with Steiner it is not the case that one could distinguish between an ethical act and its cosmic effects. One hears nothing at all about an ethical act, only about cosmic events. But then the two interpretations of the death on the cross are mutually exclusive. It cannot be both an ethical act and a purely cosmic event.

Yes, my dear friends, what am I supposed to understand from this? That the event of Golgotha took place on the earth's orbit is certainly not denied by me. I did not claim that it took place on the sun or the moon. Well, in any case it is a telluric event. That this is reversed by Traub in the assertion that I understand the event of Golgotha as a pure, that is, only a cosmic event - that is basically a strong act! From Kraljevec the way to Vienna goes via Graz! That is the distorted thinking in small, insignificant things. This distorted thinking, which one often does not want to criticize in small, insignificant things, is something that then also shows itself in great things. For anyone who feels obliged to conscientiously read what Professor Traub claims to have read will never be so presumptuous as to claim that I said that the Christ event was only a cosmic event.

Now, I can only pick out individual things. The description of Atlantis naturally hurts him again, and he finds himself particularly badly affected when I say that the Atlanteans thought in images and that now people think in concepts.

The Atlanteans thought in images. And when an image appeared before their soul, they remembered so-and-so many similar images that they had already experienced. Based on that, they formed their judgment.

To which Professor Traub says:

So the Atlantean also judged; but how a judgment without a concept is possible remains unclear.

Yes, my dear friends, concepts are formed according to judgments for straightforward thinking. If you had to have concepts in order to judge, few judgments would be able to come about. So this is something that really testifies to a very blatant lack of philosophical education.

Now, I won't even talk about the fact that he cannot understand what is spiritually similar to the sensation of blue as I describe it, right; I also won't talk about the fact that he says:

A spiritual color is a contradiction in terms.

- because he constructs arbitrary concepts of a spiritual color. I will only speak of the fact that it is said of me again and again that one can follow everything with common sense, even that which is directly observed, if one is willing to overcome one's laziness and observe to a certain degree what is written in “How to Know Higher Worlds”.

In a length that is striking for the brevity of the remaining remarks, Professor Traub now explains that on the one hand, faith in authority is required, but on the other hand, one should examine it oneself. In particular, he is harshly critical of those who say that, after all, other things in the world are also accepted on trust, for example that people who have not been to America still believe the travelers when they say that it looks like this or that there. — Well, of course it is easy to say that in America there are also people, animals, plants and so on that are also known in Europe. I will not dwell on this, I have spoken of it often; but I would like to draw your attention to the logic of this gentleman. On page 34 you read the cute sentence:

The truths learned at school I can verify.

—- so he thinks.

Most people will admittedly have no occasion to do so; but the fundamental possibility exists. I may have to become a historian, a physicist, a chemist, in order to be able to test independently. I cannot verify the theosophical truths if I am not clairvoyant; I can only check them in a negative way.

This is literally true; to test a chemical truth, one must want to become determined to become a chemist. There is nothing at all to be said against that. But Professor Traub continues:

But I cannot verify the theosophical truths unless I am clairvoyant.

Yes, you see, of course I cannot verify the theosophical truths either unless I want to become clairvoyant, just as you cannot verify the chemical truths without becoming a chemist; he himself cites this as proof. But he considers it his right to become a chemist if he wants to verify chemical truths, but he does not want to become one, as one must become to verify the theosophical truths. In any case, he turns out to be extremely demanding on this point. Because the fact that one or the other can verify and then confirm is not enough for Professor Traub. He says:

It is not enough for the theosophical side to say that the results of spiritual scientific research have already been verified by a large number of people. The question is whether they have been or can be verified by me, and, apart from the formal logical criticism, I have to say no.

That is logic, isn't it! But this logic is even intensified, my dear friends. He says, after all, with chemical truths, with ordinary scientific truths, it does not matter if everyone checks them, because they are not as important as spiritual truths, nor are historical truths. And there we find the following cute sentence:

On the contrary, we must demand that in matters of world view, the individual stands by himself and does not simply accept what others dictate to him. If I were ever in a position to have to dare something great based on one of those school truths – for example, that Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire or that Hannibal crossed the Alps – and I came to the complete conviction that life or bliss depends on such a truth, I would no longer be satisfied with just accepting the authority of others, but would do everything I could to gain an independent certainty about those things.

Yes, I want to know how he actually does it, I want to know how he wants to gain an independent certainty about the event of his own birth, which is, after all, an extremely important event in his life on earth! So these things are written down from the mere rattling of words that are not at all accompanied by any thoughts. Based on our current circumstances, these are youth educators! This raises the question of judging everything as possible.

Now I would like to read you a sentence of mine, my dear friends, which you will know, which I am reading here not for any personal reason, but because something quite peculiarly remarkable appears to me in the way Professor Traub introduces the sentence:

Spiritual science will not, in its very essence, directly interfere with any religious confession or the domain of any religious confession. It can never want to create a religion. Therefore, in the circles of the spiritual scientific world view, the most diverse religious confessions will live together in the deepest peace and fullest harmony and will be able to strive for the knowledge of the spiritual. ... Spiritual science does not in any way need to divert anyone from their religious life. Therefore, one cannot speak of spiritual science as such being a religious confession. It does not want to create a religious confession, nor does it want to change people in any way with regard to their religious confession. Nevertheless, it seems as if people are thinking about the religion of anthroposophy. In truth, one cannot speak in such terms, because within the Anthroposophical Society all religions are represented, and none are prevented by it from practicing their religious beliefs in the fullest, most extensive and most intense way.

These sentences are mine. They are found in 'The Task of Spiritual Science and Its Structure in Dornach'. Professor Traub cites them and then adds the following sentence. I will read it out, although I am not sure whether I am clever enough to recall the following sentence in the right way. He adds the sentence:

These sentences, which also give a certain impression of Steiner's unsightly and un-German style, reveal his opinion: anthroposophy is not a religion as such.

Yes, I must confess that if I wanted to judge the unsightly style of this Traub writing – well, I don't want to pass judgment on it, because after all it is a matter of taste, but when I have read so much criticism about style lately and then see that judgments are formed in such a way, then it seems to me to be almost as irrelevant as the content-related matters.

Now I would like to share with you just a few sentences from the last part of the text, where the relationship between anthroposophy and Christianity is discussed. It says:

2. Christianity is a historical religion. Theosophy is a religion without history. The first sentence cannot be substantiated here, only elucidated. It means not only that Christianity has a history and passes through a historical development, but also that its validity as truth is bound up with history. If one crosses out the story of the Gospels, the whole of Christianity stands in the air. And what about the other sentence, that Theosophy is without history? He does not mean, of course, that Theosophy has no history. It has a very long history. You meet only old acquaintances when you look around in the theosophical literature. What is Steiner's Christology other than a new form of Gnostic Christology? His anthropology and cosmology also have their parallels in the history of religious and philosophical thought. The doctrine of reincarnation and the related, though not identical, idea of transmigration of souls run through the history of religions in ever new forms. In this sense, Theosophy also has its history. It is without history in the sense that it does not need history to justify its conviction of truth.

Yes, I must say, with such a remark, one's mind could stand still: a Protestant theologian who claims that the truth of Christianity is based only on history, that Christianity does not contain eternal truths! One cannot even find out what the contradiction is supposed to be. He himself points out that Theosophy also originated historically. But he attaches great importance to the fact that Theosophy endeavors - although it originated historically - to find ahistorical, that is, eternal truths. Christianity is supposed to be merely a historical matter. Traub writes:

The first sentence...

- namely, “Christianity is an historical religion” —

... cannot be justified here, but only explained. It means not only that Christianity has a history and is undergoing an historical development, but also that its validity is bound up with history.

Yes, it is absolutely incomprehensible how such a sentence can be pronounced as something valid, because that is how it is pronounced. The person in question is a university professor, so he teaches with a certain authority. These things are sufficiently characterizing to show where the words that oppose the humanities come from.

It is particularly interesting for me, who always tries to reject anything that is overheated tone, who tries to present as calmly as possible, with a calm, scientific style, that I am also accused of:

It was different with the great mystics of the past. In their presence one had the feeling: “Take off your shoes; the ground you stand on is holy ground.” One does not have this feeling in the presence of Steiner. There is no sense of mystery here. It is as if the magic of mystery has been stripped from the beyond. Hence the sober, dry tone that characterizes Steiner's writings. They have none of the excitement and gripping quality that one would expect from the prophet of a new worldview. When you consider this, it is impossible to overlook the contrast between Christianity and anthroposophy. There is reverence for the mystery of the eternal; here is the understanding and sobriety of the one who has uncovered the secret.

Yes, my dear friends, I consciously refuse to speak in an overheated tone of something unknown, because that is precisely what has a hypnotizing effect on human souls.

Now, I have highlighted some of the typical things that oppose the spiritual scientific movement. We had to stop at such a point, since I intend to move on to characterizing what the position of that spiritual entity that we call Michael, who in turn has become the spiritual world regent since the end of the seventies of the last century, actually is in relation to the human present and its culture. Next time I must characterize the whole metamorphosis of the Michael personality, from what Michael was – that which is called the face of Yahweh – to his present position. It was also necessary to characterize a little the stones that are thrown in the path of spiritual science.

One can say: Firstly, in such a case there is the most terrible inaccuracy, secondly, in such a case there is the inability to somehow find out the key points of the matter - and, moreover, the unscrupulous will to characterize the matter as it has been done here. Finally, the brochure summarizes the content of the critique:

Christianity is a religion of history...

— there is the sentence for the second time! —

... theosophy is without history. Christianity is essentially ethical, anthroposophy is cosmically oriented. Christianity is a religion of mystery; the anthroposophist has penetrated the mystery. Christianity is simple at its core; anthroposophy is complicated and fantastic.

Yes, that is true, and many opponents of anthroposophy today fly this flag. But the reasons for this and the direction in which the judgment should be steered if one wants to arrive at a fair and dignified judgment must first be pointed out in a typical case. Next Friday, I will discuss the topics mentioned above. We will meet here at 7 p.m. for the lecture.

The relationship between anthroposophy and philosophy has already been discussed, albeit only briefly. Today we want to talk about fairly elementary aspects of so-called formal logic. Despite the elementary nature of our deliberations today, it may not be without use to delve into a philosophical chapter between our forays into higher worlds. It is not meant that such a lecture could directly offer anything for penetrating into the higher worlds. A logical consideration can do this no more than formal logic can enrich experience in the sensory realm. For example, someone who has never seen a whale cannot be convinced that they exist. He must make the observation himself. But it is precisely the knowledge of borderline areas that will be useful to anthroposophy, just as logic was useful to scholastics. The philosophers of the Middle Ages, who today are somewhat contemptuously grouped together under the name of scholastics, did not regard logic as an end in itself either; it did not serve to learn anything substantial. The subject-matter of teaching was either the observation of the senses or revelation, which is obtained through divine grace. But although, in the opinion of the scholastics, logic was quite powerless to enrich experience, they nevertheless regarded it as an important instrument of defense. So it should be an instrument of defense for us as well.

A distinction is made between material and formal logic. Logic as such cannot grasp anything material or substantial as its object. Concepts such as time, number, and God give a content that does not arise through logical conclusions. On the other hand, the form of thinking is the task of logic; it brings order to thoughts, it teaches how we must connect concepts that lead to correct conclusions. It is fair to say that logic was more highly valued in the past than it is today. In grammar schools, philosophy, logic and psychology used to be taught together. The aim of the teaching was to lead young people to disciplined, orderly thinking; propaedeutics means preparation. Today, however, people are trying to eliminate this kind of preparation and incorporate it into the study of silence because logic is no longer sufficiently respected. Thinking, they say, is innate in man; so why teach thinking in a special subject? But it is precisely in our time that it is very necessary to reflect on ourselves and to devote more attention to formal logic.

Aristotle is considered the founder of formal logic. And what Aristotle has done for logic has always been recognized, even by Kant, who says that formal logic has not progressed much since Aristotle. More recent thinkers have sought to add to it. We do not want to examine today whether or not such additions were necessary and justified. We just have to recognize the scope of logic here.

Anthroposophists are often reproached for not being logical. This is very often because the person making the reproach does not know what logical thinking is and what the laws of logical thinking are. Logic is the science of the correct, harmonious connection of our concepts. It comprises the laws by which we must regulate our thoughts in order to have within us a mirror reflecting the right relationships of reality.

We must first realize what a concept is. The fact that people are so little aware of what a concept is is due to the lack of study of logic on the part of the learned. When we encounter an object, the first thing that happens is sensation. We notice a color, a taste or a smell, and this fact, which takes place between man and object, we must first consider as characterized by sensation. What is in the statement: something is warm, cold and so on, is a sensation. But we actually do not have this pure sensation in ordinary life. When we look at a red rose, we not only perceive the red color; when we interact with objects, we always perceive a group of sensations at once. We call the combination of sensations “red, scent, extension, form” a “rose.” We do not actually perceive individual sensations, only groups of sensations. Such a group can be called a “perception”.

In formal logic, one must clearly distinguish between perception and sensation. Perception and sensation are two entirely different things. Perception is the first thing we encounter; it must first be dissected in order to have a sensation. However, that which gives us a mental image is not the only thing. The rose, for example, makes an impression on us: red, scent, shape, expanse. When we turn away from the rose, we retain something in our soul, such as a faded remnant of the red, the scent, the expanse, and so on. This faded remnant is the idea. One should not confuse perception and idea. The idea of a thing is where the thing is no longer present. The idea is already a memory image of the perception.

But we still have not come to the concept. We get the idea by exposing ourselves to the impressions of the outside world. We then retain the idea as an image. Most people do not get beyond the idea in the course of their lives, they do not penetrate to the actual concept. What a concept is and how it relates to the idea is best shown by an example from mathematics. Take the circle. If we take a boat out to sea, until we finally see nothing but the sea and the sky, we can perceive the horizon as a circle when it is very calm. If we then close our eyes, we retain the idea of the circle from this perception as a memory image. To arrive at the concept of the circle, we have to take a different path. We must not seek an external cause for the idea, but we construct in our minds all the points of a surface that are equidistant from a certain fixed point; if we repeat this countless times and connect these points with a line in our minds, the image of a circle is built up in our minds. We can also illustrate this mental image with chalk on the blackboard. If we now visualize this image of the circle, which has been created not by external impressions but by internal construction, and compare it with the image of the sea surface and the horizon that presented itself to our external perception, we can find that the internally constructed circle corresponds exactly to the image of external perception.

If people really think logically, in the strict logical sense, they do something other than perceive externally and then visualize what they have perceived; this is only an idea. In logical thinking, however, every thought must be constructed inwardly, it must be created similarly to what I have just explained using the example of the circle. Only then does man approach external reality with this inner mental image and find harmony between the inner picture and external reality. The representation is connected with external perception, the concept has been created by inner construction. Men who really thought logically have always constructed inwardly in this way. Thus Kepler, when he formulated his laws, constructed them inwardly, and then found them in harmony with external reality.

The concept is therefore nothing other than a mental image; it has its genesis, its origin in thought. An external illustration is only a crutch, an aid to make the concept clear. The concept is not gained through external perception; it initially lives only in pure inwardness.

In its thinking, our present-day intellectual culture has not yet gone beyond mere imagining, except in mathematics. For the spiritual researcher, it is sometimes grotesque to see how little people have progressed beyond mere imagining. Most people believe that the concept comes from the imagination and is only paler, less substantial than the latter. They believe, for example, that they can arrive at the concept of a horse by successively seeing large, small, brown, white and black horses appear in their perception; and now I take - so people continue - from the perception of these different horses, what is common to all horses and omit what is separate, and so I gain the concept of the horse. But one only gets an abstract idea, and one never arrives at the concept of the horse in the strict sense of the word. Nor does one arrive at a concept of the triangle by taking all kinds of triangles, taking what is common to them and omitting what separates them. One only arrives at a concept of the triangle by inwardly constructing the figure of three intersecting lines. With this inwardly constructed concept we approach the outer triangle and find it harmonizing with the inwardly constructed image.

Only in relation to mathematical things can people in today's culture rise to the concept. For example, one proves by inner construction that the sum of the angles in the triangle is equal to one hundred and eighty degrees. But if someone starts to construct concepts of other things inwardly, a large proportion of our philosophers do not recognize it at all. Goethe created the concepts of the “primordial plant” and the “primordial animal” by inward construction; not only was the different left out, the same was retained - as stated earlier in the example of the horse. The primordial plant and the primordial animal are such inward mental constructions. But how few recognize this today. Only when one can build up the concept of the horse, the plant, the triangle, and so on, through inner construction, and when this coincides with outer perception, only then does one arrive at the concept of a thing. Most people today hardly know what is meant when one speaks of conceptual thinking.

Let us not take mathematical concepts, and let us not take Goethe's Organik, where he created concepts in a truly magnificent way, but let us take the concept of virtue. One can indeed have a pale general idea of virtue. But if you want to arrive at a concept of virtue, then you have to construct it inwardly, and you have to take the concept of individuality to help you. You have to construct the concept of virtue as you construct the concept of a circle. It takes some effort to do this, and various elements have to be brought together, but it is just as possible as constructing mathematical concepts. Moral philosophers have always tried to give a sensuality-free concept of virtue. Some time ago, there was a philosopher who could not imagine a sensuality-free concept of virtue and thought those who claimed such a thing were fantasists. He explained that when he thinks of virtue, he imagines virtue as a beautiful woman. Thus, he still introduced sensuality into the non-sensual concept. And because he could not imagine a sensuality-free concept of virtue, he also denied this to others.

If you delve into Herbart's ethics, you will find that for him, “goodwill” and “freedom”, these ethical concepts, are not formed by taking what is common and omitting what is separate. Instead, he says, for example, that goodwill encompasses the relationship between one's own will impulses and the imagined will impulses of another person. He thus gives a pure definition. In this way, one could construct the whole of morality through pure concepts, as in mathematics, and as Goethe attempted with his organic system. The general idea of virtue must not be confused with the concept of virtue. People arrive at the concept only gradually, through an inner process.

By setting the concept of the concept before us, we distance ourselves from all arbitrariness of imagining. To do this, we must first consider the pure course of imagining and the pure course of conceptualizing. I need not say that when a person imagines a triangle, he can only imagine this or that triangle. We must now take into account the way in which mere perceptions are connected and the way in which pure concepts are connected. What governs our perceptual life? When we have the perception of a rose, the perception of a person who has given us a rose can arise quite spontaneously. This may be followed by the perception of a blue dress that the person in question was wearing, and so on. Such connections are called: association of perceptions. But this is only one way in which people link ideas together. It occurs most purely where the human being completely abandons himself to the life of ideas. But it is also possible to string ideas together according to other laws. This can be shown by an example: a boy sits in the forest under tall trees. A person comes along and admires the good-quality timber. “Good morning, carpenter,” says the bright boy. Another comes along and admires the bark. “Good morning, tanner,” says the bright lad. A third passes by and marvels at the magnificent growth of the trees. “Good morning, painter,” says the boy. So here three people see the same thing – the trees – and each of these three people has different ideas, but these are different for the carpenter, the tanner and the painter. They are different combinations of ideas, not mere associations. This is because, according to his inner element, his soul structure, man connects this or that external idea with another, not only externally surrendering himself to the ideas. Here man allows the power that rises from his inner being to work. This is called: apperception is at work in him. Apperception and association are the forces that link mere ideas through external or subjective inner motives. Both apperception and association work in the mere life of ideas. It is quite different in the life of concepts. Where would people end up if they only relied on the subject's apperception and random association in the life of concepts? Here, people have to follow very specific laws that are independent of the association of ideas and the apperception of the subject. If we look at the mere external connection, we do not find the inner belonging of the concepts. There is an inner belonging of the concepts, and we find the lawfulness for this in formal logic.

First of all, we now have to look at the connection between two concepts. We connect the concept of the horse and that of running when we say: The horse is running. - We call such a connection of concepts a “judgment.” The point now is that the connection of concepts is carried out in such a way that only correct judgments can arise. Here we have, first of all, only a connection of two concepts, quite independently of association and apperception. When we connect two ideas through their content, we form a judgment. An association is not a judgment, because, for example, you could also connect bull and horse with each other through an association. But the connection of ideas can also happen in more complicated ways. We can add judgment to judgment and thus come to a “conclusion.” A famous old example of this is the following: All men are mortal. Caius is a man. Therefore, Caius is mortal. - Two judgments are correct in these sentences, so the third one “Caius is mortal” that follows from them is also correct. A judgment is the combination of two terms, a subject with the predicate. If two judgments are combined and a third follows from them, that is an inference. We can now develop a general scheme for this: If “Caius” is the subject \(S\) and “mortal” the predicate \(P\), then in the judgment “Caius is mortal” we have the connection of the subject \(S\) with the predicate \(P: S = P\). According to this scheme, we can form thousands of judgments. But to come to a conclusion, we still need a middle term \(M\), in our example “human”, “all humans”. So we can set up the scheme for a conclusion:

\(M = P\) All humans are mortal
\(S = M\) Caius is a human
\(S = P\) Therefore Caius is mortal.

If this conclusion is to be correct, the concepts must be connected in exactly this way; nothing must be transposed. If, for example, we form the sequence of judgments: The portrait resembles a person – The portrait is a work of art – we must not conclude: Therefore the work of art resembles a person. This latter conclusion would be false. But what is the error here? We have the schema:

\(M = P\) The portrait resembles a person
\(M = S\) The portrait is a work of art
But \(S\) is not equal to \(P\):
The work of art does not resemble a person.

We have turned the universally valid schema upside down here. It depends, then, on the form of the schema, on the manner of linking, to know: the first figure of conclusion is correct, the second is false. It is immaterial how the linking of concepts otherwise proceeds in our thoughts; it must be like the first formula in order to be correct.

We shall now see how one comes to know a certain legitimate connection in order to be able to find a number of such figures. Correct thinking proceeds according to quite definite such figures of inference; otherwise it is just wrong thinking. But things are not always as easy as in this example. Merely from the fact that the conclusions are wrong, one could often find out today, from even the most learned books, that what has been said cannot be true. Thus there are inner laws of thinking like the laws of mathematics; one could say an arithmetic of thinking. Now you can imagine the ideal of correct thinking: all concepts must be formed according to the laws of formal logic. However, formal logic has certain limits. These limits must be applied to the human mind. This would lead to correct insights and recognize the nature of fallacies. By all rules of logic, it would conform to the laws of logic if we said:

All Cretans are liars \(M = P\)
This one is a Cretan \(S = M\)
Therefore he is a liar, therefore \(S = P\)

Now the ancient logicians had already noticed that this is true for all cases, except for the case in which a Cretan himself says it. In this case, the conclusion is certainly false. For if a Cretan says, “All Cretans lie, therefore I am a liar,” it would not be true that Cretans are liars, and so he would be telling the truth; and so on.

It is similar with all fallacies, for example with the so-called crocodile conclusion: An Egyptian woman saw how her child playing by the Nile was seized by a crocodile. At the mother's request, the crocodile promises to return the child if the mother guesses what it will do now. The mother now utters: You will not give me back my child. - The crocodile replies: You may have spoken the truth or a lie, but I do not have to give the child back. Because if your speech is true, you will not get it back according to your own saying. But if it is false, then I do not return it according to our agreement. - The mother: I may have spoken the truth or spoken falsely, but you must give me back my child. Because if my speech is true, then you must give it to me according to our agreement; but if it is false, then the opposite must be true. You will give me back my child. The same applies to the conclusion that affected a teacher and a student. The teacher has taught the pupil the art of jurisprudence. The pupil is to pay the last half of the fee only after he has won his first case. After the teaching is completed, the pupil delays the beginning of the practice of law and therefore also the payment. Finally, the teacher sues him, saying to him: “Foolish youth! In any case, you must now pay. For if I win the lawsuit, you must pay according to the judgment; if you win, you must pay according to the contract, for you have won your first lawsuit. But the student: Wise teacher! Under no circumstances do I have to pay. For if the judges rule in my favor, I have nothing to pay according to the judgment; but if they rule against me, I pay nothing according to our contract.

There are countless such fallacies, which are formally quite correct. The problem is that logic can be applied to everything except itself. The moment we refer back to the subject itself, formal logic breaks down. This is a reflection of something else: when we move from the three bodies of man to the ego, everything changes. The self is the setting for logic, which, however, may only be applied to other things, not to itself. No experience can ever be made through logic, but logic can only be used to bring order to experiences.

I have often spoken to you of how the human soul has altered in the course of mankind's development, how short-sighted it is to believe that the constitution of the modern soul can be understood if one will not look back to the different changes it has passed through. We look back—I do not need to recapitulate it—to the most varied epochs of earthly evolution; we have in particular often characterised the post-Atlantean epochs in order to show how the constitution of man's soul continually altered. In speaking of such things one must advance from the abstract to the concrete. One must try to give as clear an answer as possible to the question: What was the nature of the human soul in the ages of antiquity? We look back to a far-off age in which—and this may be stated in more than a figurative sense—divine teachers themselves instructed men about the sacred mysteries of existence. We know that from this ancient epoch onwards men have come to learn of these mysteries of existence in most manifold ways. From epoch to epoch the conceptions of the human soul have actually become more and more different. The concepts and ideas which we have today, which live in us and which we put every moment into words, these lived too in earlier conditions of our soul but in an utterly different way. Many of our most ordinary ideas lived quite differently. Today I will speak of what are apparently the most ordinary concepts, two concepts living in man's soul. People denote them at every moment from their word-store, but they lived in the human soul in earlier times in an entirely different way. I will speak of the two concepts: Space and Time.

Space for modern man is the most abstract thing conceivable. What do men mostly picture as space? Three dimensions standing at right angles to each other—or if one reads philosophical text books: the state of extension of physical objects—or there are still other definitions of space. But all that—think how prosaic, cold, abstract, that all is! Three dimensions standing at right angles to one another, or even all that geometry has to say about space,—how frightfully abstract, how prosaic and poverty-stricken, so poverty-stricken that the whole of space—with time as well—has become for Kant subjective shadow, merely a form of conceiving sense-phenomena. This abstraction, space, of which modern man knows little more than that it has length, breadth and height, this abstraction, space, was a very different conception in the far past, of which, however, something still exists today for especially sensitive people—though indeed it is only a trace. One need not go back so extremely far; in the 6th, 7th, 8th pre-Christian centuries one may definitely say that space, as it was then experienced, was very different for the human soul from the prosaic abstraction that it is for man today. Even in the early Greek ages when the soul experienced space, it felt it to be something with which it was livingly united. It felt itself placed into a living Something, in feeling itself placed into space.

Today man has at most a vestige of the sense of standing with his personality, his human self within space. But the man of antiquity expressed a significant relation of himself to the universe, if he distinguished above and below, right and left, in front and behind. The living feeling that one expressed when in ancient times one spoke of above and below, of right and left, of before and behind, has terribly little to do with our abstract three dimensions, which have no other occupation at all than standing at right angles to each other. What a very monotonous occupation it would be through eternity, if one did nothing else at all but stand at right angles to one another like the three dimensions of geometry.

Above and below: it was something living when in ancient times man still experienced how he was first a little child and raised himself from below upwards, when he felt how the course of life consists in an unfolding in the direction of above and below. The course of life consisted in the experience of the direction of above and below. One only travels a tiny distance from the earth (unless one lives in the Ahrimanic age of aeroplanes, or in the Atlantean age but there it was not very high above the earth—you know of this from my description of Atlantis), only a very little distance in normal life does one travel upwards from the earth in growing, and thus experience the above and below, the opposition of above and below. But this opposition was felt in antiquity as the contrast of the world of consciousness and the objective world,—of the conscious and the unconscious world. How subject is related to object—that was a deep experience when one felt above and below. Above, and ever farther and farther upwards come the divine worlds, downwards the worlds which are opposed to the Gods, and the human being is placed within the Above and Below.

As late as to such men as Goethe (you only need study his “Faust”) you still find remains of the consciousness of above and below. In addition to the above and below men felt the right, and left. Today we must use abstractions if we speak of right and left. To the man of antiquity a living in right and left was an actual experience, one might say a genuine world of observation. The Above and Below is the line from infinity to infinity or from the conscious to the unconscious. Right and left: in experiencing right and left one experienced the connection in the world between mind and figure, between wisdom and form. You only need draw a symmetry-axis, what is left and right of it gives together the form and you cannot combine the right and the left without doing it purposefully, without relating the one to the other.

If above and below is pointing to man's mysterious relation to the spiritual and material worlds, then the experience of right and left is his relation to the worlds spreading out in form. And by relating the form in the right and left to one another, by letting wisdom prevail in the forms arranged symmetrically right and left, he experiences himself in the second element of space. This experience of sense in the shape, of wisdom in the form in all possible variations, this feeling of oneself within this harmony of sense and shape, of wisdom and form, was experienced by the man of old as what today is the abstract second dimension. The above and below, the right and left belonged to the flat plane, to the surface which can have no existence for the senses, which requires thickness, needs before and behind if it is to exist in the element of the sense-perceptible.

And in this third, in the before and behind, ancient mankind felt the entrance of the material into the spiritual. (See diagram) Above and below, left and right he experienced as something still spiritual. It can have no material existence if something is merely above and below, and right and left—it is pure picture, must be pure picture in space; it becomes material only through thickness. In ancient times man felt vividly that in growing he made a few steps upwards from the earths surface in the direction of the above and below. He felt that in walking, he could move freely that he was in the element of his will: before and behind. In between stood the completely free self-movement to right and left while standing still.

Ancient man experienced in his being this threefold contrast as placed into the All; the remaining still with regard to right and left, the striding into the world with regard to before and behind, the gradual movement from below upwards in the direction of the above-below. This was the experience of the man of old. In experiencing the above and below he felt weaving in the universe all that today we call the intelligence, the reasoning of the universe. All that rules in the universe as intelligence was interwoven in space with his idea of the above and below, end since he could share in this intelligence of the world through his growth from below upwards, man felt himself to be intelligent. The participation in the above and below was at the same time a participation in cosmic intelligence. And participation in the right and left, in the interweaving of sense and shape, of wisdom and form, was for him the feeling that weaves through the world. And his restful remaining still, surveying the world, was to him a uniting of his own feeling with the universal feeling. His striding through space in the direction of forwards or back was the unfolding of his will, the placing of himself, with his own will, into the universe, the universal will, He felt his own life to be interwoven with the above and below, the right and left, the before and behind. The conscious and the unconscious: above and below; wisdom and form: right and left; spirit and matter: in front and behind. Such was the experience of the man of antiquity.

At the same time, however, he experienced the indefinite—if I put it crudely—when one stands on one's head then the under is above and the above under. So too is it for the antipodes, and if one counts oneself in with the earth, the below is above and the above underneath. One can imagine too through some circumstance or other that what is normally right is in front, what is normally left is behind. These directions are just as living and weaving in space as in a certain respect they are indistinguishable, weaving into one another. Ancient man felt as he thus experienced himself in the three-divisioned space that the Divinity ruled in the threefoldness. The divine ruling in space directed man then to the divine in duration.

He experienced—and what I am saying now was actually experienced—he experienced in space the divine manifestation, ruling in threefold manner. It was the image in him of the threefold God: Father, Son and Spirit or by what other terms the three-membered God was known. Threefoldness is truly not thought out in the mind, is not an invention. The threefoldness with all its qualities was experienced in its reflection when ancient man experienced livingly the three dimensions of space.

And just as in a certain respect want of clearness can prevail about the above and below, just as right and left can also be before and behind, so in certain circumstances an uncertainty can also enter into the reciprocal relationships of God, Son, Spirit. In the sphere of the transitory, the sphere of space, man experienced the three dimensions concretely, not abstractly or geometrically as we do. And as he experienced concretely how the divine expressed itself in space, in the transitory, he therefore related the transitory to the element of duration; the three-dimensioned space became for him the reflected image of the three-dimensioned spirituality.

The idea of ancient man was approximately: If I live here below on earth I live in the threefoldness of space, but this is to me the reflected proof of the threefold nature of the divine origin of the world.

Today space has become an abstraction and only a few people perceive the depth-dimension, the thickness-dimension, that is, the above and below, the in front and behind, or the plane-dimension of right and left. Even among philosophers little of this experience is to be found. But yet some few who reflect on things and are not entirely asleep come to realise that the depth-dimension really arises in the unconscious observation lying not so very far below the consciousness. Men still feel the depth, but that is the last shadowy relic of space-experience. In the evolved religions an understanding for the Oneness of God has taken precedence of the real understanding of the threefoldness. The understanding for the unity of God has an origin similar to that for the threefold nature of God through space.

My dear friends, spiritual science seeks its information out of the divine facts themselves. Simple-minded people that come and say that no external proof for this or that is given. Well, we have gone into a great deal. I could still relate many things, but it shall not occupy our time today. I will only point out that it is largely the unscientific nature of modern science, so-called, if the verification cannot be found. Just this one thing I will say, and it is as it were an external proof of the fact that the man of antiquity felt in the same way I have described today. Why have the ancient Rabbis called God also Space? Because in earlier time, even in Judaism, they felt what I have shown you today concerning mankind. If science could really think in different domains it would find countless riddles which at the same time, however, are true proof, external proof of what spiritual science has at any rate to find out of the spiritual facts. One of the names for God among the Rabbis is Space; Space and God denote the same.

The unity of the divine has an origin similar to that of the threefoldness of the divine. It is connected with the living experience of Time. Time too was not the abstraction to the man of old that it is to us today. But the concrete experience of time was lost still earlier than the concrete experience of space. If one reads Plato or Aristotle today with a real understanding, and not in the way many schoolmasters read—well, I have often quoted the note written by Hebbel in his diary where the reincarnated Plato sits before the schoolmaster as a pupil, and the teacher reads a dialogue of Plato's with his class and the reincarnated Plato is given very poor marks. Hebbel noted this in his diary. One who reads Plato and Aristotle today, not as is often done by a schoolmaster, but with really deep understanding, finds that this feeling for space was still fully in existence in the 6th, 7th, 8th pre-Christian centuries. It was however already shadowy in Plato and Aristotle, and the living experience of time was lost still earlier than those pre-Christian centuries. It was strongly alive in the second post-Atlantean epoch the ancient Persian, where a cold shiver would have been produced among, for instance, the pupils of Zarathustra, if one had spoken to them of time as a line running from the past to the future. It runs quite uniformly, but does nothing else than run its course from the past to the future.

Again in the Gnosis there existed a more shadowy feeling—but scarcely still to be recognised—for the living nature of time. They did not speak of a line running from past to future but they spoke of Aeons, the creators who were there earlier and from whom the later proceeded, where one Aeon always passed on the impulse of creation to others. Time was so imagined pictorially that in the hierarchical succession the preceding Being always gave the impulse to the one following; the following was ever, as it were, brought forth by the preceding, the preceding Being enclosed the next following. One looked up to the preceding Being, as more divine than the one succeeding. “Later” one experienced as more non-divine, “earlier” one experienced as more divine. This looking towards the change in evolution from the divine to the non-divine was contained in the living experience of time. Everything would fall apart if one were not to weave the divine and the non-divine to a unity. That is identical with our modern abstractions of past and future.

But in this picture of time, looking right back to the “Ancient of Days”, and encompassing the ever more and more encompassing, one experienced the image of God as Unity. Just as the three-divisioned, threefold Space was experienced as the image of the threefoldness of God, so was Time experienced as the image of the oneness of God. The basis of monotheism lies in the ancient time-experience, the basis for perceiving the Trinity lies in the ancient space-experience. Thus has the constitution of man's soul changed, thus has what was once alive became abstract and dry. However paradoxical this may sound: modern man most certainly has an abstract picture when he speaks of space, and he pictures or so I believe—a living relationship when he speaks of a friend. But that concreteness, that elementary experience, which today speaks from friend to friend, that is still abstract in comparison with the intensive experience of the universe which ancient man had when he experienced space and time, which to him were the images of the Unity and Trinity of the Divine.

Thus have we become dry and abstract in respect of space and time, and something else must take their place, something that we must again experience, that must be more and more inwardly realised. We must learn to feel that duality, that contrast in the world of which I have spoken during recent weeks. My dear friends, think for once that someone were to see only the rippled surface of water. This crinkly, rippled water-surface is in fact an abstract line. What is the concrete? There below, the water; there above, the air. And out of the duality air and water, in the co-operation of their forces, there arises the maya, the rippled surface. But so is our world the rippled surface, so too are we as men if we behold ourselves only as we look within maya; if we behold ourselves in reality then here too we must see: below, the water; above, the air.

Below the water—we see it if we observe transitory evolution, as I have brought it before you recently, where man develops in such a way that what he can conceive as a child he would grasp only as an old man. What he conceives in the age of puberty, he knows somewhat earlier, but still only towards old age. I depicted the course of human life, where it is only in old age that one grasps in oneself what one has been in childhood and youth. Life runs thus not apparently, but in reality on the surface, I have said that perhaps one does not need such a perspective today for life on the surfaces but for dying one needs it.—That the conception of the below; and belonging to it, the conception of the real above the region of duration. I spoke of this region in a recent lecture,¹ where man does not evolve, but has that which belongs to duration his whole life through from birth to death. But we cannot consider today how the below and the above interweave, if we do not realise the below, there where it threatens to become fixed, where it threatens to harden; and if we do not realise the above there where it threatens to dissolve, to spiritualise itself—if we do not develop the feeling for the contrast: the Divine—the Luciferic the Ahrimanic. Man of old had something alive in his soul when he spoke of his space-experience, his time-experience; the man of the Earth-future must develop inner concepts, inner impulses representing: Divine—Ahrimanic Luciferic.

• 1. 15th September 1918

If you take the concept of Jesus from the Koran, for example, and consult from 19th Surah, you will see that it specifically mentions that the Nathan Jesus Child actually spoke immediately at his birth. This is what the Koran says: “Jesus spoke and said:‘See, I am the servant of God. He has given me the book and He has made me to a prophet and He has blessed me wherever I am, and He has given me His blessings so long as I live, and love to my mother and peace upon the day of my birth and the day when I die and the day when I am resurrected again to life. This is Jesus, the son of Mary, the Word of truth’ ”. This actually appears in the Koran.

In the ancient Jewish teachings as they are contained in the Talmud and other writings apart from the Old Testament, you learn that which is more of a conceptual nature, but on the other hand the Haggadah is the name given to that which modern people would call legends and tales. However, these legends and tales in the Haggadah refer more to actual perception in the spiritual world; they go back to imaginative knowledge.

I am going to share a portion from the Haggadah about Solomon with you. It says: “Rabbi Joachin says: The feet of man guarantee for him that they bring him to that place where he is supposed to go. And they tell about those Moors who are the sons of Shesher named Elacoraf and Akia who are the scribes of Solomon. One day Solomon saw the Angel of Death who was very sad and he asked: Why are you sad? The Angel of Death replied: Because I require these two Moors. As a result of that Solomon gave his Moors to the Seherem (Seherem are those demons who for imaginative vision look like goats and fly through the air) and sent them into the City of Loos. When these two Moors arrived there, they died. A few days afterwards, Solomon again saw the Angel of Death and this time the Angel was laughing. And Solomon said to the Angel: Why do you laugh? The Angel of Death replied: You sent them precisely to the place where I wanted them to go. So at that time Solomon said the following: The feet of the human being guarantee for him that they bring him to the place where he is supposed to be. Thus Solomon had an experience with the Angel of Death, an experience which confirmed the truth of that which Rabbi Joachin said, namely, the feet of man guarantee for him that he is taken to the place where he needs to be.”

Now, my dear friends, you will see that a number of questions are raised in this story from the Haggadah. The feet of the man guarantee that he is brought to the place where he is supposed to go. Why are the feet spoken of so precisely? In such ancient imaginative legends, nothing of an arbitrary nature is there, everything has its definite deep significance. So we have the first question which one can ask. Then we also have another: Why was the Angel of Death sad when he appeared before Solomon with the statement that he is going to take the two scribes away? It seems ridiculously trivial to say that the Angel was sad; he was going to do his job. Then Solomon asks him: “Why are you sad?” What is the significance of this question? The Angel of Death says he is sad because he demands the two scribes. But Solomon gives them to the demons who carry them into the City of Loos.

Now, you see the question about the city of Loos can be more easily answered. The city of Loos was so organized that no one was allowed to die within the city, hence those people who were ready to die were carried outside the city. It was the only city which had this organization. Therefore when Solomon heard that the Angel of Death was going to take his scribes, he sent them to the city because he believed that if they were in the city, the Angel of Death could not get hold of them. This is the story given in the Haggadah. However, these stories are found in many other places in Jewish tradition. There it is related in this way: They had only arrived at the gates of the city because they fell down during their flight. And because they were not able to enter the city, the Angel was able to get hold of them. However, the next day you have the Angel of Death standing before Solomon and laughing. This is very strange; the Angel is laughing because he was able to get hold of these two scribes for death. Solomon recognizes the truth of Rabbi Joachin when he says: “The feet of human beings are a guarantee that he is brought to the place where he is supposed to be.”

Now, it is important to understand that both scribes, both Moors, are the sons of Shesher, who himself was the scribe for David. Thus, this indicates that these two scribes of King Solomon were very special. we must put all these things together if we want to perceive the whole significance of the questions which surface when we speak about this very significant cognitive moment in the life of King Solomon. Now, remember that King Solomon was not wise because he was clever in the sense that modern man is clever, he was called the wise Solomon because he was able to have real vision into the spiritual world; the spiritual world was open to him. Therefore Solomon was to experience that truth which Rabbi Joachin imparted, namely, the truth in connection with the feet of human beings.

When you consider the human being in comparison with the animal, then you see a very important difference. Through the fact that man has a vertical spine, he is at right angles to the surface of the earth. The spine of the animal, however, is parallel to the surface of the earth. Now I hope that no one here is going by object to telling us about the kangaroo. These are exceptions which can be explained if we go into the details of the situation. But let us put that on the side for the moment. We know man has an upright spine and the spine of the animal is horizontal. Now, when we draw a line through the spine of the animal—it is not a straight line, but a curved one—then we have a line curving parallel to the curvature of the earth which means when we draw a circle parallel to the earth then that passes through the spine of the animal. However, when we draw the same curve for the human being, then we find that this curve has a middle point. In the case of the animal we have seen the middle point of the curve was the middle point of the earth. However in the middle point of the curve that we draw through the spinal column of man, there you have the middle point of the moon. Why? Because that particular stage of development which the animal is going through at present, man already went through in the ancient Moon period. Therefore, at the present time man still has a connection with the moon insofar as the curve passing through his spine has its center point in the moon, just as the curve passing through the animal has its center point in the earth. Therefore man is connected with the moon in a similar descriptive way as the animal is connected with the earth.

Now, man has torn himself away from the earth; man is not as united with the earth as is the animal kingdom. As far as his external physical nature is concerned, man has torn himself loose from his earth planet. However, he has only torn himself loose in one aspect of his nature; he has another aspect through which he is attached to the earth, and that is with his feet. Man has to stand upon the earth with his feet. However, passing over from the Moon development to the earth development, he has torn himself away from the earth with his hands. His feet, however, are still connected with the earth. If you understand the human form as it has developed itself in the transition from the Moon evolution to the Earth evolution, so you must say: In so far as man belongs to the earth, the earth has been able to attach itself to him in his feet. What guarantees does man have to come to the earth? This is guaranteed by man's foot situation. Hence we have the explanation in the Hebrew: The feet guarantee him. The word ‘guarantee’ in the Hebrew is the same as the word you use in reference to guaranteeing someone an amount of capital, the word guarantee indicates that as far as his feet are concerned, it is guaranteed that he has a connection with the earth. That does not mean that the feet of the human being carry him to the place of his death, but the whole secret of the human form lies in this sentence as Solomon has recognized it through the fact that he is able to look into the spiritual world.

Now, I have yet to describe that which Solomon revealed when he had words with the Angel of Death. We will see this from the example of how we have a wisdom present in humanity which we previously called the primal wisdom. This primal wisdom passed away in order that man could have an opportunity during the Earth evolution to develop this wisdom again, but to develop it out of himself in complete freedom.

Now, there is another riddle in this story about the Angel of Death. At one time he is sad and at another time he is laughing. We can just think about the true nature of laughing and weeping. You know very well that if you see a person walking along the street who is laughing to himself, you would say that he is crazy. You see that laughing is something which you expect one to participate in with other people. On the other hand, when it comes to crying, you know that usually you cry when you are alone. To explain this phenomenon of weeping and laughing, we have to remember that we generally think that what we are as human beings is only enclosed within our skin and we forget the fact that the air is outside us and when we breathe it in, it becomes part of us and then we breathe it out again. Therefore we are part of our whole environment. And when we go to sleep, we breathe out our ego and astral body, we breathe it in again when we wake up. So we see that there is a flowing life between us and the spiritual world. Actually when we laugh, we spread out our ego and astral body outside us. You stretch out, you expand your astral body and your ego when you laugh. And this expansion of the astral body goes out to the ether body. The invisible man spreads himself out elastically. That is the process when you laugh. The reverse process takes place when you weep. There you have the astral body contracting together with the ether body and pressing itself an the physical body which then presses out tears.

Now we go back to Solomon. When Solomon looked at the Angel of Death, he did not see a physical body, but he saw a spiritual being. What he really saw when the Angel laughed was the Angel spreading himself out. The first time he saw the Angel, he was weeping, that means the Angel was drawing himself together. Here we see how spiritual beings fulfil their activities. Laughing and weeping is an accompaniment of life with us human beings through which we only express our inner being; we show how our inner being is constituted. In the case of spiritual beings, they show their actions. As far as we are concerned, when we laugh and cry, it has very little significance for other people. We do not produce activities through our laughing and crying. These are accompaniments of our life. However, in the moment when we approach certain spiritual beings who with their actual self are occupied more in working than we are, there you have the significance of the expanding out and the contracting in. The Angel of Death, because he was in the position of having to fetch these two Moors to death, had to hold his forces together, he had to condense himself in order to give support for his forces because he was about to perform some activity which expressed itself in the fact that he was sad. That is only an indication of how he is drawing himself together. The next day when he had accomplished his task, then the elasticity expressed itself again, he spread himself out and you had the appearance of laughter.

Now we come to the next question: Why were they led to the City of Loos and what is the meaning of this whole process with Solomon? In the first place we must contemplate the fact that Solomon was a person who stands in connection with the spiritual world. I told you that it is very significant that both scribes were the sons of Shesher who had been the scribe of King David. Thus they are very valuable personalities and scribes at that ancient time signified something different from what it means today. Scribes in Egypt, for example, were people who were able with all sorts of inner fervor to paint letters in the sense of the ancient Egyptian script, and when someone painted a false letter, he stood under the penalty of death, because he was dealing with something of a holy nature. There was something of a holy nature in the letters; this applied to the scribes of King Solomon who also stood in connection with the spiritual world. They stood in communion with Solomon who imparted his knowledge of the spiritual world to them. And the City of Loos points out the fact to us that there was something in these scribes which enabled them to have a feeling of their immortality even during their life, they had this connection with the spiritual world. We ought to bring our attention to the fact that they knew of their soul-spiritual kernel which passes through the portal of death. They knew this not only theoretically, but they belonged to those who, as it were, were initiated in a certain degree into these mysteries.

Hence the Angel of Death had some difficulty here, because it was necessary to put himself in a certain connection with King Solomon, which means that both scribes, as well as King Solomon, lived in the consciousness of their immortality. Therefore it was necessary for the Angel of Death to enter into the whole process which he had to execute because a consciousness was present of the death which was involved here. This did not mean that King Solomon wanted to protect his scribes from death and therefore sent then to the City of Loos, but it was supposed to indicate that here we are dealing with death which was completely conscious, that the knowledge of death was part of their knowledge. Here the main emphasis was that Solomon was conscious of the death of his scribes and when it is said that he sent then to the city of Loos, that should only indicate to us how the Ahrimanic force represented by the Angel of Death is represented by its agent as the demonic goat which enters into the situation. Thus the whole process which occurs consciously is supposed to be explained to us through the story in the following way: A death once occurred in such a way that a wise man was conscious of it. That is what Rabbi Joachin wanted to indicate. The whole process is connected with the spiritual world. This arising of knowledge of the super-sensible world in King Solomon is indicated by this story. Rabbi Joachin said: “Man is bound to the earth through the form of the feet and its relationship to the earth, and it is expressed that man is connected to the earth in a one-sided way, that only his feet are guarantee for the fact that man belongs to the earth. The upright posture of man is a guarantee for the fact that he is given over to the spiritual world with his essential kernel. And because Solomon was able to believe him, he was able to be made consciously aware of the death of his scribes who were dear to him.

Therefore we see that the idea of these ancient traditions can only be understood with the aid of spiritual science. You learn from that that Solomon's wisdom is connected with the fact that he was able to look into the spiritual world and discover the mystery of death. In the line of the generations which descends from King Solomon, you have the physical preparation, as it were, for this clairvoyance in so far as it is able to enter the portal of death. Therefore we see the body of Jesus descending from the Solomon line of the House of David, but the soul is that of Zarathustra. We have to be clear about the soul being that of Zarathustra and why it had to enter into a body which descended from someone who was permeated with clairvoyance.

Now, I have often spoken about that which came with the soul of Zarathustra. Today I only want to emphasize the fact that that which came later was mostly removed from the teaching of Zarathustra and then passed over into the teaching of Mani, and further on into the teaching of Manichaeisn. We know the deepest questions of the riddle of man belongs to the question of the relationship of good and evil, and we know that we can understand it when we have insight into the working of Lucifer and Ahriman. But this working of Lucifer and Ahriman leads us back to Zarathustra. Lucifer and Ahriman are already present as a fact of the spiritual world in the teaching of Zarathustra. And let us try to bring the Zarathustrian teaching of the good and evil into connection with the teaching of predestination which is connected with the Islamic religion.

Let us consider the import of this teaching of predestination. On the one side it says: Everything which occurs has been predetermined, so that even taking a step in front of my door was predetermined. Even when I die that was predestined. Everything is strongly predestined, which means that for the consciousness of the Islamic person, everything that occurs was already previously written in the Book of God. However, every time this Islamic person is confronted with something, he says: “If it is the will of God.” He is completely convinced of the fact that everything is written in the Book of God; however, he says: “I will only do this thing if it is the will of God”. A Westerner would say to this Islamic person: “If you say that everything is predestined, then it does not make any sense to say I will do it if God wills it. Why do you say: ‘I will do it if God wills it?’ There is no doubt about it since everything is already determined from the beginning.” Here we have an insoluble contradiction; it really is an insoluble contradiction. Look at Western philosophy, at Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling and so on, and you will find the after-working of this insoluble contradiction, but it appears in a particularly crass way in the teaching of Kismet, of everything being predestined. Here we have a teaching which, in this connection, is different from the teaching of Zarathustra, that the people who know Zarathustra know about Lucifer and Ahriman. At first we have the teaching of primal wisdom which did not contain any contradictions and this transforms itself into teaching which does carry a contradiction. A person who does not recognize that life is filled with contradictions will really never understand life. Life, when it is only approached with the human understanding is bound to give many contradictions.

First we have the age of Zarathustra and then this is followed by a time when man is confronted by contradictions. But through these contradictions he should be stimulated to develop his real inner life. Now, you have something happening in the earth evolution where something which did not belong to the earth evolution comes in in order that man can resolve these contradictions. Here we have the Nathan Jesus coming into earth evolution and with this Nathan Jesus you have something which helps to solve all the earth contradictions, because the Nathan Jesus comes from the spiritual world and is not attached to the earth. In the Nathan Jesus we have a healing of the contradictions which occurs in human beings during the earth sojourn. So we find where you have this contradiction of the predestination and the idea ‘If God wills it’ in the Koran, and you have in this very same Koran the allusion to the Nathan Jesus which I quoted earlier, who spoke immediately at birth. You see, all these things are very complicated.

It requires courage, courage in order to think things toward the end. And this is the sort of courage that we get from spiritual science. Too often today people are apathetic, but in spiritual science we want to replace apathy with calmness. With apathy you do not care; with calmness you are able to absorb these things in a mood of equanimity.

Yesterday we tried to place ourselves in the position of the developing process of conceptualization and idealization, of the development of concepts about the world and of ideas, and we saw that a certain development can be observed here as well: that, so to speak, from a kind of clairvoyant experience of the concepts, what the Platonic ideas were arises, and that gradually developed that abstract way of thinking which still extends into our own day; but that time is pressing, so that, as it were in a conscious way, living life in concepts is to be achieved again, in order to enter into living spirituality in general, so that what was left behind as dream-like clairvoyance in concepts may be achieved again in a conscious way.

Now we have to look more closely at how, in a very different way, all the highest matters of world existence can be grasped in a time when there was still something of the resonance of the old, clairvoyantly grasped concepts, and how quite differently the highest matters of humanity had to be grasped when conceptual thinking had already become intellectual-rational and abstract. For the questions we spoke of again yesterday, which arose so significantly in medieval scholasticism, these questions could actually only develop naturally in an age in which one was uncertain about the relationship between the world of concepts and the true world of reality. In a time that had preceded Greek philosophy, something like what we have considered the doctrine of universals in re, post rem, ante rem could not have been conceived at all, because the vividly possessed concept leads into reality. One knows that one stands in reality with it, and then one cannot raise the questions that were discussed yesterday. They do not arise at all as riddle questions.

Now, in the early days of Christian development, there was still something of an echo of the old clairvoyant conceptual world, and one can say: when the Mystery of Golgotha went through the development of European and Near Eastern humanity , there were still many people who were really able to absorb the things that relate to the Mystery of Golgotha in echoes of clairvoyantly grasped concepts, which can actually only be understood spiritually. Only in this way can we understand that much of what was developed in the first centuries of Christianity to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha must have been incomprehensible in later times. When the older Christian teachers still used the echoes of the old clairvoyant concepts to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha, then, of course, these clairvoyant concepts remained incomprehensible to the later centuries in their actual essence. Basically, what is called gnosis is usually nothing more than the echo of old clairvoyant concepts. They tried to understand the Mystery of Golgotha with old clairvoyant concepts, and clairvoyant concepts were no longer understood later, only abstract concepts. Therefore, what Gnosis actually wanted was misunderstood. However, it would be very one-sided to simply say: There was a Gnosis that still had old clairvoyant concepts that went back to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, and then came the unwise people who were unable to understand the Gnostics. It would be very one-sided to think in such a way. To work in a certain perfect sense with clairvoyant concepts belongs to a much older time than the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, to a much older time. And these clairvoyantly grasped concepts were already infected with Lucifer, that is to say, the old clairvoyant-conceptual grasping was already permeated with Lucifer, and this Luciferic permeation of the old clairvoyant conceptual system is Gnosticism. Therefore, a kind of reaction against Gnosticism had to arise, because Gnosticism was the dying old clairvoyant conceptual world, the old clairvoyant conceptual world already infected by Lucifer. This must also be borne in mind.

Now I will start with a man who, in the first centuries of Christianity, tried to stem the currents that came from Gnosticism, which had become Luciferian, and wanted to understand the Mystery of Golgotha from this point of view. That is Tertullian. He came from North Africa, was well-versed in the wisdom of the pagans. Towards the end of the second century, after the Mystery of Golgotha, he converted to Christianity and became one of the most learned theologians of his time. It is particularly interesting to take a closer look at him, because, on the one hand, he still had some inner understanding of the old clairvoyant conceptual world from his study of ancient pagan wisdom, and, on the other hand, because, as his conversion story shows, he had the full Christian impulse within him and wanted to unite both in such a way that Christianity could fully exist. To do this, he had to suppress what he perceived as the Gnosticism with a touch of Luciferism in Basilides, Marcion and others. And now certain questions arose for him. These questions arose for Tertullian for a very specific reason. You see, when we begin with spiritual science today, we very often speak of the structure of human nature, of the way in which man first has his dense physical body, which the eyes can see and the hands can grasp; then how there is an etheric body, how there is an astral body, a sentient soul and so on. That is to say, we seek above all to recognize the constitution of human nature. But if you follow the historical development of spiritual life in the centuries since the Mystery of Golgotha, you will find nowhere that the human constitution has been observed in such a way as we do today. This was lost and had already been lost when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred. Those who were touched by the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha no longer knew anything about this structure of the human being. But this presented a very definite difficulty for them. In order to recognize this difficulty, my dear friends, try to connect with your own heart, with your own soul, in order to ask yourself a question. You know that we have tried in many different ways to make clear to you the way in which the Christ, through Jesus, has intervened in the evolution of the earth. But try to understand how the Christ has penetrated the members in Jesus, if you knew nothing of the whole constitution, of the essence of man! Only this made it possible to understand how the Christ, as a kind of cosmic ego, permeates the bodies, so that you first knew something about these bodies. For those who in the future will seek an understanding of the Christ, knowledge of the structure of the human being must be the essential preparation.

In ancient times, when there were still dream-like, clairvoyant concepts, something was known about the structure of the human being; and something had been handed down to the Gnostics, even if it was distorted. Therefore, these Gnostics had tried to penetrate the coming of the Christ into Jesus of Nazareth with the last remnants of the concepts of the human constitution. But the others, to whom Christianity was now to come, and who were taught by their church teachers, knew nothing of this structure of the human being, nor did their church teachers. And so the big, extensive question arose: What is the actual situation regarding the interaction of the Christ nature and the Jesus nature? How is it possible that this Christ, as a divine being, takes hold in Jesus, as a human being? And it is this question that occupies people like Tertullian. Because they lack the prerequisite for understanding the matter, the problem arises for them again posthumously, as it were — but in the case of Christ Jesus it makes them wonder: how are the spiritual, physical and soul actually connected? They did not know how they are connected in people in general, but they had to find out something about how they were connected in the case of Christ Jesus. Because the Gnosticism of that time had a Luciferian bent, it naturally did not arrive at the right answer either. If you recall certain lectures that I have given here recently, you will find that I said that people, on the one hand, come to materialism and, on the other hand, to a one-sided spiritualism. One-sided materialism is Ahrimanic, one-sided spiritualism has a Luciferic touch. The materialists do not come to the spirit, and the Luciferic spiritists do not come to matter.

This was the case with the Gnostics: they did not come to physical existence, to material existence. And if you now look at a person like Marcion, you see: for him there is a clear, a more or less clear concept of Christ, but he is absolutely unable to grasp how this Christ was contained in Jesus. Therefore, the whole process became etherealized for him. He managed to grasp the Christ as a spirit, as an ethereal being that seemingly took on a body. But he could not grasp the correct way in which the Christ was in Jesus. Marcion came to say, in the end, that Christ did indeed descend to earth, but that everything that Jesus experienced was only seemingly experienced; the physical events are only seemingly experienced; the Christ did not actually participate, but was only there like an ethereal entity, which, however, remained quite separate. That is why Tertullian had to turn against Marcion and against the others who thought similarly, Basilides for example. And for him the great riddle arose: How was the divine nature of Christ connected with the human nature of Jesus? What exactly was the God-man? What was the Son of God? What was the Son of Man? — Above all, he sought to clarify these concepts. And so he first formed a concept that was very important and is still important today, which one must understand if one wants to see how manifold the possibilities of error are for man.

Tertullian developed a certain way of thinking. He had to break out of the old, clairvoyant way of thinking and come to a clear understanding of concepts and their relationship to realities, including higher, spiritual realities. I would like to insert an episode here that will help you to see not what Tertullian became aware of, but what dominated his thinking. I will insert a purely intellectual episode, but I ask you to take it very much to heart. I do the following. I write the number 1 and then its double 2, 2 - 4, 3 - 6, etc. And now imagine: I do not stop at all, I keep writing, that is, I write to infinity. How many such numbers would I have written then? Infinitely many, aren't they! But how many have I written here? Have I written a number on the right for every number on the left? Without a doubt, I have written exactly as many numbers on the right as I have written on the left, and if I continue into infinity, there would always be a number on the right for every number on the left. But now imagine: every number on the right is also on the left. But that means nothing other than: I have as many numbers on the right as I have on the left, but at the same time I have only half as many numbers on the right as on the left. Because it is quite obvious that there must always be one in between two numbers that are double, I must have only half as many numbers on the right as on the left. One is always left out, that is obvious, so I can only have half as many on the right as on the left. That is obvious. But consider that one is always missing, that 1, 3, 5, 7 and so on are missing, so half the numbers are missing on the right! So I only have half as many on the right as on the left. Nevertheless, I have exactly the same number of numbers as on the left. That is to say: as soon as I enter infinity, half is equal to the whole. That is quite clear: as soon as I enter infinity, half is equal to the whole – you cannot escape it. As soon as you enter infinity with your concepts from the finite, something like that comes out by itself, that half is equal to the whole. You can write all the numbers on the left and all the square numbers on the right: 1 - 1, 2 - 4, 3 - 9, 4 - 16, 5 - 25. Certainly there is a square number for every number, but as true as many numbers are missing here, it can only be a part. Think about it: after all, it is always only the square numbers.

You can visualize the same thing in another way: I draw two parallel lines here – I have shown this before. How large is the space between these two parallel lines? Infinitely, of course! In mathematics, as you know, this is indicated by this sign: 00. But if I now draw a perpendicular to it, and a parallel at exactly the same distance, then the current space is exactly twice as large as the previous one, but still infinite. That is, the new infinity is twice the previous infinity. You can see this very clearly here: you can see here, by the simplest means of thought, that thinking is only valid in the finite. It is unfounded and without result as soon as it goes beyond the finite. It cannot begin with the laws that it has within itself when it goes out of the finite into the infinite. But you must think of this infinity not only in terms of the very large or the very small, but also within the world of qualities.

This is a triangle, this is a square, this is a pentagon (see drawing), I could make a hexagon, heptagon, octagon and so on, and if I keep going, it will become more and more similar to a circle. If I then draw a circle, how many corners does it have? It has an infinite number of corners. But if I draw a circle that is twice as large, it also has an infinite number of corners, but twice as many corners! So even in the finite, the concepts of infinity are everywhere, so that our thinking can fail everywhere, even where it can encounter the finite, because of infinity, because of the intense infinity. This means that thinking must always realize that it is at a loss and without support when it wants to go out of the finite sphere, which is given to it first, into the infinite.

We must draw a practical conclusion from this. We must really draw the practical conclusion that we must not simply think in this way, that we can go terribly wrong if we think in this way. And among the many negative achievements that can be attributed to Kant, the positive one is that he once gave people a good rap on the knuckles with regard to this nonsense: thinking in this way, going at everything. If you think about it, you can prove that space must have a boundary somewhere, that the world is finite; but equally that it is infinite, because thought becomes unfounded as soon as you go beyond a certain sphere. And so Kant put together the so-called antinomies: how one can prove one thing just as well as the opposite, because thinking is unstable, has only a relative value. One can think quite correctly with regard to one point; but if one is not able to extend it to the other, which is perhaps next to it, one goes wrong if one simply thinks or even just observes at random. In this area, one can really see how little people are aware that one cannot just lash out, neither with thinking nor with observing and with some taking in of what is out there.

Apparently, I am now linking something very metaphysical and epistemological with something very mundane. But it is exactly the same puzzle; it's just a shame that we don't have the time to discuss epistemologically how it is the same puzzle. Mr. Bauer drew my attention to something very beautiful in this direction a few days ago. You know that Pastor R., in his lecture in which he killed off our spiritual science, pointed out that if someone were to go up to our building after it, they would be reminded of old Matthias Claudius by all the incomprehensible people depicted there. And Pastor R. wanted to say that the good old Claudius would have to stand there and say: “Up there, these anthroposophists rule and want to recognize that which can never be recognized!” It is simply not recognizable to people. — And then he quoted Matthias Claudius:

We proud men of the earth
Are vain and poor sinners
And know not much at all;
We spin airy-fairy
And seek many arts
And get further from the goal.

So there we are, because old Matthias Claudius tells us that all people are poor sinners and should not turn their gaze to the incomprehensible and inscrutable. Well, and then good old Matthias Claudius also says, in a nutshell, that Pastor R. is such an intelligent person that he knows that people are poor sinners and know nothing of that which cannot be seen with the outer eye. Mr. Bauer, who was not content with simply listening to these words from Pastor R., opened Matthias Claudius and read the “Evening Song” by Matthias Claudius, which goes like this:

The moon has risen
The golden stars are shining
Bright and clear in the sky;
The forest stands black and silent,
And from the meadows rises
A wonderful white mist.

How still the world is, And in the dawn's embrace, So cozy and so mild! As a quiet chamber,Where you the day's misery Sleepily and forgetfully shall.

Do you see the moon standing there? —
It is only half visible,
And yet it is round and beautiful!
Some things are probably like that,
Which we confidently laugh at,
Because our eyes do not see them.

We proud human children
are vain poor sinners
And know not much at all;
We spin airy-fairy
and seek many arts
And get further from the goal.

And so, poor sinner, Pastor R. is the one who is getting further and further away from the goal! He has simply forgotten that the fourth verse is connected to the third!

As you can see, it is important to try to be comprehensive in your thinking. Of course, if the fourth verse refers to Pastor R. – if Pastor R. identifies with all humble human beings – then the exact opposite can be concluded than if the third verse is added. This latter, trivial example is not completely unrelated to the more metaphysical-theoretical example I have given. It is necessary for people to realize that if they look at something and then think about what they have seen, they may come to the exact opposite of what is really true. And that is what particularly comes to the fore when the transition is to be made from the finite to the infinite or from the material to the spiritual or the like.

Now, someone like Marcion, from his Lucifer-infected gnosis, said: A god cannot undergo the process of becoming human and so forth that takes place here on earth, because a god must be subject to different laws that belong to the spiritual world. He did not find the connection between the spiritual and the material, the sensual. Now there was a debate about this, which no longer existed – Marcion is only externally, physically, recognizable from his opponents, for example from Tertullian – that the whole external physical story of Jesus of Nazareth would not be appropriate for the divine world order; how God could be on earth, that could only be appearance, that could all be without meaning. The Christ would have to be understood purely spiritually. Tertullian said: “You are right, Marcion” — this is now in Tertullian's writings — “you are right when you make your concepts as you make them; these are quite understandable, transparent concepts, but then you must also apply them only to the finite, to the things that happen in nature; you must not apply them to the divine. For the divine, one must have other concepts. And what is the rule, the law, for the workings of the divine, may appear absurd to the finite mind.

Tertullian was thus confronted, not consciously, I will not say, but intuitively and unconsciously, with the great riddle of how far thinking, which is adapted to nature, to natural phenomena, applies. And he countered Marcion: If one applies only that thinking which appears plausible to man, then one can assert what Marcion says. But with the Mystery of Golgotha, something has entered into world evolution to which this thinking is not applicable, for which one needs other concepts. — Hence he formed the word: These higher concepts, which refer to the divine, compel us to believe what is absurd for the finite. In order not to do injustice to Tertullian, one must not just quote the sentence: “I believe what is absurd, what cannot be proved” – but one must quote this sentence in the context in which it appears and which I wanted to make somewhat understandable. That was the main problem that now occupied Tertullian: How is the divine nature of Christ connected with the human nature of Jesus? And here he was clear about one thing: human concepts are not suitable for grasping what happened with the mystery of Golgotha. Human concepts always lead to the inability to connect the spiritual that one has grasped from the Christ with what one must grasp as earthly history in relation to Jesus. But, as I said, Tertullian lacked the possibility of grasping the problem from the constitution of man, as we are trying to understand it again today. As a result, he initially only managed, for the first time, to find, I would say, the surrogate for the concept that we develop when we want to clarify something in a particular place in our spiritual scientific knowledge.

Do you remember a place in our spiritual knowledge that you can find, for example, in my 'Theosophy'? There you will see: first there is the physical body, etheric body, astral body, then: sentient soul, mind or feeling soul, consciousness soul, and finally the individual connections with the spirit self. There are various discussions about how the spirit self works its way into the consciousness soul. But this is exactly the point to consider if you want to look into the abiding of Christ in the man Jesus, if you want to understand this. It is a prerequisite to know how the spirit self enters the consciousness soul in general humanity; it is a prerequisite to understand how the nature of Christ, as a special cosmic spirit self, entered the consciousness soul nature of Jesus of Nazareth. Tertullian only found a substitute for this, and what he formulated as a concept can be understood as saying today: According to Tertullian, there is no mixing between the Christ, corresponding to the spirit self, and the Jesus, corresponding to the consciousness soul and all the lower aspects of being that belong to it. And humanity will only get to know such a connection when the spirit self is properly present. Now we live in the age of the consciousness soul. Each person will have a much looser connection when the spirit self is regularly developed in the sixth post-Atlantic period. Then people will also better understand how differently, for example, the Christ nature was bound to the Jesus nature than, let us say, the consciousness soul was bound to the mind soul. The consciousness soul is, of course, always mixed with the mind soul. But the spirit soul is connected to the consciousness soul, not mixed with it. And this is the concept that Tertullian really developed. He says: Christ is not mixed with Jesus, but connected. The one God-man, Christ Jesus, presented Himself to him in order to illustrate to him once again in the age in which this old conceptual clairvoyance was no longer present how the divine and the physical soul were connected in human nature. The Christ appears before Tertullian as the representative of all humanity. Through the Christ, he studied the constitution of man in order to understand Christ Jesus. The Christ became the center of his entire thinking, which could no longer be applied to the one human nature. And because Tertullian had realized that Christ is not mixed with Jesus, but connected - he could not say as we would say: like the spirit self with the consciousness soul - but he said: not mixed, but connected - through this it emerged for him, that he said: everything that Christ has connected with, also comes from the spirit of the world; that is the father principle in the world. For Tertullian, the Father principle became that which, so to speak, belonged to the earthly manifestation of Jesus. There lies the father principle, the creative principle in nature, that which brings forth everything in nature. The Christ principle united with this, the son principle. Thus it became for Tertullian, and through the father and the son, through the purification of the external, the natural, through the Christ, the spirit arises again, which he calls the Holy Spirit.

Thus, in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, that which stands as the Christ Jesus, as Jesus emerging from the Father-Principle, as everything in the world emerges from the Father-Principle. Thus, this Christ Jesus, by virtue of the fact that he carried the Christ within him, was the Son emerging from the Father-Principle, who had simply come later, the Bringer of the Spirit — the Spirit, which then in turn comes from him. Thus Tertullian sought to find the way out from the individual human being to the cosmos: to the principles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus, Father
Christ, Son
Holy Spirit

Now the great difficulty arose for him in making it understandable how three could be one and one three. In ancient times, when there were still clairvoyant concepts, it was not particularly difficult to imagine this. But for the time when everything falls apart through concepts and nothing can be properly connected anymore, the difficulty arose. Tertullian used a nice comparison to make it clear how one can be three and three one. He said: Take the source. From the source comes the brook, from the brook comes the river. If we ask about the river, we say: It comes from the spring through the brook; from the spring through the brook. Or take, he said, for comparison the roots, the shoots, the fruit: the fruit comes from the root through the shoot. — Tertullian needed a third comparison, saying: The little flame of light comes from the sun, carried through the cosmos. Thus, he said, one must imagine that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son. And just as this trinity – source, brook, river – does not contradict the unity that the river is in reality, so the fact that the Spirit comes from the Father through the Son does not contradict the unified development of Father, Son and Spirit.

So he tried to make clear to himself how the three can be one: like roots, shoots and fruit, like source, stream and river. And he also tried to arrive at a certain formula. By thinking in terms of the father principle – that is, in terms of that which is always the source from which the spirit principle comes through the son principle: the natural, the externally created, the externally revealed; in terms of the son principle, that which permeates the penetrates the externally revealed; and with the spirit principle, that which is brought about for earthly development by both together, he formed a doctrine for himself, but which was basically only a single symptomatic expression of what was developing in general in these first centuries of Christianity among people who, on the one hand, still had something of Gnosticism in them, and at the same time were suffering all the pains and afflictions because Gnosticism was bound to be lost. These people were now trying to come to terms with what Christ Jesus was, and what He had to be in order to fulfill the goal of the Mystery of Golgotha. Tertullian is only one particularly ingenious representative of those who, in the early days of Christianity, tried to penetrate spiritually to what had happened.

Then, out of Christianity, there emerged what you know as the Credo, as the Apostolicum, which was established in the third and fourth centuries and was then also established by the councils. If you study this, as it was in those days, then you will find out: it is basically a defense against Gnosticism, a rejection of Gnosticism, because one sensed the Luciferic factor in Gnosticism. Gnosis tends towards Lucifer, that is, towards a one-sided spiritual conception. It cannot, therefore, come to the Father Principle at all, cannot properly appreciate it. It regards the material world with contempt, as something it cannot use. It must be stated: I believe in God the Father, the Almighty Father – the first part of the Creed. This first part of the Creed is formulated against the contempt for the material, so that even the external, that which is seen with the eyes, is also understood as a divine, and precisely a divine, that emerges from the Father principle.

The second thing was to declare, in opposition to Gnosticism, that there was not only an ethereal Christ in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, but that this Christ was really connected, not mixed, with the man Jesus of Nazareth. It had therefore to be established on the one hand that the Christ was connected with the spiritual, and on the other hand that the Christ was connected with Jesus of Nazareth, the natural evolution on earth, and that when suffering, dying, rising and all that death, resurrection and all that has yet to take place in imitation of the Mystery of Golgotha, is not something in which the Christ does not participate, but that He really suffers in the flesh. The Gnostics had to deny that the Christ suffered in the body because He was not connected to the body; for the Gnostics, at least for certain Gnostics, it was only an apparent suffering. In contrast to this, it should be stated that the Christ was really connected to the body in such a way that He suffered in the body. So all the events that had taken place on the external physical plane were to be connected with the Christ. Therefore: I believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Holy Ghost and Mary the Virgin, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven – that is, became spiritual again – and is seated at the right hand of the Father, judging the living and the dead.

One can now say: The Gnostics came closest to the spirit, which is to be regarded as a mere spiritual. But it is spiritual in so far as it now represents a spiritual essence, but must gradually be realized in human coexistence in the social structure that is emerging during the Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan period, where the Holy Spirit is embodied, not now in an individual human being, but in all humanity, in the configuration of society. But it is only at the beginning. However, the Gnostics were the ones who could best understand that something that is only spiritual does not intervene in the material. Therefore, the God of the Gnostics was basically the closest thing to the Holy Spirit. But this Christianity, which wanted to be transferred to earth, which did not want the spirit to be lost to Lucifer, to be seen only as something spiritual in it, this Christianity now also had to define faith in the spirit as something that was connected to the material: I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Church. — That is now in the Apostolicum, that is, the church as a great physical body of the Holy Spirit. This Christianity was not allowed to regard life in the spirit as something merely inward either, but had to have realized the spirit outwardly through the remission of sins, in that the Church itself took over the ministry of the remission of sins and, in addition, the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Church, in the remission of sins, in the resurrection of the flesh.

So the Credo is in about the 4th century. So there were nothing but barricades against Gnosticism, and the way these three parts of the Apostolicum are formulated is closely related, as is something like this: the river has arisen from the source through the stream, or: the fruit has arisen from the root through the sprout. During that time there was an enormous striving to grasp how the spirit is connected to the material that spreads throughout the world, how one can think the spiritual together with the material, how one can think the Trinity together with that which spreads outwardly in the material. That is what is sought; it is sought intensively. But when one considers all that lives in the Apostolicum, which today has become completely incomprehensible, one must say: the echo of the old clairvoyant concepts still lives in it, only to die away, and therefore the not the old living forms that it could have gained if one had been able to understand the Trinity and the Apostolicum with earlier clairvoyant concepts, but it is a beginning to grasp the material and the spiritual at the same time.

Today there are very many people who say: Why concern oneself with this old dogmatics? There people have only ruminated with all sorts of crazy ideas, but no one can make sense of it, it is all vain dreaming. If we look more closely, however, we find that behind this vain dreaming there is a tremendous struggle to grasp what had just become relevant for the world through the Mystery of Golgotha on the one hand, and through the loss of the old clairvoyant knowledge, the gradual fading away of the old clairvoyant knowledge, on the other.

Now the development continues, and something similar is happening as has already happened in older times, when out of the one root of the mysteries, where art and religion and science were still one, the three have developed out of each other. Now again that which is in that common root, which one tried to grasp through the Apostolicum, strives apart into the trinity. I will now attempt to describe this further development in such a way as can be presented today without causing too much offence. For if I were to communicate what needs to be said without further ado, many a head would be turned by it.

What started out as a unity developed within Western culture in three separate currents. That is to say, one current was particularly suited to grasp the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, one current more the Son, the Christ, and one current more the Father. And the curious thing is that more and more in separate courses of development the Holy Spirit current, the Christ current, and the Father current are emerging, but one-sidedly. For naturally, it can only be penetrated in its entirety when all three are present. If one develops what is to be understood as a trinity so one-sidedly, then difficulties of development arise; then some things are left out, and others degenerate. Now the following developed: The common development gradually separated in such a way that one developmental stream clearly continued, which was directed primarily towards the Holy Spirit – not as the first in time; the first in time is, of course, the coming together – and this is the one that is still essentially embodied today in the Russian Orthodox Church. However strange it may seem, the essential feature of the Russian Orthodox Church is that it primarily honors only the Holy Spirit. And you will recognize from the way, for example, Solowjew speaks about Christ, that he is primarily well-versed in grasping Christianity from the side of the Holy Spirit. It does not depend on whether he consciously speaks about Christ or not, but on which spirit rules in him, which meaning he connects with the things. What matters is the inner aspect, especially the way in which he inseparably regards the external social order of the church in relation to what is taught and is cult. This is entirely out of the nature of the Holy Spirit. The early Church, however, wanted to avoid this mere knowledge of the Holy Spirit by setting up the Trinity in the Creed and adding the Christ and the Father to the Holy Spirit. But these three must – which is also Solowjew's ideal – come together again in a kind of synthesis.

The second current was the one that was more oriented towards cultivating the Christ; it may have taught all kinds of things about the Holy Spirit, but essentially it cultivates the Christ. It is the church that spread from Rome in the Occident and had the tendency to cultivate the Christ. Think of it: in all areas where this church was active, it basically wanted to cultivate the Christ; wherever you look, there is the Christ. Wherever you look, this church is significant in the one-sided cultivation of the middle article of faith in the Creed. Only in recent times has this church tried to penetrate the Father principle as well. But because they do not know the actual inner connection, they cannot establish the right relationship between Christ and the Father. And this incorrect recognition of the relationship between Christ and the Father is what causes all the discussions in modern Protestantism. It pushes from Christ towards the Father. This can be observed again in our time. The sad events of the present have also brought about the fact that individual souls, rather numerous souls, have been imbued with religious consciousness by these events; this can be proven. But Christ reigns very little in this manifestation of the new religious consciousness; much more the father principle, the general principle of God, by which is meant the father principle. Anyone who is able to observe correctly in the world can see this everywhere. I would like to describe just one small symptom to you. During our last stay in Berlin, a dear member died and was cremated in Berlin. I set the condition – due to the prevailing circumstances it was necessary – that a minister speak. He was a very dear man and very much in agreement with me speaking afterwards. But lo and behold, he now gave a truly soul-stirring speech, and one had the feeling, as he spoke of God the Father, that he spoke deeply inwardly from the soul. And the whole time I listened to him and realized: This is actually a confirmation of what spiritual science in general must show: The Christ has been cultivated, now people have gone astray; when one speaks of religious life, one only comes to the father principle. — Many letters that come from the field, whose writers have deepened religiously, speak little of Christ, everywhere of the principle that must be seen as the father principle. — Anyone who studies this can see this. And then, at the end, because Christmas was just around the corner, the pastor mentioned Christ. This was so far-fetched because, as a Christian, he now thought it might be advisable to speak of Christ. You couldn't find any appeal or meaning in it. — And such phenomena are now increasing every moment.

There is also a third current that cultivates the Father principle one-sidedly. And now you can imagine: the two fundamental pillars that were erected against the one-sided cultivation of the Father principle by the Apostolicum, the Christ and the Holy Spirit, must be left out if only the Father principle is cultivated one-sidedly. On the other hand, the father principle was introduced into the Apostolicum to indicate that the material world is also a divine one. The one-sided father principle is cultivated in the school of thought that ties in with Darwin, Haeckel and so on. That is the one-sided development of the father principle. And no matter how much Haeckel may have resisted it, he was born out of religion. He was born out of religion through the one-sided development of the Father principle, just as other religious currents were born through the one-sided development of the Holy Spirit or the Christ principle.

And basically, it seems rather superficial when people say that the first councils only dealt with dogmatic concepts. These dogmatic terms are not just dogmatic terms, but they are the outward symbol for deep contradictions that live in European humanity, for those contradictions that live in those who are predisposed as Holy Spirit people, predisposed as Christ people, predisposed as Father people. This differentiation is also deeply rooted in the nature of the European world. And to the extent that in the first centuries of the Christian proclamation, people looked at the whole of Europe, they established a creed that encompasses the Trinity. Of course, each one-sidedness can bring the other side with it, but it does not have to. But humanity must pass through many trials, must pass through many one-sidedness in order to find its way out of one-sidedness to totality, to wholeness. And then one must also have the good will to study things in their deeper content, in their deeper essence.

If we study the three layers, the three currents of European intellectual life, which can be characterized as I have just done, in their deeper essence, then we will see that the differentiation has gone deep into the very fiber of people's souls, and we will learn to understand much that, if we do not understand, can only stand before us like a painful enigma. One would like to say: just as unity was presented in the Trinity before Tertullian, so three main European human needs lived in the way the One expressed itself symptomatically in Three, insofar as they were guided by religious life, and something like the formation of the schism between the Western Roman and the Eastern Roman Church, the Roman and the Greek, the Orthodox Church, is only the outer expression of the necessity that lies in the impulse that must branch out in different directions.

In this sense, spiritual science will make many things in human life understandable. In this way, by trying to shine ever deeper light into human interrelationships, into the interrelationships within the whole development of humanity, it is of course quite misunderstood today. For more and more clearly, the time is emerging in the outer world that wants nothing to do with spiritual science, a time in which a deeper understanding of history is no longer sought; in which everyone pursues only what they want to believe to be true according to their subjective beliefs, their personal sympathies or antipathies. Of course, spiritual science is needed precisely in such a time, because the pendulum of development must swing in the other direction. But it is equally obvious that spiritual science will be misunderstood in such a time. And we really must be clear about how much of our time lives in such a way that man does not seek objectivity, the overview, but judges rashly out of his inclinations. It is really the case that, on the one hand, there is a profound necessity to say an extraordinary amount from the spiritual world, but that it is extraordinarily difficult to make oneself understood in our immediate present. Never as strongly as in our immediate present did people live, so to speak, in the general aura, of which they are not even aware. I am deeply convinced, if I may say so, that much in our time must remain unsaid. Many will find it self-evident that they are now suited to hear, perhaps in a smaller circle, what otherwise cannot be said. But this opinion is quite erroneous. Many people may indeed long to hear now something that can perhaps only be said to humanity in years to come. But we must realize that we are living in a time when the judgment is not made only when a word with its meaning approaches our soul, but when the judgment has already been made before the word approaches our soul. In our time, the way in which the word is received is already largely determined by the time the word reaches the ear, and has not yet been received by the soul. There is no longer time to ask about the meaning, so stirred up are people's passions and emotions by the oppressive events we have been plunged into, and many a word could only be tolerated by being spoken in our presence.

We can do nothing else in our presence than to make this clear to ourselves again and again, that it is essential that a number of people are found who stand firmly on the ground of what we have already attained; who stand firmly and faithfully on this ground and can cherish the hope that this firm and loyal standing on the ground of spiritual science can become important and essential for the development of humanity in a certain period of time. The time will surely come when — since many passions have already been stirred up — something like a great question will permeate the atmosphere in which our spiritual-scientific movement lives. This question will not be clearly heard, but perhaps the effects will be clear. Nor will the answers be given clearly in words, but in relation to external events they will perhaps be very clear. Something will be whispered through the spiritual-scientific current without being expressed in words, such as: Should I go with them or should I not go with them? And the answer will also speak of what has driven people out of sensationalism, out of sympathy with the general feelings that arise from spiritual science. It will arise from many secondary feelings, which will push towards an answer that will not be clearly formulated, that will not simply express itself by saying: I liked spiritual science, now other feelings have mixed in, now I no longer like it. Instead, people will appear in masks and seek all kinds of reasons, which they may discuss from many sides. The essential thing will be that one used to like spiritual science, but no longer likes it, which has a lot to do with enthusiasm, sensation, all kinds of sensual lustful feelings and so on. In a sense, precisely out of the emotions of the present, something will arise more and more, such as: I go with - and: I do not go with. - Alone in the inner being, our spiritual science is invincible, completely invincible. And what we have to look for is that at least some are found in whose hearts it is firmly anchored, but anchored not out of sympathy and preference, out of favor and sensation, out of vanity and enthusiasm, but because the soul is connected with it as with its truth, and because the soul does not shy away from difficulties in entering the core of truth in the world. Much will fall away completely; but perhaps what remains afterwards will be all the more significant and certain. This must be borne in mind when it is necessary to emphasize again and again that, until more peaceful times come to our civilized countries, we must renounce much that might be very useful precisely for understanding our present time, but which, because of the nature of our time, really cannot be brought before humanity at this time.

I would like to say these words to explain why some things have only been hinted at, especially in the last lectures. But I would like to add one more thing. Precisely when it is true – and it is true – that we live in a time when the word has already led to judgment before it has even reached the soul, then many can learn a great deal from the events of the present with the tools of what spiritual science already gives them. Much can be learned from what is happening around us, if we look at it more deeply, if we see how today outer humanity has almost completely lost the ability to judge according to any kind of objectivity, how judgments flow only from the emotions, permeating everything in the cultural world. And if you look for the reason why this is so, if you see this reason buzzing in the human aura of the present and then know how the word is already a judgment before it enters the soul, then you can also learn a lot from the events of the present with the instrument of spiritual science. And we should learn if we are to be able to become a tool in reality - as a society for this spiritual science. The example that was given today, how a person who wants to meet our society quotes a fourth verse and omits the third, yes, my dear friends, when you look for the reasons for the opposition that arises against us: they can be found everywhere. They must be sought everywhere in superficiality, in the most enormous superficiality. Everywhere, so to speak, a fourth verse has been seen and a third verse overlooked, figuratively speaking. Only many of us still do not believe that. Many of us still believe that they are doing well when they go to this or that person and tell him: I have become so spiritual through our spiritual science that I even read to my husband fighting out there in the field, and I know that it helps him. – Then, of course, people come and use that against us. Or when people are told what we had to hear, what was passed on as the 'Nathanael story' and so on. That such things should happen at all, that these things should really be passed on from our midst, seems at first to be done with the best of intentions, but with a good will that is connected with a certain naivety, but a naivety that is boundlessly arrogant because it does not recognize and does not want to recognize, but takes himself as a person so seriously that he considers it the most necessary thing in the world to want to convert this or that person – whom, if he were not so naive, he would know cannot be converted. This is so infinitely important that one can understand how, at times, naivety can feel endowed with boundless arrogance and a sense of mission. And as a rule, no one resents the naive person more than the naive person himself, who believes he is doing the very best when, out of a certain enthusiasm, he does the absurd.

And it is indeed necessary, if you take the matter, that we at least gain from spiritual science the ability to think modestly. If thinking can really go so wrong, as I have tried to make clear today, why should we always, when we have drilled this or that into our brains, why should we believe that it is an incontrovertible truth? And why should we then immediately trumpet it out into the world as if we were on a mission? Why shouldn't we decide to learn something real first and to get a certain inner impulse of aliveness from spiritual science, rather than just the one we get when we sip at it? Therefore, the seriousness, the deep seriousness that must permeate us cannot be emphasized enough, and it must always tell us: And no matter how much you believe in your judgment in any given direction, you have to test it, because it could be wrong. If we take all this into account, along with many other things (not everything can be said after all), then, little by little, we will truly be a number of people in whose inner lives what is so impersonal lives, just as the most important impulses must be impersonal in the present, if they are to prevail against the purely personal impulses that permeate and have permeated the world today.

I wanted to speak to you about your souls, since we will not meet for a few weeks now. I wanted to give you a broader perspective in the last hours before these weeks when we cannot speak to each other, by unrolling a page in the original development of Christianity and in its divergence into different currents. I am convinced that no matter how much you study the development of Christianity in past centuries, what has been said today will provide you with a thread that will clarify an infinite number of things for you in outward appearances. And in the outward appearances, if you really look at them seriously, you will find confirmation everywhere of what I could only hint at today. It would be good if we could use something like meditation material that could present us with problems and puzzles for our souls, the solution of which we could each try according to our ability. Of course, some will only be able to do this with fleeting thoughts, for a few minutes, while others will be more inclined to familiarize themselves with something that can provide enlightenment about what has been hinted at. But everyone can be stimulated if they try to develop, as I would say, the surging thoughts that go back through the centuries and yet are essentially involved in what is happening in the present, so that there is a need to understand it. I know that in reality no one understands our painful present without becoming familiar with all the contradictions that have arisen in a completely natural way in the course of European development. But when one compares what is being judged today about the world situation with what is objectively correct and can only be recognized if one knows all the forces that have intervened in the development, and which only the study of history can reveal, including in a spiritual sense, when one compares today's judgments with what leads to real judgment, then one is deeply, deeply pained. Not only do we feel pain, my dear friends, at what is happening today, but also at the difficulties that arise in order to get beyond what is happening today. And we must get out of it! And the better you will realize that a deep spiritual-scientific understanding of the developmental forces of humanity is necessary in all areas, without letting our personal emotions interfere, the more such an understanding of the developmental impulses through spiritual science is striven for, the more you recognize how important it is to recognize these impulses through spiritual science and to awaken them in your soul, the better you will be among those souls who can stand firm on the ground on which one must stand today if what is actually necessary according to the inner demands of human development is to be achieved.

I would like to speak to you about your feelings and emotions, so that spiritual science may enter into them and become firmly anchored in them, and so that there may be people, as there should be and as there must be, if we want to make progress in the evolution of humanity. In all modesty we must think this, but in this modesty we must do it, because it is not suitable to educate us to megalomania, but only to create in us the need to apply as much strength and as much intensity as possible to penetrating what wants to realize itself spiritually in the developmental history of humanity.

Before coming to the topic of today's talk, I would like to say a few words about the great and grievous loss on the physical plane we have suffered in recent days. You will undoubtedly know what I mean: the day before yesterday, Herr von Moltke's soul passed through the gate of death.¹

What this man was to his country, the outstanding part he played in the great and fateful events of our time, the significant, deep impulses growing out of human connections that formed the basis of his actions and his work—to appreciate and pay tribute to all this will be the task of others, primarily of future historians. In our age it is impossible to give an entirely comprehensive picture of everything that concerns our time. As I said, we will not speak of what others and history will have to say, but I am absolutely convinced that future historians will have very much to say about von Moltke. However, I would like to say something that is now in my soul, even if I have to express it at first symbolically; what I mean will be understood only gradually. This man and his soul stand before my soul as a symbol of the present and the immediate future, a symbol born out of the evolution of our time, in the true sense of the word a symbol of what should come to pass and must come to pass.

As we have repeatedly emphasized, we are not trying to integrate spiritual science into contemporary culture out of somebody's arbitrary impulses, but because it is needed in these times. There will not be a lasting future if the substance of this spiritual science does not flow into human development. This is the point, my dear friends, where you can see the greatness and significance we find when we think of Herr von Moltke's soul. He participated most actively in the busy life of our era, the life that developed out of the past and led to the greatest crisis humanity ever had to go through in its history. He was one of the leaders of the army and was right in the middle of the events that inaugurated our fateful present and future. Here was a soul, a personality, who did all this and, at the same time, also was one of us, seeking knowledge and truth with the most holy, fervent thirst for knowledge that ever inspired a soul in our day and age.

That is what we should think of. For the soul of this personality, who has just died, is more than anything else an outstanding historical symbol. It is profoundly symbolic that he was one of the leading figures of the outer life, which he served, and yet found the bridge to the life of the spirit we seek in spiritual science. We can only wish with all our soul that more and more people in similar positions do as he has done. This is not just a personal wish, but one born out of the need of our times. You should feel how significant an example this personality can be. It does not matter how little other people speak about the spiritual side of his life; in fact, it is best for it not to be talked about. But what von Moltke did is a reality and the effects are what is important, not whether it is discussed. Herr von Moltke's life can lead us to realize that he interpreted the meaning of the signs of the times correctly. May many follow this soul who are still distant from our spiritual science.

It is true, and we should not forget it, that this soul has given as much to what flows and pulsates through our spiritual science as we have been able to give him. Now souls are entering the spiritual world bearing within them what they have received from spiritual science. What spiritual science strives for has united with the soul of a person, who has died after a very active life. This then works as a deeply significant, powerful force in the realm we want to explore with the help of our spiritual science. And the souls now present here who understand me will never forget what I have just said about how significant it is that souls now take what has flowed for many years through our spiritual science into the spiritual world, where it will become strength and power.

I am not telling you this to assuage in a trivial way the pain we feel about our loss on the physical plane. Pain and sorrow are justified in a case like Herr von Moltke's death. But only when pain and sorrow are permeated by a sound understanding of what underlies them can they become great and momentous active forces. Take, therefore, what I have said as the expression of sorrow over the loss the German people and all humanity have experienced on the physical plane.

Let us stand up, my dear friends, and recite this verse:

Spirit of your soul, ever working Guardian!
May your wings carry
Our souls' imploring love
To the son in the spheres entrusted to your care!
United with your power,
May our prayer be a shining help
To the soul it lovingly seeks.

My dear friends, as I have often said, the occult substance that flows through our whole evolution has found its outer expression or manifestation in all kinds of more or less occult and symbolic brotherhoods and societies. In my recent talks I have characterized them in more detail as really quite superficial. We are now living in an age when the occult knowledge from the spiritual world must be given to people in a new way, as we have been trying to do for many years now, because the previous ways are obsolete. Granted, they will continue to exist for a time, but they are quite obsolete, and it is important that we understand this in the right way.

As you know, I like to call our spiritual science anthroposophy, and a few years ago when I gave lectures here, I called them lectures on anthroposophy. Last time, I referred to these lectures on anthroposophy, particularly to my emphasis on the fact that human beings actually have twelve senses. I explained that, as far as our senses are concerned, what is spread out over our nerve substance is organized according to the number twelve because the human being is in this most profound sense a microcosm and mirrors the macrocosm.

In the macrocosm the sun moves through twelve signs of the zodiac in the course of a year, and the human I lives here on the physical plane in the twelve senses. Things are certainly rather different out there in the macrocosm, especially in regard to their sequence in time. The sun moves from Aries through Taurus, and so on, and back again through Pisces to Aries as it makes its yearly course through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Everything we have in us, even everything we experience in our soul, is related to the outer world through our twelve senses. These are the senses of touch, life, movement, balance, smell, taste, sight, warmth, hearing, speech, thinking, and the sense of the I.

Our inner life moves through this circle of the twelve senses just as the sun moves through the circle of the twelve signs of the zodiac. But we can take this external analogy even further. In the course of a year, the sun has to move through all the signs of the zodiac from Aries to Libra; it moves through the upper signs during the day and through the lower ones at night. The sun's passage through these lower signs is hidden from outer light. It is the same with the life of our soul and the twelve senses. Half of the twelve are day senses, just as half of the signs of the zodiac are day signs; the others are night senses.

You see, our sense of touch pushes us into the night life of our soul, so to speak, for with the sense of touch, one of our coarser senses, we bump into the world around us. The sense of touch is barely connected with the day life of our soul, that is, with the really conscious life of the soul. You can see for yourself that this is true when you consider how easily we can store the impressions of our other senses in our memory and how difficult it is to remember the impressions of the sense of touch. Just try it and you'll see how difficult it is to remember, for example, the feel of a piece of fabric you touched a few years ago. Indeed you'll find you have little need or desire to remember it. The impression sinks down in the same way as the light fades into twilight when the sun descends into the sign of Libra at night, into the region of the night signs. And thus other senses are also completely hidden from our waking, conscious soul life.

As for the sense of life, conventional psychological studies hardly mention it at all. They usually list only five senses, the day senses or senses of waking consciousness. But that need not concern us further. The sense of life enables us to feel our life in us, but only when that life has been disturbed, when it is sick, when something causes us pain or hurts us. Then the sense of life tells us we are hurting here or there. When we are healthy, we are not aware of the life in us; it sinks into the depths, just as there is no light when the sun is in the sign of Scorpio or in any other night sign.

The same applies to the sense of movement. It allows us to perceive what is happening in us when we have set some part of our body in motion. Conventional science is only now beginning to pay attention to this sense of movement. It is only just beginning to find out that the way joints impact on one another—for example, when I bend my finger, this joint impacts on that one—tells us about the movements our body is carrying out. We walk, but we walk unconsciously. The sense underlying our ability to walk, namely, the perception of our mobility, is cast into the night of consciousness.

Let us now look at the sense of balance. We acquire this sense only gradually in life; we just don't think about it because it also remains in the night of consciousness. Infants have not yet acquired this sense, and therefore they can only crawl. It was only in the last decade that science discovered the organ for the sense of balance. I have mentioned the three canals in our ears before; they are shaped like semicircles and are vertical to each other in the three dimensions of space. If these canals are damaged, we get dizzy; we lose our balance. We have the outer ears for our sense of hearing, the eyes for the sense of sight, and for the sense of balance we have these three semicircular canals.

Their connection with the ears and the sense of hearing is a vestige of the kinship between sound and balance. The canals, located in the cavity in the petrosal bone, consist of three semicircles of tiny, very minute, bones. If they are the least bit injured, we can no longer keep our balance. We acquire our receptivity for the sense of balance in early childhood, but it remains submerged in the night of consciousness; we are not conscious of this sense.

Then comes the dawn and casts its rays into consciousness. But just think how little the other hidden senses, those of smell and taste, actually have to do with our inner life in a higher sense. We have to delve deeply into the life of our body to be able to get a sense for smell. The sense of taste already brings us a growing half-light; day begins to dawn in our consciousness. But you can still make the same experiment I mentioned before concerning the sense of touch, and you will find it very difficult to remember the perceptions of the senses of smell and of taste. Only when we enter more deeply into our unconscious with our soul does the latter consciously perceive the sense of smell. As you may know, certain composers were especially inspired when surrounded by a pleasant fragrance they had smelled previously while creating music. It is not the fragrance that rises up out of memory, but the soul processes connected with the sense of smell emerge into consciousness.

The sense of taste, however, is for most people almost in the light of consciousness, though not quite; it is still partly in the night of consciousness for most of us. After all, very few people will be satisfied with the soul impression of taste alone. Otherwise we should be just as pleased with remembering something that tasted good as we are when we eat it again. As you know, this is not the case. People want to eat again what tasted good to them and are not satisfied with just remembering it.

The sense of sight, on the other hand, is the sense where the sun of consciousness rises, and we reach full waking consciousness. The sun rises higher and higher. It rises to the sense of warmth, to the sense of hearing, and from there to the sense of speech and then reaches its zenith. The zenith of our inner life lies between the senses of hearing and speech. Then we have the sense of thinking, and the I sense, which is not the sense for perceiving our own I but that of others. After all, it is an organ of perception, a sense. Our awareness of our own I is something quite different, as I explained in my early lectures on anthroposophy. What is important here is not so much knowing about our own I, but meeting other people who reveal their I to us. Perception of the other person's I, not of our own, that is the function of the I sense.

Our soul has the same relationship to these twelve senses as the sun does to the twelve signs of the zodiac. You can see from this that the human being is in the truest sense of the word a microcosm. Modern science is completely ignorant of these things; while it does acknowledge the sense of hearing, it denies the existence of the sense of speech although we could never understand the higher meaning of spoken words with the sense of hearing alone. To understand, we need the sense of speech, the sense for the meaning of what is expressed in the words. This sense of speech must not be confused with the sense of thinking, which in turn is not identical with the ego sense.

I would like to give you an example of how people can go wrong in our time in this matter of the senses. Eduard von Hartmann, who was a most sincere seeker, begins his book Basic Psychology with the following words as though he were stating a self-evident truth: “Psychological phenomena are the point of departure for psychology; indeed, for each person the starting point has to be his or her own phenomena, for these alone are given to each of us directly. After all, nobody can look into another's consciousness.”² The opening sentence of a psychology book by one of the foremost philosophers of our time starts by denying the existence of the senses of speech, thinking, and the I. He knows nothing about them. Imagine, here we have a case where absurdity and utter nonsense must be called science just so these senses can be denied.

If we do not let this science confuse us, we can easily see its mistakes. For this psychology claims we do not see into the soul of another person but can only guess at it by interpreting what that person says. In other words, we are supposed to interpret the state of another's soul based on his or her utterances. When someone speaks kindly to you, you are supposed to interpret it! Can this be true? No, indeed it is not true!

The kind words spoken to us have a direct effect on us, just as color affects our eyes directly. The love living in the other's soul is borne into your soul on the wings of the words. This is direct perception; there can be no question here of interpretation. Through nonsense such as Hartmann's, science confines us within the limits of our own personality to keep us from realizing that living with the other people around us means living with their souls. We live with the souls of others just as we live with colors and sounds. Anyone who does not realize this knows absolutely nothing of our inner life. It is very important to understand these things. Elaborate theories are propagated nowadays, claiming that all impressions we have of other people are only symbolic and inferred from their utterances. But there is no truth in this.

Now picture the rising sun, the emergence of the light, the setting sun. This is the macrocosmic picture of our microcosmic inner life. Though it does not move in a circle, our inner life nevertheless proceeds through the twelve signs of the zodiac of the soul, that is, through the twelve senses. Every time we perceive the I of someone else, we are on the day side of our soul-sun. When we turn inward into ourselves and perceive our inner balance and our movements, we are on the night side of our inner life.

Now you will not think it so improbable when I tell you that in the time between death and rebirth the senses that have sunk deeply into our soul's night side will be of special importance for us because they will then be spiritualized. At the same time, the senses that have risen to the day side of our inner life will sink down deeper after death. Just as the sun rises, so does our soul rise, figuratively speaking, between the sense of taste and the sense of sight, and in death it sets again. When we encounter another soul between death and a new birth, we find it inwardly united with us. We perceive that soul not by looking at it from the outside and receiving the impression of its I from the outside; we perceive it by uniting with it. You can read about this in the lecture cycles, where I have described it, and also in An Outline Of Occult Science.³

In the life between death and rebirth, the sense of touch becomes completely spiritual. What is now subconscious and belongs to the night side of our inner life, namely, the senses of balance and movement, will then become spiritualized and play the most important part in our life after death.

It is indeed true that we move through life as the sun moves through the twelve signs of the zodiac. When we begin our life here, our consciousness for the senses rises, so to speak, at one pillar of the world and sets again at the other. We pass these pillars when we move in the starry heavens, as it were, from the night side to the day side. Occult and symbolic societies have always tried to indicate this by calling the pillar of birth, which we pass on the way into the life of the day side, Jakim.⁴

Our outer world during the life between death and rebirth consists of the perceptions of the sense of touch spread out over the whole universe, where we do not touch but are touched. We feel that we are touched by spiritual beings everywhere, while in physical life it is we who touch others. Between death and rebirth we live within movement and feel it the same way a blood cell or a muscle in us would feel its own movement. We perceive ourselves moving in the macrocosm, and we feel balance and feel ourselves part of the life of the whole. Here on earth our life is enclosed in our skin, but there we feel ourselves part of the life of the universe, of the cosmic life, and we feel that we give ourselves our own balance in every position. Here, gravity and the constitution of our body give us balance, and usually we are not aware of this. During life between death and a new birth, however, we feel balance all the time. We have a direct experience of the other side of our inner life.

We enter earthly life through Jakim, assured that what is there outside in the macrocosm now lives in us, that we are a microcosm, for the word Jakim means, “The divine poured out over the world is in you.”

The other pillar, Boaz, is the entrance into the spiritual world through death. What is contained in the word Boaz is roughly this, “What I have hitherto sought within myself, namely strength, I shall find poured out over the whole world; in it I shall live.” But we can only understand such things when we penetrate them by means of spiritual knowledge. In the symbolic brotherhoods, the pillars are referred to symbolically. In our fifth post-Atlantean epoch they will be mentioned more often to keep humanity from losing them altogether and to help later generations to understand what has been preserved in these words.

You see, everything in the world around us is a reflection of what lives in the macrocosm. As our inner life is a microcosm in the sense I have indicated, so humanity's inner life is built up out of the macrocosm. In our time, it is very important that we have the image of the two pillars I mentioned handed down to us through history. These pillars each represent life one-sidedly; for life is only to be found in the balance between the two. Jakim is not life for it is the transition from the spiritual to the body; nor is Boaz life for that is the transition from body to spirit. Balance is what is essential.

And that is what people find so difficult to understand. They always seek one side only, extremes rather than equilibrium. Therefore two pillars are erected for our times also, and we must pass between them if we understand our times rightly. We must not imagine either the one pillar or the other to be a basic force for humanity, but we must go through between the two. Indeed, we have to grasp what is there in reality and not go through life brooding without really thinking, as modern materialism does. If you seek the Jakim pillar today, you will find it. The Jakim pillar exists; you will find it in a very important man, who is no longer alive, but the pillar still exists—it exists in Tolstoyism.

Remember that Tolstoy basically wanted to turn all people away from the outer life and lead them to the inner.⁵ As I said when I spoke about Tolstoy in the early days of our movement, he wanted to focus our attention exclusively on what goes on in our inner life. He did not see the spirit working in the outer world—a one-sided view characteristic of him, as I said in that early lecture. One of our friends showed Tolstoy a transcript of that lecture. He understood the first two-thirds of it, but not the last third because reincarnation and karma were mentioned there, which he did not understand. He represented a one-sided view, the absolute suppression of outer life. It is painful to see him show this one-sidedness. Just think of the tremendous contrast between Tolstoy's views, which predominate among a considerable number of Russia's intellectuals, and what is coming from there these days. It is one of the most awful contrasts you can imagine. So much for one-sidedness.

The other pillar, the Boaz pillar, also finds historical expression in our age. It too represents one-sidedness. We find it in the exclusive search for the spiritual in the outer world. Some years ago, this phenomenon appeared in America with the emergence of the polar opposite to Tolstoy, namely, Keely.⁶ Keely harbored the ideal of building a motor that would not run on steam or electricity, but on the waves we create when we make sounds, when we speak. Just imagine that! A motor that runs on the waves we set in motion when we speak, or indeed with our inner life in general! Of course, this was only an ideal, and we can thank God it was just an ideal at that time, for what would this war be like if Keely's ideal had been realized? If it is ever realized, then we will see what the harmony of vibrations in external motor power really means. This, then, is the other one-sidedness, the Boaz pillar. It is between these two pillars we must pass through.

There is much, indeed very much, contained in symbols that have been preserved. Our age is called upon to understand these things, to penetrate them. Someday people will perceive the contrast between all true spirituality and what will come from the West if the Keely motor ever becomes a reality. It will be quite a different contrast from the one between Tolstoy's views and what is approaching from the East. Well, we cannot say more about this.

We need to gradually deepen our understanding of the mysteries of human evolution and to realize that what will some day become reality in various stages has been expressed symbolically or otherwise in human wisdom throughout millennia. Today we are only at the stage of mere groping toward this reality. In one of our recent talks I told you that Hermann Bahr, a man I often met with in my youth, is seeking now—at the age of fifty-three and after having written much—to understand Goethe. Groping his way through Goethe's works, he admits that he is only just beginning to really understand Goethe. At the same time, he admits that he is beginning to realize that there is such a thing as spiritual science in addition to the physical sciences. I have explained that Franz, the protagonist of Bahr's recently published novel Himmelfahrt (“Ascension”), represents the author's own path of development, his path through the physical sciences.⁷

Bahr studied with the botanist Wiessner in Vienna, then with Ostwald in the chemical laboratory in Leipzig, then with Schmoller at the seminar for political economy in Berlin, and then he studied psychology and psychiatry with Richet in France. Of course, he also went to Freud in Vienna—as a man following up on all the various scientific sensations of the day would naturally have to do—and then he went to the theosophists in London, and so forth. Remember, I read you the passage in question, “And so he scoured the sciences, first botany with Wiessner, then chemistry with Ostwald, then Schmoller's seminar, Richet's clinic, Freud in Vienna, then directly to the theoso- phists. And so in art he went to the painters, the etchers, and so on.”⁸

But what faith does this Franz attain, who is really one of the urgently seeking people of the present age? Interestingly enough, he wanders and gropes, and then something dawns on him that is described as follows:

He was no longer in a state of spiritual innocence. But wasn't there perhaps a kind of second innocence, an innocence regained? Was there not a piety of the intellect, humbled by the recognition of its own limits, wasn't there a faith for those who know, a hope born out of despair? Weren't there throughout history wise men, living in solitude and seclusion from the world, yet connected with each other through secret signs, and working wonderfully and quietly with an almost magical power in a region beyond nationalities and creeds, in the infinite, in the sphere of a purer humanity, a humanity nearer to God? Were there not even today, scattered all over the world and hidden in secret, knights of the Holy Grail? Were there not disciples of a white lodge, a lodge invisible and perhaps not to be entered but merely felt, yet working and predominating everywhere and determining human destiny? Hasn't there always been an anonymous community of holy men on earth, who do not know each other nor anything of each other and yet are working together and on one another through the very power of their prayers? Such thoughts had already much occupied him in his theosophical days, but he had obviously gotten to know only false theosophists; maybe genuine, true theosophists did not allow themselves to be known ...

These thoughts occur to Franz after he has hurried through the world and has been everywhere, as I have told you, and has at last returned to his home, presumably Salzburg. That's where these thoughts occur to him, in his Salzburg home. I would like to mention in all modesty that he did not come to us; and we can get an idea of why Franz did not come to us. In his quest for people who are striving for the spirit, Franz remembers an Englishman he had once met in Rome and whom he describes as follows:

He was a clever man in his mature years, of good family, a rich, independent bachelor, and a proper Englishman—sober, practical, unsentimental, lacking any musical or artistic sense; in short, a robust, cheerful, sensuous person. He loved fishing, rowing, sailing, eating and drinking heartily, he was a playboy disturbed in his complacency only by one single passion, the curiosity to see everything, to get to know everything, to have been everywhere—with no other ambition than to be able to say with satisfaction, regardless of what place was being talked about, that he knew this or that hotel, where Cook's had found accommodations for him, had seen the sights, and associated with notable people of rank and fame. To be able to travel more comfortably and to have access everywhere, he had been advised to become a freemason. He praised the usefulness of this association until he thought he had discovered a similar but better organized and more powerful association of a higher kind, which he now wanted to join by all means, just as he would have made travel arrangements with another better firm than Cook s if one could have been found.

He was not to be dissuaded from his conviction that the world was governed by a small group of secret leaders, that so-called history was made by these men who were as unknown to their closest servants as those in turn were to theirs. He claimed to have followed the traces of this secret world government, of this real freemasonry of which the other was merely a most foolish copy, made by inadequate means. He thought he had found its center in Rome among the Monsignors, most of whom, of course, only played a minor role as unsuspecting pawns, whose jostling provided the cover for the four or five true leaders of the world. And, looking back, Franz still had to laugh at the funny desperation of this Englishman, who had the misfortune never to meet the real leaders but always only their pawns. However, this did not deter the man in his attempts but only served to increase his respect for this very well-guarded and impenetrable association, which he was willing to bet he would be allowed to enter some day—even if he had to stay in Rome until the end of his life and become a monk or even if he had to be circumcised.

For since he was tracking everywhere the invisible threads of a power covering the whole world like a spider web, he was not averse to hold Jews in very high esteem. And occasionally he expressed his serious suspicion that in the ultimate, innermost circle of this concealed worldwide web, Rabbis and Monsignors might be sitting together in utmost harmony, which would have been alright with him as long as they would allow him to take part in their magic.

There you have a caricature of what I have told you, namely, that there is, as it were, a kingdom within a kingdom, a small circle whose power radiates into others. But the Englishman, and Franz with him, imagined this circle to be a community of Rabbis and Monsignors; as a matter of fact, they are precisely the ones who are not in it. But you see that Franz just gropes his way here. And why? Well, he remembers once again the eccentric whims of the Englishman:

It was only much later that it occurred to him to wonder whether perhaps someone who had not been born with such capacities could acquire them, whether one could train oneself to such powers, whether they could be learned. But the theosophical exercises soon disappointed him.

Those he had given up! You see, there is such a groping and fumbling in our time. People like Bahr reach their old age before they understand anything spiritual, and then they have such grotesque ideas as we see here. This Franz is then invited to the house of a canon. This Salzburg canon is a very mysterious personality, and of great importance in Salzburg—the town Salzburg is not named, but we can nevertheless recognize it. He is of even greater importance than the cardinal, for the whole city no longer talks about the cardinal but about the canon although there are a dozen canons there. And so Franz gets the idea that maybe this very man is one of the white lodge. You know how easy it is to get such ideas.

Well, Franz is invited to lunch at the canon's house. There are many guests, and the canon is really a very tolerant man; imagine, he is a Catholic canon, and yet he has invited a Jewish banker together with a Jesuit, Franz, and others, including a Franciscan monk. It is a very cheerful luncheon party. The Jesuit and the Jewish banker are soon talking—nota bene, the banker is one to whom practically everybody is indebted but who is really most unselfish in what he does and as a rule does not ask for repayment of what he apparently lends but instead only wants the pleasure of being invited to the house of a gentleman such as the canon once a year. The eager conversation between the Jesuit and this Jewish banker is altogether too much for Franz. He leaves them and goes into the library to escape their scandalous jokes, and the canon follows him.

The library, though not big, was very select. On theology there were only the most essential works, the Bollandist writings and a good deal of Franciscan literature, Meister Eckhart, writings on the spiritual exercises, Catherine of Genoa, the mysticism of Gorres and Mohler's symbolism. On philosophy there were more books: all of Kant's works, including the collected volumes of the Kant Society, also Deussen's Upanishads and his history of philosophy, Vaihinger's philosophy of the As if, and very many books on epistemology. Then the Greek and Latin classics, Shakespeare, Calderon, Cervantes, Dante, Macchiavelli, and Balzac in the original, but of German literature only the works of Novalis and Goethe, the latter in various editions and his scientific writings in the Weimar edition. Franz took down a volume of these and found a number of marginal notes made by the canon, who at this moment left the young monk and the Jesuit and joined Franz, saying, “Yes, no one knows the scientific writings of Goethe.”

Now what the canon finds in Goethe's scientific writings is characteristic, on the one hand, of what is actually contained there and can be understood by the canon and, on the other hand, of what the canon can understand by virtue of being a Catholic canon.

“Yes, no one knows the scientific writings of Goethe. It is a pity! In these writings, the old heathen that Goethe is supposed to have been suddenly appears in a different light, and only after reading them does one understand the end of Faust.”

There the canon is right. We cannot understand the end of Faust if we don't know Goethe's scientific views.

“I have never been able to believe that Goethe pretended there [in Faust] to be a Catholic just for artistic effect. [You see, the canon in him cannot be denied, but never mind.] After all, my respect for the poet, for all poets, is too great to believe that at the moment he utters his last words, he is putting on a mask.”

That is what most people believe, that Goethe really was only pretending when he wrote the magnificent, grandiose final scene of Faust. “But the scientific writings reveal on every page how much of a Catholic Goethe was.” Yes, well, the canon calls everything he can understand, everything he likes, Catholic. We don't need to feel embarrassed about that.

“... how much of a Catholic Goethe was, perhaps unknowingly and in any case without the courage of his convictions. These writings read as though the writer, on the whole nothing crucial, necessary, and essential is lacking, not even the dash of superstition, magic, or whatever you want to call it, that makes confirmed Protestants so suspicious of our sacred doctrine. Often I could hardly believe my own eyes. But once you are on the trail of the hidden Catholic in Goethe, you soon see him everywhere. His trust in the Holy Spirit (of course, Goethe prefers to call him ‘Genius’), his deep feeling for the sacraments, which he thought were too few, his sense for penitence, his gift for reverence, and even more so the fact that in totally un-Protestant fashion he is not content with faith but always insists on the acknowledgment of God in the living deed, the pious work this rare and most difficult realization that human beings cannot be approached by God if they do not first approach God themselves, the realization of this awesome human freedom to choose either to accept or reject the grace offered, this freedom through which alone God's grace will be deserved by those who decide to accept it—all this, even in his exaggerations and distortions, is still Catholic to the core.”

For us, it would be particularly interesting to know what the canon calls “exaggerations.” Well, in any case, he calls them Catholic and goes on to say:

“Therefore, as you see, I have often written in the margin the passages from the Council of Trent where the same content is expressed, sometimes even in almost the same words.”

Imagine, a Catholic canon writing the resolutions of the Council of Trent next to the words of Goethe!⁹ In this juxtaposition you have what permeates all humanity and what we may call the core of spiritual life common to all people. This should not be taken as just so much empty rhetoric; instead it must he understood as it was meant. The canon continues:

“And when Zacharias Werner tells us that a sentence in Goethe's Elective Affinities has made him a Catholic, I believe him implicitly. Of course, this is not to deny [here the canon comes through again] there is also a heathen, a Protestant, and even an almost Jewish Goethe; I don't want to claim him as an ideal Catholic.”

What the canon adds to this we can be pleased to hear; well, I don't want to press my opinion on you; at least I am pleased to hear the following:

“If Goethe had indeed been Catholic, which on the whole he was more likely to have been than the shallow and complacent run-of-the-mill monist the neo-German senior professors parade under his name ...”

Of course, the canon here refers to Richard M. Meyer, Albert Bielschowsky, Engel—neo-German senior professors who have written neo-German works on Goethe.¹⁰

You see, we are already doing what our times secretly and darkly long for, something that is indeed inevitable—this is a very serious matter.

Now please remember some of the first lectures I gave to our groups in these fateful times, where I spoke of a shattering occult experience, namely the perception that the soul of Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated in Sarajevo, plays a special part in the spiritual world.¹¹ As most of you will remember, I told you his soul has attained cosmic significance, as it were. And now Bahr's novel has been published and people have been buying it for weeks. In it the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is described by a man who had hired himself out, under the guise of a simpleton, as a farmhand by a Salzburg landowner who is the brother of the protagonist Franz. Now this man disguised as a simpleton is so stubborn he has to be whipped to work. At the time of the assassination in Sarajevo, this poor fool behaves in such a way that he gets another thrashing; and imagine, when he reads the news of Franz Ferdinand's assassination in an announcement posted on the church door, this fellow says: “He had to end like this; it could not have been otherwise!”

Well, people can't help assuming he was part of the conspiracy even though the murder took place in Sarajevo while the simpleton was in Salzburg. However, such discrepancies don't trouble the people who investigate the matter: Obviously this fellow is one of the Sarajevo conspirators. And since they find books written in Spanish among his possessions, he is evidently a Spanish anarchist. Well, these Spanish books are seized and taken to the district judge, or whatever he is. He, of course, cannot read a word of Spanish but wants to get the case off his docket as quickly as possible after the poor simpleton has been arrested and brought before him. The district judge wants to push this case off on the superior court in Vienna; the people there are to figure out what to do with this Spanish anarchist. After all, the district judge does not want to make a fool of himself; he is an enthusiastic mountain climber and this is perhaps the last fine day of the season, so he wants to get things settled quickly and get going! He understands nothing of the matter. Nevertheless, he is certain of one thing: he is dealing with a Spanish anarchist.

Then he remembers that Franz had been in Spain (I told you Bahr himself was there too) and could read Spanish. Franz is to read the book and summarize it for the judge. And so Franz takes the manuscript—and what does he discover? The deepest mysticism. Absolutely nothing to do with anarchism—only profound mysticism! There is actually a great deal that is wonderful and beautiful in the manuscript. Well, according to Franz this simpleton wrote it himself because his very mysticism led him to want to die to the world. Naturally, I do not want to defend this way of proceeding. The simpleton then turns out to be in reality a Spanish infante, a crown prince, and his description fits that of the Archduke Johann who had left the imperial house of Austria to see the world. Franz could not discern the simpleton's Austrian character, but his true identity shines through the disguise, and Franz hits on the idea to say the fellow is a Spanish infante. You can imagine what this means in poor old Salzburg! The people believed they had caught an anarchist and put him into chains—now he turns out to be a Spanish infante! But this man, who knew the heir to the throne, Archduke Ferdinand, what does he say about the latter now after he himself has been unmasked as an infante and a mystic?

The enchanted but now disenchanted prince, still in his old clothes and otherwise still the same old fellow, yet different since Franz knew the old clothes were a disguise, said with a smile, “Forgive me this deception, which, for my feeling, wasn't really one. I have long since stopped being the infante Don Tadeo. If circumstances force me now to play his role again, the part has become much more difficult for me. To myself I was really the old simpleton, and if I ever lied at all, I lied to myself, not to you. I could not know I would inconvenience you, and I am sorry enough for that. Naturally it was all the silliest misunderstanding.”

“I have known the successor to the throne well, without having actually met him; he was very dear to me, and we have been in touch albeit not in the ‘local’ way. [He means here in a way not on the physical plane.] He had long overstepped the limits of his earthly work and had already one foot in the realm of purely spiritual activity. He had to go over completely, I knew. In order to fulfill his work he could no longer stay here. It is only from there that his deed will be done. I only wonder why destiny hesitated so long with him. And that Sunday, as I came out of the church where in my prayers I had been assured again, when I saw the anxious crowd, I knew right away he had at last been freed. What is to happen through him, he can carry out only from the other side. Here he could only promise it; his life was only a preliminary announcement of what is to come. Only now can the deed come about. I have never been able to think of him as a constitutional monarch, with parliamentarianism and all that other humbug. He was a man of too much stature for that. But now he has seized the reins of action all at once. Only now in his death will this man live, really live. This is what I felt when I heard the news, and this is what I meant by the words I said at the time.”

“It had to end like this,” that's what he said at the time of the assassination. I have to admit that I was strangely and deeply moved when I read these words a few days ago in Bahr's Himmelfahrt. Just compare what we find in this novel with what has been said here out of the reality of the spiritual world! Try to understand from this how deeply spiritual science is rooted in reality. Try to see that those who are seeking for knowledge, albeit at first only in a groping, tentative way, are really on the same path, that they want to follow this path and that they also arrive at what we are developing here, even down to the details. After all, it is hardly likely that what I said back then could have been divulged to Hermann Bahr by one of our members. But even if that had been the case, he did at any rate not reject it, but accepted it.

We do not want to put into practice what is really only some hobby or other. We want to put into practice what is a necessity of our age and a very clear and urgent one at that. And now certain really slanderous things are making themselves felt, and we see that people nowadays are inclined to turn their sympathy to those who spread slander. It is much rarer these days for people to show sympathy for the side that is justified. Instead, precisely where injustice occurs we find people think those who have been wronged must appease and cajole the party who committed the injustice. We find this again and again. Even in our Society we find it again and again. My dear friends, today I do not feel in the mood to go into these things, and in any case that is not the point of my talk. I never mention such things except when it is necessary. But let me conclude by mentioning one more point.

In my recently published booklet, I have pointed out that what we are seeking in our spiritual science has been uniform and consistent since the beginning of our work.¹² I have also explained that it is indeed slander to talk of any kind of changing sides, of any contradictions to what we did in the early days of our movement. On page 49 you will find the following:

In a lecture I gave in 1902 to the Giordano Bruno Society, I referred to these statements by I. H. Fichte [which seemed to me the expression of a modern intellectual movement and not merely the opinion of an individual]; “that was when we made a beginning with what reveals itself now as the anthroposophical way of thinking ...”¹³

I was referring there to a lecture held in Berlin before the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded. Continuing along the lines of Goethe, I wanted to create in that lecture the starting point for this new movement not on the basis of Blavatsky and Besant, but based on modern spiritual life, which is independent of those two.¹⁴ Yet there are people today who dare to say the name “anthroposophy” was only invented when, as they say, we wanted to break away from the Theosophical Society. As I explained in my book:

This shows what we had in mind was an expansion of the modern striving for a world view to an actual observation of spiritual reality. Our aim was not to take any old views from the publications then (and even still today) called “theosophical,” but to continue the striving that began with modern philosophy but then got stuck in the abstract and therefore did not gain access to the real spiritual world.

Circumstances sometimes bring about favorable situations in karma. Thus, what I wrote a few weeks ago so you can now read it no longer needs rely only on the memory of the few individuals who heard my talk to the Giordano Bruno Society back in 1902, that is, before the German Section was founded. Today I can present documentary evidence. Well, life's funny like that; due to the kindness of one of our members, Fraulein Hübbe-Schleiden, I have recently received the letters I wrote to Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden back then, just before and on the occasion of the founding of the German Section. Now, after his death, those letters were returned to me.

The German Section of the Theosophical Society was not founded until October 1902. This particular letter is dated September 16, 1902. There are a few words in this letter I would like to read to you. Forgive me, but I must begin somewhere. There was a lot of talk at that time about connecting with the theosophist Franz Hartmann, who was just then holding a kind of congress.¹⁵ I have no intention of saying anything against Franz Hartmann today, but I have to read what I wrote in those days:

Friedenau-Berlin, September 16, 1902. Let Hartmann continue to tell his rubbish to his people; in the meantime I want to take our theosophy where I will find people of sound judgment. Once we have a connection to the students [so far we have had only mediocre success with this], we will have gained much. I want to build anew, not patch up old ruins. [That is how the theosophical movement appeared to me then.] This coming winter I hope to teach a course on elementary theosophy in the Theosophical Library. [I did indeed hold this course, and one of the lectures was given during the actual founding of the German Section. The course title is mentioned here, too.] In addition, I plan to teach elsewhere an ongoing course entitled “Anthroposophy or the Connection between Morality, Religion, and Science.” I also hope to be able to present a lecture to the Bruno Society on Bruno's monism and anthroposophy. At this point, these are only plans. In my opinion, that is how we must proceed.

That was written on September 16, 1902. Here is the document, my dear friends, that can prove to you these things are not simply claims made after the fact, but they have really happened in this way. It is favorable karma that we are able to show who is right at this moment when so much slander is spread, and will increasingly be spread, about our cause.

• 1. Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke, 1848–1916, German soldier Chief of general staff (from 1906) and director of German strategy at beginning of World War I (1914). Lost the first battle of the Marne (Sept. 1914) and was relieved of his command (Nov. 1914).
• 2. Eduard von Hartmann, 1842–1906, German philosopher. Grundriss der Psychologie (“Basic Psychology”), Bad Sachsa, 1908.
• 3. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science, 3rd ed., repr., (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989).
• 4. Jakim and Boaz are the words inscribed on the two columns at the front of Solomon's Temple. See the Old Testament, I Kings, Chapter 7, II Chronicles, Chapter 3. See also Rudolf Sterner, Bilder Okkulter Siegel und Säulen (“Pictures of Occult Seals and Pillars”), vol. 284/285 in the Collected Works (Dornach, Switzerland. Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1977).
• 5. Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Count, 1828–1910. Russian novelist and moral philosopher.
• 6. John Ernst Worrell Keely, 1827–1898. Claimed invention of a perpetual-motion system (1873). After his death, his apparatus was proven a fraud.
• 7. Hermann Bahr, Himmelfahrt (“Ascension”), Berlin, 1916.
• 8. Hermann Bahr, Himmelfahrt and see Lecture One, notes 13-17.
• 9. Council of Trent, council of the Roman Catholic Church, 15451563.
• 10. Richard M. Meyer, 1860–1914, German philologist.
• 11. Franz Ferdinand, 1863–1914, Archduke of Austria. Nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph and heir to crown. Was assassinated with his wife on June 28, 1914, by a Serbian nationalist at Sarajevo, Bosnia. This assassination led to World War I.
• 12. Rudolf Steiner, Die Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaft und deien Bau in Dornach (“The Mission of Spiritual Science and its Building in Dornach”), Berlin, 1916.
• 13. Immanuel Hermann von Fichte, 1796–1879, son of Johann Gottlieb. Philosopher, exponent of an ethical or speculative theism.
• 14. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, 1831–1891, American theosophist. Organized Theosophical Society in 1875 with Henry Steel Olcott.
  
  Annie Besant, 1847–1933, English theosophist and Indian political leader.
• 15. Franz Hartmann, 1838–1912, doctor and theosophist. Founded his own movement within theosophy.

I have spoken to you from various points of view of the impulses at work in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. You suspect—for I could only draw your attention to a few of these impulses—that there are many others which one can attempt to lay hold of in order to comprehend the course of evolution in our epoch. In my next lectures I propose to speak of the impulses which have been active in the civilized world since the fifteenth century, especially the religious impulses. I will attempt therefore in the three following lectures to give you a kind of history of religions.

Today I should like to discuss briefly something which some of you perhaps might find superfluous, but which I am anxious to discuss because it could also be important in one way or another for those who are personally involved in the impulses of the present epoch. I should like to take as my starting point the fact that at a certain moment, I felt that it was necessary to lay hold of the impulses of the present time in the ideal which I put forward in my book The Philosophy of Freedom.

The book appeared, as you know, a quarter of a century ago and has just been reprinted. I wrote The Philosophy of Freedom—fully conscious of the exigencies of the time—in the early nineties of the last century. Those who have read the preface which I wrote in 1894 will feel that I was animated by the desire to reflect the needs of the time. In the revised edition of 1918 I placed the original preface of 1894 at the end of the book as a second appendix. Inevitably when a book is re-edited after a quarter of a century circumstances have changed; but for certain reasons I did not wish to suppress anything that could be found in the first edition.

As a kind of motto to The Philosophy of Freedom I wrote in the original preface: ‘Truth alone can give us assurance in developing our individual powers. Whoever is tormented by doubts finds his powers emasculated. In a world that is an enigma to him he can find no goal for his creative energies.’ ‘This book does not claim to point the only possible way to truth, it seeks to describe the path taken by one who sets store upon the truth.’

I had been only a short time in Weimar when I began to write The Philosophy of Freedom. For some years I had carried the main outlines in my head. In all I spent seven years in Weimar. The complete plan of my book can be found in the last chapter of my doctoral dissertation, Truth and Science. But in the text which I presented for my doctorate I omitted of course this last chapter.

The fundamental idea of The Philosophy of Freedom had taken shape when I was studying Goethe's Weltanschauung which had occupied my attention for many years. As a result of my Goethe studies and my publications on the subject of Goethe's Weltanschauung I was invited to come to Weimar and collaborate in editing the Weimar edition of Goethe's works, the Grand Duchess Sophie edition as it was called. The Goethe archives founded by the Grand Duchess began publication at the end of the eighties.

You will forgive me if I mention a few personal details, for, as I have said, I should like to describe my personal involvement in the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In the nineties of the last century in Weimar one could observe the interweaving of two streams—the healthy traditions of a mature, impressive and rich culture associated with what I should like to call Goetheanism, and the traditional Goetheanism in Weimar which at that time was coloured by the heritage of Liszt. And also making its influence felt—since Weimar through its academy of art has always been an art centre—was what might well have provided important impulses of a far-reaching nature if it had not been submerged by something else. For the old, what belongs to the past, can only continue to develop fruitfully if it is permeated and fertilized by the new. Alongside the Goetheanism—which survived in a somewhat petrified form in the Goethe archives, (but that was of no consequence, it could be rejuvenated, and personally I always saw it as a living force)—a modern spirit invaded the sphere of art. The painters living in Weimar were all influenced by modern trends. In those with whom I was closely associated one could observe the profound influence of the new artistic impulse represented by Count Leopold von Kalkreuth,¹ who at that time, for all too brief a period, had been a powerful seminal force in the artistic life of Weimar. In the Weimar theatre also a sound and excellent tradition still survived, though marred occasionally by philistinism. Weimer was a centre, a focal point where many and various cultural streams could meet.

In addition, there was the activity of the Goethe archives which were later enlarged and became the Goethe-Schiller archives. In spite of the dry philological approach which lies at the root of the work of archives, and reflects the spirit of the time and especially of the outlook of Scherer,² an active interest on the more positive impulses of the modern epoch was apparent, because the Goethe archives became the magnet for international scholars of repute. They came from Russia, Norway, Holland, Italy, England, France and America and though many did not escape the philistinism of the age it was possible nonetheless to detect amongst this gathering of international scholars in Weimar, especially in the nineties, signs of more positive forces. I still vividly recall the eccentric behaviour of an American professor^T1 who was engaged on a detailed study of Faust. I still see him sitting crosslegged on the floor because he found it convenient to sit next to the bookshelf where he could immediately put his hand on the reference books he needed without having to return continually to his chair. I remember also the gruff Treitschke³ whom I once met at lunch and who wanted to know where I came from. (Since he was deaf one had to write everything down on slips of paper.) When I replied that I came from Austria he promptly retorted, characterizing the Austrians in his inimitable fashion: well, the Austrians are either extremely clever people or scoundrels! And so one could take one's choice; one could opt for the one or the other. I could quote you countless examples of the influence of the international element upon the activities in Weimar.

One also learned much from the fact that people also came to Weimar in order to see what had survived of the Goethe era. Other visitors came to Weimar who excited a lively interest for the way in which they approached Goetheanism, etcetera. I need only mention Richard Strauss⁴ who first made his name in Weimar and whose compositions deteriorated rather than improved with time. But at that time he belonged to those elements who provided a delightful introduction to the modern trends in music. In his youth Richard Strauss was a man of many interests and I still recall with affection his frequent visits to the archives and the occasion when he unearthed one of the striking aphorisms to be found in Goethe's conversations with his contemporaries. The conversations have been edited by Waldemar Freiherr von Biedermann⁵ and contain veritable pearls of wisdom. I mention these details in order to depict the milieu of Weimar at that time in so far as I was associated with it.

A distinguished figure, a living embodiment of the best traditions of the classical age of Weimar, quite apart from his princely origin, was a frequent visitor to the archives. It was the Grand Duke Karl Alexander whose essentially human qualities inspired affection and respect. He was the survivor of a living tradition for he was born in 1818 and had therefore spent the fourteen years of his childhood and youth in Weimar as a contemporary of Goethe. He was a personality of extraordinary charm. And in addition to the Duke one had also the greatest admiration for the Grand Duchess Sophie of the house of Orange who made herself responsible for the posthumous works of Goethe and attended to all the details necessary for their preservation. That in later years a former finance minister was appointed head of the Goethe Society certainly did not meet with approval in Weimar. And I believe that a considerable number of those who were by no means philistine and who were associated in the days of Karl Alexander with what is called Goetheanism would have been delighted to learn, in jest of course, that perhaps after all there was something symptomatic in the Christian name of the former finance minister who became president of the Goethe Society. He rejoiced in the Christian name of Kreuzwendedich.⁶

I wrote The Philosophy of Freedom when I was deeply involved in this milieu and I feel certain that it expressed a necessary impulse of our time. I say this, not out of presumption, but in order to characterize what I wanted to achieve and still wish to achieve with the publication of this book. I wrote The Philosophy of Freedom in order to give mankind a clear picture of the idea of freedom, of the impulse of freedom which must be the fundamental impulse of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch (and which must be developed out of the other fragmentary impulses of various kinds.) To this end it was necessary first of all to establish the impulse of freedom on a firm scientific basis. Therefore the first section of the book was entitled ‘Knowledge of Freedom.’ Many, of course, have found this section somewhat repugnant and unpalatable, for they had to accept the idea that the impulse of freedom was firmly rooted in strictly scientific considerations based upon freedom of thought, and not in the tendency to scientific monism which is prevalent today. This section, ‘Knowledge of Freedom,’ has perhaps a polemical character which is explained by the intellectual climate at that time. I had to deal with the philosophy of the nineteenth century and its Weltanschauung. I wanted to demonstrate that the concept of freedom is a universal concept, that only he can understand and truly feel what freedom is who perceives that the human soul is the scene not only of terrestrial forces, but that the whole cosmic process streams through the soul of man and can be apprehended in the soul of man. Only when man opens himself to this cosmic process, when he consciously experiences it in his inner life, when he recognizes that his inner life is of a cosmic nature will it be possible to arrive at a philosophy of freedom. He who follows the trend of modern scientific teaching and allows his thinking to be determined solely by sense perception cannot arrive at a philosophy of freedom. The tragedy of our time is that students in our universities are taught to harness their thinking only to the sensible world. In consequence we are involuntarily caught up in an age that is more or less helpless in face of ethical, social and political questions. For a thinking that is tied to the apron strings of sense perception alone will never be able to achieve inner freedom so that it can rise to the level of intuitions, to which it must rise if it is to play an active part in human affairs. The impulse of freedom has therefore been positively stifled by a thinking that is conditioned in this way.

The first thing that my contemporaries found unpalatable in my book The Philosophy of Freedom was this: they would have to be prepared first of all to fight their way through to a knowledge of freedom by self-disciplined thinking.

The second, longer section of the book deals with the reality of freedom. I was concerned to show how freedom must find expression in external life, how it can become a real driving force of human action and social life. I wanted to show how man can arrive at the stage where he feels that he really acts as a free being. And it seems to me that what I wrote twenty years ago could well be understood by mankind today in view of present circumstances.

What I had advocated first of all was an ethical individualism. I had to show that man can never become a free being unless his actions have their source in those ideas which are rooted in the intuitions of the single individual. This ethical individualism only recognized as the final goal of man's moral development what is called the free spirit which struggles free of the constraint of natural laws and the constraint of all conventional moral norms, which is confident that in an age when evil tendencies are increasing, man can, if he rises to intuitions, transmute these evil tendencies into that which, for the Consciousness Soul, is destined to become the principle of the good, that which is befitting the dignity of man. I wrote therefore at that time:

Only the laws obtained in this way are related to human action as the laws of nature are related to a particular phenomenon. These laws however are in no way identical with the impulses which govern our actions. If we wish to understand how a man's action arises from his moral will, we must first study the relation of this will to the action.

I envisaged the idea of a free community life such as I described to you recently from a different angle—a free community life in which not only the individual claims freedom for himself, but in which, through the reciprocal relationship of men in their social life, freedom as impulse of this life can be realized. And so I unhesitatingly wrote at that time:

To live in love of our action and to let live in the full understanding of the other's will is the fundamental maxim of free men. They know no other obligation than that with which their will intuitively puts itself in harmony; how they will direct their will in a particular case will be determined by their capacity for ideas.

With this ethical individualism the whole Kantian school, of course, was ranged against me, for the preface to my essay Truth and Science opens with the words: ‘We must go beyond Kant.’ I wanted at that time to draw the attention of my contemporaries to Goetheanism—the Goetheanism of the late nineteenth century however—through the medium of the so-called intellectuals, those who regarded themselves as the intellectual elite. I met with little success. And this is shown by the article^T2 which I recently wrote in the Reich and especially by my relations to Eduard von Hartmann.⁷ You can imagine the alarm of contemporaries who were gravitating towards total philistinism, when they read this sentence:^T3 When Kant apostrophizes duty:

‘Duty! thou sublime and mighty name, thou that dost embrace within thyself nothing pleasing, nothing ingratiating, but dost demand submission, thou that dost establish a law ... before which all inclinations are silent even though they secretly work against it,’ then, out of the consciousness of the free spirit, man replies: ‘Freedom! thou kindly and humane name, thou that dost embrace all that is morally pleasing, all that my human dignity most cherishes and that makest me the servant of nobody, that settest up no new law, but dost await what my moral love itself will recognize as law, because, in face of every law imposed upon it, it feels itself unfree ...’

Thus the underlying purpose of The Philosophy of Freedom was to seek freedom in the empirical, in lived experience, a freedom which at the same time should be established on a firm scientific foundation. Freedom is the only word which has a ring of immediate truth today. If freedom were understood in the sense I implied at that time, then everything that is said today about the world order would strike a totally different note. We speak today of all sorts of things—of peace founded on justice, of peace imposed by force and so on. But these are simply slogans because neither justice nor force bear any relationship to their original meaning. Today our idea of justice is completely confused. Freedom alone, if our contemporaries had accepted it, could have awakened in them fundamental impulses and brought them to an understanding of reality. If, instead of such slogans as peace founded on justice, or peace imposed by force, people would only speak of peace based on freedom, then this word would echo round the world and in this epoch of the Consciousness Soul might kindle in the hearts of men a sense of security. Of course in a certain sense this second, longer section had a polemical intention, for it was necessary to parry (in advance) the attacks which in the name of philistinism, cheap slogans and blind submission to authority could be launched against this conception of the free spirit.

Now although there were isolated individuals who sensed which way the wind was blowing in The Philosophy of Freedom, it was extremely difficult—in fact it was impossible—to find my contemporaries in any way receptive to its message. It is true—amongst isolated voices—that a critic of the time wrote in the Frankfurter Zeitung: ‘clear and true, that is the motto that could be written on the first page of this book,’ but my contemporaries had little understanding of this clarity and truth.

Now this book appeared at a time when the Nietzsche wave was sweeping over the civilized world—and though this had no influence on the contents, it was certainly not without effect upon the hope I cherished that the book might nonetheless be understood by a few contemporaries. I am referring to the first Nietzsche wave when people realized that Nietzsche's often unbalanced mind was the vehicle of mighty and important impulses of the age. And before Nietzsche's image had been distorted by people such as Count Kessler⁸ and Nietzsche's sister, in conjunction with such men as the Berliner, Karl Breysig and the garrulous Horneffer,^8a there was every hope that, after the ground had been prepared by Nietzsche, these ideas of freedom might find a certain public. This hope was dashed when, through the people mentioned above, Nietzsche became the victim of modern decadence, of literary pretentiousness and snobism—(I do not know what term to choose in order to make myself understood).

After having written The Philosophy of Freedom I had first of all to observe how things developed—I am not referring to the ideas contained in the book (for I knew that at first few copies had been sold), but to the impulses which had been the source of the ideas in The Philosophy of Freedom. I had the opportunity of studying this for a number of years from the vantage point of Weimar.

However, shortly after its publication, The Philosophy of Freedom found an audience, an audience whom many would now regard as lukewarm. It found limited support in the circles associated with the names of the American, Benjamin Tucker, and the Scottish-German or German-Scott, John Henry Mackay.⁹ In a world of increasing philistinism this was hardly a recommendation because these people were among the most radical champions of a social order based on freedom of the Spirit and also because when patronized to some extent by these people, as happened for a time in the case of The Philosophy of Freedom, one at least earned the right to have not only The Philosophy of Freedom, but also some of my later publications banned by the Russian censor! The Magazin für Literatur which I edited in later years found its way into Russia, but, for this reason, most of its columns were blacked out. But the movement with which the Magazin was concerned and which was associated with the names of Benjamin Tucker and J. H. Mackay failed to make any impression amid the increasing philistinism of the age. In reality that period was not particularly propitious for an understanding of The Philosophy of Freedom, and for the time being I could safely let the matter drop. It seems to me that the time has now come when The Philosophy of Freedom must be republished, when, from widely different quarters voices will be heard which raise questions along the lines of The Philosophy of Freedom.

You may say, of course, that it would have been possible nonetheless to republish The Philosophy of Freedom during the intervening years. No doubt many impressions could have been sold over the years. But what really matters is not that my most important books should sell in large numbers, but that they are understood, and that the spiritual impulse underlying them finds an echo in men's hearts.

In 1897 I left the Weimar milieu where I had been to some extent a spectator of the evolution of the time and moved to Berlin. After Neumann-Hofer had disposed of the Magazin I acquired it in order to have a platform for ideas which I considered to be timely, in the true sense of the word, ideas which I could advocate publicly. Shortly alter taking over the Magazin, however, my correspondence with J. H. Mackay was published and the professoriate who were the chief subscribers to the Magazin were far from pleased. I was criticized on all sides. ‘What on earth is Steiner doing with our periodical,’ they said, ‘what is he up to?’ The whole professoriate of Berlin University who had subscribed to the Magazin at that time, in so far as they were interested in philology or literature—the Magazin had been founded in 1832, the year of Goethe's death and amongst other things this was one of the reasons why the University professors had subscribed to the review—this professoriate gradually cancelled their subscriptions. I must admit that with the publication of the Magazin I had the happy knack of offending the readers—the readers and not the Zeitgeist.

In this context I should like to recall a small incident. Amongst the representatives of contemporary intellectual life who actively supported my work on behalf of Goetheanism was a university professor. I will mention only one fact ... those who know me will not accuse me of boasting when I say that this professor once said to me in the Russischer Hof in Weimar: ‘Alas, in comparison with what you have written on Goethe, all our trivial comments on Goethe pale into insignificance.’ I am relating a fact, and I do not see why under present circumstances these things should be passed over in silence. For after all the second half of the Goethean maxim remains true (the first half is not Goethean): vain self praise stinks, but people rarely take the trouble to find out how unjust criticism on the part of others smells.¹⁰

Now this professor was also a subscriber to the Magazin. You will remember the international storm raised by the Dreyfus affair at that time. Not only had I published in the Magazin^T4 information on the Dreyfus¹¹ case that I alone was in a position to give, but I had vigorously defended^T5 the famous article, J'accuse, which Zola had written in defence of Dreyfus. Thereupon I received from the professor who had sung my praises in divers letters (and even had these effusions printed) a postcard saying: ‘I hereby cancel my subscription to the Magazin once and for all since I cannot tolerate in my library a periodical that defends Emile Zola, a traitor to his country in Jewish pay.’ That is only one little incident: I could mention hundreds of a similar kind. As editor of the Magazin für Literatur I was brought in contact with the dark corridors of the time and also with the modern trends in art and literature.^T6 Were I to speak of this you would have a picture of many characteristic features of the time.

Somewhat naively perhaps I had come to Berlin in order to observe how ideas for the future might be received by a limited few thanks to the platform provided by the Magazin—at least as long as the material resources available to the periodical sufficed, and as long as the reputation which it formerly enjoyed persisted, a reputation which, I must confess, I undermined completely. But I was able in all innocence to observe how these ideas spread amongst that section of the population which based its Weltanschauung upon the writings of that pot-house philistine Wilhelm Bölsche¹² and similar popular idols. And I was able to make extremely interesting studier which, from many and various points of view, threw light upon what is, and what is not, the true task of our epoch.

Through my friendship with Otto Erich Hartleben¹³ I met at that time many of the rising generation of young writers who are now for the most part outmoded. Whether or not I fitted into this literary group is not for me to decide. One of the members of this group had recently written an article in the Vossische Zeitung which he tried to show in his pedantic way that I did not fit into this community and he looked upon me as an unpaid peripatetic theologian amongst a group of people who were anything but unpaid peripatetic theologians, but who were at least youthful idealists.

Perhaps the following episode will also interest you because it shows how I became for a time a devoted friend of Otto Erich Hartleben. It was during the time when I was still in Weimar. He always visited Weimar to attend the meetings of the Goethe Society; but he regularly missed them because it was his normal habit to get up at 2 in the afternoon and the meetings began at 10 a.m. When the meetings were over I used to call on him and usually found him in bed. Occasionally we would while away an evening together. His peculiar devotion to me lasted until the sensational Nietzsche affair in which I was involved severed our friendship. We were sitting together one evening and I recall how he warmed to me when, in the middle of the conversation, I made the epigrammatic remark: ‘Schopenhauer is simply a narrow-minded genius.’ Hartleben was delighted; and he was delighted with many other things I said the same evening so that Max Martersteig (who became famous in later years) jumped up at my remarks and said: ‘Don't provoke me, don't provoke me.’

It was on one of the evenings which I spent in those days in the company of the promising Otto Erich Hartleben and the promising Max Martersteig and others that the first Serenissimus anecdote was born. It became the source of all later Serenissimus anecdotes. I should not like to leave this unmentioned; it certainly belongs to the milieu of The Philosophy of Freedom, for the spirit of The Philosophy of Freedom pervaded the circle I frequented and I still recall today the stimulus which Max Halbe¹⁴ received from it (at least that is what he claimed). All these people had already read the book and many of the ideas of The Philosophy of Freedom have nonetheless found their way into the world of literature. The original Serenissimus anecdote from which all other Serenissimus anecdotes are derived did not by any means spring from a desire to ridicule a particular personality, but from that frame of mind that must also be associated with the impulse of The Philosophy of Freedom, namely, a certain humouristic attitude to life or—as I often say—an unsentimental view of life which is especially necessary when one looks at life from a deeply spiritual standpoint. This original anecdote is as follows:

His Serene Highness is visiting the state penitentiary and asks for a prisoner to be brought before him. The prisoner is brought in. His Highness then asks him a series of questions: ‘How long have you been detained here?’ ‘Twenty years’—‘Twenty years! That's a good stretch. Tell me, my good fellow, what possessed you to take up your residence here?’ ‘I murdered my mother.’ ‘I see, you murdered your mother; strange, very strange! Now teil me, my good fellow, how long do you propose to stay here?’ ‘As long as I live; I have been given a life sentence.’ ‘Strange! That's a good stretch. Well, I won't take up your valuable time with further questions.’ He turns to the prison Governor—‘See that the last ten years of the prisoner's life sentence are remitted.’

That was the original anecdote. It did not spring from any malicious intention, but from a humorous acceptance of that which, if necessary, also has its ethical value. I am convinced that if the personality at whom this anecdote—perhaps mistakenly—was often directed had himself read this anecdote he would have laughed heartily.

I was able therefore to observe how in the Berlin circle I have mentioned attempts were made to introduce something of the new outlook. But ultimately a touch of the Bölsche crept into everything. I am referring of course not only to the fat Bölsche domiciled in Friedrichshagen, but to the whole Bölsche outlook which plays a major part in the philistinism of our time. Indeed the vulgarity of Bölsche's descriptions is eminently suited to the outlook of our time. When one reads Bölsche's articles one is compelled to handle ordure or the like. And the same applies to his style. One need only pick up this or that article and we are invited to interest ourselves not only in the sexual life of the jelly fish, but in much else besides. This ‘Bölsche-ism’ has become a real tit-bit for the rising philistines in our midst today.

What I wrote one day in the Magazin was hardly the right way to launch it. Max Halbe's drama, Der Eroberer, had just been performed. It certainly is a play with the best of intentions, but for that reason fell flat in Berlin. I wrote a criticism which reduced Halbe to sheer despair, for I took all the Berlin newspapers to task and told the Berlin critics one and all what I thought of them. That was hardly the way to launch the Magazin. But this was a valuable experience for me. Compared with the Weimer days one learned to look at many things from a different angle. But at the back of my mind there always lurked this question: how could the epoch be persuaded to accept the ideas of The Philosophy of Freedom? If you are prepared to take the trouble, you will find that everything I wrote for the Magazin is imbued with the spirit of The Philosophy of Freedom. However, the Magazin was not written for modern bourgeois philistines. But, of course, through these different influences I was gradually forced out.

At that very moment the opportunity of another platform presented itself—that of the socialist working class. In view of the momentous questions which were stirring the consciousness of the world at the turn of the century, questions with which I was closely associated through J. H. Mackay and Tucker who had come to Berlin from America and with whom I spent many an interesting evening, I was glad of this opportunity of another platform. For many years I was responsible for the curriculum in various fields at the Berlin school for workers' education. In addition I gave lectures in all kinds of associations of the socialist workers. I had been invited not only to give these lectures, but also to conduct a course on how to debate. Not only were they interested in understanding clearly what I have discussed with you here in these lectures, but they were anxious to be able to speak in public as well, to be able to advocate what they deemed to be right and just. Exhaustive discussions were held on all sorts of topics and in widely different groups. And this again gave me an insight into the evolution of modern times from a different point of view. Now it is interesting to note that in these socialist circles one thing that is of capital importance for our epoch and for the understanding of this epoch was tabu. I could speak on any subject—for when one speaks factually one can speak today (leaving aside the proletarian prejudices) on any and every subject—save that of freedom. To speak of freedom seemed extremely dangerous. I had only a single follower who always supported me whenever I delivered my libertarian tirades, as the others were pleased to call them. It was the Pole, Siegfried Nacht. I do not know what has become of him—he always supported me in my defence of freedom against the totalitarian programme of socialism.

When we look at the present epoch and the new trends, we perceive that what is lacking is precisely what The Philosophy of Freedom seeks to achieve. On a basis of freedom of thought The Philosophy of Freedom establishes a science of freedom which is fully in accord with natural science, yet reaches beyond it. This section of the book makes it possible for really independent thinkers to be able to develop within the present social order. For if freedom without the solid foundation of a science of freedom were regarded as real freedom, then, in an age when evil is gaining ground (as I indicated yesterday), freedom would of necessity lead not to liberty, but to licence. What is necessary for the present epoch when freedom must become a reality can only be found in the firm inner discipline of a thinking freed from the tyranny of the senses, in genuine scientific thinking.

But socialism, the rising party of radicalism, which will assert itself even against the nationalists of all shades who are totally devoid of any understanding of their epoch, lacks any possibility of arriving at a science of freedom. For if there is one truth which is important for our epoch, it is this: socialism has freed itself from the prejudices of the old nobility, the old bourgeoisie and the old military caste. On the other hand it has succumbed all the more to a blind faith in the infallibility of scientific materialism, in positivism as it is taught today. This positivism (as I could show) is simply the continuation of the decree of the eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 869. Like an infallible and invisible pope this positivism holds in its iron grip the parties of the extreme left, including Bolshevism, and prevents them from attaining to freedom.

And that is the reason why, however much it seeks to assert itself, this socialism which is not rooted in the evolution of mankind, cannot do other than convulse the world for a long time, but can never conquer it. That is why it is not responsible for errors it has already committed and why others must bear the responsibility—those who have allowed it, or wished to allow it, to become not a problem of pressure, as I have shown,^T7 but a problem of suction.

It is this inability to escape from the tentacles of positivism, of scientific materialism, which is the characteristic feature of the modern labour movement from the standpoint of those whose criterion is the evolution of mankind and not either the antiquated ideas of the bourgeoisie or what are often called new social ideas of Wilsonism, etcetera.

Now I have often mentioned that there would be no difficulty in introducing spiritual ideas to the working class. But the leaders of the working class movement refuse to consider anything that is not rooted in Marxism. And so I was gradually pushed aside. I had attempted to introduce spiritual ideas and was to a certain extent successful, but I was gradually driven out.^T8 One day I was defending spiritual values in a meeting attended by hundreds of my students and only four members who had been sent by the party executive to oppose me were present; nonetheless they made it impossible for me to continue. I still vividly recall my words: ‘If people wish socialism to play a part in future evolution, then liberty of teaching and liberty of thought must be permitted.’ Thereupon one of the stooges sent by the party leadership declared: ‘In our party and its schools there can be no question of freedom, but only of reasonable constraint.’ These things I may add are profoundly symptomatic of the forces at work today.

One must judge the epoch by its most significant symptoms. One must not imagine that the modern proletariat is not thirsting for spiritual nourishment! It has an insatiable craving for it. But the nourishment which it is offered is, in part, that in which it firmly believes, namely positivism, scientific materialism, or in part an indigestible pabulum that offers stones instead of bread.

The Philosophy of Freedom was bound to meet with opposition here, too, because its fundamental impulse, the impulse of freedom has no place in this most modern movement, (i.e. socialism).

Before this period had come to an end I was invited to give a lecture before the Berlin Theosophical Society. A series of lectures followed during the winter and this led to my association with the Theosophical movement. I have spoken of this in the preface to my book, Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens und ihr Verhältnis zur modernen Weltanschauung.^T9 I must emphasize once again for this relationship with Theosophy has often been misunderstood—that at no time did I seek contact with the Theosophical Society; presumptuous as it may seem, it was the Theosophical Society which sought to make contact with me. When my book Mysticism and Modern Thought appeared not only were many chapters translated for the Theosophical Society, but Bertram Keightley and George Mead, who occupied prominent positions in the Society at the time, said to me: ‘This book contains, correctly formulated, everything we have to elaborate.’ At that time I had not read any of the publications of the Theosophical Society. I then read them, more or less as an ‘official’ only, although the prospect filled me with dismay.

But it was important to grasp the tendency of evolution, the impulse weaving and working in the life of the time. I had been invited to join the society; I could therefore join with good reason in accordance with my karma because I could perhaps find in the Theosophical Society a platform for what I had to say. I had of course to suffer much harassment. I should like to give an example which is symptomatic. One day when I attended a congress of the Theosophical Society for the first time I tried to put forward in a brief speech a certain point of view. It was at the time when the ‘entente cordiale’ had just been concluded and when everyone was deeply impressed by this event. I tried to show that in the movement which the Theosophical Society represents it is not a question of diffusing theosophical teachings from any random centre, but that the latest trends, the world over, should have a common meeting place, a kind of focal point. And I ended with these words: If we build upon the spirit, if we are really aiming to create a spiritual community in a concrete and positive fashion, so that the spirit which is manifested here and there is drawn towards a common centre, towards the Theosophical Society, then we shall build a different ‘entente cordiale.’

It was my first speech before the Theosophical Society of London and I spoke intentionally of this entente cordiale. Mrs. Besant declared—it was her custom to add a few pompous remarks to everything that was said—that the ‘German speaker’ had spoken very beautifully. But I did not have the meeting on my side; and my words were drowned in the flood of verbiage that followed—whereas the sympathies of the audience and what they wanted was more on the side of the Buddhist dandy, Jinaradjadasa. At the time this too seemed to me symptomatic. After I had spoken of something of historical significance, of the other entente cordiale, I sat down and the Buddhist pandit, Jinaradjadasa, came tripping down from his seat higher up in the auditorium—and I say tripping advisedly in order to describe his movements accurately—tapping with his walking stick on the floor. His speech met with the approval of the audience, but at the time all that I remembered was a torrent of words.

I have emphasized from the very beginning—you need only read the preface to my book Theosophy—that the future development of theosophy will follow the lines of thought already initiated by The Philosophy of Freedom. Perhaps I have made it difficult for many of you to find an unbroken line of continuity between the impulses behind The Philosophy of Freedom and what I wrote in later years. People found the greatest difficulty in accepting as true and reliable what I attempted to say and what I attempted to have published. I had to suffer considerable provocation. In this society which I had not sought to join, but which had invited me to become a member, I was not judged by what I had to offer, but by slogans and cliches. And this went on for some time until, at least amongst a small circle, I was no longer judged by slogans alone. Fundamentally, what I said or had published was relatively unimportant. It is true that people read it, but to read something does not mean that one has assimilated it. My books went through several editions, were reprinted again and again. But people judged them not by what I said or what they contained, but in terms of what they themselves understood, in the one case the mystical element, in another case the theosophical element, in a third case this, in a fourth case that, and out of this weiter of conflicting opinions emerged what passed for criticism. Under the circumstances it was neither an ideal, nor an encouraging moment to have The Philosophy of Freedom reprinted. Although this book presents, of course in an incomplete, imperfect and infelicitous fashion, a small contribution to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, nonetheless it seeks to express the fundamental, significant and really powerful impulses of this epoch.

Now that The Philosophy of Freedom has been republished alter a quarter of a century I should like to emphasize that it is the fruit of a close and active participation in the life of the time, of an insight into our epoch, of the endeavour to detect, to apprehend what impulses are essential for our epoch. And now twenty-five years later, when the present catastrophe has overwhelmed mankind, I realize—you may perhaps attribute it to naivety—that this book is in the true sense of the word, timely; timely in the unexpected sense, that the contemporary world rejects the book in toto and often wants to know nothing of its contents.

If there had been any understanding of the purpose of this book—to lay the foundations of ethical individualism and of a social and political life—if people had really understood its purpose, then they would know that there exist today ways and means of directing human evolution into fertile channels—different from other paths—whilst the worst possible path that one could follow would be to inveigh against the revolutionary parties, to grumble perpetually and retail anecdotes about Bolshevism! It would be tragic if the bourgeoisie could not overcome their immediate concern for what the Bolsheviks have done here and there, for the way in which they behave towards certain people; for, in reality, that is beside the point. The real issue is to ascertain whether the demands formulated by the Bolsheviks are in any way justified. And if one can find a conception of the world and of life that dares to say that, if you follow the path indicated here, you will attain what you seek to achieve by your imperfect means, and much else besides(and I am convinced that, if one is imbued with The Philosophy of Freedom, one dares to say that)—then light would dawn. And to this end the experience of a Weltanschauung founded on freedom is imperative. It is necessary to be able to grasp the fundamental idea of ethical individualism, to know that it is founded on the realization that man today is confronted with spiritual intuitions of cosmic events, that when he makes his own not the abstract ideas of Hegel, but the freedom of thought which I tried to express in popular form in my book The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, he is actually in touch with cosmic impulses pulsating through the inner being of man.

Only through spiritual experiences is it possible to grasp the idea of freedom and to begin to regenerate those impulses which at the present time end in every case in a blind alley. The day when we realize that it is a waste of words to discuss such empty concepts as law, violence, etcetera, that the idea of freedom can only lead to reality when apprehended through spiritual experiences, that day will herald a new dawn for mankind. To this end people must overcome their deep-seated apathy; they must abandon the practice, common amongst scientists today, of descanting on all kinds of social questions, on the various quack remedies for social and political amelioration. What they seek to achieve in this domain they must learn to establish on a firm, solid foundation of spiritual science. The idea of freedom must be anchored in a science of freedom.

It was evident to me that the proletariat is more receptive to a spiritual outlook than the bourgeoisie which is steeped in Bölsche-ism. One day for example aller Rosa Luxemburg¹⁵ had spoken in Spandau on ‘science and the workers’ before an audience of workers accompanied by their wives and children—the hall was full of screaming children, babes in arms and even dogs—I addressed the meeting. At first I intended to say only a few words, but finally my speech lasted one and a quarter hours. Taking up the thread of her theme I pointed out that a real basis already existed, namely, to apprehend science spiritually, i.e. to seek for new forms of life from out of the spirit. When I touched upon such questions I always found a measure of support. But hitherto everything has failed owing to the indolence of the learned professions, the scientists, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, teachers, etcetera on whom the workers ultimately depend for their knowledge. We met with all sorts of people Hertzka¹⁶ and his Treiland, Michael Flürscheim and many others who cherished ambitious social ideals. They all failed, as they were bound to fail, because their ideas lacked a spiritual basis, a basis of free, independent scientific thinking. Their ideas were the product of a thinking corrupted by its attachment to the sensible world such as one finds in modern positivism. The day that sees an end to the denial of the spirit, a denial that is characteristic of modern positivism, the day when we recognize that we must build upon a thinking freed from the tyranny of the senses, upon spiritual investigation, including all that is called science in the ethical, social and political domain, that day will mark the dawn of a new humanity. The day that no longer regards the ideas I have attempted to express here today, albeit so imperfectly, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, but as ideas that will find their way to the hearts and souls of mankind today, that day will herald a new dawn! People listen to all sorts of things, even to Woodrow Wilson; they do more than listen to him. But that which is born of the spirit of human evolution finds little response in the hearts and souls of men. But a way must be found to evoke this response. Mankind must realize how the world would be transformed if the meaning of freedom were understood, freedom not in the sense of licence, but freedom born of a free spirit and a firmly disciplined mind. If people understood what freedom and its establishment would signify for the world, then the light which many seek today would lighten the prevailing darkness of our time.

This is what I wanted to say to you with reference to historical ideas. My time is up; there are many other things I wished to say, but they can wait for another occasion. I ask your indulgence for having included in my lecture many personal experiences of a symptomatic nature that I have undergone in my present incarnation. I wanted to show you that I have always endeavoured to treat objectively the things which concern me personally, to consider them as symptoms which reveal what the age and the spirit of the age demand of us.

• 1. Count Leopald von Kalkreuth (1855–1928). Landscape and portrait painter. Professor at the Weimar Art School, 1885–90.
• 2. W. Scherer (1841–86). Pioneer of philological approach to the study of literature. Professor of German languages, Berlin.
• T1. Thomas Calvin, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Columbia.
• 3. H. von Treitsche (1834–96). Historiographer of the Prussian state. A Patriot and nationalist. Published the Preussische Jahrbücher (1866–89).
• 4. R. Strauss (1864–1949). Director State Opera, Vienna, 1918. Famous for Choral works, Lieder, chamber music, ballet and opera.
• 5. Waldemar von Biedermann (1817–1903). Goethe scholar. Edited a collection of Goethe's Gespräche (1889–96) 10 vols.
• 6. Kreuzwendedich Frieherr von Rheinbaben (1855–1921). 1901–9, Prussian Finance Minister; 1913–21, President of the Goethe Society.
• T2. Luziferisches und Ahrimanisches in ihrem Verhältnis zum Menschen.
• 7. Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906). Philosophie des Unbewussten, 1869. See Rudolf Steiner's Riddles of Philosophy, Part II and his Briefe, Vol II, 1953.
• T3. p. 143 of the 1964 edition of The Philosophy of Freedom.
• 8. Harry Graf Kessler (1868–1937); K. Breysig (1855–1940), historian.
• 8a. E. Horneffer (b. 1871). A disciple of Nietzsche, professor in Giessen. Emphasized pedagogic value of Graeco-Roman culture.
• 9. Benjamin Tucker published in America a periodical: Liberty, the Pioneer Organ of Anarchism. J. H. Mackay (1864–1933). Belonged to the literary Bohemia of Berlin. Popularized ‘individual anarchism’, cf. his novel Die Anarchisten, 1891. The hero is the mouthpiece of the author. An aggressive socialist. Dealt with in detail in R. Steiner's Gesammelte Aufästze zur Kulturgeschichte (1887–1901).
• 10. About the expression: ‘vain self-praise stinks’ Goethe commented: ‘That may be; but the public has no nose for the smell of others' unjust criticism.’
• T4. p. 143 of the 1964 edition of The Philosophy of Freedom.
• 11. Dreyfus (1859–1935). Jewish officer falsely accused of treason and transported to Devil's Island. Rehabilitated 1906.
• T5. 19th February, 1898, Emil Zola und die Jugend (see Bibl. Nr. 31 for this and other articles).
• T6. See Die Veröffentlichungen aus dem literarischen Frühwerk R. Steiners Heft V, VIII, IX.
• 12. W. Bölsche (1862–1939). Disciple of Zola; tried to link poetry and science. Scientific popularisor. Best known for Das Liebesleben in der Natur, 3 vols.
• 13. O. E. Hartleben (1864–1905). Dramatist, novelist and lyric poet. Attacked moral conventions and believed in the free personality.
• 14. M. Halbe (1865–1944). Dramatist and novelist. Nostalgia for lost youth, attachment to homeland, W. Prussia. (See R. Steiner's Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Dramaturgie, 1889–1900).
• T7. See Lecture IV.
• T8. See Chapter XXVIII, The Course of My Life, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1951.
• T9. Mysticism and Modern Thought, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London and Anthroposophie Press, New York, 1928 and as Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Rudolf Steiner Publications, New Jersey, 1960.
• 15. Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919). Radical Socialist, worked for overthrow of existing regime. Opposed to war 1914. Author of ‘Spartakus’ letters 1916. Drafted programme of newly formed Communist party 1918. With K. Liebknecht fomented Spartakus rebellion, January, 1919. Finally shot by counter revolutionaries.
• 16. Theodor Herzka (1845–1924). National economist. Wished to establish settlement co-operatives in various countries, e.g. Africa, and to redistribute land in order to break the monopoly of landed proprietors.

Shortly after 1:15, Dr. Steiner begins his announced lecture on contemporary pseudoscience.

My dear friends!

Yesterday I spoke to you about how phenomena such as the book “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and the Science of the Spirit” by Ernst Boldt and also his recent brochure – this one in particular – “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” can be traced back to a certain school of thought in the present day, and how actually the younger people who want to enter, so to speak, the field of “free writers” are more pitiful seduced people of certain currents of our present intellectual life than people to whom one can ascribe in the fullest sense of the word what they do and write. It does not matter that Mr. Boldt himself may not want to know that he is a student of the “pseudo-science” to be characterized. He has unfortunately become one without his knowledge. Before I move on to a proof of what I have just said, I would like to cite once again a particularly worrying example of what such a training can achieve.

As you know, in the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” the accusation is made against myself - let us say - that I “take on masks”, that I do not tell the 75 percent within our society that have now been sufficiently identified what I myself recognize as the truth, but rather what I believe is suitable for their particular inferiority. You may know from the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” that with regard to this point, special reference is made to my writing “Friedrich Nietzsche - A Fighter Against His Time”, and that the brochure particularly points out that in that writing I represent the Nietzschean point of view with regard to the truth. I must read a few sentences on page 16 of the brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” so that you can get to know the full severity of the accusation expressed on page 16 of the brochure, insofar as it is based on something I am said to have said in my writing “Friedrich Nietzsche - A Fighter Against His Time”:

No matter how correct a thought or judgment may be, if they do not further a matter in a given situation, they are worthless and false at that point; and if certain logical fictions and false judgments can lead to a desired result under certain circumstances, then they are valuable and true at that point. Dr. Steiner himself, in his discussion of this topic, characterized the unconditional striving for truth and truthfulness, as Fichte advocated it, as “superficial,” while Nietzsche's view was “drawn deep from the essence of human nature.

My dear friends, you should consider the full weight of the audacity of such an assertion as has been made here. On pages 9-10 of my essay “Friedrich Nietzsche... and so on,” I have in fact uttered the following words in response to the question of the value of truth, quoting Nietzsche first:

Is it any wonder that we finally become suspicious, lose our patience, turn around impatiently? That we, in turn, learn how to ask questions from this sphinx? Who is it, actually, who is asking us questions here? What in us actually wants “the truth”? Indeed, we stopped long before asking about the cause of this will – until, finally, we came to a complete stop in front of an even more fundamental question. We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not untruth?

This is a thought...

so I now say further,

... of almost unsurpassable audacity. If we compare this with what another bold “thinker and friend of riddles,” Johann Gottlieb Fichte, says about the pursuit of truth, we can see how deeply Nietzsche draws his ideas from the essence of human nature. “I am called upon,” says Fichte, “to bear witness to the truth; my life and my fate are of no importance; the effects of my life are of infinite importance. I am a priest of truth; I am in its pay; I have bound myself to do and dare and suffer everything for it.” (Fichte, lectures ‘On the destiny of the scholar,’ fourth lecture.) These words express the relationship in which the noblest minds of Western modern culture place themselves in relation to truth. Nietzsche's saying quoted above makes them appear superficial. One can object to them: Is it not possible that untruthfulness has more valuable effects on life than truthfulness? Is it impossible that truth can harm life? Did Fichte ask himself these questions? Did others who bore “truth's witness” do so?

When such a sentence is written, it has been wrested from the bleeding heart in order to gain and present an insight. First of all, a relationship is presented – and presented in such a way that something is singled out from the whole of our Western culture that belongs to the very depths of what can be said; and only in comparison with an even deeper psychological search and an even deeper rumination on the values of truth in the human soul does this appear even less profound than the “deeper” one, that is, it appears as the “relatively superficial”. Now, the starting point is taken from what is rooted in the soul as the impulse that makes Fichte seek truth, and it is pointed out - this is implied in the sentence - that in the sense of Nietzsche - who, after all, also lived a century later than Fichte - Fichte's question could and should be asked even more urgently than Fichte did.

However, people do not come close to asking a question of this kind – this must be said! – people who then boast about it by saying:

Those with an eye for nuance and a sense of character will have to admit that this serious accusation does not apply to me in any way.

Anyone with a “finger for nuances” would never dare to quote a passage such as the one on page 10 of my Nietzsche essay in the outrageous way it is done here in the brochure. Such a quotation comes from the school from which these people learn what they are able to learn, not from what should be done within the anthroposophical stream.

Following on from this, let me now ask another question. Is there not a question underlying all these accusations that have been made: Why doesn't Dr. Steiner address certain issues in front of that 75 percent? I have once again tried to find an answer to this question, at least in the sense of the questioner. I leaf through the book “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and Spiritual Science”. There is a good deal in it about the misunderstood Haeckel and some of it is taken directly from my writings and lectures. Reference is also made to my lectures “Man and Woman” and “Man, Woman and Child in the Light of Spiritual Science”. What is in Boldt's book, insofar as it is based on occult principles, is admittedly borrowed from what I said about the 75 percent of girls' boarding schools, nunneries and the Salvation Army. Mr. Boldt finds what I say about these people good enough to use for the teaching he is counting on. He carries the wisdom of the nunnery to those who, let us say, are unprejudiced. Thus assertions are made. What people do directly contradicts what they say, so to speak, immediately. For how else would Mr. Boldt have taken what he wrote “from the occult point of view” if not from the messages that were given to the 75 percent girls' boarding school, nunnery and Salvation Army? Such logic is the fruit borne by the school from which such writings come. But let us not be surprised that it bears such fruit. If someone talks about “sexual problems” today, it is because he has been influenced by “authorities” in this field, and Mr. Boldt has also been influenced, even if he does not know it or admit it. And who would not know that a much-cited authority in this field is Professor Auguste Forel! I would just like to share with you some characteristics of some contemporary scientific work from Forel's lecture on “Sexual Ethics”, namely from the first half, where ethics in general is discussed. Page 3:

1. Ethics.

Ethics is the science of morals. What, then, is morality? It can be said that morality consists of two things:

1. A feeling: conscience, sense of duty or ethical feeling (altruistic feeling), which tells us: “This you should do and that you should leave.” This feeling is instinctive and consists of a mixture of pleasure and displeasure. Those who develop it feel pleasure when they follow “the voice of conscience” and displeasure when they do not follow it.

Anyone who writes something like this has never taken the trouble to read even a single serious psychological book in our time, even superficially. A person who is an authority in our time speaks in sentences like these:

This feeling...

morality

... is instinctual and consists of a mixture of pleasure and displeasure.

I do not want to say what kind of pain one gets when, somewhat familiar with these things, one has to accept a sentence that confuses “feeling” with “instinct” and then talks about a “mixture of pleasure and displeasure.” The worst kind of amateurism betrays itself at the beginning of the book of a great authority! Then page 4:

But reason and science rebel against the categorical imperative, the longer, the more. Kant, great though he was, was not infallible. The imperative of conscience is not categorical in and of itself, nor is it categorical in any other way than that of the sexual drive, fear, motherly love or other feelings and drives. First of all, daily observation teaches us that there are people who are innately without conscience, who lack the voice of duty.

Let anyone who is considered an “authority” in this field dare – I will ignore all the rest, purely formally and logically – to write the sentence: “The imperative of conscience” – by which he means the Kantian imperative – “is in and of itself no more categorical and no less categorical than that of the sexual urge”! I want to ignore all moral aspects and point out only the perverse logic and phenomenal ignorance in all philosophical matters of a contemporary authority. I want to point out something else and read the sentence again:

Firstly, daily observation teaches us that there are people who are innately unscrupulous and who lack the voice of duty.

I turn to page 7, where the question is examined as to what the “voice of conscience”, the sense of duty, actually consists of:

The sense of duty is, as an inclination, innate, that is, hereditary.

There is only one page in between; on page 4, “authority” denies that it is “innate” because “innate people can be without conscience,” and on page 7 it says:

The sense of duty is, as an inclination, innate, i.e. hereditary. It can be developed or, conversely, dulled by education; but it cannot be acquired, and only brain diseases can destroy it where it is clearly present. That which is acquired or acquired...

There is no way to escape this tangle of crazy contradictions!

...is least the conscience; rather, it is its objects, just like those of the sense of shame.

It goes on to say:

Where does conscience come from, the sense of duty?

On page 8, we read further:

When I feel sympathy or love for a person, an animal, an object, I suffer myself and feel displeasure as soon as the object of my sympathy suffers or is endangered.

You may think: Well, that just slips out of the pen like that! No, it just slips out of the pen like that if you have confused thinking!

Hence the words compassion and sympathy (pain with). I therefore seek to help the object of my sympathy, to save it.

This “object of sympathy” continues to play a role; it is not just a typo here. At best, the word “object” can be used if “people” or “animals” have not been used beforehand. But if you have used “people” and “animals” beforehand and then say “object,” it shows that you have not the slightest sense of clarity of presentation. But the gentleman has something else: strange terms for many things, from which we can learn something in the present. Page 9:

But the necessity for a common defense against enemies led many animals to develop feelings of sympathy and duty towards entire groups, resulting in the emergence of loose societies here and there (swallows, buffalo, monkeys). Finally, certain animal species have developed feelings of sympathy and duty to such an extent that they have led to the realization of anarchist socialism, as is the case with wasps, bees, termites and ants.

I believe that even the less educated will almost turn around when they hear the words “anarchistic socialism”; because it is synonymous with “iron wood” or “wooden iron”. And that Professor Forel has not misspelled it again, but just does not know how to correctly formulate the terms in today's world, is shown by the further remarks, which I will not go into further. Then he continues on page 10:

Thus, humans have instinctively developed feelings of sympathy and duty that were coupled with intensely selfish predatory instincts. The enormous complication of the great human brain has now made things extremely complex. Thus, crime and heroism could develop side by side. We see infanticide, patricide and matricide, robbery, theft, slavery, war and, not to be forgotten, the most abject subjugation of women as objects of purchase and sale or as beasts of burden, the fruits of the egoism of a highly developed, cleverly thinking brain organization.

These are the words you would use in a lecture aimed at an audience you want to speak to in a popular way! You tell them that all these things – these strange, confused phenomena, mixed with all kinds of predatory instincts – stem from a particular complication of the brain organization. Materialism is blackened by this way of thinking, which is devoid of all logic! Continue on pages 11 [and 12]:

It is now as clear as day from this brief sketch, the main features of which we owe to the theory of descent and natural science, that morality can only be relative. It was always relative to the family, to the clan, to the fatherland; it must become relative to humanity. Man's phylogenetic sense of duty (i.e., the instinctive sense of duty inherited from our animal and human ancestors) unfortunately varies greatly from individual to individual.

So now we have inherited a sense of duty from our “animal and human ancestors”! It goes on like this. But this gentleman also quotes out of context. Page 13:

But now another difficulty arises, namely the frequent lack of harmony between the ethical motives of an act and its ideal value. “(I am) part of that force which always wills evil and always creates good.”

These are the words of Mephisto in “Faust”; therefore, he puts “I am” in brackets and then says immediately afterwards:

We often say instead of always,

so he brings a quote so that he has to change it immediately afterwards – and on the same line, because otherwise it wouldn't fit! On page 14, something strange happens that the gentleman and his students don't notice:

Altruism and egoism are only in relative contrast. In ants and bees, they are wonderfully harmoniously adapted to each other instinctively, without ever coming into conflict with each other. This can and should be striven for in humans, however great the difficulties are that his nature poses to this task. For this, a harmonious interaction of hereditary feelings of duty with reason and knowledge is essential.

But this “reason and knowledge” would not exist at all if the strange theories developed here were sound. But they are introduced; just as materialistic ideas are previously introduced into the text, “reason and knowledge” are now introduced. - The following is the author's view of the “nature of morality”, page 14:

I must briefly mention two more points: firstly, morality and social or racial hygiene coincide, ...

Social and racial hygiene and morality are therefore the same: they coincide! This is how he comes to characterize the “essence of morality.” Yes - but they only coincide

... as soon as one understands by hygiene that of the brain, i.e., of the organ of the soul, and subordinates individual hygiene to social hygiene.

Anyone who can still think anything of value in the face of such a sentence is actually hard to find! But these things characterize the thinking of the “authorities” – and are never cited as proof of the scientific conscience that reigns over certain schools of thought in our time. Do not think that this is an isolated example; these things are widespread; and they are significant for a reason that I will explain.

Why are they significant? Well, they stem from an “authority” in the field to which we are referred, from a generally recognized authority, from a man who is much talked about at home and abroad. He is an authority in this field, and he knows everything that can be learned in this field in terms of craftsmanship and natural science. And that is the significant thing, that is what is so bad in our present time: one can actually be an authority in any specialized field today without even knowing the very most elementary basic elements of logic and the very most elementary basic elements of scientific methodology at all; one can pass on to humanity today the most important things that are being researched in such a way that they are blackened into the worst form of nonsense! One often stands before these things with deep sadness. There is an excellent mathematician of the present day, a famous mathematician, to whom the rank of one of the first among mathematicians is not to be denied, Leo Königsberger. Recently I read from him – I am almost ashamed to say it – an “academic treatise” about what mathematics actually is as a science. He refers to Kant, and what he says about the methodological foundations of the mathematical sciences and their relationship to other sciences is the most immature, childish stuff.

That is to say, today, when it comes to accepting things that are there to educate the public about the progress of our intellectual life, you can accept the most childish stuff from the authorities, because people no longer feel obliged, when they step out of their area of expertise, to even know a little about what they want to talk about. Yes, if only they would not talk about it – but, excuse me, that is not an option, because otherwise the gentlemen would have to remain silent about so many things that we would hear little from them!

And now I ask another question. Those who, without knowing anything about the facts of natural science themselves, speak or write about sexual matters or similar topics among younger people today are fed from sources like the ones I have characterized. Let us not be surprised if their heads are in a mess; because with such logic, their heads must be in a mess, as we are dealing with one. And the poor, pitiful victims are innocent, their entire mental life is destroyed by what I have just characterized, which does not stand alone but pours out into literature in a broad stream, which is precisely what our audience feeds on today.

My dear friends, we are dealing today – and as anthroposophists we have to deal with it! – in many fields of today's production, not with 'scientificness', but with 'pseudoscientificness', not to use another word. An example of such pseudoscience is given to you; I could give many.

A certain Dr. Freud in Vienna has founded all kinds of “scientific” things. Among them there is also a “dream science,” the famous Freudian “dream science,” to which much reference is made today. I will pick out just one example from the beautiful “scientific” world that prevails.

From his point of view, Freud finds that every dream is based on a wish; and he finds the theory, which is more convenient than factual, that when a person cannot satisfy a wish in life, and he might be disturbed in his sleep, he then dreams in his sleep that his wish has been fulfilled. So anyone who hopes for something and does not have it dreams - and then sleeps well because they have fulfilled their wish in their dream. Yes, but it is not the case with all dreams that they can be traced back to a hope, to a wish; the facts cannot be treated so simply. In the field of this “science”, a distinction is made between “latent” and “manifest” dream wishes. For example, the following example is constructed. - I take things that have actually been given.

I dream of a person whose name is, say, “R”; but he doesn't look like “R” at all, but like “B” - and “B” is crazy. Now it is difficult to construct the pipe dream here. But Dr. Freud is never at a loss for an explanation. He says: Yes, but the R I dream about secretly wishes he were crazy! If I dreamt about him as he really is, I couldn't dream that he's crazy, because he isn't. So I dream about the other guy, B, who is crazy, because I wish that R would go crazy like B.

Here the latent is separated from the manifest. What is introduced is, to use a nice technical term from Freud, “dream censorship”, and I could cite a nice smorgasbord of such examples from Freudian dream censorship.

Yes, such “scientific rigour” has led to the well-known Freudian “psychoanalysis”, to the fact that the followers of this psychoanalysis attribute various phenomena that occur in the human soul to so-called “islands” or island provinces in subconscious life. So, for example, if there is hysteria or something of the sort, then the person coming to the doctor is examined by being interrogated; but one must interrogate him until one comes upon something sexual. Because these islands are always unfulfilled sexual desires. They go down into the subconscious and stay there until the doctor brings them back up; and until the doctor brings them back up, they are the causes of all kinds of mental disorders, and you cure them by bringing the suppressed sexualisms back up.

I do not want to bring out these suppressed sexualisms present in the subconscious and apply them to the founder of the theory himself; because something strange could come of it if one were to apply this theory to the one who has formulated it, and trace it back to something suppressed inside, to such island provinces that could have accumulated in childhood.

But with these “wishful dreams”, with the “latent” and “manifest” states and with “dream censorship”, we now come to other things, for example to the answer to the question: “Why do so many people dream of the death of close relatives?” - And it is said that now, because as a child one thought, even if one did not love these relatives: “If only he would die soon!” This has gone into the subconscious and comes up again as a latent wish and then comes out later. But it is not limited to childhood; because it also happens in other relationships that people wish each other dead – for example, the younger son, who is not the heir in his family, has the wish that his older brother, who is the heir, may die. He does not admit this to himself when he is conscious, but the dream brings it out. In particular, there are many such island provinces in the human soul in the sense that early-arising sexualism, which the theory of these people, stirs in the first tender childhood, is expressed in such a way that girls love their father and are jealous of their mother, and vice versa, that boys love their mother and are jealous of their father, and that children then wish the individual dead. But this is something that happens quite commonly; for it is to this “commonplace” that the Oedipus tragedy, for example, can be traced. And these people ask: Where does the harrowing nature of this Oedipus tragedy come from? Answer: Because a picture was once used to describe the fact that a son often loves his mother and seeks to kill his father. That is supposed to be the harrowing nature of the Oedipus tragedy. Dr. Unger was hinting at such things when he pointed out the peculiar way fairy tales and myths are interpreted by this school. I could cite several more, even worse examples, but I think this example is enough.

Is this “science”? This is pseudoscience! Inferior science! But it has a large audience today. But it is a source of confusing and misleading immature minds. Let's not be surprised if these immature minds then go around with confused thoughts.

I have allowed myself to cite a particular example of how sexuality creeps into pseudo-science. Of course, an infinite number of other examples could be cited to show how this pseudo-sexual science creeps into public discourse.

My friends! I once said two things to Mr. Boldt because I felt obliged to say them when he wanted to write not a slim volume like “Sexual Problems,” but four or five volumes. I said to him – it was before the little book was written: “Mr. Boldt, don't write that now! When you are ten, twelve, fifteen years older, you will regret ruining your life by writing such stuff in your youth.” On page 12 of the brochure it says:

That is why Dr. Steiner has consistently refrained from speaking since the summer of 1911. I must of course remain silent here about his private comments to me; I can only reveal that they were neither warm nor cold.

I said a second thing to Mr. Boldt on another occasion. I said to him: “You see, Mr. Boldt, to deal with this subject in particular is a dangerous matter, and really only someone who is really at home in the field of research that delves deeper into the secrets of existence, and who speaks about these things from this point of view, can do it; because then one speaks quite differently about these things. And it is the most dangerous subject one can touch upon, for the reason that when the thoughts are directed to this sphere they will always become darkened in a certain respect."

I am touching here on something that would have to be treated at length if it were to become quite clear, but which is a real result of spiritual science. We may dwell on many things about which we seek to gain clear thoughts: The moment thoughts turn to the sexual sphere, however pure the act, it is all too easy to lose control of one's thoughts. That is why those who knew more about the occult side of life veiled this area in symbolism – and in many symbols. And it seems to have been left to the crude materialism of our time to destroy the sacred symbols with clumsy hands, so as not to point out that there are sacred, high realms, and that the lowest of these realms, which is to be sought for us humans - the most particular case - is the realm of the sexual. It seems as if today's crude materialism, with its clumsy, foolish hands, was destined to start from this area and declare the high, sacred areas to be reinterpreted in terms of the sexual area, as you have just seen with Boldt. Things are bad in this area, but we should not be surprised if immature minds are confused by the way things are treated in a literature that is increasingly flooding over us – I have to keep saying it over and over again.

It would be good to call upon history for help here too, and I would like to refer to a book, although I would like to make it clear that I do not agree with some of the nonsense in it. This is a reference to the “Memories and Discussions” that Moritz Benedikt wrote in his book “From My Life”, which was first published in Vienna in 1906. Moritz Benedikt is a gentleman who has grown old and has experienced a lot in terms of the development of scientific life in recent decades; from this point of view, it is extremely interesting to read the book. I would like to quote a passage where Moritz Benedikt talks about his visit to Florence. This visit took place in the 70s of the nineteenth century, which is worth noting. He writes

In Florence, I naturally made personal acquaintances this time, and the most valuable, with whom I maintained contact during visits to Florence and elsewhere, were Mantegazza and Moritz Schiff. Mantegazza was and is a very imposing figure; he instinctively recalled imposing Italian model baritones for the role of Don Juan. He is a master of the art of living. Florence owes its magnificent anthropological and ethnographic museum to this brilliant anthropologist. Mantegazza, who is a witty scientific psychologist, also wrote novels, and the hero of one of them is tuberculosis. His book “Gli amori dei uomini” has become the most popular, having been translated into all languages. No publisher wanted to be named, and the motto “Honny soit qui mal y pense” was emblazoned on the title page.

At that time, no publisher wanted to be named; today it is different!

I reproached him once and told him that I was one of those Honny etc. Mantegazza's book is the most original, ingenious and learned among its peers. But this topic should not be treated in a popular way. Mantegazza apologized to me with the fact that his salary was 5,000 lire without any other academic income. He therefore had to publish a lot, and in such a way that it would bring him a considerable income.

Here you have one of the causes of the sources that confuse our immature minds.

The French forensic psychologists have often and insistently dealt with this topic in the past without causing a scandal, and the same applies to a book by Tarnowsky in St. Petersburg; these authors wrote only for specialist circles.

The literature on sexual perversions grew later, and only British scholars refused to compete, making no secret of their indignation against such authors. When the well-known book by Krafft-Ebing appeared, Hack-Tuke told me that the committee of the British Medico-Psychological Association wanted to propose that the Vienna colleague be deprived of his honorary membership.

In the 1870s, the committee of the British Medico-Psychological Association wanted to propose withdrawing Krafft-Ebing's honorary membership because of his book.

I talked them out of it. I said that Krafft-Ebing had certainly written the book in good faith; he could not have known how far its content would penetrate into young people and even into girls' schools, and I could spare the man the shame. Of course, when the effect became clear, he should not have allowed further editions to be published. Today, the pupils of “higher girls' schools” are more enlightened about these topics of sexual perversity than we were as young doctors, and often I feel like introducing corporal punishment for those “emancipated” teachers who promote such enlightenment.

This was written in 1906 by the truly important criminal anthropologist Moritz Benedikt: that young doctors were recently less enlightened in certain matters than female students at secondary schools for girls are now! Apart from everything else, it seems that it might be better if those who profess such things turn to secondary schools for girls, since they do not want to be a convent, a Salvation Army or a girls' boarding school . No, you see, not even the comparison with the “girls' boarding school” applies, because these are indeed something like higher girls' schools; because according to Moritz Benedikt, you could find things there. So it would be very difficult to get out of the contradictions, which you have to get into if you are put in the position of having to talk about these things.

It would be taking this topic far too far if I wanted to expand it even further in the way I would like to. I just wanted to show you, so to speak, that in such a case we are dealing with people whose minds have been made confused, and we should not be surprised. For there is a broad trend of pseudoscience, and a broad trend, made by scientific authorities – who they really are. For Mantegazza is also a scientific authority, and it is fair to say that Florence owes its Anthropological Institute to him. But that is precisely the sad thing, that today's world has brought it about that all such institutes are in the hands of people who can handle so little true scientific methodology. And we ask ourselves: Should we allow this practice to enter our circles? Or is it not precisely our task to seriously oppose such practice? I think that in relation to this question, no one could actually be in doubt! Anyone who looks through what exists as “sexual literature” today will unfortunately only find this problem discussed in the most pseudo-scientific sense. I often had to drive in the car these days; but I could see from the car “lectures on sexual problems” etc. advertised on the notice boards. Just look at a single notice board: That is the topic of sexuality today, which is popular, which is popular. You can't say that by discussing this topic you are doing something unpopular; oh no, you can rather make yourself “unpopular” if you avoid the topic.

What have I actually wanted to say with all such things? I wanted to say first of all that we have a great need in these matters to see everything in the clear light – to see in the clear light that people like Mr. Ernst Boldt and like Casimir Zawadzki, who was mentioned to them the day before yesterday, including – I don't want to exclude him either – Hans Freimark, are basically poor fellows, pity the poor fellows who also want to write something; and because they have learned too little, they choose what is easiest to write about today – firstly because it is popular and people don't pay attention to the mistakes, and secondly because it is a field in which you can fool people about anything. Just read the second part of our friend Levy's book, the part that refers to Freimark's sexual literature. Basically, one can have nothing but pity for all these people; they can only evoke the feeling: How sad it is what can happen to immature souls today! And if it were not absolutely necessary to point out clearly everywhere where the fruits of what I have characterized emerge – because otherwise the nonsense takes hold – one would remain silent for the sake of these poor seduced people , for the sake of these poor people who also want to write something because they have not learned a trade in life either, one would remain silent for the sake of these poor people - and silently pass over such stuff.

We cannot do that. It is our duty to spread light and truth about things. It is our duty to emphasize that we will never allow ourselves to be forced to talk about this or that - we will not allow ourselves to be forced by anything other than our conviction, which is based on the truth. And how much and in what way I will ever speak about these things, I will make dependent only on my conviction - not on what authorities or immature minds find contemporary.

I understand the compassion and the feeling that one can have for such people. Therefore, I am not surprised that I received the following letter this morning; because I already said yesterday: I consider a person like Mr. Boldt to be honest – like Sophie in The Purple, the one hero of whom she says: “At least he is honest; he” – I will not repeat the word – “characterizes himself clearly enough.” I do not think Mr. Boldt is dishonest; I even subjectively grant him every good will. But where will we end up if we do not shine the light of truth on these things? Do we think we would silently accept a statement in a brochure that “Dr. Steiner has to don all kinds of masks and hides the truth”? What a treasure trove of information for anyone who wants to write new brochures about us! Should we then encourage this? Oh, I believe there are truly souls who would have preferred it if all these things had not been spoken about; and we could have experienced it that there would be all kinds of articles and brochures out there again, and even more so with the expression: “You see, this is said by a man who, even as one of the most loyal followers of Dr. Steiner, publicly professes it! What more could you want?"

I, my dear friends, want more! I want what I always want: not to be revered on the basis of authority, but to be understood! And if I am characterized as Mr. Boldt characterized me in his pamphlet “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?”, then, if one continues to speak of worship, one must have the most blind worship of authority and the most blind submission to authority. I thank you very much for such a belief in authority; I do not want it! Because I do not want any belief in authority! Again an example of how people who act in this way in the name of non-authoritarian belief are in harmony with themselves. So I understand a letter like the one I received this morning, instructing me to read the following to the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society:

My dear fellow thinkers!

Since it is unfortunately not possible for me to attend the General Assembly, I would like to take the liberty of responding in writing to the brochure by Ernst Boldt, which has been discussed several times here in the last lodge evenings. I cannot fully share the position taken towards the author of this pamphlet, although I too am of the opinion that the way in which Boldt presents his case is boorish with regard to the leading ladies, and therefore naturally has to be offensive. Unfortunately, he has only robbed himself of the success of his pamphlet, which contains many good things.

But even if, as I said, the form is nothing short of commendable, it does not seem to me to be sufficient reason to expel Mr. Boldt from our society, as requested; and I think that Theosophists in particular should be able to give credit to a youthful fire spirit and hothead. In any case, they are not the most dangerous opponents (insofar as one can speak of opposition at all here) who openly and honestly express their opinions, and if one wanted to exclude such people immediately, the necessary consequence of this would be to foster dishonesty on the one hand and a lack of critical thinking on the other. And surely we cannot want that!? If Dr. Steiner himself repeatedly calls on his followers to be unsparing in their criticism, then he found this fully compatible with the principle of having trust in his teaching and leadership, and I therefore cannot find the accusation that the booklet contains an insult to Dr. Steiner justified. On the contrary! Even the most cursory glance at it must make everyone realize what a high opinion the author has of Dr. Steiner despite his criticism. I feel obliged to say that I know Mr. Boldt to be one of the most enthusiastic and loyal supporters of the Theosophical movement, and that he always speaks with the greatest reverence and warmth for Dr. Steiner in regard to all the enemies of our great cause. In the good faith that this expression of opinion will not be held against me, I am

Theosophical greetings
Your humble
Ferdinand Freiherr von Paungarten
Munich, January 18, 1914.

As I said, I can understand such a mood - for the reason that people are not inclined everywhere to look into what is important. We must have the deepest, most earnest compassion for all the poor people who are seduced by what I have characterized; and finally: we should always dive down into the depths of existence. Here I would like to ask a question that may perhaps touch on the grotesque: is it really so very important whether people are ultimately outside or inside the Anthroposophical Society? Is it really so essential that we always reflect on the negative sides of these things? Perhaps we would achieve something if we took a more positive view of things!

My dear friends, the mistakes that are made are usually in completely different areas than where you look for them. But let us gradually learn to look for the mistakes in the right area. That is why we have to consciously make mistakes in our task. People may come into our circles for two reasons. One reason will be that these people are able representatives of our cause, and that they in turn want to stand up for this cause before the world. That is all well and good; we need not say any more about this reason. But on the other hand, there is another reason: people come to us who, above all, want to get from us what one can get in a spiritual movement today. We must give it to them; we must give it to them under all conditions, because we are obliged to do so. And even if some of them cause us trouble afterwards, we must give it to them; we cannot simply exclude everyone. Nevertheless, we never make the main mistakes when we exclude people, but we do make them – and we have to make them – when we admit people by accepting this or that person. Once people are inside, it doesn't matter much whether we let them in or put them out. That is not the point. What is important is that we present our case in a positive way. It is important that when someone on the outside, of the kind who fabricates their brochures against me, writes: “He is a hypocrite who only says what the 75 percent of members want to hear,” that the members point out the factual reasons why such a book has not been recommended in our Anthroposophical Society. Our members should point out that we know what we are doing and that we also know how to behave in the right way towards “fashionable science” because we know that it is a pseudo-science, an inferior science, that we do not want to propagate. Let us separate the matter from the personalities altogether! Let us try to do this. If we act in this way in public, when the public approaches us, as has been attempted, and if we derive all the writing from the whole structure of an inferior pseudo-science, if we give these things the necessary dismissal because of their unscientific nature - out of a higher scientific nature - when they knock at our doors, then we have fulfilled our duty, our impersonal positive duty. Let us change the negative approach in this case to a positive one.

Vollrath's case was completely different from Boldt's. And I would regret it if this difference had not been discovered. An honest, stubborn man with a bit of megalomania, seduced by what I have tried to characterize, comes to us in Mr. Boldt - seduced by what we must fight against in the most severe way. Not only today - we must always stand up with our whole personality when it comes to taking action against these things. But we need to know how we stand as an Anthroposophical Society! To do this, we need to know a number of things. For example, we need to know: How does the Society relate to the fact that the two Munich ladies who form the board of the first Munich branch initially did not display the announcement of Boldv's book and did not promote the book? That is how the matter began. We know from the letters that our esteemed and dear director Sellin was taken ill for speaking his mind to the young man. That is the matter. And we heard yesterday from director Sellin that he has also told the young man his opinion about the book before. Yesterday we heard from this place that Mr. Boldt's “Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House” was asked to take this book on commission. Miss Mücke rejected this with indignation. I also believe that Miss Mücke objected to the fact that someone was asking her to take this book on commission.

I will pick out these four examples; but there is one thing we need to know about these four things if we want to achieve something positive in this area. We can ignore Mr. Boldt, as we have ignored him so far. But we do need to know whether what is happening is happening in the interests of our members. We need to know where the dividing line lies between the 75 percent and the 25 percent who are clenching their fists in their pockets. Clarity and truth must prevail!

It is not without reason that I have asked not to be something like I was before, when I was limited as “General Secretary” of the section in terms of submitting proposals and the like because I was General Secretary. You have indeed elected me as the chairman of this meeting; but this only applies to this meeting; it is a purely administrative office that has nothing to do with the Society as such. In relation to the Society, I am a private individual, and I am therefore allowed to make proposals now.

I would now like to make a proposal that puts us on positive ground with regard to this point, which we have talked about so much. I cannot go into all the details of the many excellent things that people have said here; I have only set four “examples”. And I believe we must now ask ourselves the question: How should the two Munich ladies have acted when in 1911 the pretender approached them to propagate the cause and to lay out the announcement? — They should have acted as they did! And our conversation will surely have shown that they acted correctly. But one must know how society thinks about it.

Our friend, Director Sellin, did the right thing when he went to the man and made him aware of his immaturity. I am convinced that Mr. Sellin has the deepest compassion for the deeply honest Mr. Boldt.

And Miss Mücke certainly has nothing against Mr. Boldt's personality; she is probably indifferent to it. She has expressed her indignant rejection of the brochure for factual reasons.

But all these are manifestations of the will of individuals. It is important that we clarify our position on such matters, that we put the positive above all else in relation to this matter. Therefore, I would like to ask you to consider the following proposal:

The General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society, which has been meeting in Berlin since January 18, 1914, declares to the Executive Council of the Working Group I in Munich that it is in full agreement with the latter's attitude towards the 1911 essay “Sexual Problems in the Light of Natural Science and Spiritual Science” by Ernst Boldt 1911 – that after the negotiations that have been conducted on widespread pseudo-science of the present day, it has come to the conclusion that it is in the interest of truly spiritual cultural interest to protect such a position of the two board members by the fullest confidence of the General Assembly. This trust and the recognition for the rejection at the time is expressed to the board of the Working Group I in Munich, as is the same to Director Sellin for his fatherly advice, which he gave to those who were going astray scientifically in the past and are doing so again - The assembly expresses its agreement with the rejection of the brochure “Theosophy or Antisophy?” by Miss Mücke, the director of the “Philosophical Theosophical Publishing House”.

My dear friends, those of you who will adopt this resolution will have expressed in a positive way how you feel about these matters – and need do no more than continue what has been done so far in relation to this matter.

The “resolution” will be read again in the above version.

Dr. Steiner: If we adopt this resolution, then we will know how the matter is viewed, and we will also have addressed the right people. Because it will gradually become more and more necessary that those who have to act in our society can also know whether or not they have the confidence of the members; otherwise it will always be repeated that one - well, that one “elects” the people again, but everywhere this or that is “rumored” here and there. It does no harm if we occasionally express to those who have offices to administer that we agree with them. It does no harm if we occasionally openly confess it to the world. I would not want to fail to explicitly express to Mr. Boldt that I am personally extremely sorry that the whole thing happened to him, and that I can put myself in the shoes of someone who has read too much confusing stuff and then comes to such arguments as the good man has done.

Since no one wishes to speak about this resolution, we will vote on it: It is adopted without any opposing votes.

Dr. Steiner: And this time it is necessary that I also ask those who voted neither for nor against, who thus sat with clenched fists in their pockets both times, who thus belong to the 25 percent of Mr. Boldt's group, to raise their hands.

No one raises their hand.

Dr. Steiner: I must therefore note that no one from the 25 percent has appeared here. Of course, what we have decided here regarding the Boldt proposal in no way prejudices the decision of the Munich Working Group I. The group is autonomous and can do as it wishes. We have only decided for the “Anthroposophical Society”.

Ms. Stinde: The Munich group has not yet made any decision. It is true that a motion for expulsion was tabled, but I suggested waiting until after the General Assembly and then putting the motion forward again because many members had not even read the brochure. I asked that the brochure be made available so that everyone could inform themselves and take a stand when we returned. Mr. Boldt has not yet been expelled, and it is up to the Munich group to decide whether or not they want to expel him. I said at the time that we would quietly accept the insults that Mr. Boldt had poured out on the board in his brochure, that he could write many more such writings, and that the members probably think the same way and therefore would not expel him yet. The reason why expulsion was requested was the gross insults against Dr. Steiner, and on this point we do not yet know what will happen. - I would also like to thank you for the trust that has been expressed to us. But I have to say: even if you had not approved us - we could not have acted differently than we did.

Mrs. Peelen: In his last document, Mr. Boldt pointed out that the Koblenz Lodge had recommended its members to buy his book. This is only half the truth; and because it could be construed as an indictment of the Munich ladies' actions, I feel compelled to say a few words on the matter.

Mr. Boldt's father had been a member of the Koblenz lodge for years. He honored us, my husband and me, with his trust and told us a lot about his—we may say—unfortunate son, who also caused him serious concern in terms of his health. So we had to bear with him and also learned from him that his son was working on a larger work. He also read us letters from him in which the son wrote in detail about his work and also mentioned what we had just heard: that Dr. Steiner himself had told him to wait another ten years before publishing, because he was still too young. In short, we followed the creation of the book with our father and shared in his suffering. Now the book was published. Naturally, our father brought it to us beaming with joy, so to speak, and immediately gave it to the lodge as a gift. We had not read the book, knew nothing of its content, nor did we know that Mr. Boldt – as he used the expression – had been “boycotted”, so to speak. But when our father put the book on the table, I felt it necessary to say a few words about it. Mr. Boldt probably took this the wrong way and repeated it as a half-truth, as if we had recommended his book to the members. But none of our members have read the book; it is still untouched in the library to this day.

Director Sellin: I would like to take the liberty of following up on Ms Stinde's comments: I did not simply make a general request for expulsion, but rather I gave Mr. Boldt the opportunity to withdraw his insults. Exclusion was made dependent on this. In the preface to his brochure, Mr. Boldt then said that if this writing did not receive the proper recognition, he would incorporate it into a larger work. That is a threat. Therefore, a somewhat forceful approach had to be taken. This took the form of him having to take back what he had said. Dr. Steiner is quite right when he says that I personally have nothing against Mr. Boldt. Mr. Boldt is ill and suffers from lung disease; I have the warmest sympathy for him. And when he suffered so severely this summer, I often went to him and helped him with my modest healing powers. He also said that I had brought him some relief. And during the conversation in question, I did not speak in a frivolous manner, but I calmly told him what he had done wrong. I also said to him, because he constantly quotes Nietzsche: “Leave us alone with your quotations. It sounds as if Nietzsche were the supreme theosophist for us, to whom we have to look up!” I told him many bitter things, for example: “If I had received such a manuscript earlier in my position as editor, it would have gone straight into the wastepaper basket!” But I told him this in a very calm manner. Now that he has heard this judgment, he may now reflect. He will gradually realize that he will not find any support in our society with his fantasies about sexual problems.

Dr. Steiner: It is clear that in this case we really have to stand on the ground that is appropriate for a spiritual scientific movement. I did not say in vain that Mr. Boldt is no different today than he has always been since he has been with us, that he will not be a different person when he is inside or outside - just as Zawadzki was exactly the same when he was still in the Society; he was no different than he is now that he is outside. Of course, he writes differently now than he would write if he were in society; but that doesn't matter, he is not a different person. But we should pay a little attention to the nature of the human soul; that is what matters. And if you consider that over the years a great deal has been done to help Mr. Boldt, to give him advice in a wide variety of directions, so that if the young man waited ten years and learned in those ten years what he had not yet learned while writing his book, then he could really believe that he would achieve something. I really believed at the time that after ten years he would regret – I did not say that lightly – having written such a thing, because he would have learned something.

When you consider this, why should we today have to exclude from society someone who behaves in this way? This case is quite different from those in which we have resorted to something else in the past. So I believe that we should refrain from excluding Mr. Boldt. And if in the future he attaches importance to participating with the girls' boarding schools, Salvation Army and convents in what he calls “the fruits of spiritual science,” I believe that we will enable him to do so with the same love as we have done so far. But if he comes at us again with his writing in the future, we will be able to draw some conclusions from these negotiations after what we have experienced.

Mr. Bauer reads the following resolution:

The Second General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society rejects with indignation the way in which Mr. Boldt has spoken about Dr. Steiner in his brochure “Theosophy or Anti-Theosophy?” as a serious insult to both Dr. Steiner and the Society.

Mr. Bauer: If trust has already been expressed to those who have worked positively, then something positive should also be expressed on our part – which could perhaps be poured into other forms – about how we stand in relation to Dr. Steiner regarding the insults heaped upon him in this brochure through the quotations and the whole way of presenting them. So the intention of this resolution was to achieve a kind of rallying cry, to show how we stand before and after - and even more so after - with complete trust and loyalty to the teacher of our movement.

Dr. Steiner: I think we need to have variety in our negotiations, and I do not think it is appropriate to take up all the time with one part. Therefore, we now want to insert something else and postpone the business negotiations until tomorrow morning.

The conclusion of the protocol will follow in the next issue of the messages.

On this occasion I should like to be allowed to include certain personal references among matters of objective history, because what must be added to the subject dealt with in the lecture yesterday is necessary for our study today and after careful consideration I believe it is right to include more details.

I want, first of all, to speak of a particular experience connected with our Movement. You know that outwardly we began by linking ourselves—but outwardly only—with the Theosophical Society and that we founded the so-called German Section of that Society in the autumn of 1902, in Berlin. In the course of the year 1904 we were visited in various towns of Germany by prominent members of the Theosophical Society, and the episode from which I want to start occurred during one of these visits. The first edition of my book Theosophy had just been published—in the spring of 1904—and the periodical Lucifer-Gnosis was appearing. In that periodical I had published articles dealing with the problem of Atlantis and the character of the Atlantean epoch. These articles were afterwards published as a separate volume entitled Unsere atlantischen Vorfahren (Our Atlantean Forefathers).¹ The articles contained a number of communications about the Atlantean world and the earlier, so-called Lemurian epoch. Several articles of this kind had therefore already appeared, and just at the time when the members of the Theosophical Society were visiting us a number of the periodical containing important communications was ready, and had been sent to subscribers. A member highly respected in the Theosophical Society had read these articles dealing with Atlantis, and asked me a question. And it is this question which I want to mention as a noteworthy experience in connection with what was said in the lecture yesterday.

This member of the Theosophical Society, who at the time of its founding by Blavatsky had taken part in most vital proceedings, a member, therefore, who had shared to the full in the activities of the Society, put the question: “By what means was this information about the world of Atlantis obtained?”—The question was very significant because until then this member was acquainted only with the methods by which such information was obtained in the Theosophical Society, namely, by means of a certain kind of mediumistic investigation. Information already published in the Theosophical Society at that time was based upon investigations connected in a certain respect with mediumship. That is to say, someone was put into a kind of mediumistic state—it could not be called a trance but was a mediumistic state—and conditions were established which made it possible for the person, although not in the state of ordinary consciousness, to communicate certain information; about matters beyond the reach of ordinary consciousness. That is how the communications had been made at that time and the member of the Theosophical Society in question who thought that information about prehistoric events could be gained only in this way, enquired what personality we had among us whom we could use as a medium for such investigations.

As I had naturally refused to adopt this method of research and had insisted from the outset upon strictly individual investigation, and as what I had discovered at that time was the result entirely of my own, personal research, the questioner did not understand me at all, did not understand that it was quite a different matter from anything that had been done hitherto in the Theosophical Society. The path I had appointed for myself, however, was this: To reject all earlier ways of investigation and—admittedly by means of super-sensible perception—to investigate by making use only of what can be revealed to the one who is himself the investigator.

In accordance with the position I have to take in the spiritual Movement, no other course is possible for me than to carry into strict effect those methods of investigation which are suitable for the modern world and for modern humanity. There is a very significant difference, you see, between the methods of investigation practised in Spiritual Science and those that were practised in the Theosophical Society. All communications received by that Society from the spiritual world—including for example, those given in Scott-Elliot's book on Atlantis—came entirely in the way described, because that alone was considered authoritative and objective. In this connection, the introduction of our spiritual-scientific direction of work was, from the very beginning something entirely new in the Theosophical Society. It took thorough account of modern scientific methods which needed to be elaborated and developed to make ascent to the spiritual realms possible.

This discussion was significant. It took place in the year 1904, and showed how great the difference was between what is pursued in Spiritual Science and what was being pursued by the rest of the Theosophical Society; it showed that what we have in Spiritual Science was unknown in the Theosophical Society at that time and that the Theosophical Society was continuing the methods which had been adopted as a compromise between the exotericists and the esotericists. Such was the inevitable result of the developments I described in the lecture yesterday. I said that seership gradually died away and that there remained only a few isolated seers in whom mediumistic states could be induced and from whom some information might be obtained. In this way, “Occult Orders”, as they were called, came into being, Orders in which there were, it is true, many who had been initiated, but no seers. Among the prevailing materialism these Orders were faced with the necessity of having to cultivate and elaborate methods which had long been in vogue, and instruments for research had to be sought among persons in whom mediumistic faculties—that is to say, atavistic clairvoyance—could still be developed and produce some result. In these circles there were far-reaching teachings and, in addition, symbols. Those, however, who wished to engage in actual research were obliged to rely on the help of persons possessed of atavistic clairvoyance. These methods were then continued in a certain way in the Theosophical Society, and the compromise of which I spoke yesterday really amounted to nothing else than that in the Lodges and Orders experiments were made whereby spiritual influences might be projected into the world. The desire was to demonstrate that influences from the spiritual world are exercised upon man.

Procedures adopted in esoteric schools had therefore been brought into action. This attempt was a fiasco, for whereas it had been expected that through the mediums genuine spiritual laws prevailing in the surrounding world would be brought to light, the only result was that nearly all the mediums fell into the error of supposing that everything emanated from the dead, and they embellished it into communications alleged to have been made to them by the dead. This led to a very definite consequence.—If the older members among you will think back to the earliest period of the Theosophical Society and study the literature produced under its aegis, you will find that the astral world—that is to say, the life immediately after death—was described in books by Mrs. Besant which merely reproduced what is contained in Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine or was to be read in books by Leadbeater. This was also the origin of everything that was given out concerning man's life between death and a new birth.

If you compare what is said in my book Theosophy about the Soul-world and the Spirit-world—to begin with, people were always trying to refute it but I think that today a sufficient number are able to think objectively on the subject—you will find very considerable differences, precisely because in regard to these domains too the methods of investigation were different. For all the methods of research employed in the Theosophical Society, even including those used for investigating the life of the dead, originated from the procedures of which I have spoken.

So you see, what the Theosophical Society had to offer the world to begin with was in a certain respect a continuation of the attempt made by the occultists previously. In what other respect this was not the case we shall hear in a moment. Taken as a whole, however, it was a continuation of the attempt which, since the middle of the nineteenth century, had been the outcome of the compromise made between the exotericists and the esotericists, except that later on things were made rather more esoteric by the Theosophical Society. Whereas the previous attempt had been to present the mediums to the world, the members of the Theosophical Society preferred to work in their inner circle only and to give out merely the results. That was an important difference, for there people were going back to a method of investigation established as a universal custom by the various Orders before the middle of the nineteenth century. I bring this forward because I must sharply emphasise the fact that with the advent of our Spiritual Science an entirely new method, one which takes full account of the work and attitude of modern science, was introduced into the occult Movement.

Now as I told you, the compromise reached between the exotericists and the esotericists to convince the materialistic world through mediums of all types that a spiritual world exists, had been a fiasco, a fiasco inasmuch as the mediums always spoke of a world which under the existing conditions simply could not be accessible to them, namely, the world of the dead. The mediums spoke of inspirations alleged to have been received from a world in which the dead are living. The situation was that the attempt made by the exotericists and the esotericists had not achieved the result they had really desired.

How had such a state of affairs come about? What was the outcome of the remarkable attempt that had been made as a result of the compromise? The outcome was that initiates of a certain kind had wrested the power from the hands of those who had made the compromise. The initiates of the extreme left-wing had taken possession of the proceedings which had been countenanced in the way described. They acquired great influence, because what was obtained through the mediums did not spring from the realm of the dead at all, but from the realm of the living—from initiates who had put themselves either in distant or close rapport with the mediums. Because everything was brought about through these initiates and through the mediums, it was coloured by the theories of those who wished to get the mediums under their control. The desire of those among the exotericists and esotericists who had made the compromise was to bring home to men that there is indeed a spiritual world. That is what they wanted to impress. But when those who thought themselves capable of holding the guiding reins let them slip, the occultists of the extreme left-wing took possession of them and endeavoured by means of the mediums—if I may use this tautology—to communicate their theories and their views to the world.

For those who had made the compromise for the good of humanity, the position was disastrous, because they felt more and more strongly that false teachings about the super-sensible were being brought into the world.—Such was the position in the development of occultism in the forties, fifties and even in the sixties of the nineteenth century.

As long as deliberation still continued in the circles of honest occultists, the situation was sinister. For the further the occultists inclined to the left, the less were they concerned to promote that which alone is justifiable, namely, the universal-human. In occultism a man belongs to the “left” when he tries to achieve some ultimate goal with the help of what he knows in the way of occult teaching. A man belongs to the “right” in occultism when he desires that goal purely for its own sake. The middle party were in favour of making exoteric the esoteric knowledge needed in our time to promote the interests of humanity universal. But those who belong to the extreme “left” are those who combine special aims of their own with what they promulgate as occult teaching. A man is on the “left” to the extent to which he pursues special aims, leads people to the spiritual world, gives them all kinds of demonstrations of it, and instils into them in an illicit way, promptings that simply help to bring these special aims to fulfilment. The leading circle of modern initiates was faced with this situation. It was realised that the control had fallen into the hands of people who were pursuing their own special aims.—Such was the state of affairs confronting the esotericists and the exotericists who had made the compromise referred to.

Then it was “heard”—the expression may not be quite exact but absolutely exact words cannot be found because one is dependent on external language and intercourse among occultists is different from anything that external language is capable of describing—it was “heard” that an event of importance for the further continuation of spiritual development on the Earth must be at hand. I can describe this event only in the following way.—In the research carried on by the individual Orders, they had preferred for a long time to make less use of female mediums. In the strict Orders, where it was desired to take the right standpoint, no female mediums were ever used for obtaining revelations from the spiritual worlds.

Now the female organism is adapted by nature to preserve atavistic clairvoyance longer than the male organism. Whereas male mediums were becoming almost unknown, female mediums were still to be found and a great number were used while the compromise still held. But now there came into the occultists' field of observation a personality who possessed mediumistic faculties in the very highest degree. This was Madame H. P. Blavatsky, a personality very specially adapted through certain subconscious parts of her organism to draw a great deal, a very great deal, from the spiritual world. And now think of what possibilities this opened up for the world! At one of the most crucial points in the development of occultism, a personality appeared who through the peculiar nature of her organism was able to draw many, many things from the spiritual world by means of her subconscious faculties.

An occultist who at that time was alert to the signs of the times could not but say to himself: Now, at the right moment, a personality has appeared who through her peculiar organic constitution can produce the very strongest evidence of ancient, traditional teaching existing among us in the form of symbols only. It was emphatically the case that here was a personality who simply because of her organic make-up afforded the possibility of again demonstrating many things which for a long time had been known only through tradition. This was the fact confronting the occultists just after the fiasco which had led to a veritable impasse. Let us be quite clear on the point: Blavatsky was regarded as a personality from whom, as out of an electrically-charged Leyden jar, the electric sparks—occult truths—could be produced.

It would lead too far if I were to tell you of all the intermediate links, but certain matters of importance must be mentioned. A really crucial moment had arrived which I can indicate in the following way; although expressed somewhat symbolically, it is in strict accordance with the facts.—The occultists of the right-wing, who in conjunction with the middle party had agreed to the compromise, could say to themselves: It may well be that something very significant can be forthcoming from this personality. But those belonging to the left-wing could also say with assurance: It is possible to achieve something extremely effective in the world with the help of this personality!—And now a veritable battle was waged around her, on the one side with the honest purpose of having much of what the initiates knew, substantiated; on the other side, for the sake of far-reaching, special aims.

I have often referred to the early periods in the life of H. P. Blavatsky, and have shown that, to begin with, attempts were made to get a great deal of knowledge from her. But in a comparatively short time the situation rapidly changed, owing to the fact that she soon came into the sphere of those who belonged, as it were, to the left. And although H. P. Blavatsky was very well aware of what she herself was able to see—for she was especially significant in that she was not simply a passive medium, but had a colossal memory for everything that revealed itself to her from the higher worlds—nevertheless she was inevitably under the influence of certain personalities when she wanted to evoke manifestations from the spiritual world. And so she always made reference to what ought really to have been left aside—she always referred to the “Mahatmas”. They may be there in the background but this is not a factor when it is a question of furthering the interests of humanity.

And so it was not long before H. P. Blavatsky was having to face a decision. A hint came to her from a quarter belonging to the side of the left that she was a personality of key importance. She knew very well what it was that she saw, but she was not aware of how significant she was as a personality. This was first disclosed to her by the left-wing. But she was fundamentally honest by nature and after this hint had been given her from a quarter of which, at the beginning, she could hardly have approved, because of her fundamental honesty, she tried on her side to reach a kind of compromise with an occult Brotherhood in Europe. Something very fine might have resulted from this, because through her great gift of mediumship she would have been able to furnish confirmations of really phenomenal importance in connection with what was known to the initiates from theories and symbolism. But she was not only thoroughly honest, she was also what is called in German a “Frechdachs”—a “cheeky creature”. And that she certainly was! She had in her nature a certain trait that is particularly common in those inclined to mediumship, namely, a lack of consistency in external behaviour. Thus there were moments when she could be very audacious and in one of these fits of audacity she imposed on the occult Brotherhood which had decided to make the experiment with her, terms which could not be fulfilled. But as she knew that a great deal could be achieved through her instrumentality, she decided to take up the matter with other Brotherhoods. And so she approached an American Brotherhood. This American Brotherhood was one where the majority had always wavered between the right and the left, but at all events had the prospect of discovering things of tremendous significance concerning the spiritual worlds.

Now this was the period when intense interest was being taken in H. P. Blavatsky by other Brothers of the left. Already at that time these left-wing Brothers had their own special interests. At the moment I do not propose to speak about these interests. If it were necessary, I could do so at some future time. For the present it is enough to say that they were Brothers who had their special interests, above all, interests of a strongly political character; they envisaged the possibility of achieving something of a political nature in America by means of persons who had first been put through an occult preparation. The consequence was that at a moment when H. P. Blavatsky had already acquired an untold amount of occult knowledge through having worked with the American Lodge, she had to be expelled from it, because it was discovered that there was something political in the background. So things couldn't continue.

The situation was now extremely difficult, tremendously difficult. For what had been undertaken in order to call the world's attention to the existence of a spiritual world, had in a certain respect to be withdrawn by the serious occultists because it had been a fiasco. It was necessary to show that no reliance could be placed on what was being presented by Spiritualism, in spite of the fact that it had many adherents. It was only materialistic, it was sheer dilettantism. The only scholarly persons who concerned themselves with it were those who wanted to get information in an external, materialistic way about a spiritual world. In addition, H. P. Blavatsky had made it clear to the American Lodge on her departure that she had no intention whatever of withholding from the world what she knew. And she knew a great deal, for she was able to remember afterwards what had been conveyed through her. She had any amount of audacity!

Good advice is costly, as the saying goes. What was to be done? And now something happened to which I have referred on various occasions, for parts of what I am saying today in this connection I have said in other places. Something that is called in occultism “Occult imprisonment” was brought about.² H. P. Blavatsky was put into occult imprisonment. Through acts of a kind that can be performed only by certain Brothers—and are performed, moreover, only by Brotherhoods who allow themselves to engage in illicit arts—through certain acts and machinations they succeeded in compelling H. P. Blavatsky to live for a time in a world in which all her occult knowledge was driven inwards. Think of it in this way.—The occult knowledge was in her aura; as the result of certain processes that were set in operation, it came about that for a long time everything in this aura was thrown back into her soul. That is to say, all the occult knowledge she possessed was to be imprisoned; she was to be isolated as far as the outer world and her occultism were concerned.

This happened at the time when H. P. Blavatsky might have become really dangerous through the spreading of teachings which are among the most interesting of all within the horizon of the Occult Movement. Certain Indian occultists now came to know of the affair, occultists who on their part tended strongly towards the left, and whose prime interest it was to turn the occultism which could be given to the world through H. P. Blavatsky in a direction where it could influence the world in line with their special aims. Through the efforts of these Indian occultists who were versed in the appropriate practices, she was released from this imprisonment within her aura; she was free once again and could now use her spiritual faculties in the right way.

From this you can get an idea of what had taken place in this soul, and of what combination of factors all that came into the world through H. P. Blavatsky, was composed. But because certain Indian occultists had gained the merit of freeing her from her imprisonment, they had her in their power in a certain respect. And there was simply no possibility of preventing them from using her to send out into the world that part of occultism which suited their purposes. And so something very remarkable was “arranged”—if I may use a clumsy word. What was arranged can be expressed approximately as follows.—The Indian occultists wanted to assert their own special aims in opposition to those of the others, and for this purpose they made use of H. P. Blavatsky. She was given instructions to place herself under a certain influence, for in her case the mediumistic state had always to be induced from outside—and this also made it possible to bring all kinds of things into the world through her.

About this time she came to be associated with a person who from the beginning had really no directly theosophical interests but a splendid talent for organisation, namely, Colonel Olcott. I cannot say for certain, but I surmise that there had already been some kind of association at the time when Blavatsky belonged to the American Lodge. Then, under the mask, as it were, of an earlier individuality, there appeared in the field of Blavatsky's spiritual vision a personality who was essentially the vehicle of what it was desired from India to launch into the world. Some of you may know that in his book People from the Other World, Colonel Olcott has written a great deal about this individuality who now appeared in H. P. B.'s field of vision under the mask of an earlier individuality designated as Mahatma Kut-Humi. You know, perhaps, that Colonel Olcott has written a very great deal about this Mahatma Kut-Humi, among other things that in the year 1874 this Mahatma Kut-Humi had declared what individuality was living in him. He had indicated that this individuality was John King by name, a powerful sea-pirate of the seventeenth century. This is to be read in Olcott's book People from the Other World.

In the Mahatma Kut-Humi, therefore, we have to do with the spirit of a bold sea-pirate of the seventeenth century who then, in the nineteenth century, was involved in significant manifestations made with the help of H. P. Blavatsky and others too. He brought tea-cups from some distance away, he let all kinds of records be produced from the coffin of H. P. B.'s father,³ and so forth. From Colonel Olcott's account, therefore, it must be assumed that these were deeds of the bold pirate of the seventeenth century.

Now Colonel Olcott speaks in a remarkable way about this John King. He says that perhaps here one had to do, not with the spirit of this pirate but possibly with the creation of an Order which, while depending for its results upon unseen agents, has its existence among physical men. According to this account, Kut-Humi might have been a member of an Order which engaged in practices such as I have described and the results of which were to be communicated to the world through H. P. Blavatsky but bound up with all kinds of special interests. These were that a specifically Indian teaching should be spread in the world.

This was approximately the situation in the seventies of the nineteenth century. We therefore have evidence of very significant happenings which must be seen in a single framework when we are considering the whole course of events in the Occult Movement. It was this same John King who, by means of “precipitation”, produced Sinnett's books, the first one, Letters about the Occult World and, especially, Esoteric Buddhism.

This book Esoteric Buddhism came into my hands very shortly after publication—a few weeks in fact—and I could see from it that efforts were being made, especially from a certain quarter, to give an entirely materialistic form to the spiritual teachings. If you were to study Esoteric Buddhism with the insight you have acquired in the course of time, you would be astonished at the materialistic forms in which facts are there presented. It is materialism in its very worst forms. The spiritual world is presented in an entirely materialistic way. No one who gets hold of this book can shake himself free from materialism. The subject-matter is very subtle but in Sinnett's book one cannot get away from materialism, however lofty the heights to which it purports to carry one. And so those who were now H. P. B.'s spiritual “bread-givers”—forgive the materialistic analogy—not only had special aims connected with Indian interests, but they also made trenchant concessions to the materialistic spirit of the age. And the influence which Sinnett's book had upon very large numbers of people shows how correctly they had speculated.⁴ I have met scientists who were delighted with this book because everything fitted in with their stock-intrade and yet they were able to conceive of the existence of a spiritual world. The book satisfied all the demands of materialism and yet made it possible to meet the need for a spiritual world and to acknowledge its existence.

Now you know that in the further development of these happenings, H. P. Blavatsky wrote The Secret Doctrine in the eighties of the nineteenth century, and in 1891 she died. The Secret Doctrine is written in the same style as Esoteric Buddhism, except that it puts right certain gross errors which any occultist could at once have corrected. I have often spoken about the peculiar features of Blavatsky's book and need not go into the matter again now. Then, on the basis of what had come about in this way, the Theosophical Society was founded and, fundamentally speaking, retained its Indian trend. Although no longer with the intensity that had prevailed under the influence of John King, the Indian trend persisted. What I have now described to you was, as it were, a new path which made great concessions to the materialism of the age, but was nevertheless intended to show humanity that a spiritual world as well as the outer, material world must be taken into account.

Many details would have to be added to what I have now said, but time is too short. I will go on at once to show you how our spiritual-scientific Movement took its place in the Movement which was already in existence.

You know that we founded the German Section of the Theosophical Society in October, 1902. In the winters of both 1900 and 1901 I had already given lectures in Berlin which may be called “theosophical” lectures, for they were held in the circle and at the invitation of the Berlin Theosophists. The first lectures were those which ultimately became the book entitled, Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens (translated into English with the title, Mysticism and Modern Thought). These lectures were given to a circle of Members of the Theosophical Society, of which I myself was not then a member. It must be borne in mind at the outset that one had to do with teaching that was already widespread and had led numbers of people to turn their minds to the spiritual world. Thus all over the world there were people who to a certain extent were prepared and who wanted to know something about the spiritual world. Of the things I have told you today they knew nothing, had not the slightest inkling of them. But they had a genuine longing for the spiritual world, and for that reason had attached themselves to the Movement in which this longing could be satisfied. And so in this Movement there were to be found persons whose hearts were longing for knowledge of the spiritual world.

You know that in a grotesque and ludicrous way I was taxed with having made a sudden turn-about from an entirely different world-view which had been presented in my book Welt- and Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert.⁵ The first part had appeared in February 1900, and the second part in the following October. I was taxed with having suddenly changed sides and having gone over to Theosophy. Now I have often told you that not only had Sinnett's book, for example, come into my hands immediately after its publication, but that I had also had close associations with the young Theosophical Society in Vienna. It is right that you should understand what the circumstances were at the time, and I want also to give you a very brief; objective view of the antecedents of the German Section. There were people in the Theosophical Society who longed to know of the spiritual world, and I had given lectures in their circle. These were the lectures on Mysticism and the Mystics which I gave in a small room in the house of Count Brockdorff. At that time I was not myself a member. The preface to the printed volume containing these lectures is dated September 1901. In the summer of 1901 I had collected the lectures given the previous winter, into the book published in September 1901 under the title Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichin Geistlebens.⁶

I will read the first lines of the preface to this book:

“What is stated in this work formed the content of lectures given by me last winter in the Theosophical Library in Berlin. I was invited by Count and Countess Brockdorff to speak on mysticism to an audience seriously interested in the subject. Ten years earlier I should not have ventured to comply with such a request. Not that the world of ideas which I am now bringing to expression was not already within me. This world of ideas is presented in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, published by Emil Felber, Berlin, 1894.—But to express this world of ideas as I am doing today and so to make it the basis of study as in this present book, requires something quite different from a mere firm conviction of its intellectual truth. It requires intimate communion with this world of ideas such as can be achieved only after many years. Only now, after this intimate communion has been vouchsafed to me, do I venture to speak in the way that will be apparent in this book.”

Now you can conceive why I had allowed the contents of lectures given in very different circles to find a place in an occult movement. In the first edition of the book Welt-and Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, the following is contained in the chapter about Schelling I quote from the first edition, which was dedicated to Ernst Haeckel and was published in February, 1900. I will read a few passages from the book of which people have said that it sprang from a world-view quite different from that presented in the book on Mysticism.—

“Now there are two possible ways of describing a being which is at the same time Spirit and Nature. The one is: I exhibit the laws of nature which are active in Reality. Or, I show how the spirit acts in order to come to these natural laws. One and the same thing guides me in both cases. The one shows me conformity to law as it is active in nature; the other shows me what the spirit does in order to represent to itself this same conformity to law. In the one case I pursue natural science, in the other spiritual science. How these two are connected, Schelling describes in an interesting way. He says: ‘The necessary tendency of all natural science is to ascend from nature to intelligence. This and nothing else underlies the endeavour to bring theory into natural phenomena. The highest perfection of natural science would be the complete spiritualisation of all natural laws into laws of observation and thought. Phenomena (the material) must completely vanish, and laws alone (the formal )remain. Hence it happens that the more conformity to law is brought into nature herself the more the veils vanish, phenomena themselves become more spiritual and finally disappear altogether. Optical phenomena are nothing more than a geometry whose lines are drawn by light, and the light itself is already an ambiguous materiality. In the phenomena of magnetism all traces of matter are lost, and in those of gravity, which even the natural scientist is only able to accept as a direct spiritual operation—an effect at a distance—nothing remains but its laws, whose transactions are in the vastness of the mechanism of the celestial movements. The perfect theory of nature would be that by virtue of which nature as a whole is resolved into an intelligence. The lifeless and unconscious products of nature are only nature's abortive attempts to reflect herself; so-called lifeless nature is, however, an unripe intelligence, hence in its phenomena the intelligent character still peeps through, but without consciousness. Nature only reaches her highest aim—to become herself wholly object—in her highest and final reflection, which is none other than Man, or more generally, what we call Reason, through which nature first completely returns into herself, and by which it becomes manifest that she, nature, is originally identical with what is known in us as intelligence and consciousness.’ ”

And referring further to Schelling, I say a little later:

“To Schelling, with his progressive thought, the study of the world was the study of God, or Theosophy. He already stood completely on this ground when, in 1809, he brought out his Philosophic Enquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom and allied Matters. All questions concerning conceptions of the world now come to him in a new light. If all things are divine, how comes it that there is evil in the world, since God can only be perfect Goodness? If the soul of man is in God, how comes it that she follows her own self-seeking interests? And if it is God who acts in me, how can I, who therefore in no wise act as an independent being, yet be called free?”

This view of the world is not put aside.—And I say further:

“With such views, Schelling proved himself to be the boldest, most courageous of those philosophers who allowed themselves to be stimulated by Kant into adopting an idealistic view of the world. Under the influence of this stimulus, man has relinquished philosophising about things lying beyond what the human senses alone and the thought concerning such observations, utter. Men try to rest content with what lies within the field of observation and thought. But whereas Kant drew from this the inevitable conclusion that man can know nothing of things ‘beyond’, his successors declared: As observation and thought indicate nothing divine in that ‘beyond’, they are themselves the divine. Among those who declared this, Schelling was the most forceful. Fichte gathered everything into selfhood; Schelling extended selfhood over everything. He did not, like Fichte, wish to show that selfhood is everything, but, on the contrary, that everything is selfhood. And Schelling had the courage to declare not only the ego's content of ideas to be divine, but the whole human spirit-personality. He not only made the human Reason divine, but the content of human life a divine, personal entity. One calls an explanation of the world Anthropomorphism which, starting from man, imagines that underlying the whole course of the world there is a being who guides that course as man guides his own actions. Those, too, who postulate a general cosmic Intelligence as the basis of events, they too explain the world in the anthropomorphic sense. For this cosmic Intelligence is none other than the human Reason which has been made general and universal. When Goethe says: ‘Man never realises how anthropomorphic he is’, his mind is engrossed with the thought that concealed anthropomorphisms are contained in the simplest utterances we make about nature. When we say, ‘a body rolls further because another has struck it’, we form such an idea from out of our ego. We strike a body and it rolls on. If we see that a ball moves towards another and this other rolls on further, we think of the striking of the second by the first as analogous to the striking effect which we ourselves exercise. Ernst Haeckel spoke the anthropomorphic dogma: ‘divine world-creation and divine world-government resemble the mechanical productions of an ingenious technician or engineer and the State-administration of a wise ruler. The Lord God as Creator, Sustainer and Ruler of the Cosmos is here conceived as thoroughly human in his thinking and acting.’ Schelling had the courage to lead anthropomorphism to its ultimate consequences. He declared man and his whole life-content to be divine; and as not only the rational belongs to this life-content, but also the irrational, he was able also to explain the existence of irrationality in the world. To this end he had to extend the rational views of the reasoning mind by adding another, whose origin does not lie in thinking. This—in his opinion—higher view, he calls ‘Positive Philosophy’. ‘This’, he says, ‘is the really free philosophy; anyone who does not desire it may leave it alone; I leave everyone free; I say only that if anyone desires, for instance, to ascertain the actual course of things, to have a free world-creation and so forth, he can succeed only along the path of a philosophy such as this. If rationalistic philosophy satisfies him and he desires nothing further, let him content himself with that, but he must give up trying to find in rationalistic philosophy what unfortunately it cannot have within it, namely, the real God and the reality underlying the course of things, and a free relationship of God to the world.’ Negative philosophy will ‘remain pre-eminently the philosophy for the schools, Positive philosophy, the philosophy for life. Only through both together will there come the consecration that man may expect from philosophy. It is well known that the Eleusinian Initiates distinguished the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries; the Lesser were a preparation for the Greater. ... Positive philosophy is the necessary consequence of Negative philosophy when this is rightly understood. It may therefore be said: In Negative philosophy the Lesser Mysteries are celebrated, in Positive philosophy the Greater.’

This chapter of my book closed with the passage:

“If the inner life is declared to be divine, it seems inconsistent to confine ourselves to one part of it. Schelling did not fall into this inconsistency. When he said that to explain nature is to create nature, he indicated the direction of his own view of life. If the reflective study of nature is a repetition of her creation, the basic character of his creation must correspond to that of human action; it must be an act of free spiritual activity, not one like a geometrical necessity. But we cannot recognise a free creation through laws of Reason; it must reveal itself through different means.”

I was writing a history of world-views held in the nineteenth century. I could not go any further than this, for what prevailed at the time in advancing evolution were purely dilettante attempts which had no influence upon the progress of philosophical research. Such matters could not form part of this book. But Theosophy, in so far as it is carried into earnest thinking—that you find in the chapter on Schelling.

The second part of the book, which deals, firstly, with Hegel, is dated October, two. It was then that I had just begun to give the lectures referred to, and in September, 1901, the book on Mysticism had already been published. Truly it is not for the sake of emphasising personal matters but in order to help you to make an unprejudiced judgment that I should like to refer you to a criticism of the book Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert which appeared on 15th December, 1901 in the journal of the German Freethinkers' Alliance, The Free-Thinker. Here, after an introduction and a remark to the effect that there had been no readable presentation of the development of thought in the nineteenth century, it continues:

“Especially in the domain of philosophy in which disputes can be carried on in appropriate words, many sins are committed in popular writings. The ‘Watchers of Zion’ and organisations of every kind, with their learned cliques to which unfortunately so many university tutors belong, are much to blame.”

Quotation of the folllowing extract is made only in order to point out the good-will with which the book was received at the time:

“So much the more must we welcome the fact that Dr. Rudolf Steiner, an author well known as a modern thinker and protagonist, has undertaken the task of giving the German public an objective presentation of the spiritual conflicts waged in Germany in the nineteenth century concerning views and conceptions of the world.”

Then, after an extract from the book, a remarkable statement follows and I must read it to you in full. The writer of this review regrets the absence of something in the book, and expresses this in the following words:

“Although the spiritualism of Du Prel and the anchoretic original Christianity of Tolstoi are useless for cultural activity based on the thought of evolution, yet symptomatically they have a value not to be overlooked. The same may be said of Neo-Buddhism (Theosophy), which has developed a terminology of its own, a sort of mystic jargon. A psychology of the modern belief in spirits by a man of the mental calibre of Steiner would be decidedly welcome. The language of his book is easy to comprehend. None of the yard-long passages of the academic philosopher disturbs the enjoyment of the reader.”

This was written in November 1901, shortly after I had begun to give the theosophical lectures in Berlin. It can truly be said that there was then a demand, a public demand, that I should speak about the aim and purpose of Theosophy. It was not a matter of arbitrary choice but, as the saying goes, a clear call of karma.

In the winter of 1900-1901, I gave the lectures on Mysticism, and in that of 1901-1902 those dealing with the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries in rather greater detail. These lectures were subsequently printed in the book Christianity as Mystical Fact⁷ (published in the summer of 1902).

The greater part of Mysticism and Modern Thought was at once translated into English, still before I was a member of the Theosophical Society. I could tell you a great deal of importance, but time does not permit of it now; it may be told another time. One thing, however, I must add.

You see clearly that nowhere in the course of things was there any kind of sudden jump; one thing led to the other quite naturally. At the beginning of the course of lectures on the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries—again held in Count Brockdorff's library—and indeed also at the time of the second series I had some opportunity of hearing about matters which were not so very serious at that time, but which eventually led to things which have been spoken of here as “mystical eccentricities”.

So in the year 1901-1902, I spoke on the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries and these lectures were attended by the present Frau Dr. Steiner. She had also heard the lecture I had given in the Theosophical Society during the winter of 1900 on Gustav Theodor Fechner. It was a special lecture, not forming part of the other series. Frau Dr. Steiner had therefore already been present at some of the lectures I gave during that time. It would be interesting to relate a few details here—but these may be omitted; they merely add a little colour to the incident. If necessary, they can be told on another occasion.

After having been away for a time, Frau Dr. Steiner returned to Berlin from Russia in the autumn, and with an acquaintance of Countess Brockdorff was present at the second course of lectures given in the winter of 1901–1902. After one of the lectures on the Greek Mysteries, this acquaintance came to me and said—well, something of the kind just alluded to! This lady subsequently became a more and more fanatical adherent of the Theosophical Society and was later given a high position in the Order founded to wait for the Second Coming of Christ. At the time of which I am speaking, she came to me after the lecture on the Greek Mysteries and, adopting the air of a really profound initiate of the Theosophical Society about to give evidence of her initiation, said: “You have spoken of Mysteries; but they are still in existence. There are still secret societies. Are you aware of that?”

After a subsequent lecture on the same subject, she came to me again and said: “One sees that you still remember quite well what you were taught when you were in the Greek Mysteries!” That is something which, carried a little farther, borders on the chapter deserving the title of “mystical eccentricities”.

In the autumn of 1901, this lady organised a tea-party. Frau Dr. Steiner always speaks of it as the “chrysanthemum tea” because there were so many of these flowers in the room. The invitation came from this acquaintance of Countess Brockdorff and I often thought that she wanted—well, I don't quite know what it was! The day chosen for the founding of the Theosophical Society was one of special importance for this lady. She may have wanted to enlist me as a co-worker on her own lines, for she put out feelers and was often very persistent—but nothing of any account came of it. I should like, however, just to relate a conversation that took place in the autumn of 1901 between the present Frau Dr. Steiner and myself on the occasion of that “chrysanthemum tea”, when she asked whether it was not urgently necessary to call to life a spiritual-scientific Movement in Europe. In the course of the conversation I said in unambiguous terms: “Certainly it is necessary to call such a Movement to life. But I will ally myself only with a Movement that is connected exclusively with Western occultism and cultivates its development.” And I also said that such a Movement must link on to Plato, to Goethe, and so forth. I indicated the whole programme which was then actually carried out.

In this programme there was no place for unhealthy activities, but naturally a few people with such tendencies came; they were people who were influenced by the Movement of which I have spoken. But from the conversation quoted at the beginning of this lecture, which I had with a member of the English Theosophical Society, you will see that a complete rejection of everything in the nature of mediumship and atavism was implicit in this programme.

The path we have been following for long years was adopted with full consciousness. Although elements of mediumistic and atavistic clairvoyance have not been absent, there has been no deviation from this path, and it has led to our present position.

I had, of course, to rely on finding within the Theosophical Movement people who desired and were able to recognise thoroughly healthy methods of work. The invariable procedure of those who did not desire a Movement in which a healthy and strict sense of scientific responsibility prevails, has been to misrepresent the aim we have been pursuing, in order to suit their own ends. The very history of our Movement affords abundant evidence that there has been no drawing back from penetrating into the highest spiritual worlds, to the extent to which they can now, by grace, be revealed to mankind; but that on the other hand, whatever cannot be attained along a healthy path, through the right methods for entering the spiritual worlds, has been strictly rejected. Those who recognise this and who follow the history of the Movement do not need to take it as a mere assurance, for it is evident from the whole nature of the work that has been going on for years. We have been able to go very, very much further in genuine investigation of the spiritual world than has ever been possible to the Theosophical Society. But we take the sure, not the unsure, paths. This may be said candidly and freely.

I have always refused to have anything to do with forms of antiquated occultism, with any Brotherhoods or Communities of that kind in the domain of esotericism. And it was only under the guarantee of complete independence that I worked for a time in a certain connection with the Theosophical Society and its esoteric procedures, but never in the direction towards which it was heading. Already by the year 1907 everything really esoteric had completely vanished from the Theosophical Society, and later happenings are sufficiently well known to you. It has also happened that Occult Brotherhoods made proposals to me of one kind or another. A certain highly-respected Occult Brotherhood suggested to me that I should participate in the spreading of a kind of occultism calling itself ‘Rosicrucian’, but I left the proposal unanswered, although it came from a much-respected Occult Movement. I say this in order to show that we ourselves are following an independent path, suited to the needs of the present age, and that unhealthy elements are inevitably regarded by us as being undesirable in the extreme.

• 1. Dr. Steiner's articles in Lucifer-Gnosis are collected in the book entitled Aus der Akasha-Kronik. The book was published in English translation by Rudolf Steiner Publications Inc., New York, 1959, with the title Cosmic Memory.
• 2. See inter alia: Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, lecture 7 and lecture 10; Earthly and Cosmic Man, lecture 1; Earthly and Cosmic Man, lecture 1; The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, lecture 4; Things of the present and past in the Spirit of Man, lecture 5. (The last two lecture-courses are not yet printed but are available in translation as typescripts.) See also Notes at end of Lecture Five.
• 3. Note by translator. Presumably by means of the process known in spiritualism as “precipitation”.
• 4. See notes at the end of Lecture Five.
• 5. The content of this book is included in Die Rätsel der Philosophie.
• 6. Translated with the title, Mysticism and Modern Thought. (Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London and Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1925.)
• 7. Second English edition (revised) 1972. (Rudolf Steiner Press, London)

In the course of our studies I have spoken of the events in the early development of Western civilization. My aim was to ascertain from these enquiries into the past what is of importance for the present, and with this object in view I propose to pursue the matter in further detail. Our present epoch, as we can see from a cursory glance, is an epoch when only thoughts derived from the Mystery teachings concerning human evolution can exercise effective influence. Now in order to grasp the full implication of this claim we must not only have a clear understanding of many things, but we must also look closely into the needs and shortcomings of contemporary thinking, feeling and willing. We shall then begin to feel that our present epoch has need of new impulses, new thoughts and ideas, and especially of those impulses and thoughts which spring from the depths of the spiritual life and which must become the subject of spiritual-scientific study.

At the present time there is much that fills us with sadness. We must not allow ourselves to be depressed by this mood of sadness, rather should it be something that can prepare us and teach us to work and strive in our present circumstances. I recently came across a publication which I felt would give me the greatest pleasure. The author is one of the few who are receptive to the ideas of Spiritual Science and the more is the pity that he was unable to introduce into his writings the fruits of anthroposophical endeavour. The book to which I am referring is The State as Organism, by Rudolf Kjellén (note 1), the Swedish political economist. After reading the book, I must confess that I was left with a feeling of disappointment because I realized that here was a person who, as I said, was receptive to the ideas of Spiritual Science, but whose thoughts were still far removed from the thoughts we stand in need of today, thoughts which must be clearly formulated and become concrete reality, especially today, so that they may enter into the evolution of our time. In his book Kjellén undertook to study the State and its organization, but at no time does one feel that he possessed the ideas or the intellectual grasp which could offer the slightest chance of solving his problem. It is a melancholy experience to be disillusioned time and again—but let us not be discouraged, let us rather brace ourselves to meet the challenge of our time.

Before I say a few words on these matters I should like to call your attention once again to those ancient Mysteries which, as you can well imagine from the statements I recently made about the iconoclasm of the (Christian) Church, are known to history today only in a mangled version. It is all the more necessary therefore for our present age that Spiritual Science should bring an understanding of these Mysteries. I mentioned in my last lecture the unprecedented fury with which Christianity in the first centuries destroyed the ancient works of art and how much that was of priceless value was swept away. One cannot take an impartial view of Christianity unless one is prepared to see this destructive side with complete objectivity. And bear in mind at the same time that the various books which deal with this subject present a particular point of view. Everyone today who has received a minimum of education has a picture of the spiritual development of Antiquity, of the spiritual evolution that preceded Christianity. But how different this picture would be if Archbishop Theophilus (note 2) of Alexandria had not burnt in the year 391 seven hundred thousand scrolls which contained vitally important records of Roman, Egyptian, Indian and Greek literature and their cultural life. Just imagine how different would be the picture of Antiquity if these seven hundred thousand scrolls had not been burnt. And from this you will realize how much reliance can be placed on the history of the past which has documentary support—or rather how little reliance!

Let us now follow up the train of thought which I touched on in my lecture yesterday. I pointed out that the forms of Christian worship were in many respects borrowed from the symbols and ceremonies of the ancient pagan Mystery cults, that the forms of these Mystery cults and symbols had been totally eradicated by Christianity in order to conceal their origin. Christianity had made a clean sweep of the pagan forms of worship so that people had no means of knowing what had existed prior to their time and would simply have to accept what the Church offered. Such is the fate of human evolution. We must be prepared to recognize without giving way to pessimism that the course of human evolution is not one of uninterrupted progress.

I also showed in the course of my lecture yesterday that the rites and rituals of the Roman Church owed much to the Eleusinian Mysteries which had been interrupted in their development because Julian had been unable to carry out his intentions; his plan had failed to materialize. But the rites and sacraments of later years owed still more to the Mithras Mysteries. But the spirit of the Mithras Mysteries, that which justified their existence, the source from which they derived their spiritual content, can no longer be investigated. The Church has been careful to remove all traces of it and to close the door to enquiry. Knowledge of this can only be recovered if we strive to come to an understanding of these things through Spiritual Science. Today I propose to touch upon only one aspect of the Mithras Mysteries (note 3). I could of course speak at greater length about the Mithras Mysteries if I had more time at my disposal, but in order to understand them we must first gradually become conversant with their details.

In order to grasp the true spirit of the Mithras Mysteries whose influence spread far into the West of Europe during the first post-Christian centuries, we must be aware that they were based upon a central core of belief (which was right for the world of Antiquity and perfectly justified up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha), that the community or the individual communities, for example, the folk-communities or other groups within the folk-communities consisted not only of the individual units or members, but that, if they were to have any reality, communities must be imbued with a community spirit which has a super-sensible origin. A community was determined not only by the counting of heads, but for the people of Antiquity it represented the external form, the incarnation, if I may use the word in this connection, of a genuinely existing communal spirit. The aim of those who were received into these Mysteries was to participate in this spirit, to share the thoughts of this group-soul; not to insulate themselves from the community by obstinately pursuing their own egoistic thoughts, feelings and volitional impulses, but to live in such a way that they were receptive to the thoughts of the group-soul. In the Mithras Mysteries in particular the priests maintained that this union with the group-soul cannot be achieved if one looks upon a larger community simply as an external manifestation, for thereby that which lies in the community spirit is in the main obscured. The dead, they claimed, are part of our immediate environment and the more we can commune with those who have long been dead the better we shall order our present life. Therefore the longer these souls had been discarnate, the more beneficial they found it to commune with these souls. And in order to be able to commune with the spirit of the ancestor of a tribe, folk-community or family they found it best to make contact with the ancestral soul. It was assumed that this soul develops further after passing through the gates of death and therefore has a deeper insight into the future destiny of the Earth than those who are living on this Earth in their present physical bodies. Thus the whole purpose of these Mysteries was to establish those dramatic representations which would put the neophyte into touch with the souls of those who had long passed through the gates of death.

Those who were admitted to these Mysteries had to undergo a first stage of initiation which was usually characterized by a term borrowed from the bird-species; they were called “Ravens”. A “Raven” was a first-degree initiate. Through the particular Mystery rites, through the potent use of symbols and especially through dramatic performances he became aware not only of the sensible world around him or of what one learns through contact with one's fellow-men, but also of the thoughts of the dead. He acquired a certain capacity which enabled him to recall memories of the dead and the ability to develop it further. The “Raven” was under the solemn obligation to be conscious in the moment, to be alert and responsive to the world around, to be aware of the needs of his fellow-men and to familiarize himself with the phenomena of nature. He who spends his life in day-dreaming, who has no feeling for the indwelling spirit of man and nature was considered to be unsuitable material for reception into the Mysteries. For only the ability to see life around him clearly and in its true perspective fitted him for the task which he had to fulfil in the Mysteries. His task was to participate as far as possible in the changing circumstances of the world in order to widen the range of his experience, to share in the joys and sorrows of contemporary events. He who was unresponsive or indifferent to contemporary events was an unsuitable candidate for initiation. For the first task of the aspirant was to “reproduce”, to re-enact in the Mysteries the experiences gained through participation in the life of the world. In this way these experiences served as a channel of communication with the dead with whom the Initiates sought to make contact. Now you might ask: Would not a high Initiate have been more suitable for this purpose? By no means, for the first-degree Initiates were eminently suited to act as intermediaries because they still possessed all the feelings, shared all the sympathies and antipathies which fitted them for life in the external world, whilst the higher Initiates had more or less purged themselves of those emotions. Therefore these first-degree Initiates were specially suited to experience contemporary life in terms of the ordinary man and to incorporate it into the Mysteries. It was therefore the special task of the “Ravens” to mediate between the external world and those long dead. This tradition has survived in legend. As I have often stated legends as a rule have deep implications. The Kyffhäuser legend tells how Friedrich Barbarossa who had long been dead is instructed by Ravens, or how Charles the Great in the “Salzburg Untersberg” is surrounded by Ravens that brought him news of the outside world. These are echoes of the ancient pagan Mysteries and especially of the Mithras Mysteries.

When the aspirant was ready for the second degree of initiation he became an adept or “occultist” as we should say today. He was then able not only to incorporate into the Mysteries his experience of the sensible world, but also to receive clairvoyantly the communications from the dead, the impulses which the super-sensible world (this world of concrete reality which the dead inhabit) had to impart to the external world. And only when he was fully integrated into the spiritual life which originates in the super-sensible and is related to the external, sensible world was he considered to be adequately prepared for the third degree, and he was now given the opportunity to give practical expression to the impulses he had received in the Mysteries. He was now singled out to become a “warrior”, one who mediates to the sensible world that which must be revealed from the super-sensible world.

But was it not a gross injustice, you may ask, to withhold vital information from the people and to initiate only a select few? You will only understand the reason for this if you accept what I stated at the outset, namely, that the people were dependent upon a group-soul and were content for these select few to act on behalf of the whole community. They did not look upon themselves as separate individuals but as members of a group. It was only possible therefore to pursue this policy of selection at a time when the existence of a group-soul, when the selfless identification with the group was a living reality.

And when, as a “warrior” the initiate had championed for a time the cause of the super-sensible, he was considered fitted to establish smaller groups within the framework of the larger group, smaller communities within larger groups as the need arose. If, in those ancient times, anyone had taken into his head to found an association on his own initiative, he would have been ignored. Nothing would have come of it. In order to establish a union or association the initiate must become a “lion”, as it was termed in the Mithras Mysteries, for that was the fourth degree of initiation. He must first have reinforced his spiritual life through association with those impulses which existed not only amongst the living, but which united the living with the dead. From the fourth degree the initiate rose to a higher degree of initiation which permitted him through certain measures to take over the leadership of an already existing group, a folk-community in which the dead also participated. The eighth, ninth and tenth centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha are totally different from those of today. It would never have occurred to anyone to claim the right to choose arbitrarily the leader of their community; such a leader had to be an initiate of the fifth degree. Then, at the next higher degree, the initiate attained to those insights which the Sun Mystery (of which he had recently received intimations) implanted in the human soul. Finally he attained the seventh degree of initiation. I do not propose to enter into the details of these later degrees of initiation, for I simply wished to characterize the progressive development of the initiate who owed to his contact with the spiritual world his capacity to take an active part in community life.

Now you know that the group-soul nature has gradually declined in accordance with the necessary law of human evolution. It was at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha that man first developed ego consciousness. This had been prepared for centuries, but the crisis, the critical moment in this development had been reached at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One could no longer assume that the individual had the power to carry the whole community with him, to transfer his feelings and impulses to the entire community in a spirit of altruism.

It would be foolish to imagine that the course of history could have been other than it has been. But sometimes a thought such as the following may prove fruitful: what would have happened if, at the time when the message of Christianity first made its impact on human evolution, the pagan traditions had not been eradicated root and branch, but if historically a certain knowledge (which would be transparent even to those who relied on documents) had been transmitted to posterity? But Christianity was opposed to such a possibility. We will discuss later the reason for this attitude; today I wish simply to register the fact that Christianity was opposed to the transmission of this knowledge. Thus Christianity was confronted by a totally different kind of humanity which was not so much attached to the group-souls as that of former times, a humanity in which the approach to the individual had to be totally different from that of ancient times when the individual was virtually ignored and when men looked to the group-soul for guidance and acted out of the group-soul. Through the fact that Christianity suppressed all documentary evidence of the early centuries the people were kept in ignorance; Christianity in fact consciously fostered ignorance of the epoch when it had first developed. This Christianity borrowed those aspects of the pagan teaching which served its purpose and incorporated them in its traditions and dogmas and especially in its cults or religious ceremonies and then effaced all traces of the origin of these cults. The ancient cults have a deep symbolic meaning, but Christianity gave them a different interpretation. The performance of cult acts or ceremonies was still a familiar sight, but the source of the primeval wisdom from which they derived was concealed from the people.

Take for example the bishop's mitre of the eighth century. This mitre was embroidered with swastikas which were arranged in different patterns. The swastika which was originally the Crux Gammata dates back to the earliest Mysteries, to the ancient times when man was able to observe the activity of the “lotus flowers” in the human etheric and astral organism, how that which was active in the lotus flower was one of the chief manifestations of the etheric and astral forces. The bishop wore the swastika as a symbol of his authority, but its significance was lost and it had become a dead symbol. All traces of its origin had been eradicated. What history tells us of the origin of such symbols is only dry bones. Only through Spiritual Science can we rediscover the living spiritual element in these things.

Now I said earlier that people were consciously kept in ignorance, but the time has now come to dispel this ignorance. And over the years I think that I have said enough and in a variety of ways to show that it is essential at the present time to be alive and alert to these questions. For our epoch is an epoch in which the necessary period of darkness has run its course and when the light of spiritual life must dawn again. It is devoutly to be wished that as many as possible should feel in their hearts that this spiritual light is a necessity for our time and that the failures and endless sufferings of our time are connected with all these questions. We shall realize that superficial judgements are inadequate when we come to speak of the causes of our present situation. So long as we speak only from a superficial standpoint we shall be unable to develop thoughts or impulses which are sufficiently potent to dispel the ignorance which is the source of our attendant ills. It is indeed remarkable how mankind today—but this need not depress us, rather should it encourage us to observe and understand our present condition—is unwilling to face up to the situation because, for the most part, man is as yet unable to perceive what is really necessary for our evolution. It is heartbreaking to see what Nietzsche felt about the prevailing darkness and confusion of our age, a man who suffered deeply from, and was driven to the point of madness by the chaos and confusion of the second half of the nineteenth century. We shall not come to terms with a personality such as Friedrich Nietzsche if we look upon him as someone whom one blindly follows, as so many have done. For he answered these blind followers in the original prelude to the “Gay Science”.

I am sufficient unto myself
I owe allegiance to none,
And I laugh at every master
Who cannot laugh at himself.

That is also the underlying mood of the whole of “Thus spake Zarathustra”. But this did not prevent Nietzsche from being surrounded by many who were merely hangers-on. They, in any case, have nothing positive to contribute to our present situation. But the other extremists—and between these two groups can be found every shade of opinion—are equally of no help, for they say that although Nietzsche had many creative ideas, he ultimately lost his reason and so can be safely ignored. Friedrich Nietzsche is a strange phenomenon; one need not be his willing slave, yet the fact remains that even in his period of mental sickness he was acutely sensitive to the darkness and chaos of the age.

Indeed the account of the distress which Nietzsche suffered in his time provides us with a good yardstick with which to measure the difficulties of our own time. I propose to read two passages from Nietzsche's posthumous writings: “The Will to Power; the Transvaluation of all Values” (note 4) which was written at a time when his mind was unhinged, passages which could have been written today with a wholly different intent than Nietzsche's and could have been written to expose the deeper underlying cause of our present situation. Nietzsche wrote:

“What I am about to relate is the history of the next two centuries. I shall describe what is foreshadowed and from which there is no escape—the triumph of nihilism. This history can be written now, for necessity is already at work here. This future is already presaged by a hundred different omens; this destiny announces its presence everywhere; for the music of tomorrow all ears are pricked. The whole of European culture is slowly moving towards catastrophe in an agony of suspense which increases from decade to decade—restless, violent, precipitate like a river in spate hastening to its ocean bed, and which refuses to reflect and even dreads reflection.”

Judge then of your own reactions in the light of these words from the pen of a man of rare sensitivity at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century and compare these words with another passage which I will now read to you and which vividly portrays the deep distress he felt and which everyone can experience himself.

“My friends, we had a hard time in our youth; we even suffered from youth as if it were a serious disease. This is owing to the age in which we are born—an age of great internal decay and disintegration which, with all its weakness and even with the best of its strength is opposed to the spirit of youth. Disintegration, that is to say a sense of insecurity, is peculiar to our age; nothing stands on solid ground or on sound faith or belief. People live for the morrow, because the day after tomorrow is uncertain. Our path is slippery and dangerous and the ice that still bears us has become precariously thin: we all feel the mild and ominous breath of the thaw-wind. Within a short space of time the path we are treading will never be able to know the footsteps of man again.”

It is clear that these sentiments were born of a profound insight into the realities of the time. He who would understand the age in which we live and especially the task that faces the individual, he who can look beyond the moment and the day will himself feel what is expressed in those passages and will perhaps say: Nietzsche's mental derangement prevented him from adopting a critical attitude to the ideas which arose in him. None the less these ideas stemmed from an acute sensitivity to the immediate realities of the present age. Perhaps we shall one day draw a comparison between Nietzsche's response to his age and the customary pronouncements of “experts” which do not even touch the fringe of the causes which lie at the root of our present difficult times. We shall then change our attitude and see the necessity for Spiritual Science today. People are unwilling to listen to the teachings of Spiritual Science; but in saying this I have no wish to imply reproach. Far be it from me to attach blame to anyone. The people to whom I am referring are for the most part those for whom I feel great respect and who, in my opinion, would be the first to take to Spiritual Science. I simply wish to point out how difficult it is for the individual to be receptive to Spiritual Science if he is impervious to spiritual appeal, if he succumbs entirely to the Zeitgeist, to the superficial trends of the time. One must be fully aware of this.

At this juncture I can now revert to Kjellen's book, The State as Organism. It is a curious book because the author strives with every fibre of his being to clarify the question: What is the State in reality?—and because he does not believe in the capacity of man's ideas and concepts to understand this question. It is true that the book contains many fine things which have been praised by contemporary critics, but the author has not the slightest idea of the deeper layers of understanding and knowledge which are necessary in order to rescue mankind from its present predicament. I have only time to refer to the central theme of his book. Kjellen raises the question: What is the relation of the individual to the State? And in attempting to answer this question he immediately came up against a difficulty. He wished to depict the State as a reality, as an integrated whole, in other words, as an organism primarily. Many have already described the State as an organism and are then always faced with the question: an organism consists of cells, what then are the cells of the State? Clearly the individual members of the State!—And on the whole Kjellen also shared this view: the State is an organism as the human or animal organism is an organism, and just as the human organism consists of individual cells, so too the State consists of individual cells, of human beings who are the cells of the State.

One can hardly imagine a more misguided or misleading analogy. If we follow up the analogy we shall never arrive at a clear understanding of man. Why is this? The cells of the human organism are juxtaposed, and this juxtaposition has a special significance. The whole structure of the human organism depends upon this juxtaposition. In the organism of the State the individual units or members are not contiguous like the individual cells in the human or animal organism. That is out of the question. In the totality of the State the human personality is something wholly different from the cells in the organism. And even if at a pinch we compare the State with an organism we must realize that we and the whole of political science are sorely mistaken if we overlook the fact that the individual is not a cell; only the productive element in man can sustain the State, whilst the organism is an aggregate of cells and it is they which determine its functioning. Therefore the present State in which the group-soul is no longer the same as in ancient times can only progress through the endeavour or initiative of the single individual. This cannot be compared with the function of the cells. As a rule it is immaterial what we choose to compare, but if we make a comparison between two objects they must be related objects. As a rule it is accepted that analogies are valid to some extent, but they should not be so far fetched as Kjellén's analogy. There is no objection to his comparing the State with an organism; one could equally well compare it with a machine (there is no harm in that) or even with a penknife—doubtless points of similarity can be found here too—but, if the comparison is carried through, it must be consistent. But people are not sufficiently familiar with the principles of logic to be aware of this.

Now Kjellén is perfectly entitled to compare the State with an organism if he so wishes. But if he wishes to make this comparison he must look for the right cells. But they cannot be found because the State has no cells! If we think about the matter concretely the analogy breaks down. I simply wish to point out that one can only carry this analogy through if one thinks in an abstract way like Kjellen. The moment one thinks realistically, one demurs, because the idea has no roots in reality. We find that the State has no cells. On the other hand we discover that the individual States can perhaps be compared to cells and that the sum total of States on Earth can be compared to an organism. A fruitful idea then occurs to us. But first we must answer the question: what kind of organism? Where can one find something comparable in the kingdom of nature where the cells fit into each other in the same way as the individual “State cells” fit into the entire organism of the Earth? Pursuing this idea we find that we can only compare the entire Earth organism with a plant organism, not with an animal organism and still less with a human organism. Whilst natural science is only concerned with the inorganic, with the mineral kingdom, political science must be founded on a higher order of ideas, on the ideas of the plant kingdom. We must look to neither the animal nor the human kingdom and we must free ourselves from mineralized thinking, dead thought forms to which the scientists are so firmly attached. They cannot rise to the higher order of ideas embodied in the plant kingdom, but apply laws of the mineral kingdom to the State and call it political science.

In order to arrive at this fruitful conception mentioned above our whole thinking must be rooted in Spiritual Science. We shall then be able to satisfy ourselves that the whole being of man by virtue of his individuality is far superior to the State, he penetrates into the spiritual world where the State cannot enter. If therefore you compare the State with an organism and the individual member of the State with the cells, then, if you think realistically, you will arrive at the idea of an organism consisting of individual cells, but the cells would everywhere extend beyond the epidermis. You would have an organism with its cells which extends beyond the epidermis; the cells would develop independently of the organism and would be self-contained. You would therefore have to picture the organism as if “living bristles” which felt themselves to be individuals were everywhere projecting beyond the epidermis. Living thinking thus brings us into touch with reality, and shows us the impossible difficulties that must face us if we wish to grasp any idea that is to be fruitful. It is not surprising therefore that ideas which are not impregnated with Spiritual Science have not the capacity to sustain us in coping with our present situation. For how can one reduce to order the chaos in the world if one has no idea of its cause? No matter how many Wilsonian manifestos are issued by all kinds of international organizations or associations and the like, so long as they have no roots in reality, they are so much empty talk. Hence the many proposals which are put forward today are a sheer waste of time.

Here is an example which demonstrates how imperative it is that our present age should be permeated with the impulses of Spiritual Science. It is the tragedy of our time that it is powerless to develop ideas which could reconcile and control the organic life of the State. Hence everything is in a state of chaos. But it must now be clear to you where the deeper causes of this chaos are to be sought. And it is not surprising therefore that books such as Kjellen's The State as Organism conclude in the most remarkable manner. We are now living in an age when everybody is wondering what is to be done so that men may once again live in harmony, when with every week they are increasingly determined to live in enmity and to slaughter each other. How are they to be brought together again? But the science which deals with the question of how men are once again to develop social relationships within the State concludes in Kjellen's case with these words: “This must be the conclusion of our enquiry into the State as organism. We have seen that for compelling reasons the State of today had made little progress in this direction and has not yet become fully aware that this is its function. None the less we believe in a higher form of State which recognizes a more clearly defined rational purpose and which will make determined efforts to achieve this goal.”

That is the concluding passage in his book; but we do not know, we have no idea what will come of it. Such are the findings of a painstaking and conscientious thinking that is so caught up in the stream of contemporary thought that it overlooks the essentials. One must face these problems squarely; for the impulse, the desire to gain insight into these problems only arises when we face them squarely, when we know what are the driving forces in our present age.

Even without looking far beneath the surface we perceive today an urge towards a kind of “socialization”, I do not mean towards socialism, but towards “socialization” of the Earth organism. But socialization—because it must be conscious, and not proceed from the unconscious as in the last two thousand years—socialization, reorientation or reorganization, is only possible if we understand the nature of man, if we learn to know once again the being of man—for that was the object of the ancient Mysteries. Socialization applies to the physical plane. But it is impossible to establish a social order if one ignores the fact that on the physical plane are to be found not only physical men, but men endowed with soul and spirit. Nothing can be achieved if we think of man only in physical terms. You may socialize, you may order social life in accordance with contemporary ideas, and within twenty years everything will be in chaos again if you ignore the fact that man is not only the physical being known to natural science, but a being endowed with soul and spirit. For soul and spirit are active agents and exercise a powerful influence. We may ignore their existence in our ideas and representations, but we cannot abolish them. If the soul is to inhabit a physical body which participates in a social order appropriate to our time it must have freedom of thought and opinion. Socialization cannot be realized without freedom of thought. And socialization and freedom of thought cannot be realized unless the spirit is rooted in the spiritual world itself.

Freedom of thought as an attitude of mind or way of thinking, pneumatology, spiritual maturity and spiritual science—as scientific foundation of all ordinances and directives—these are inseparably linked. We can only discover through spiritual science how these things are related to man and how they can he realized practically in the social order. Freedom of thought, that is, an attitude to one's neighbour that fully recognizes his right to freedom of thought, cannot be realized unless we accept the principle of reincarnation, for otherwise we look upon man as an abstraction. We shall never see him in the right light unless we look upon him as the result of repeated lives on Earth. The whole question of reincarnation must be examined in connection with the question of freedom of thought and opinion. The life of man will be impossible in the future unless the inner life of the individual can be rooted in the life of the spirit. I am not suggesting that he must become clairvoyant, though this will certainly occur in individual cases, but I maintain that he must be firmly rooted in the life of the spirit. I have often explained that this is perfectly possible without becoming clairvoyant. If we look around a little we shall find where the major hindrances lie and in what direction we must look for the source of these obstacles. It is not that people are unwilling to search for the truth—and as I have said, I do not wish to reprove or to criticize—but they erect psychic barriers and are the victims of their many inhibitions.

Often an isolated instance is so instructive that we are able to gain a real understanding of many contemporary phenomena from these symptoms. There is one symptom peculiar to our own time which is most remarkable. It is curious how people who are normally so brave and courageous today, are terrified when they hear that the claims of spiritual knowledge are to be recognized. They are bewildered. I have often told you that I noticed that many who had attended one or two lectures were not seen again for some time. Meeting them in the street I asked why they had never turned up again. “I dare not”, came the reply. “I am afraid you might convince me.” They find such a possibility dangerous and disturbing and are not prepared to expose themselves to the risk. I could cite many other examples of a similar kind from my own experience, but I prefer to give examples from the wider field of public life.

A short time ago I spoke here of Hermann Bahr (note 5) who recently gave a lecture here in Berlin entitled “The Ideas of 1914”. I pointed out how he attempted—you need only read his last novel Himmelfahrt—not only to move a little in the direction of Spiritual Science, but he even tried in his later years to arrive at an inner understanding of Goethe, that is, to follow the path which I would recommend to those who wish to provide themselves with a sound background for their introduction to Spiritual Science. There are very many today who would like to speak of the spirit once again, who would welcome any and every opportunity to revive knowledge of the spirit. I do not wish to lecture or criticize, least of all a person such as Hermann Bahr for whom I feel great affection. Even if it is far from our intention to sermonize, we none the less have the strange feeling that an outlook such as that of Hermann Bahr has contributed to the corruption of thought and has infected human thinking with original sin.

Now in his Berlin lecture Hermann Bahr expressed many fine and admirable sentiments; but many astonishing things come to light. He began by saying that this war had taught us something completely new. It had taught us to integrate the individual once again into the community in the right way, to sacrifice our individualism, our ego centricity for the benefit of the whole. This war has taught us, he said, to make a clean sweep of the past with its antiquated ideas and to fill our inner life with something completely new. And he proceeded to describe the inestimable benefits this war has brought us. I have no wish to criticize, quite the reverse. But after a lengthy disquisition on how the war has transformed us all, how we shall be completely` changed through the war, it is strange to come upon the concluding passage: “Man always cherishes hope of a better future, but himself remains incorrigible. Even the war will leave us much as we are.” As I said before, I have no wish to criticize, but I cannot help being touched by these high hopes. These people are motivated by the best of intentions; they wish to find once again the path to the spiritual. And Bahr therefore emphasized that we had relied too much upon the individual; we had practised the cult of individualism far too long. We must learn once again to surrender to the whole. Those who belong to a nation have learned to merge with the nation, to sacrifice their separativeness. And nations too, he believes, are only totalities of individual characteristics, parts of a greater whole which will later emerge. Thus Bahr sometimes betrays, and especially in this lecture, the paths he none the less follows in order to arrive at the spirit. Sometimes he gives only vague indications, but these indications are most revealing. Ring out the old, the past is dead, is his motto. The Aufklärung wished to found everything on a basis of reason; but all to no purpose, everything has ended in chaos. We must find something that brings us in touch with Reality and saves us from chaos. And in this context Bahr once again makes astonishing revelations:

“Perhaps nations and individuals would then have learned what is most difficult for them to learn—to grant to others the right to individuality that each individual claims for himself, for, in the final analysis, the individuality of others is the precondition of one's own. If we were all alike there would be no distinguishing features. And they would have learned that just as each individual with his distinctive gifts in his own particular field is necessary to the nation, in order through his self-fulfilment to sustain the nation and thus at the same time to be self-sufficient and also to serve the nation, so too the universality of mankind, the common membership of all mankind that reaches to the Divine grows out of nations and transcends nations.”

That is a hint, if not a broad hint, at least it is a clear hint. People are striving to find the way to God, but are unwilling to follow the path that is appropriate to our time. They are looking therefore for a different path which already exists, but it never occurs to them that this traditional path was indeed effective up to 1914 and now, in order to obviate its consequences, they want to return to it again!

The symptoms manifested here are, I think, deserving of quiet examination, for these are the views not of a single individual, but of a vast number of people who feel and think in this way. A book by Max Scheler (note 6) recently appeared with the title Der Genius des Krieges and der deutsche Krieg. It is a good book and I can safely recommend it. Bahr too thinks highly of it. He is a man of taste and well informed and has every reason to commend it. But he also wishes to publicize the book and proposes to write a highly favourable review, a puff to boost Scheler. He wonders how best to proceed. To scandalize the public is not the right approach; some other way must be found to attract their attention. What was he to do? Now Hermann Bahr is a very sincere and honest man and leaves no doubt as to what he would do in such a case. In his article on Scheler he begins by saying: Scheler has written many articles to show how we could escape from our present predicament. Scheler caught the public eye. But, says Bahr, people today do not approve of being told whom to read; it goes against the grain. And so Hermann Bahr characterizes Scheler in the following way: “People were curious about him and yet rather suspicious of him; we Germans want to know above all where we stand in relation to an author. We do not like indefinition.”

Let us have therefore a clear picture. This is not achieved by reading books and accepting their arguments; something more is needed. Bahr now gives a further hint: “Even the Catholics preferred to reserve judgement (on Scheler) lest they should be disappointed. His idiom displeased them. For every mental climate creates in the course of time its own native idiom which gives a particular flavour and meaning to words of common usage. In this way one recognizes who `belongs’, with the result that ultimately one pays less attention to what is said than to how it is said.”

Hermann Bahr decided to announce Scheler with a flourish of trumpets. Now, like Bahr himself, Scheler hints at those remarkable catholicizing endeavours—always tentatively at first, he never commits himself immediately. Now according to Bahr, Scheler does not speak like a genuine Catholic. But Catholics want to know where they stand in relation to Scheler, and especially Bahr himself since he intends to puff Scheler in the Catholic periodical “Hochland”. After all, people must know that Scheler can be safely recommended to Catholics. They do not like to be left in the dark, they want to know the truth.

And this is the crux of the matter. People will know where they stand if they are told that it is perfectly safe for Catholics to read Scheler! The fact that he is exceptionally clever and witty is of no consequence; Catholics have no objection to that. Bahr, however, proposes to hold up Scheler as an outstanding personality in order to boost his importance, but at the same time he does not wish to offend people. First of all he bewails the fact that mankind has become empty and vapid, that man has lost all connection with the spirit; but he must find his way back to the spirit once again. I quote a few passages from Hermann Bahr on Scheler which touch upon this subject:

“Reason broke away from the Church and arrogantly assumed that of itself it could understand, determine, order, command, shape and direct life.”

Hermann Bahr lacks the courage to say: reason must now seek contact with the spiritual world. He therefore says: reason must look to the Church once again.

“Reason bloke away from the Church and arrogantly assumed that of itself it could understand, determine, order, command, shape and direct life. It (reason) had scarcely begun to take the first steps in this direction than it took fright and lost confidence in itself. This self-awareness of reason, the consciousness of its boundaries, of the limitations of its own power when bereft of the divine afflatus, began with Kant. He recognized that reason of itself cannot achieve that which by its very nature it is constrained to will; it cannot achieve the goal it has set itself. He called a halt to reason at the very moment where it promised to be fruitful. Kant set boundaries to reason, but his disciples extended these boundaries and each went his own way. Ultimately godless reason had no other choice but to abdicate. It realized finally that it can know nothing. It searched for truth so long until it discovered that either truth was non-existent or that there was no truth to which man could attain.”

Enough has now been said in defence of the modern outlook and all those fine sentiments about the “boundaries of knowledge.”

“Since that time we have lived without truth, believing there is no truth. We continued to live however as if truth must none the less exist. In fact, in order to live we had to live by denying our reason. And so we preferred to abandon reason completely. We committed intellectual suicide. Soon man was regarded simply as a bundle of impulses. He was proud of his dehumanisation. And the consequence was 1914.”

And so Hermann Bahr praises Scheler because of his Catholicizing bent. Then he proceeds to give a somewhat distorted picture of Goethe, for he had been at pains for some time to depict him as a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic. And then goes on to say:

“The modern scientist denied his spiritual birthright. Science abandoned presuppositions. Reason no longer derived from the divine the ‘impulse’ which is imperative for its effectiveness. What other path was open to it? None, save the appeal to the instincts. The man without established values was suspended over an abyss. And the result was—1914.”

“If we are to build afresh it must be from totally new foundations. If we are to bring about a spiritual renewal we must make a complete break with the past. It would be presumptuous to aim at the immediate spiritual rehabilitation of Europe. We must first rehabilitate man and restore his lost innocence; he must become aware once again that he is a member of the spiritual world. Freedom, individuality, dignity, morality, science and art have vanished from the world since faith, hope and love are no more. And only faith, hope and love can restore them. We have no other choice, either the end of the world or—omnia instaurare in Christo” (to renew all things in Christ).

But this “omnia instaurare in Christo” does not imply a search for the spirit, a move towards the investigation or exploration of the spirit, but the inclusion of the nations in the Catholic fold. How is it, Bahr asks, that men are able to think for themselves and yet are able to remain good Catholics? We must look to those who are suited to the present age. And Scheler fits the bill for he is not such a fool as to speak for example of an evolution into the spiritual world, or to specify a particular spiritual teaching. He is not such a fool as to commit himself openly, as is the case with those who speak of the spirit and then suggest: the rest will he added unto you if you enter the Church, i.e. the Catholic Church—for that is implied both by Bahr and Schelerwhich in their opinion is sufficiently all-embracing. In this way conflicting opinions can be reconciled under the umbrella of the Church. None the less people today want to think for themselves and Scheler adapts himself to their thoughts. Indeed, Bahr believes that Scheler in this respect is a master of giving people what they want:

“Scheler attracts attention because he does not gesticulate or raise his voice. Involuntarily people ask who can it be who appears to be so sure of his influence that he does not feel it necessary to raise his voice. It is a favourite device of seasoned orators to open on a quiet note and thus command the silent attention of the audience; the orator must also have the power to hold them spellbound. Scheler can do this in masterly fashion. He so captivates his listener that the listener is unaware whither he is being led and suddenly finds himself at a destination that was wholly unforeseen. Starting from unexpected propositions which the listener innocently accepts, Scheler forces him imperceptibly to conclusions which he would have actively resisted had he been in any way forewarned. In this respect Scheler's art of persuasion is unrivalled. He is a born educator; I know of no one who can lead us so easily but firmly to the truth.”

Indeed it is a special art to be able to take people by surprise in this way. First one makes statements that are unexceptionable; then the argument proceeds slowly and leads to a conclusion at which the audience would have demurred had they been aware of it from the start. How does one account for this, Bahr asks, and what must be done in order to act with the right intentions? In this review of Scheler Bahr gives his honest and candid opinion:

“The question now is whether the average German can grasp the magnitude of the moment and all that it portends. He is animated by the best of intentions, but still fondly imagines that belief is no longer possible for modern man since it has been scientifically refuted. He does not suspect that this `science or dogma of unbelief’ has itself long been refuted scientifically. He knows nothing of the quiet preparatory work in this direction of the outstanding German philosophers of our time—Lotze, Franz Brentano, Dilthey, Eucken, and Husserl.” (note 7).

I now beg you to give special attention to the following:

“The ordinary person still hears in the last faint echo of the Münchausen posthorn, the latest aberration which, unbeknown to him, has already been refuted. Amidst this confusion a calm clear voice will soon be heard which gives no suspicion of the sentimental day dreaming, romanticism or mysticism which fills the ordinary person with unholy dread. And precisely because Scheler pleads the cause of a recovery of faith straightforwardly and unemotionally and in the customary jargon of the ’cultivated man of our time’, he is the man we need today.”

So now we know! Now we know why Bahr approves of Scheler. He (Scheler) cannot be accused of being a visionary or a mystic, for the average German is mortally afraid of them. And woe betide anyone who does not respect this fear, for if he were take it into his head to banish this fear or recognize the need to struggle against it, it would need more than a little courage to venture on such an undertaking.

Because I have great respect and affection for Hermann Bahr I would like to show that he is typical of those who find great difficulty in accepting a spiritual teaching of which our time stands in need. But there is promise of hope only if we overcome that terrible fear, if we have the courage to acknowledge that Spiritual Science is not an idle fancy, that the greatest clarity of thought is called for if we wish to make the right approach to Spiritual Science, for there is little evidence of clear thinking in the few examples which I have quoted to you today from Hermann Bahr and other contemporary writers. Spiritual courage is called for if we wish to develop ideas that are strong and effective. We need not go all the way with Nietzsche, nor need we wholly share the view he expresses in a passage which none the less may attract our attention; but when this sensitive spirit, stimulated perhaps by his illness, expresses his boldest and most courageous opinions we must nevertheless go along with him. The fear of being misunderstood must not deter us. It would he the greatest calamity that could befall us today if we were to be afraid of being misunderstood. We must sometimes perhaps pass judgements like the following judgement of Nietzsche, even though it may not be sound in every detail; that is not important. In his treatise “On the History of Christianity” he wrote:

“Christianity as a historical reality must not be confused with that one root which its name recalls: the other roots from which it has sprung are by far the more important. It is an unprecedented abuse of language to associate such manifestations of decay and such monstrosities as the ‘Christian Church’, ‘Christian belief’ and ‘Christian life’ with that Holy Name. What did Christ deny?—Everything which today is called Christian!”

Although this is perhaps an extreme view, Nietzsche nevertheless touched upon something which has a certain truth; but he expressed it somewhat radically. It is true to the extent that one could say: What would Christ most vigorously condemn if He were to appear in our midst today? Most probably what the majority of people call “Christian” today, and much else besides, which I will discuss in our lecture on Tuesday next.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Rudolf Kjellen (1864–1922), Swedish historian, professor at Upsala. Belonged to the school of “geopolitics”, the doctrine of the interaction of geographical and political factors in the constitution and development of States.

Note 2. Theophilus. Patriarch of Alexandria 385–412. He condemned Origen at the Synod of Alexandria 408. “He deprived the pagans of Alexandria of a temple ... and apparently destroyed other temples. A riot ensued and a number of Christians were slain. With Theophilus at their head the Christians retaliated by destroying the celebrated temple of Serapis on the ruins of which the patriarch erected a church.” (Quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. XIV, 1913.)

Note 3. Mithras Initiation. According to R. J. Vermaseren, in Mithras, the Secret God (Chatto & Windus, 1963) he who had acquired sufficient knowledge “could gain successively the title of Raven (Corax), Bride (Nymphus), Soldier (Miles), Lion (Leo), Persian (Perses), Courier of the Sun (Heliodromus) and Father (Pater)”. This book is a classic in the study of Mithraism. There are figures in the text and illustrations.

Note 4. Nietzsche. “The Will to Power and the Transvaluation of all Values.” According to P. Tillich “will” here means “the universal dynamics of all life processes and ‘power’ the affirmation of one's own individual existence. It is the power of the best.” The transvaluation of all values implies that since “God is dead”, i.e. that traditional and ethical values no longer stem from belief in a transcendent authority, man himself must re-create them. The “Übermensch” must be developed. He is the “superior” man physically, mentally and spiritually, the man of self-discipline who has learned to command and obey, to accept responsibility, whose watchword is duty and honour. It is an aristocratic ideal. According to Nietzsche his antitype is mass man, the “herd man” who has succumbed to ideologies that promise happiness and well-being. He is timid, bored, conformist, opposed to tradition and culture. This “slave morality” is utilitarian and keeps only its own advantage in view and prepares the ochlocracy, the “nihilism” towards which we are moving (p. 13 in the English text).

Note 5. Hermann Bahr (1863–1934). Austrian dramatist, novelist and essayist. In his later years he returned to the Church and represented the Catholic school of thought, cf. his novel Himmelfahrt.

Note 6. Max Scheler (1874–1928). Professor of Philosophy at Cologne, 1920–21. His writings have a strong theistic flavour and he was a subtle advocate of Catholicism.

Note 7. Lotze (1817–81), Dilthey (1833–1911), R. Eucken (1846–1929), Husserl (1859–1938) were philosophers of idealism. They were opposed to the mechanistic scientific philosophy of the age and pleaded the cause of ethical idealism.