The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I spoke yesterday of the great Polish drama “The Undivine Comedy” by Krasinski and of its very special significance. One can truly say that it was consciously brought into the world as the outcome of a dialogue with the Spirits working in the evolution of humanity, who in the middle of the 19th century spoke to those who were willing to listen to them.

Let us for a moment hold in our minds the thoughts that came to us from the realisation that what was astir in the inmost depths of the evolutionary process made its way into the external literary culture of the time. From Gutzkow's novel “The Mahaguru” as well as from “The Undivine Comedy”—I chose only two particularly striking examples from many that might be quoted—we see that as it were behind the scenes of external happenings, significant impulses are at work in the cultural life of mankind. From many sources we have gained knowledge that directs our minds and hearts to the great moment of world-evolution in which we are living, the moment when it is essential to be mindful of the new element that must be received into the evolution of humanity—but with the co-operation of human souls who are able to understand it. There are different ways of characterising the importance of the present time, but perhaps one thing only need be said and this will be sufficient to bring home the significance of the point of time at which we are standing.

In ages of antiquity men received a heritage consisting of wisdom yielded by atavistic clairvoyance and of knowledge gained atavistically. But this heritage petered away and the tide of materialism arose—particularly since the last three or four centuries and reaching a peak in the 19th century. This tide of materialism veiled all possibilities of vision into the spiritual world—and a new path, a new method, is now appearing in spiritual science. As I have often said, this development ultimately becomes a natural process in the souls of men. The situation today still is that the vast majority of souls have yet to learn that there are many earthly lives. But when the souls now living are re-incarnated, for the most part they will know, not merely as a theory, that there are many earthly lives; they will live on into an age when it will be known quite as a natural matter of course: there are many earthly lives. Just as human souls now remember back to a certain point in childhood, and thoughts from childhood constantly arise, so it will be natural one day for the living impression to well up from within: “We have been here many times.” Human souls will evolve to this stage just as they have evolved from primitive stages of life. This development will come about of itself but the following is inevitable.—

The souls who have learnt nothing from spiritual science today will die and return in new incarnations. Then, having learnt nothing from spiritual science, they will not know what to make of the impression that will rise up from within them of the truth of repeated earthly lives, and they may well be driven to despair. For this inner impression that will arise quite naturally in the soul must be grasped through thoughts, and the thoughts that are necessary before it can be understood are those yielded by spiritual science. These thoughts should make the whole history of the Ego and the fact of its existence in man intelligible to us; and he alone who has within him the force of these thoughts will be able to understand the impression that will come of itself, as a kind of remembrance.

But the foundation for understanding this remembrance will from now onwards have to be laid through spiritual science; knowledge of the continued existence of the Ego will have to be acquired. And those who have not acquired it will have to admit, when these remembrances well up in them: “I do not understand my own self.” This will be a terrible cry of despair in future times. It must be realised that only through knowledge and understanding of what will inevitably come in the future can human souls be kept from falling into despair. When the Ego which passes from incarnation to incarnation asserts itself in the future—and this means in our future incarnations—men must be able to understand this Ego. And they will do so if they have worked on their souls through the thoughts of spiritual science.

The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled in order that the Ego might be fully understood, and this can never happen if—as in the case of the Polish Count described yesterday—men preserve in their souls nothing but feelings of the Past—sacred though these feelings may be and connected with the events centred in the Mystery of Golgotha. Such feelings will enable these events to be grasped as matters of history, but that cannot lead to any true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. True understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha depends upon the fulfilment of the words; “Not I but Christ in me.” It will then be possible for Christ in His living activity within earth-evolution not to remain inaudible to men. He must be made audible through that which, under his inspiration, spiritual science has to say, no sentiments or feelings tied to remembrances, can lead mankind to future well-being. But neither can the interests of the future be furthered by one who lives only in and for the Present—the tyrant described in the lecture yesterday. The tyrant does indeed, assert the Ego, but not Christ within the Ego. A deep riddle is presented to us in this Polish drama: two personalities stand in contrast to one another, one of whom has the Christ of tradition, of history, but runs the risk of falling away from Him. And what comes to expression in the wife and in the child of the Count relapses into a purely atavistic connection with the spiritual world.

A great danger for our time is indicated here. It is that those who are not willing to assimilate in a new way the knowledge of mankind's connection with the spiritual worlds, although they feel that such connection exists, will cause part of their being to lose the requisite link with the spiritual world. Mankind would fall asunder into those who—like the old Count—must necessarily despair and die because they cling exclusively to the Past, and those who rise into the spiritual worlds in an atavistic way—like the Count's wife and child. Because they have not received the Christ into their inmost being in full reality, they pass into the spiritual world without finding in themselves a point of anchorage.

What is it that the members of the Count's family have not fully developed? They have not fully developed the Ego: they are remains from the age which in the regular course of the evolution of humanity has been at an end since the Mystery of Golgotha, but markedly so since the last few centuries. They are remains from an age of antiquity when the Ego had not yet completely taken root in man; they are Ego-less human beings who, because they cannot take the Christ into the Ego which has not developed into the necessary intensity, lose the Christ. And standing in contrast to them is the tyrant, who has developed the Ego and bears it in himself with all strength; without taking the Christ into the Ego, he desires to bring happiness to the world but is incapable of doing so. At the point of death—out of the vision which the tyrant understands as little as he understands how to resign himself to death—there breaks from his lips the cry: “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!”—This is an indication of the fact that for those human beings who have, it is true, acquired the Ego but have not taken Christ into this Ego, there is one moment only when it is possible for them to come into relationship with Christ: it is the moment when they pass from this world into the other world. But because Christ came from that other world into this world in order there to find the way to human hearts, men must inevitably lose Him when, after the moment of death, they arrive in that other world. All the deeper impulses at work in our time belong to a sphere where momentous issues are at stake—I can say no more than that they “are at stake.”

But now we must go rather more deeply into things that are already known to us but must be studied in a certain setting if we are to understand them in the light of the conditions prevailing in our time. We know that, properly speaking, the evolution of the earth must be divided into an epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha and an epoch following the Mystery of Golgotha. We know, too, that in the epoch before the Mystery of Golgotha, Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits also worked into the souls of men. Particularly in considering the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha it must be realised that foolish chatter about avoiding Ahriman and Lucifer at all costs will get us nowhere. For Ahriman and Lucifer were allowed by the normal, progressive spiritual Beings to work in the earthly evolution of men.

Now we know that there are spiritual Beings actually ranking higher than men but who during the Old Moon period of evolution did not reach the height that would have been possible for them; they did not reach it, but for all that they rank higher than men. So that bearing in mind the intervention of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings, we can now understand better what is called the ancient, primeval wisdom in earth-evolution. For example, the ancient wisdom that was misused in the Lemurian epoch and perished with the Lemurians; the wisdom that was then misused in the Atlantean epoch and brought about the destruction of Atlantis. What was it that was then among men? What was it, in reality? To say that the great wisdom then existing was misused, applied in practices of black magic and so forth, is a very abstract way of speaking and leads to no very definite idea. Let us think, for example, of the character of this wisdom in the last periods of the Lemurian epoch. Whence had it come? Spiritual Beings who had not completed their full development during the Old Moon epoch but who were nevertheless at a higher level than men, had mingled with the earthly evolution of humanity. Man was already there—but, as you can well imagine, in his most primitive state. What was subsequently developed by human beings during the Atlantean and Post-Atlantean epochs did not yet exist. In those Lemurian times, man was a being wholly devoid of intelligence, for intelligence was to develop only gradually during the course of earth-evolution. Man was primitive in his will, in his actions, in his soul-development—altogether like a child. Now had there existed only bodies of men with the higher members of those bodies that had been developed for them by the progressive spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, men would not have been capable at that time of evolving any outstanding wisdom. But in that Lemurian age a very lofty altogether extraordinary wisdom existed. For example, among those primitive men there was widespread knowledge of how to handle a child during the period between birth and the seventh year so that as the result of a certain transformation of his etheric body which then worked back upon the brain, he could be made extremely clever. Radical educational methods have to be applied today if this result is desired—and everyone is aware how very often these efforts are unsuccessful. But in any case the art of affecting the brain itself by exercising a certain influence on the etheric body of the brain, so that the child in question becomes extremely clever, is entirely lost today. Furthermore—and I hasten to emphasise it—this art is in no circumstances whatever legitimate in our time, for if it became at all general, even in its most elementary form, it would lead to terrible abuses.

How is the existence of such an art in Lemurian times to be explained? It is explained by the fact that Beings who had not completed their development on the Old Moon, but had evolved only the first six of their seven members, incorporated in men who otherwise would have been utterly primitive. The spiritual Beings who on the Old Moon were at a higher level than men but had not attained the apex of their development, took on these primitive human bodies and went to work with arts which far transcended all earthly knowledge. You can imagine what such Beings in human bodies were capable of accomplishing,—Beings who at a level higher than the human had developed the sixth member—the Life-Spirit—entered into these primitive, flexible, pliant bodies. And they became terrible magicians, dread magicians!

And again, what kind of arts were general in the Atlantean epoch? First and foremost there was the wisdom which must be applied in order to cause talents in ancestors to be transmitted, purely through heredity, to their descendants and actually to be enhanced in these descendants. The Beings whose development had not been completed on the Moon but who for all that were of a higher rank than earthly man, were deeply versed in this art—with most significant effect. Let me put it like this: it was as if by methods connected with star-constellations and the like, one were to lead over the qualities of a genius to his descendants, but in such a way that these spiritual qualities were not merely inherited, but intensified, enhanced. These higher Beings working in human bodies were capable of mighty achievements. All this was swept out of existence. Very many things were connected with these particular arts. For example, it was possible by their means to observe the course of spiritual evolution and to guide the spiritual forces into the stream of heredity.

And so even superficial observation will show that there is a very great deal in world-evolution which in an earlier age had its justification but which in the form it now bears is no more than a relic that has been preserved. Both in unimportant and important domains it is so. In his novel “The Mahaguru” Gutzkow wanted to indicate something of the kind in an important domain. He wanted to give emphasis to the question: In what form does something that had great significance in ancient times—in the Atlantean epoch, when it was still possible for men to regulate the stream of heredity—in what form does it appear when it is carried over into an age and into a community where the traditions of it had indeed been preserved but where nothing more was known of the earlier art than an inferior form of it called in occultism “Occult Chemistry?” Gutzkow showed that something of the kind existed in Tibet. Naturally, the priesthood in Tibet had no knowledge of how through forces of heredity they could produce a body for the individuality whom they believed should pass from one body into another—but they preserved the old customs. So there we have an example of the external reality presenting an aspect utterly different from what it had been in conditions once prevailing in the evolution of humanity. Reading “The Mahaguru” makes one want to cry out: Oh, how reality itself can become a maya in face of the prevailing conditions!

And now think of something else.—You can well imagine that the men of Lemurian and Atlantean times did not resemble the men of today, for what developed, inwardly in the soul at that time also gave configuration to the outer form; the whole outer form of man was different—it was pliant and flexible. The human form in the times of Lemuria and Atlantis was not ape-like; the bodies of the actual ancestors of men were not ape-like.—It would seem, therefore, that world-evolution must have made an exception in the case of certain people who have written of themselves that they can remember having descended from apes!¹—But we will not go into that now.—Men did not resemble apes, but if you picture our children presenting a much, much more infantile appearance, with an elemental quality of being extending over the whole body, you may be able to get an idea of the character of the human body in those times. As you can read in the book “From the Akasha Chronicle,” because Beings surviving from the Old Moon evolution had incarnated in these pliant, flexible bodies, these bodies became animal-like rather than human. Distorted forms arose, with strangely contorted limbs.—And there you have the origin of the figures of gods to be found among certain peoples. These curious figures with non-human faces and huge limbs, originate from the knowledge that the incarnating Moon-Beings were united with human bodies.

If in the Atlantean epoch there had been painters and sculptors, they would have been able to portray or model these figures of Moon-Beings incarnated in human bodies. But in Tibet this was no longer possible. Hence the canon must be strictly obeyed, for the artists would otherwise have made figures with whatever terms they liked. If a man did not obey the canon but created something out of his own play of fancy, he incurred the death-penalty. Naturally, one may ask: Is there any justification for condemning to death someone who makes only one tiny change in the figure of a god? Is there really any justification for it? In Tibet, of course, there is no longer any justification, but once upon a time there was, for as you have heard, these Beings were actually present in bodies, and if they were not faithfully portrayed, any deviation amounted to a lie. In those ancient times a lie had infinitely greater power than it has nowadays. If at the present time everyone who tells a lie were to suffocate as the result—well, I prefer to leave it at that, for I think that the fear of suffocation would be too great to allow people to risk telling lies! I assume that nowadays people will not suffocate—but at that time a lie would have caused actual suffocation. For the thought expressed in the word contained a power to give form to the air in the larynx, and then suffocated the man—and anyone who had incorrectly portrayed on earth a Being who had not fully completed his development on the Old Moon would have suffocated, in other words, a process of nature would have caused his death.

The evolution of humanity is an exceedingly complicated matter and to understand it one must go deeply into spiritual science. To find the right approach to world-evolution it is essential to study what it is the mission of spiritual science to make known from spiritual worlds. For spiritual science is, as it were, a first impulse to which other impulses must increasingly be added, in order that humanity in the future may advance along the right path. You will have realised from what I have been saying recently² that a course must be steered between a Scylla and a Charybdis, that a very definite path must be laid down in spiritual science.—This must be taken with the deepest earnestness. Our modern natural science is developed by materialistic methods. During these last weeks I have tried to describe its characteristics to you. I have said that a materialistic method in natural science is fully justified. It can be characterized by saying that it is adapted to cloak the spiritual reality lying behind. Why, then, must this materialistic method be there in our present time?

In our present time an earlier knowledge of nature must be superseded by a new knowledge of nature. I have told you something about this earlier knowledge of nature. Just think what kind of knowledge it was! To be able to mould a human head into an instrument editable for genius, through specific measures applied scientifically in the old sense of the word—this signified colossal knowledge!—or again, so to regulate heredity that qualities of genius were transmitted to descendants—the knowledge required for this was even more penetrating and comprehensive, far, far surpassing all the theories of evolution, the physics, chemistry and so on, of today. But that ancient knowledge was to be veiled and obscured by the materialistic method employed in natural science today—which is fully justified in the purely physical domain. It must be remembered that at the time when that lofty knowledge of nature existed, man was not a free being; he was only at the beginning of the gradual evolution of freedom. He was led and guided and what came to pass in the process of his guidance was for the most part brought about by the higher Hierarchies. And it was single individuals who deviated from the regular course, who advanced too far along the path to freedom, who were responsible for the fall into the abyss and the inevitable destruction of Atlantis. But with the constantly increasing freedom of will, man would have been unfit for knowledge of this kind. To possess knowledge such as once existed on the earth is unthinkable today because man's will has attained freedom to an extent that would enable him still to misuse this knowledge. How, then, is this free will guided into the right channel?

From indications I have given recently you will have gathered that by adopting the method employed in natural science, with all its scrupulous exactitude, the free will is directed into the right channel; moreover, this method is a wonderfully effective pedagogical means for the development of the free will. We have therefore no cause whatever to quarrel with the method employed in natural science, the justification of which for our present time we fully acknowledge. You will find that what is contained in our lecture-courses and books completely refutes the allegations of individual opponents—to the effect, for example, that we repudiate natural science. It is sometimes necessary to take exception to the pretensions of certain investigators and so-called scientific authorities; but nothing derogatory to the achievements of natural science will ever be found in our literature. To say that anything in our literature is a repudiation of natural science would be sheer calumny, for among us there can be no question of such repudiation. But at the same time it must be realised that attacks upon us may well be made from the side of so-called natural science—and if necessary, we must then repel the attack. But true adherents of spiritual science must become more and more conscious of the necessity to understand the natural-scientific method and to protect this method from being tainted by all kinds of non-scientific concepts—for example concepts of the atom and movement of the atom, of which I have recently spoken. These are fantasies of natural science, and the difference must be clearly seen.

Efforts must be made to distinguish between genuine natural science and scientific fantasy. How often do we not hear it said today that one thing or another is scientifically established—whereas it is nothing of the kind, because words are simply accepted as facts. Never was blind belief in authority greater than it is at the present time in the domain of science, for everyone allows things to be determined entirely by those in whom they happen to believe. The purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha was that what came into the world through Lucifer might gradually be corrected in a certain way—it is indicated symbolically in the Bible: “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil”—that is to say, ye shall know good and evil from outside. But when in the sphere of perceptions one perceives from outside, it is impossible to receive from that world anything other than perceptions. As soon as one begins to reflect about the perceptions, to speculate about them and derive all kinds of ideas from them, one is on the way to finding what has been imbued into them by Ahriman and Lucifer. The ideas must come out of the spiritual world and be united with the perceptions: then these ideas are in the real sense divine! In human life there must be a marriage between the ideas which are given to men from out of the Spiritual and what he perceives in the outer world through his senses. But this union must first be achieved. How this principle applies in the scientific domain you can gather from my essay “Truth and Science.” The belief that in the scientific sense, ideas, thoughts, could also be found from outside, from the perceptions, is based on illusion, on illusion caused by Ahriman and Lucifer. But as long as the Powers associated with the words “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil” (which means to search for the ideas in the outer world) were sanctioned, that is to say, until the Mystery of Golgotha—as long as Lucifer and Ahriman were allowed to work in this sphere, there was no objection to be made. But that state of things is now over. Now, in the matter of the permeation of perceptions from outside, they are all the more unjustified.

This too was brought into evidence in the middle of the 19th century through a crisis of a particular kind. This crisis announced itself in great and outstanding achievements: spectral-analysis, for example, came on the scene, swept away the conception that when one looks upwards to the stars one has to do with spiritual Beings—and showed that substances to be found everywhere in the universe also exist on the earth. The old union between ideas and perceptions is no longer possible, for such discoveries make it essential that the ideas shall again find the spiritual path into our souls. The same applies to Darwinism. To reason entirely on the basis of what is found by outer perception—that is to say, to seek for the ideas in the outer world—can only lead to a purely materialistic conception and interpretation of the world. In short, the crisis is in evidence everywhere and there is also widespread rebellion against the fact that the ideas must flow out of the spirit-realm into the souls of men if humanity is to make progress. In other words: we must understand the nature of Ahriman and Lucifer and be on the alert when they try to make us continue the principle indicated in the words; “Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil.” We must learn to observe both Ahriman and Lucifer. And we shall be able to do this if we permeate the Ego, as it has now unfolded, with Christ.

But something else too resounded through the world in primeval times, resounded from a different side, after man had acquired the power to distinguish good and evil, to direct his gaze outwards, that is to say, to use his senses and through them to acquire ideas based on sense-perceptions. The decree went forth: Man must be driven out of the spirit-realm in which he has hitherto been living, in order that he may not also eat “of the Tree of Life.” But Christ will forever give men to eat of the Tree of Life, and the ideas which stream directly out of the spirit-realm into human souls must be inwardly experienced. But they can be experienced in the real sense only when the human soul takes Christ into itself. Then we have something quite different from the concept of Knowledge; then we have the concept of Life. Just as a strict eye must be kept on Lucifer and Ahriman in order that when they allow knowledge derived from the outer world to penetrate into us we may perceive that this knowledge is coming from them, so we must realise that through the impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha, ideas were to flow into men to be the substance of life—the substance not of knowledge alone, but of life. And when from this standpoint of life we study the different religions of the world, it will be far, far from our minds to investigate these religions with the object of discovering whether they are or are not in keeping with our own view of the world. To apply only the concept of knowledge to these religions is not our task; we must apply the concept of life.

There are definite forms of religion in the world. We should not set out to discover whether we can consider these forms to be true, but whether through their ritual and ceremonies they are able to give nourishment and life to the souls of men, and—as the souls of men differ—it follows that their life can be sustained by different forms of nourishment. If we grasp this truth we shall realise that we can never lend ourselves to quarreling with any form of religion but that we must endeavour to understand it in so far as it is life-nourishment for human souls to whom it is given as life not as knowledge only, but as very life. Then we shall see that the standpoint from which a religion begins to quarrel with some branch of science is entirely misplaced. We shall also realise that religion will inevitably adopt a hostile attitude towards progress in natural science and spiritual science alike. For the religions are still unwilling to get away from the old Tempter, they still want to invoke only that God Who said to man that He will give them life, that they themselves are not to eat of the Tree of Life. The representatives of religions do not want to invoke God alone but also the Luciferic Spirit and the Ahrimanic Spirit; they want the eyes for distinguishing good and evil to be opened through religion. Religion wants to be “knowledge.” But it cannot be “knowledge” because it is life-substance. And under the sway of this temptation which still whispers in their ears, the representatives of the different religions believe they possess facts of knowledge in their religions, whereas the question of knowledge cannot, in reality, come into consideration between religion and science. We have no cause whatever to combat religious bodies, because we ask them about the sustenance they provide for life, not about what knowledge they possess. Religious communities will always be tempted to ask whether science as it advances is in keeping with what they regard as knowledge. But because life is in process of constant evolution, advancing science can never be in keeping with religions which invariably tend towards conservatism.

And now you can picture the whole conflict which in the nature of things will ever and again be urged. I should like you to think rightly about this conflict and to realize that as a matter of course the representatives of religious bodies, because they are under the sway of temptation, will always, from their standpoint, combat spiritual science, just as they combat natural science. But you must also realise that these opponents fight because they lack understanding. This does not excuse them at all, but it must none the less be realised that they fight because of lack of understanding; they cannot take the right standpoint. As a sign and symptom, let me bring to your notice words written by a man who perceived the inevitable approach of the natural-scientific age and the natural-scientific way of thinking, and who was told by a friend that one should not be concerned with knowledge that is not contained in the Bible or preserved in the traditions of the Church. Since the 14th century, of course, things have changed in this connection.—Dante's “Divine Comedy” is a great, world-embracing poem. But Dante lived at the time when the epoch during which men confined themselves to purely historical Christianity was passing away. For Dante, Virgil was simply the exile banished to hell. Dante did not know much about anything that differed from the Christianity confronting him as a great system and régime. But in the case of Petrarch it was different, 1 century later, in the 14th century, Petrarch read Virgil with far greater credence. He turned not only to Greek but also to Roman spiritual culture. When one of his friends wrote to Petrarch saying that there had appeared to him in a dream a spiritual Being who exhorted him to avoid all non-Christian literature, he (Petrarch) gave a very significant answer. I stress the importance of this incident because it shows how the friend—and through him, Petrarch—was enjoined from the spiritual world to concern himself only with what the Christianity of that time regarded as truly Christian. Petrarch wrote the following beautiful words which held good at that time for the approaching epoch and still hold good today. Petrarch replied to his friend Boccaccio in momentous words, affirming his standpoint, why he read this non-Christian literature, and what it meant to him (Petrarch: Letter to Boccaccio (“Epistolae seniles” I. 5):

“Why then should we shun the pagan poets and writers who do not use the name of Christ simply because they have never heard it? Surely there is greater danger in the books of sceptics who speak of Christ and at the same time dispute Him—but those who claim to be the defenders of the true faith read these writings with the greatest eagerness. Believe me: much that is simply the product of sloth and timidity is attributed to thoughtful deliberation. Men often cast scorn on what is out of their reach; it is characteristic of ignorance to condemn what it cannot comprehend and nobody will concede to it strivings of which it is incapable.

“Here lies the root of the misguided judgments of what is unknown; it is not so much the blindness of those who pass judgment as their laziness that is in evidence. We, however, should not allow ourselves to be frightened away from the sciences by any pious admonitions, or by indications of the near approach to death. If the sciences are imbibed with inner sincerity they quicken the love of morality and take from us, or at least diminish, the fear of death; if we abandon them, this will excite the suspicion that disbelief lays claim to be knowledge. The sciences are not a hindrance to one who has the right mastery of them, but they are a help to him; they level his path of life and do not thwart him.

“For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind. ...

“I know well that many have achieved great sanctity without culture, but I know too that nobody has been kept from sanctity by culture. ... If I am to tell you my own opinion, it is this: The path to holiness via ignorance may possibly be smooth, but it is faint-hearted. All good things have a single goal but many paths lead thither and fellow-travelers along these paths differ greatly; the one moves more slowly, the other more quickly, the one in obscurity, the other visibly, the one bowed with humility, the other buoyant with exultation. All journeying is blessed; but the noblest is that which proceeds freely and openly before the world. The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity, be it never so pious; and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness.”

The same could be said about our spiritual science! And not only to X³ but to all the others who fight against us, one could rejoin with the words written by Petrarch to his friend; “For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind.”

And when people harp on the “contradiction in the first and third Gospels” and refuse to admit that the contradiction disappears as soon as the existence of two Jesus boys is taken into account; when they insist upon “simplicity” and say that the fantastic statements of “the one up there” (on the Goetheanum hill) can well be ignored; when they will not admit that all the forms of life are incorporated in our Building, but talk about “distorted, fantastic forms,” one must quote the words of Petrarch: “The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity; be it never so pious, and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness.”

Such thoughts make us realise that it can never be our principle to combat any religious body and that it is sheer calumny when anyone accuses us of being an enemy of religious Movements. The very fact of such an accusation proves that there is no willingness even to try to understand us. This at least we must know; and we must resist every tendency to adopt an aggressive attitude to any religious community just as we must keep ourselves free from the same kind of attitude to natural science because that will soon disclose its attitude to spiritual science! There is no reason whatever for us to combat any religious body. Combat cannot be begun by us because it does not lie in our nature to attack. And it must be taken as an axiom that if peace is denied us, it is because the hostile neighbour is not inclined for peace. Let the principle of leaving us in peace be put to the test and then see whether peace is maintained! Let it be put to the test! But naturally, we ourselves must be permeated with the right feeling and attitude. For example, much wrong is also done when from our side, too, dogmas or rites of one kind or another are attacked, often without having been understood; but if we rightly understand them, the principle referred to holds good. I would therefore enjoin you to understand the principle of peace. Just as I was obliged to enjoin you to have forbearance with conditions prevailing at the present time, so must I enjoin you to be alert and watchful, in order that we may do what is necessary to guard the holy treasure entrusted to us. For more and more we shall have to wend our way through the world with an unwavering inner strength if we are to stand firmly on the ground where spiritual science would have us stand.

The Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ Principle are intimately connected with the need to see spiritual reality in the world. Mere looking will never suffice even to understand the Mystery of Golgotha purely as an historical event. The Mystery of Golgotha must be comprehended spiritually; and those who devote themselves to knowledge where everything is derived from outside and will not open their eyes to the new revelations of the Mystery of Golgotha which can ever and again flow to us, will not grasp the import of a poem sung by yet another voice in the middle of the 19th century concerning that which—ever changing yet ever present—holds good in earthly humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. Let me read you a section of this poem which describes how one who cannot grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha confronts this Mystery:⁴

Here is another example of how a human soul feels impelled to give expression to what has come to pass. And now that we have let these pictures pass through our souls, let me remind you of something that I have already said here: that we must change our mode of perception if we are to look with true vision into the spiritual world. We must not believe that the spiritual world can be seen as we see the material world of sense. We must even accustom ourselves to different modes of expression,—In the physical world we see trees, rivers, mountains. But of spiritual being we must say: they see us, they perceive us. To understand the Mystery of Golgotha truly, it is necessary to know this, because the Mystery of Golgotha can be understood only in the Spiritual. But that is how we aspire to understand it.

The time must come when through a true understanding of the words “Not I, but Christ in me,” it will be possible to rise into the spiritual worlds with the right knowledge. This epic poem “Ahasver” by Julius Mosen was published in the year 1838, and the fact that he was able to put the legend into such a form also indicates that the tragic destiny by which Mosen was overtaken profoundly affected him. He was bedridden nearly all his life, for his physical body was almost totally paralysed; this was precisely what enabled him to grasp such lofty ideas. We are reminded of the sinner in the novel “The Mahaguru” who, when he was already out of his mind, discovered the true nature of his art; and we are reminded, too, of the Count's wife in the Polish drama, who had to fall into a pathological state in order to find the connection with the spiritual world. It is the task of spiritual science today to help human beings to rise into the spiritual world in the healthy, normal state of consciousness.—All these things are signs of the task and of the value to be attached to the task of the spiritual-scientific Movement. Compressed into a few brief words, this is the truth that can inspire us as a source of strength: “The Mystery of Golgotha itself reveals that it must be understood spiritually, that we must seek for Christ as Spirit.” And then we must also say: “Christ is seeing us, Christ is perceiving us.”

We will inscribe this deeply in our hearts, keep it constantly in our minds, and our conscience must be satisfied when, in presenting our spiritual-scientific knowledge, we are saying with inner sincerity: May Christ be a witness of what we promulgate as Spiritual Science. We believe that this may indeed be so—and it can inspire us as men were once inspired by the cry of Bernard of Clairvaux: “It is God's Will!” These words became deeds. May it be the same among us—for we may believe that we understand Christ truly when we live under the inspiration of the words: Christ knows us.—And if you understand it aright, to a soul that sees our spiritual science in the true light, to a heart that feels it in its true light, I can impart no more esoteric saying than this: Christ is seeing us.

May these words live in our souls: “Christ is seeing us”—for so we may believe if we rightly understand spiritual science.—Christ is seeing us.

• 1. Statements to this effect are made in the book “Man: How, Whence and Whither” by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. (Theosophical Publishing Company)
• 2. See “The Occult Movement In the 19th Century”—notably Lectures IX and X.
• 3. A newspaper article had been written by a priest living in the vicinity of the Goetheanum.
• 4. Dr. Steiner now read part of the epic poem on Ahasver, or Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew, by Julius Mosen. The Wandering Jew is the legendary figure of a Jerusalem shoemaker who, taunting Christ on the way to the Crucifixion, was told by Him to “go on forever till I return.”—Note by Translator.
  
  In a lecture entitled. “Elemental Beings” (Berlin, 16th May, 1908), Dr. Steiner speaks as follows of the legend of Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew: “An important legend sets before us what a man must experience who descends too deeply into the temporary, transitory nature of the one incarnation. If we think of an extreme case, we can imagine it like this: ‘What is it to me that I should carry over something to later incarnations? I live in this incarnation, I like it, it suits me very well. I am not concerned with what I am supposed to make of it.’ Where does this thought lead? It leads to a man who sits at the wayside when a great Leader of humanity passes by. He, however, rejects the ideas of the Leader of humanity; he repulses him and thinks: ‘I will know nothing of thee, who wouldst guide the kernel of my being into future incarnations where mankind will be outwardly more perfect. I wish to remain united with my present form.’—A man who thrusts from him such a Leader of mankind will appear again in the same form. And if this attitude hardens, then he shall also thrust from him the Leader in the next incarnation. He will appear again and again as the same figure. ... Those who listen to the great Leader of humanity will preserve the soul with its eternal life-kernel. Mankind will have gone forward but they too will appear in an ever-progressive form. He, however, who thrusts the Leader of humanity from him must reappear again and again in the same form. This is the legend of Ahasueris who has thrust from himself the Christ, the Leader of humanity. ...”

As there is an opportunity for us to be together again today, I will speak of certain matters connected in one way or another with subjects we have been studying. I should like, first of all, to direct your minds to the fact that the attitude of which I spoke last time, the attitude which leads to a certain denial of the reality of the spiritual worlds, is fairly universal in the external world today. Fundamentally speaking—and indeed it is evident—willingness to approach the spiritual worlds in order to receive from them something that will enrich and invigorate life, is to be found in only a tiny handful of men. We can see that this is so.

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.

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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.

My dear friends! In view of the increasingly strong attacks that have been occurring recently, it will probably be necessary for our dear friends not to speak unclearly to the outside world about certain points of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. I will, of course, not limit myself to just telling you about this or that attack again, but I will try, starting from two examples, to also mention some more important things in connection with what is being brought to our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the outside world.

First of all, we have the latest attack by the Jesuit priest Otto Zimmermann. Believe me when I say that it is truly not something I particularly enjoy having to talk about these things, but it has to be done. It has to be done because it is necessary to call certain things that are part of our lives today by their right name. To do this, it must first be pointed out that the Jesuit priest Otto Zimmermann used the decree of the so-called Congregation of the Holy Office of July 18, 1919 to state that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science also falls under this decree and must be judged in the same way as any kind of theosophy. The question put to the Congregation and answered by this decree was this: “Can teachings that are today called theosophical be reconciled with Catholic doctrine? And is it therefore permissible to join theosophical societies, to participate in their meetings and to read their books, magazines, newspapers and writings (libros, ephemerides, diaria, scripta)?” The answer of the Holy Congregation was: ‘Negative in omnibus’ - no in all points.

Now you know from the quotation I gave you from a Stuttgart speech by a canon whose name has momentarily escaped me that the Catholic priests' side asserts that one should only inform oneself about what is contained in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the writings of opponents, because the Pope has forbidden reading my own writings. From this you can see that from this side, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is treated absolutely the same as everything else that is called 'theosophical' from this side.

Now it is necessary to point out first of all how it stands in these circles, which refer to such a decree, with the truth. One need only highlight a few passages from the article in which the Jesuit priest Otto Zimmermann speaks of the Church's condemnation of Theosophy and Anthroposophy to see the spirit in which these official representatives of the Catholic priesthood – for a Jesuit priest is an official representative – speak today. I need only read the following sentence, for example:

Until 1913, the German section of the Theosophical Society at our headquarters in Adyar, India, was our top priority. Weakened by the defection of its General Secretary, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who took most of the members with him, it has recovered to some extent over the years and now has about 25 lodges, about a fifth of which are “dormant.” It publishes Theosophische Streben in Düsseldorf as its organ for Germany and Austria. Recently, people close to Steiner, who had named his theosophy “Anthroposophy” after the defection, complained that he was becoming sterile, had no new “visions” and always presented the same things; he would probably soon throw himself on something new.

Now, my dear friends, the question arises as to what a Jesuit priest would base such things on. You can guess the sources, roughly speaking. The main source probably lies in the pamphlet by Max Seiling, who, at the end of his pamphlet, announced his return to the one true Catholic Church. But the existence of such sources should certainly not allow a truthful person to formulate his words in such a way as to say that “his surroundings” say this. Because so far I have not been able to discover that it is precisely my surroundings that say such things. So one must say: such things are untrue, and when a representative of the Catholic Church says them, he is simply saying untruths.

In the last few reflections, I spoke very clearly about the importance of taking truth seriously. Those who are so strict about the truth in such matters may well be asked what is actually meant when they later say in their explanations:

In the light of pure reason, modern theosophy is a contemptible mysticism, actually condemned by all serious science, but in the light of faith it is an almost unsurpassable conglomeration of Hindu, Buddhist, Kabbalistic, Gnostic and related errors.

If you keep this in mind and realize that the man applies exactly what he says here to anthroposophy, then you have to say that the man is disregarding the truth with the most culpable carelessness.

Now, my dear friends, you just have to realize what that means, especially for a Catholic priest, for a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. In these matters, too, one must be completely serious. You see, among the things that this Jesuit priest Otto Zimmermann criticizes about anthroposophy, which he considers to be a theosophical doctrine, is that it denies the church as the infallible teacher and guardian of the traditional faith. So you see that it is thoroughly Roman Catholic to regard the Roman Catholic Church as the infallible teacher and guardian of the true faith. Now it must be clear that the Roman Catholic Church is not – as in the Protestant creed – dealing only with ordinary teachers as pastors and the like, but that the Catholic Church is dealing with priests ordained by it, who therefore, when they speak, always speak with the mandate and commission of this Catholic Church. So if an objective untruth is asserted by such a man, then this is an objective untruth that must certainly be attributed to the Catholic Church as well. That is to say, the Catholic Church as such speaks untruthfully through this man, according to its own principles.

Yes, this is one of those things in today's intellectual life that must be taken extremely seriously and with great gravity. For you must consider, my dear friends, that the Catholic Church – even if she has recently suffered great losses due to the overthrow of certain thrones – has an extraordinarily great influence over many people through the practice of auricular confession influence over a great number of people, and that she can actually exercise this influence by simply, if she wills it, withholding absolution from those who do not obey such decrees as the one mentioned. She does, then, have a spiritual means of exerting influence, and this must be taken into account today in a very essential way. The fact that a spiritual power with such means at its disposal has its organs proclaim untruth must be thoroughly and deeply reckoned with.

You see, and this should at least be theoretically clear to those who have penetrated to the core of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, that the main damage of our time comes from people's tendency towards untruth. This widespread tendency of people to tell lies is what actually underlies all the difficulties of our time. When untruth is now officially spread from a certain quarter, which administers the spiritual life of many people, it means an extraordinary amount among the forces of our time. And when untruth appears in such a coarse and brazen way, it is necessary to take such an occurrence absolutely seriously. For just consider that this church, by banning writings, ensures that its flock cannot come to the truth from their own information, and consider that these sheep have the obligation to follow their shepherds in all matters of faith , that these sheep are obliged to believe the untruths spread by their shepherds, that these sheep do not even have the possibility to somehow ascertain that they are being told untruths.

Why am I telling you all this? I must say it for the reason that salvation for the recovery of our time can only be expected if a thorough, truthful assessment of what comes from this side and is to be expected, moves into a sufficiently large number of people today with all the necessary intensity. And from this intensive sense of reality should come the seriousness that permeates the judgment of our time. Much of what is alive in our time has been infected by the same dishonesty, even though it is not Catholic. You see, it is not possible to simply take a comfortable point of view, not wanting to inconvenience oneself by making a correct judgment about these things. Nor is it possible to take the view that not all Catholic priests will be like Father Zimmermann, because what comes from the Catholic side in opposition to anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is precisely of the same kind, and a man like Father Zimmermann is a true spokesman for what comes from that side.

Let us take just one point from all that this Father has written and to which he now refers again. This Father has raised the accusation of pantheism in a large series of articles against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. There are two issues here. Firstly, my continued opposition to pantheism. Secondly, the possibility of also accusing numerous doctors of the church, whom the Catholic Church recognizes as legitimate doctors of the church, of pantheism for the same reasons that Father Zimmermann accuses anthroposophy of being pantheistic. Well, you can even use these reasons to portray the apostle Paul as a pantheist. But what use would it be for those who believe Father Zimmermann to somehow point out that he is telling an untruth? It would be of no use, because the writings that prove it have been banned by the Pope.

The second is the accusation that the description of the figure of Christ is that of a fantastic sun spirit from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And on this point, my dear friends, Father Zimmermann really does not know, but some of his fellow monks certainly know very well where the truth lies. And these people also know very well why it is carefully avoided to tell the Catholic lay community that it should also be one of the inner teachings of the Catholic Church to see Christ as a sun spirit. What is presented from this side is that there is truth in this characteristic of Christ that is given by anthroposophy. These people know this, but their aim is to conceal the truth, to prevent it from reaching people for reasons that are clear from many of the things I have said over the years. That is why they are particularly opposed to those who want to serve the spread of this truth, which they themselves want to conceal. And then, when they want to achieve this purpose, they do not let themselves be hindered by other things that are also true and that they spread in the light of their untruthfulness. For example, everyone who knows my books, who has heard and examined even a few of my public lectures, knows that I never fail to emphasize that the Christ-Spirit is essentially different from the spirits of other so-called religious founders. Everyone can know that I regard the Christ-Spirit as that which, through its passage through the Mystery of Golgotha, has given meaning to the whole development of the earth.

Anyone who is familiar with my books and who has heard and examined my lectures knows that I expressly emphasize that it would never occur to me to speak of the equivalence of all religious systems, and I have repeatedly used a very simple parable to condemn this view of the abstract equality of the various religious systems. I pointed out that there is indeed theosophical sectarianism that claims that all the various religious systems are actually based on the same wisdom. I said that only someone who gets stuck in the abstract could claim such a non-sense. Such a non-sense can only be claimed by someone who makes his or her characterization at a certain abstract level, without going into the specifics of the individual phenomena. Someone who speaks of the same core of wisdom in all religious systems seems to me, with his characterization of religious systems, like someone who names pepper, salt, paprika, mustard and so on as ingredients and then expresses that pepper, salt, paprika, mustard and sugar are of the same essence, namely that they are ingredients. But what matters is not that we find such characteristics, which are arrived at by abstraction, in various concrete things and phenomena, but rather what the individual concrete phenomena and facts have to do with life. And here I would ask whether anyone is doing the right thing who, because the quality of being an ingredient is present in all things – salt, sugar, pepper and so on – now puts salt in their coffee instead of sugar because the same essence, the quality of being an ingredient, is present in both. You only need to be abstract enough to very easily find similarity across a certain series of phenomena. But that is not what matters in life. What matters in life is to immerse oneself in the things of the world. And then it becomes clear, in the face of the content of pre-Christian religious beliefs and the content of the Mystery of Golgotha, that these pre-Christian beliefs are preparations that have undergone a great synthesis in the Mystery of Golgotha. And it also shows that since the Mystery of Golgotha, nothing new can arise as a religion within humanity. Only insights and worldviews can arise that lead to a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha than those that were already there.

Such a deepening in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha is also represented by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. But after the Mystery of Golgotha, new religious foundations should no longer occur, for the simple reason that what has led to the founding of religions within humanity has had its preparation before the Mystery of Golgotha, and has found its conclusion in the Mystery of Golgotha, so that then new, different approaches, which are other than religious ones, can still come into humanity. But after that which has come into humanity through the religious impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha, after that marks a conclusion in the developmental history of humanity, a better understanding of this conclusion can come about, but nothing new can be founded as a religion. This impact of the Mystery of Golgotha is for the whole organism of humanity something like, let us say, the coming of puberty for the individual human natural organism. A human being cannot become sexually mature twice. He can further develop what he grows into through sexual maturity, but he cannot become sexually mature a second time. Such things become quite clear when one really pursues anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. But when it comes to these things, untruth is told and at the same time care is taken to ensure that those on whom one counts when spreading untruth cannot recognize the truth. It is not enough, my dear friends, to look through your fingers and let five be straight, but it is necessary to be quite clear about the absolute impossibility that anything beneficial for humanity can come from such sources.

I am trying to characterize these things from a certain general point of view, from the point of view of how the spread of untruth from such a source must work in the development of humanity. But one must ask oneself how it comes about that again and again, even in people who want to be anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientists, the desire arises to say this or that: so-and-so, who is within such churches, did not speak so badly about anthroposophically oriented spiritual science after all. Such things come about precisely because one always wants to make a convenient compromise with the one with whom one should not make a compromise, in the interest of human truthfulness. It almost seems to me as if I am talking superfluously – and yet I know that it is not superfluous – by characterizing the Roman Catholic Church from this point of view.

Now, my dear friends, in the same issue - “Stimmen der Zeit” from November 1919 - in which these, one must say, objective untruths are found, and at the same time the announcement that it is forbidden for orthodox Catholics to inform themselves about the truth, in the same issue there is also an article about the threefold social order by another Jesuit priest. Now, anyone who is familiar with Jesuit literature is actually accustomed to having a certain respect for this literature in the parts in which it refers to various investigations into this or that philosophical basis of human worldviews, to having a certain respect for the keen insight that is acquired through the training that people who belong to such orders must undergo. But when one reads an article like this one about the threefold social organism, one can gain the impression that these people, who until recently showed real acumen in many fields, have also lost this acumen to the corrupt elements of today's immediate present. For what can be said about a logic when, for example, it is said that I demand the independence of intellectual life and would claim:

To put it simply: the root of social disaster lies in the fact that the proletariat has lost faith.

Now, my dear friends, in my writing “The Key Points of the Social Question” it is clearly explained that a significant reason for the loss of a real spiritual life for the proletariat lies in the fact that the previous bearers of this spiritual life were not able to develop the proper vital thrust within this spiritual life. I do not claim that people who have lost their faith should be condemned if they are proletarians, but I do claim that precisely the leading, guiding circles, and these still include the part of humanity, the Roman Catholic Church – that these leading circles have gradually developed the spiritual life in such a way that it can no longer provide spiritual sustenance for the souls of broad masses of people in the present age. And it is also a fine piece of logic, for example, when it is said: Yes, Steiner wants intellectual life to become independent, but what the point of independent intellectual life is can be seen from the spread of the art of cinema in the present day. Now, my dear friends, anyone who takes the spirit of my “Key Points of the Social Question” into account will see that I am talking about the lack of freedom in today's intellectual life.

So a man like this other Jesuit priest – his name is Constantin Noppel – manages to write that I am calling for a free intellectual life, but then cites the excesses of the current unfree intellectual life as an example of what would happen under a free intellectual life. These are indeed logical defects. And such logical errors surprise me, especially in a man who has gone through Jesuit schooling; for it is understandable that a soul that has gone through Jesuit schooling should speak objectively untruthfully for political reasons, as is the case with Father Zimmermann, can be understood; but how such logical contortions can come from this side is something that can only be understood in the context of the general intellectual corruption of our day.

Such involvement of intellectual corruption is also evident in other things. In my “Key Points of the Social Question” I try to show that the unjustified interference, say, of economic interests in the legal sphere can only be overcome by making the legal sphere independent. Father Constantin Noppel now finds: Yes, even if the legal life will be independent, then there will also be alliances of farmers, workers' representatives, business alliances, and so on in the legal parliaments. If he had been able to read, he would have been able to deduce from my “key points” that they can indeed be included, but that they could not do anything there that would serve their interests as a farmers' federation, as a workers' organization or as employers' associations, because everything that serves these interests is done precisely within the independent economic sphere. Nevertheless, a Jesuit priest finds it possible to say:

Precisely because the rights, labor laws, fundamental rights and so on are established there, the right-wing parliament will be the place for a farmers' alliance, for a one-sided labor party, entrepreneurs' party and so on.

Yes, my dear friends, such logic is exactly the same as the logic of some good-for-nothing to whom you say: So that you cannot run out into the street today and scratch and beat up other boys, I am locking you up today; what will you do then? – Then he says: I'll still beat them up and scratch them. Isn't it, the logic that underlies this Jesuit priest is really exactly the same. He continues, for example:

Either those with a financial interest in this legislation do not participate, and then Steiner does not indicate any means by which the sovereign economy can be forced to accept the provisions imposed by those who are not experts. Or, alternatively, those with a financial interest work together on the legislation, in which case they will always do so as interested parties, and in the best case we will be as far as we are today.

Isn't it true that one can talk about anything with such people, and they will just say: things will remain the same anyway. One can say that an article like the one written by Otto Zimmermann is full of venom and bile, and this abundance of venom and bile is particularly striking; but an article like the one about the threefold social order, while not actually full of venom and bile, is strangely full of stupidity. I could even imagine people saying: Well, Constantin Noppel is not so bad after all, because he treats the threefold social order quite objectively, and after all, a person cannot be held responsible for his stupidity. But that would be the convenient way of judging, which is doing so much harm today.

But now I would like to take this opportunity to point out once again something that is fundamental to the idea of the threefold social order. This Jesuit priest concludes his article with the words:

But he...

— by that he means me —

... is essentially satisfied with this and hopes against all experience that the now happily separated, previously hostile brothers will now find their way to peaceful community work by themselves. Even assuming that the threefold social order could be implemented in practice, Steiner does break down the social organism into three parts, but he does not solve the social question. He fails in the synthesis.

What is important here – and this is fundamental – is that there is a difference between the idea of the threefold social order and all other programmatic ideas. All other programmatic ideas assume that they are, at least to a certain extent, attempts to solve the social problem. Most of those who draw up such social programs actually have the opinion in the background: today the world is still bad, but if it is ready in eight days to implement everything that such a program man draws up, then it will be good, then the social question will be more or less solved.

You see, the idea of the threefold social order does not start from such views, but this idea of the threefold social order first of all states that among the many different currents that have been present in human life for so many years, there is also the social question in the modern sense of the word. If we mix everything up again, we can of course say that the social question has always existed. But the social question, as we have to understand it today from our world and living conditions, is no older than seven to eight decades. This social question is there, and it has been brought into this human life by the living conditions at the present stage of human development. And it must always be solved anew, that is, people must live in a social organism, out of whose structure they will behave in such a way that their lives find a lasting solution to the social question. So the appeal is made to all people, not just to their own cleverness, but to all people. But it is shown under what conditions people should live in the social organism if they are to really contribute to solving the social question. What is being aimed at through the idea of the threefold social organism is something so fundamentally different from all that has appeared as programmatic ideas so far that it is really a huge nonsense for someone to say: “Steiner breaks down the social organism into three parts, but he does not solve the social question.” For it is clear from every line of the “Kernpunkte” and from other things I have written in this field that I am not concerned with wanting to give a solution to the social question as an individual, but rather with wanting to point out how people should be structured in the social organism so that the solution to the social question can come from the cooperation and thinking and feeling together of humanity structured in the social organism. It is therefore a capital mistake when anyone asserts that I do not solve the social question, because I have never claimed that I, as an individual, solve the social question. I merely point out the organization of social life by which the solution of the social question can be approached.

From all these things, it will be clear to you how difficult it is today, with the striving for truth born out of the fundamental conditions of the time, to really get away with the ill will of humanity and the folly of humanity. What can be more contemptible than when someone like Father Zimmermann is demonstrably peddling objective untruths? And nowadays, such peddlers of objective untruths can protect themselves from the appropriate measures by his own people by forbidding these people to inform themselves about the truth. And Father Zimmermann can write for his laymen:

In the light of pure reason, modern theosophy is a contemptible mysticism that is actually condemned by all serious science.

And the Catholic laity have to believe this objective untruth because it is forbidden to educate oneself about the truth. One can hardly imagine anything more corrupt. I just want to point this out with regard to ill will. It is difficult to argue against the stupidity that is the other factor. With regard to the social question, the great mistake people make is to believe that it can be solved by an individual or a party with a program. The social question can only be solved in a lasting and continuous way by organizing human coexistence in a certain way. This is precisely what the idea of the threefold social organism fundamentally points to, and what can be formulated as follows: This idea of the threefold social organism says that one individual cannot solve the social question. And then stupidity comes along and says: “... but he does not solve the social question”.

You see, my dear friends, it is indeed necessary not to close our eyes to these things, and I can assure you that what I said last time is something I am absolutely serious about. It is not my inclination to say these things, especially in relation to the Catholic Church. But I am not saying them as some attacker, but I say them as the attacked. I would, if these attacks had not come, truly limit myself to presenting the truth to the people in a positive way. But when the attacks come from such a spirit, there is no other way than to characterize these attacks in the appropriate way. What has been said by individual members of the Catholic priesthood is, of course, correct; it may even be one of the few correct things that has been said by the Catholic Church with regard to Anthroposophy. Here and there it has been said: Well, as long as this Anthroposophy leads an obscure existence, we will not trouble ourselves about it; but the moment it spreads, that is the moment we will destroy it!

On the one hand, the intense struggle against Anthroposophy that is currently taking place could be seen as a testament to its spread. In a sense, this is also the case. But on the other hand, the will to destroy, which exists on the side that is characterized today, must not be underestimated, because from this side one will destroy what one can destroy. And the steadfastness of a spiritual movement for the outer physical life between birth and death depends on the honest strength of its adherents. I ask you to bear this last word in mind. The honest strength of those who profess it, and also the expert strength of those who profess it, is something to which one must appeal again and again, because, of course, it is of no importance to the powers in the spiritual worlds themselves how many people on earth profess a cause. But the earth needs truth, and to spread the truth on earth, the strength of its professing is necessary.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is under attack from many sides today. My dear friends, I would be happy to deal with these attacks if they were of such a nature that they dealt with objective facts. Why shouldn't one engage in an objective polemic with objective opponents? But take such attacks as the one that came from the individual Dessoir, take what is coming from an entire church community through its representatives here – you will find the same type of unobjective attack and the same type of inner, spiritual corruption everywhere.

On Saturday at 7:30 p.m., we will then have less unpleasant things to talk about.

I would like to trouble you today with just a few details, because perhaps the time of the General Assembly week is particularly unsuitable for drawing attention to such things.

Dr. Boos was compelled by a number of articles that appeared everywhere here with thickly juicy slander against our cause to write the following open letter to – well, to those it concerns, and in such a way that it was necessary to point out the way in which the fight is being waged:

Open letter to Mr. Mo. Arnet, Catholic priest in Reinach, Baselland.

The undersigned hereby states:

1. The Ninth Commandment (Exodus 20) reads: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” This prohibition has not been repealed in Christianity (compare Eph. 4:25).

2. In the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt des Kantons Baselland und seiner Umgebung” (Catholic Sunday Paper of the Canton of Baselland and its Surroundings) of April 11, 1920 (No. 15), which you edited, you print under the title “Von den Anthroposophen” (On the Anthroposophists) an article that had previously appeared anonymously in the Catholic party newspapers “Neue Rheinfelder Zeitung” and “Die Nordschweiz”, which, in addition to numerous inaccuracies, contains no fewer than twenty-three whopper lies!

I ask you: How do you reconcile these two facts with the third, that you, the editor of the Sunday paper, hold the office of a priest in a Christian denomination, and that you also presume to judge the Christianity of other people?

You can give the answer to this question in whatever form you want. I will be there again.

Dr. jur. Roman Boos, Attorney-at-Law

Zurich – Dornach

Now the number of lies can be counted everywhere, and one will find these 23 whoppers. But one is dealing with a type of people who confuse everything. I have often emphasized: from our side, from the anthroposophical side, we never act aggressively, never attack anyone first, but we have to defend ourselves. They attack, then describe our defense as an attack. This is made clear in a cute little pamphlet that Dr. Boos received from a - yes, what is it called in the Odyssey? - from a “nobody”:

We are people of the highest education. Recently I had the pleasure of listening to a conversation between anthroposophists. ...

I don't think it's particularly tasteful to have such conversations on the tram, but, well, it just happens. Now,

... Dr. Boos also seems to me to have a very high level of education. May I kindly ask this finely educated and highly situated gentleman not to attack our priests any further, in whatever way you will. We will not let the priests of our Catholic religion be dragged through the mud by you. May revenge come upon you and all the vermin on the hill above. These are the voices of the people.

You see, my dear friends, what is being said and how necessary it is not to oversleep the things that are happening. In response to Dr. Boos, the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt”, which is edited by Mr. Arnet, the pastor of Reinach, reads:

To Dr. Roman Boos, Attorney-at-Law, Dornach - Zurich.

You have accused me of lying in the “Arlesheimer Bezirksblatt”, and in the most outrageous way imaginable, without providing any information as to the points on which I am guilty of untruthfulness as a result of printing the article in question from the “Neue Rheinfelder Zeitung” in the “Basellandschaftliches Sonntagsblatt”.

I hereby call on you to provide proof of your brazen assertion and will be ready to fight out the matter in dispute on objective ground.

Pastor M. Arnet, Editor

Well, my dear friends, once again the world is upside down. Who has something to prove? The one who has been quiet and has not harmed anyone, or the one who spreads 23 lies in the world? He feels called upon, the other should prove. Anyone who has lied 23 times should, above all, feel obliged to stand up for what he started with in the first place. Is this considered today? Is it considered that someone has the responsibility to stand up for what he claims? Does that not mean to throw all sense of responsibility to the wind? This manner of acting alone characterizes sufficiently what this is about.

I had to trouble you once again with these matters, which, as you know, are numerous enough today.

The Truth About Anthroposophy and How to Defend It Against Untruth

Dear attendees, I would like to say at the outset that this lecture truly gives me no satisfaction. It is perhaps one of those that are least likely to give me satisfaction – none of those that I desire to hold – but it has been provoked in a certain way by events that have been taking place for quite some time here in the immediate vicinity. And I may also say that it has increasingly become the case in the movement in which I stand that I have been given the task of developing the spiritual current in question, and that I am fully occupied with this development in the most diverse directions. Therefore, I truly have neither the time nor the inclination to undertake these or those attacks against the outside world. On the other hand, the attacks that others are making on this movement have recently increased in a quite monstrous way, not only in number, but above all in content. I will endeavor to keep today's lecture as objective as possible. Unfortunately, the abundance of material will force me to proceed more or less aphoristically. But I would like to divide my remarks into two parts. In the first part, I would like to present, so to speak, the historical development of the spiritual movement that I call anthroposophical, and in doing so, I will only cast a few highlights on what has aggressively asserted itself against this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from here or there. In the second part of the lecture, I will then go into more detail, summarized more or less into types, and mention only very individual cases where it is absolutely necessary.

First of all, I would like to note that there is truly the most perfect right to call the spiritual movement in question, of which this structure is supposed to be a representative, the “anthroposophically oriented” one. And not only is there every right to do so, but also to describe this spiritual movement as a completely independent one in relation to all other spiritual movements of the present day. Both, ladies and gentlemen, are being disputed. The justification of the term “Anthroposophy” is disputed in a way that is truly recognized immediately as impossible if one makes even the slightest effort to look at the whole matter historically. You must forgive me if today I have to pepper what is objective with all manner of seemingly personal observations. But in this case these seemingly personal observations are also objective and belong to the matter at hand. Anyone who wants to see the truth and follows my writings, who follows what I have written since the beginning of the 1880s in connection with Goethe's scientific writings, will find that the spiritual path is already hinted at everywhere in terms of its method, which then, as is natural, has been further developed over time (it has now been four decades since then). What from here on out will be called Anthroposophy can be distinguished in two directions. One is the way of presenting, the way of seeking, of researching; the other is the content, the results of this research, insofar as they have been able to be developed to date. It would, of course, be a poor testimony to the anthroposophical school of thought if, after four decades, we had to say that nothing had been achieved over this long period of time, but that we were merely repeating the same things that had been discussed in the publications of the 1980s.

But, ladies and gentlemen, anyone who considers the direction of thought, the direction of research, or, if I want to express myself more eruditely, the method that is considered here, will find that everything that comes into consideration was already expressed as a preliminary stage in the 1880s; I would even go so far as to say that the basic nerve of what is called spiritual science here was already hinted at then. It was natural that this spiritual research, which I mentioned in the 1880s, should first deal with that which set the particular tone for the heights of modern spiritual development. And that was the scientific world view. I had nothing but a dispute with the scientific world view in mind, which of course also made a dispute with contemporary philosophy of the time necessary. Anyone who believes otherwise misunderstands the content of what I wrote until the 1890s. There they will find little consideration of any religious beliefs or the like; but they will find repeated efforts to spiritualize the prevailing scientific direction.

Now it was self-evident that a critical examination of certain dominant factors of scientific thought at that time was necessary. But how was this examination carried out? I would like to present only the facts that, in my opinion, come into consideration. First of all, it was the case that, especially at the beginning of the 1880s, what could be called Darwinism, Haeckelism, or Darwinist Haeckelism, was, so to speak, the prevailing trend in certain scientifically minded circles. At that time, Haeckel was a factor that had to be reckoned with. Not long ago – I am now talking about the beginning of the 1890s – he had given a lecture that caused a sensation in educational circles at the time and had it published: “Monism as a Bond between Religion and Science”.

Dear attendees, the following may serve to illustrate how I have engaged with such movements. I gave a speech in Vienna – which was the nearest platform to which I had access before I went to Weimar – which is, in the most eminent sense, the rectification I undertook of what at the time could be called Haeckelism. I opposed materialistic monism with spiritual monism. A few weeks before I delivered this speech, a movement was spreading across wide areas of the educated world that was then called the “Movement for Ethical Culture”. This movement aimed essentially to treat ethics separately from world-view, to spread moral views among people as something that should exist without religious or other world-views. I opposed such a view because an ethics without a foundation seemed impossible to me. Today I can only report; the evidence will be found if one ever studies my writings historically in sequence. The essays to be mentioned today will soon be published in order, according to the year of publication, so that everyone can see how things are. I objected because, according to my insights, I could not assume that ethics, the doctrine of morals, could be anything other than that which is based on a worldview. I discussed the subject in question at the time in one of the first issues of “Zukunft”, which was just being launched. It was then that Haeckel - I had been in Weimar for quite some time when I wrote this essay and had passed Haeckel by, had not concerned myself with Haeckel, who was in Jena in the immediate vicinity - turned to me after this essay on ethical culture. I answered him at the time and later sent him a copy of my lecture in Vienna, which essentially consisted of opposing spiritual monism to materialistic monism. I never made any attempt to offer myself to any contemporary direction in any way. And if there was any kind of rapprochement with Haeckelism, it was because Haeckel approached me first; and it was also natural that a discussion with natural science took place.

Dear attendees, anyone who can read will see from all that is written in my “World and Life Views in the 19th Century”, which is dedicated to Ernst Haeckel, and from a certain reverent feelings for this courageous personality, who, despite all his downsides, was a man of great vision. It will be seen that I agreed to nothing more than could be agreed to on account of the scientific significance of Haeckel's findings. It can never be inferred from that book that I agreed with Haeckel philosophically or in terms of the highest worldview issues. On the contrary, I may relate a personal experience here. I was once in Leipzig with Haeckel and told him that it was actually a shame that he evoked in so many people the very thing he did not actually want, namely the opinion that he completely denied the spirit. He said: Do I do that? I just want to lead people to a retort and show them what happens in the retort when this and that occurs, how everything starts moving.

One could see that Haeckel imagined nothing of the workings of the spirit other than the workings of movement; but in his naivety, he could not help it. He saw matter coming to life and called that “spiritual” manifestation. He was basically naive about everything that is called spirit and the like. This gives a judgment of what I wrote in the nineties up to the small writing “Haeckel and his opponents”. Anyone who can really read will have to find, in the face of this writing, how I insert at a crucial point what a scientific foundation can never offer. Everyone will see that at that time in the 1890s I was seeking nothing more than a discussion between what I had indicated in the general direction in my Goethe writings in the 1880s, which I then further expanded in the 1897 publication “Goethe's World View,” and the scientific direction of the time.

Now, my dear audience, nothing less than a straightforward continuation of all that was at stake at the time is then given in the writing “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and its Relationship to Modern Worldviews”, which was written almost simultaneously with “World and Life Views”. It was simply a matter of the straightforward progress of serious research that the path had to lead from the natural scientific presuppositions to what was tackled in this writing. I believe that one cannot emphasize this orientation more strongly and clearly than it was done in the preface to this writing 'Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life'. One consequence of this writing was that it was translated into English in a short time. It appeared in an English journal. I had first presented the content of this writing in the form of lectures in Berlin, at the invitation of a group of Berlin Theosophists. That was in the winter of 1900 to 1901.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, consider what it means when you now put two facts together: two facts that are, of course, put together quite differently today. I was invited in the winter of 1900 by a group of Theosophists to give them these lectures, which are now available in print. These lectures are delivered solely from the intentions that were mine, before a group of Theosophists, at whose invitation, after I had written three years earlier:

I would advise anyone who meets a Theosophist to begin by putting themselves completely in a state of faith and to try to hear something of the revelations that such an enlightened person, steeped in Oriental wisdom, experiences within himself. One hears nothing, nothing but phrases borrowed from Eastern writings, without a trace of content. The inner experiences are nothing but hypocrisy.

Now, my dear audience, it cannot be said that I predicted flattery to those who then invited me to speak before them. I once hinted at the fact at issue here in a lecture given here in the vicinity. I said at the time: When I gave my lectures in Berlin during the first years, and also in other places, I had not read any of Blavatsky and Besant's writings. I had not read them either. And above all, the lectures on “Mysticism in the East” were spoken and written before I had even decided to read anything by Blavatsky and Besant. And today, for example, it is said that I claimed not to have even known the names of Blavatsky and Besant fifteen years before the Liestal lecture. I had not read anything by them. It is a peculiar way in which polemics are conducted from some quarters. While I said – and it is important to draw attention to such things from time to time, because such things are used to throw dust in people's eyes – while I said that I had not read the writings of Besant and Blavatsky, and what is quoted is what I said, a few lines later it is said that I claimed that fifteen years ago I did not even know the name Blavatsky and Besant. — So my attackers are in stark contradiction to the facts, to their own statements made a few lines earlier.

Indeed, I wonder how many readers of the attacks that appear here, for example, will not even notice that they are being fobbed off in this way. Of course I am familiar with Blavatsky and Besant by name and I have known enough of their followers personally. But, ladies and gentlemen, it is said with a certain leathern irony that I said on the one hand that I did not know Blavatsky and Besant by name, but would have nevertheless passed this damning judgment on the Theosophists; that would be a contradiction. — Well, my esteemed audience, I never passed judgment on Blavatsky and Besant, I passed judgment on Theosophists who were their followers and whom I knew all too well. You will admit that it was nothing more than that those people, whom I had addressed in such an unflattering way, invited me to lecture to them. The lectures were so successful that, as I said, they were translated into English and I was invited by the same group, which had now grown in number, to give them another series of lectures the following winter.

I have to insert something here. In the meantime, I had also given another series of lectures to a different group, one that I had belonged to for a long time and that had been founded by my friend Ludwig Jacobowski. I had given a whole series of lectures to this circle, which called itself the “Kommende” (Upcoming), under the title “From Buddha to Christ”, in which I had already presented essentially the same main content as in my present talks: the tremendous upsurge that has taken place in the development of the earth from Buddha to Christ, and how Christ Jesus cannot be compared with anyone else who has appeared in the field of earth development. It was essentially an apology for Jesus Christ, in which sounded that which I then held before a society of worldlings, of worldlings who were more inclined to make fun of such a subject than to accept it with faith. For me, it was not a matter of whether people made fun of it or not, but rather a matter of saying what seemed true to me about something that I felt needed to be said.

As I said, I was asked to give a second cycle before the circle of Theosophists, which in the meantime had grown to include all sorts of other people, and this second cycle was essentially the content that is now in my book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact'. It so happened that the first lectures I gave along the lines one might call theosophical or anthroposophical contain a vindication of Christianity. In my series of anthroposophical lectures, I started from a vindication of Christianity. From the very beginning, in answer to the accusation of oriental hypocrisy (for that is what it was), everything I have said and written on this theme has been that the whole ancient mystery religion was a preparation for the Christ event. I did not call my book “The Mysticism of Christianity”; I consciously called my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact” to suggest that no one can understand the fact of the event of Golgotha who does not - for my part call it mystical or call it spiritual or anthroposophical, it does not matter - who does not, in a spiritual way, in a kind of meta-history, meta-history, grasp the course of world history. And what has been emphasized as something radically different from the old mysteries is what I called the Mystery of Golgotha. And if it is said today that I have ever presented the matter as if the Mystery of Golgotha were a transformation of the old mysteries, then this is an objective untruth, a hair-raising objective untruth.

The two lecture series led to me being asked by the Theosophical Society to represent within its ranks what I had to represent. No one there was left in any doubt that I would never say a word that had not arisen from my own research. I did not concern myself with any of the Theosophical Society's regulations, because I did not approach the Theosophical Society – it approached me. This must also be said, not out of immodesty, but because of today's untrue attacks. And I was faced with the fact that I had to present what I personally had to say to people who wanted to hear it, regardless of whether they were Theosophists or not. And when in Berlin the people who had, as it were, provided me with an audience from their ranks, founded the German Section of the Theosophical Society, I gave a lecture from my then cycle on 'Anthroposophy' on the same day that this German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded. That is to say, I spoke about anthroposophy on the day the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded. And I gave a lecture at the Berlin Giordano Bruno Bund before the founding of this German Section, in which I said: there is no connection to all the stuff that existed in the Theosophical movement. But I said, one should read Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the definition of 'theosophy', which will give my efforts direction.¹

So I have left no one in any doubt about the exact definition and exact objective involved, neither in relation to the examination of Christianity nor in relation to what else I want to present. And to anyone who claims that I have presented anything that is not based on my own research, I can say without hesitation: they are telling an objective untruth, a hair-raising objective untruth. This untruth is all the more hair-raising, dear attendees, since I may be the one who has truly told the Theosophical Society the densest truths, that is, who has given it the densest denials, even during the time when I was, so to speak, lecturing to it. Perhaps no one has had to take as much abuse as I have from the Theosophical movement that calls itself that. And not just before I became General Secretary, but also while I held the position. My dear attendees, is it then a possible approach to put together a selection of the most stupid things that can be found not in my writings but in the writings of theosophists, and to put that on my account today? Is that a fair and honest approach? Everyone should ask themselves that. And I ask that of every person who has a sense of truth.

Dear attendees, I then wrote my “Theosophy”. I ask whether anyone who writes a book under any title and defines the title exactly, whether he can be named after a single title of a book. If someone writes a theory of cockchafers, for example, can he then only be called a cockchafer man for the rest of his life? I wrote a book about Theosophy because the content of this book corresponds to the title “Theosophy”. Just as one gives a book on chemistry a certain title and a book on physics another, so I gave the title 'Theosophy' to a book that was devoted to this particular part of general spiritual science. And anyone who says that there has been any change of flag is lying.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I have to say about assertions such as those recently made by the Protestant pastor and theologian Traub: that in 1897 I wrote against the Theosophists, and that in 1902 I myself was one of their number. No, ladies and gentlemen, the fact is this: in 1897 I wrote what I thought was right, and in 1902 I said exactly the same thing to those who wanted to hear it. I always said the same thing. And in 1902 I was not in the ranks of the Theosophists, but in 1902 the Theosophists were standing before me and wanted to hear what I had to say to them. On the other hand, I never reflected on anything the Theosophists had to say, which those who had joined the Theosophical movement glued together.

Now, with the book “Theosophy”, I began to present the content of what I had to say in a spiritual scientific direction in a literary way. In this book, 'Theosophy', which was first published in 1904, I stated exactly why I called the book 'Theosophy', and no one is entitled to use the word 'Theosophy' in relation to me in any other sense than the one I defined at the time. For in this book from 1904 there is nothing about my wanting to use the word “theosophy” in the sense of the nonsensical theosophical movement, but it says: “The highest that man is able to look up to, he designates as the ‘divine’. And he must connect his highest destiny in some way with this divine. Therefore, the higher wisdom that reveals to him his nature and thus his destiny may well be called “divine wisdom or theosophy.”

I would like to ask those who harp on about the word theosophy whether they do not know, for example, that Dante called his poem the “Commedia” and that “Divina” is an epithet. The “Divine Comedy” is merely intended to express how this poem is appreciated. From the definition I gave at the time, everyone can see how I took the word from the literary usage of the world. But I did not take it according to any complicated ideas that people here or there might have about it. But such complicated ideas arise everywhere. They arise here in a way that we will discuss in a moment, at least in a few examples. They do appear in a peculiar formulation. Regarding this formulation, ladies and gentlemen, I would just like to say the following right here. This formulation is such that I cannot decide for the time being to believe the rumor that is circulating here, that the man who is named is really the author of the Spectator articles. Until this rumor is proven to me, I do not want to believe it, because to me these articles appear to be devoid of any education, devoid of any moral conscience. And so I cannot assume anything other than that the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt” had these articles written by a completely uneducated person who had never been touched by academia. As I said, I could never bring myself to believe that the man who would have to be academically educated to write these articles, which many people attribute to him, could have written them, because they make the most uneducated impression on me, I can actually only imagine.²

In my “Theosophy” of 1904, however, I also said:

Out of the spirit hereby implied, an outline of a theosophical world-view is sketched in this writing. The one who has written it does not want to represent anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense as an experience of the external world is a fact for the eyes and ears and the ordinary mind.

I wanted to suggest at the time that I set myself the task – others may set themselves other tasks – that I set myself the task of saying nothing but what I myself could vouch for with my whole person as something I had investigated. When a mathematician presents a particular area of research, he occasionally has to repeat in his presentation what the ancient Euclid wrote, for example. Then those who are completely devoid of historical sense might come and say: he is not offering anything new, because he is just copying the ancient Euclid. It is quite natural that in the presentation one takes from history what has already been said; but nothing has been said by me that has not been carefully checked. Everything that I could not carefully check myself has been eliminated, so that all the talk of borrowing, whether it comes from Protestant or Catholic theologians, is nothing more than objective untruths. Not just errors, but objective untruths, ladies and gentlemen. For anyone can see that although a man like Leadbeater, who is often mentioned in theosophical circles, copied almost every line of his nonsensical book about Christianity from Iamblichus, no one who proceeds with real scientific conscientiousness can accuse my books of borrowing. Everything that refers to such is talk, albeit a talk that occurs in a strange way. It was mentioned, for example, among those things that were supposed to influence my anthroposophy: Buddhism, Nagazena, the Upanishads, the Egyptian Isis Mysteries, the Mysteries of Eleusis , Gnosticism, Manichaeism, “Apollinaris of Tyna” — literally —, Islam; and that from which I am said to have mainly copied is the Akasha Chronicle.

Now, dear attendees, I do not know how the writer of the article found out that I had said before how strange it is to say that anthroposophy is copied from this Akashic Chronicle. This Akashic Chronicle does not exist as an external book. The Akasha Chronicle is something quite different from any external book. What is it? If we apply the methods, which I will say a few words about in a moment, but which I always discuss in all public lectures, we can acquire a kind of meta-historical picture of the processes not only of human development but also of the cosmos. One can spiritually survey in intuitions — in corresponding images, of course — what has happened and is happening on earth or in the cosmos. Today, of course, I cannot give you all the reasons for accepting such a view, because that would take hours, but these can be found in my books. I also mention them every time I talk about the principles of anthroposophy in public lectures. So this Akashic Chronicle is something that only exists in the spirit. This Akashic Chronicle does not exist as some old book that could be compared to the Upanishads or to the yoga philosophy literature of the Indians and so on. No, this Akasha Chronicle is something purely spiritual. The person who wrote these articles, which are distributed here in the area, has no idea that he is talking about something that only exists in the mind as if it were an actual book.

Now the following has happened: I have not objected to this so far because I assumed that it was a printing error. The person in question, who is so well informed about the Akasha Chronicle, also writes or has printed or is printed instead of “Akasha” Chronicle “Akasha” Chronicle. That could be a printing error. But what happens? Isn't it true that the person who claims that anthroposophy copied from the Akasha Chronicle, since this Akasha Chronicle does not physically exist, has obviously lied, because he is leading people to believe that he has the Akasha Chronicle in his library or that other people have it in their library. Dr. Boos, in order to pick up the gauntlet, wrote: That is a deliberate untruth. — It is, of course, a deliberate untruth, because you have to know that you cannot find the Akasha Chronicle in any bookcase, because it cannot be had as a physical document. It does not exist as such. So if you claim that it is there like the Upanishads, you are telling a deliberate untruth. How is Dr. Boos now polemicized against? It is said: Dr. Boos has avoided the fact by harping on the misprint “Akasha” Chronicle. But the attacker does not indicate that Dr. Boos said that there was a deliberate untruth. And then the talk continues about the Akasha Chronicle as a real old writing that is said to have been found in a country called Atlantis. Strangely enough, according to the articles that are in circulation here, this country of Atlantis is said to have been situated between Australia and Asia and at the same time between Europe and America. Now, my dear audience, there are truly many reasons why the person who wrote these articles cannot really be considered an academically educated man; nor can he be considered a man who can think.³

The attacks that have come from a certain quarter in Munich, from a Jesuit priest born in Switzerland and living in Munich, are directed against the method, and I must, because I must speak about the whole character of the attacks, also go into these remarks about the method of spiritual research to some extent. I would just like to say this beforehand: the same man who undertook this attack on the method and later also on the content of anthroposophy claimed a few years ago that I was a runaway priest. Now this is, of course, an unscrupulous untruth, because I would never have been able to enter any monastery, which is clear from the fact that I never had a grammar school education, but only acquired the necessary grammar school education later, when I needed it. I attended a secondary modern school and did my studies at the Technical University in Vienna, so that my whole education naturally speaks against the fact that I could ever have been considered for a priestly career. So what is being said in this regard is also an unscrupulous untruth. What did the priest in question do when it was pointed out to him from some quarter – not from mine, because I cannot engage with someone who proceeds in such an unscrupulous manner unless it is necessary – what did the priest in question do when it was pointed out to him from some quarter that he had told an untruth? He could find no other way than to say in his newspaper: This is something that was claimed earlier, which can no longer be maintained today. Well, my dear audience, I was always somewhat impressed by what Deputy Walterskirchen threw in the face of an Austrian minister at a certain moment: Once a liar, never believed, even when telling the truth. One must understand what it means that there are people who spread such shameless untruths, built on nothing, plucked out of thin air, and then believe they are justified when they say: the matter can no longer be maintained.

The same man – and I would not go into his arguments, for the reasons I have now sufficiently explained, but others take up things and spread them around, because today the public reads with a sleepy soul – he attacks the method and says that one must consider this method to be something that, from a Catholic point of view, must not be, and fights against the particular way in which I describe how, through a certain development of human thought, one comes to recognize a spiritual world alongside the physical-sensual one. Nor can I go into the special characteristics of this spiritual vision here. The necessary points have often been explained in my public lectures. I now have to deal only with the question: Does someone who takes the standpoint, and really takes it, of Catholic research methodology have the right to turn against this method of research in anthroposophy?

Dear attendees, anyone who is familiar with Catholic philosophy knows that a distinction is made within it between two types of inner abilities. Every person can aspire to one type of inner ability if they organize their lives accordingly. Of course, in Catholic teaching, it is called a grace when the person in question rises to such a level. But what a person can rise to, to immerse themselves in a spiritual world, to the point of living with the deity – I am explicitly mentioning the latter – Catholic teaching calls this the “gratiae sanctificantes”. The Catholic Church carefully distinguishes these gratiae sanctificantes, as effects of grace within the soul of man, which can be granted to every man who rises to them through work, from the gratiae gratis datae. These are the effects of grace to which only individual people can rise through a special influence from the spiritual world. Such is the meaning of the matter in the writings of Catholic teachers of old. I remark this first, regardless of whether, because progress has taken place, things have to be described differently today. According to the writings of Catholic teachers such as John of the Cross or Thomas Aquinas, that is, according to the most orthodox Catholic theology, for the Catholic himself, if he does not contradict his Catholic teaching method, what is presented in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?” should be presented as a special case of the ‘gratiae sanctificantes’, not of the ‘gratiae gratis datae’, so that from the Catholic point of view the matter is absolutely incontestable with regard to the method. You can read about it in John of the Cross and Thomas Aquinas, and you will find that they say that the one who wants to do spiritual research rises up into a spiritual world, so that he experiences something there that does not just arise from his inner being as a kind of haze, but that it is as objective an external reality in the world as the sensual world is in its own way. That is why Thomas Aquinas characterizes what is bestowed on man in this way with the words: “Inspiratio significat quandam motionem ab externo.” These inspirations do not come from within, but from without. There is no other fact here than that which has only been given in a correspondingly advanced form for the 20th century in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” What is the situation here?

Simply this, my dear audience: that anyone who works towards what Thomas Aquinas defines as inspiratio is considered a heretic today. Read my Theosophy. You will find it written in such a way that no one who does not come into discord with his own Catholic method of teaching can dispute what is presented there as a method. What is presented there as a method in the sense of the present is what Catholic theologians have correspondingly recognized and called “contemplation” for earlier centuries. In this way one arrives at the results presented in this book “Theosophy”. And so exactly does this correspond to the correctly understood old description that in the whole book the Divine Being is not spoken of in such a way as to give a theory about the Divine. And now read the definitions that can be found in canonized Catholic theologians, and you will see: According to their view, one can come not only to a definition, but to a coexistence with the deity, if one really practices that which can be bestowed on every human being. That is, someone once dared to make real that which has been preached by the Catholic Church for so long until this Catholic Church has taken on a different character for the present time. Nothing else has happened. And anyone who today does not want to admit that through the special method of contemplation, man today comes to results that may be erroneous in the details, but which on the whole are correct, as I have presented them in my books, he must prohibit the method of Catholic contemplation; he must forbid his faithful by force of measures to do that which the fathers and theologians of earlier centuries have presented as something entirely in line with the Catholic Church.

If I had ever needed to agree with anyone – which goes without saying, even today – I would be able to prove that, for example, what is referred to as the method of being oriented towards the present day does not contradict the teachings of Thomas Aquinas or John of the Cross in any way. It is not methods that the Catholic Church is entitled to dispute, for these methods are nothing other than a further development of something that the Catholic Church itself once held to be true. The fact that this method, when applied correctly, leads to different results from those of the scholastics today is what is causing offence. But then one should not claim to represent scholasticism, but to have left it within the church.⁴

Now, anyone who has the necessary seriousness and conscientiousness to deal with factual matters - but, ladies and gentlemen, in our time it is a strange thing about this objectivity and this conscientiousness - anyone who, for example, reads my little Truth and Science, written at the end of the 1980s and published at the beginning of the 1990s, anyone who reads it will see that it steers in an epistemological direction towards what later became anthroposophy. At the time, I had to do away with all the epistemological prejudices associated with Kantianism. And anyone who has followed my writing throughout the decades, insofar as it is philosophical, can see that the rejection of Kant's philosophy is an organic part of what I wanted. Everything I have to say is based on a rejection of Kant's philosophy. Such are the facts. Nevertheless, in our time it is possible that someone - because I, who have devoted my whole life, among other things, to refuting Kantian philosophy, had to discuss the contrast between Thomism and Kantianism in the Whitsun lectures on Thomas Aquinas that I gave here - that someone dares - I cannot use any other expression - to say that this was done for contrast. That characterizes the level of those bushes from which anthroposophy is viewed today.

And how many people are inclined to examine things on the basis of the facts? How many people are inclined to look at how it was taken for granted that when absurdity triumphed within the Theosophical Society in 1912 and anthroposophy was declared a heresy – after all, things have been declared heresy before – that the long-prepared became a fait accompli, namely that all those who believed that I had something to say about these things turned their backs on the Theosophical Society. Nevertheless, it is possible that, for example, the following will be printed:

Annie Besant's claim that a new Christ was on the horizon in the form of Krishnamurti, a thirteen-year-old Hindu boy whose previous lives, starting with a monkey existence, Besant had clairvoyantly researched, also contributed to the split. National sensitivities also played a role. During the war, the Englishwoman Besant is said to have conducted anti-German propaganda. She is said to have stated in a proclamation: “The chosen people of God (meaning the Germans) stink in the nostrils of Europe. This embryo world empire, conceived by hatred and formed in the womb of greed, must never be born. It is the new barbarism, the opposite of everything that is noble, compassionate and human.”

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is what Annie Besant said during the war. What was said before: that anthroposophy was thrown out by the Theosophical Society, that was before these national events took place. Nevertheless, it continues here:

Steiner founded a separate society with a so-called “separate” doctrine and gave it the proud name of “spiritual science” with its “university” in Dornach. The Swiss lodges joined him.

Dear attendees, the belief is created that the separation of the Anthroposophical and Theosophical Societies had something to do with these national sensitivities. So a smorgasbord of objective untruths is written up to refute Dr. Boos' claim that 23 lies have been spread; the lies are left behind, and the defense is conducted in such a way. 23 objective untruths about anthroposophy are stated. This fact is characterized by Dr. Boos in an appropriate way, although not very delicately – but it would truly have been a sin to be delicate in this case. Now, my dear audience, it has often been demanded by those who are attacked as anthroposophists that they should refute all the stuff that is hurled at them as untruths. I ask: Where in the world is there such a thing that it can be demanded that the one about whom untruths are asserted is obliged to provide the proof of truth? The attacker has to prove; otherwise one could throw anything at anyone and he would have to prove that the assertion was untrue. Those who have spread the 23 untruths have to prove them, not those to whom they have been thrown. What do these attackers do instead of proving? They write objective untruths again, and the 23 original untruths are not touched. That is the method of those who speak about anthroposophy here.

Yes, as I said in the introduction, what I have to say today does not give me any satisfaction. I would much rather be working on the building than compiling these things, and basically I don't have time to follow all these absurdities and defamations. For, you see, my dear ladies and gentlemen, even when people of some intelligence come up with such things – and Professor Traub is certainly more intelligent than certain others – then one has to say: strange views indeed! This Professor Traub, who wrote the book 'Rudolf Steiner as Philosopher and Theosophist', who – I will not touch on the rest – finds it appropriate to say: Yes, Steiner claims things that cannot be verified. – But, ladies and gentlemen, Steiner does not claim any different things from those that can be verified by someone who uses the same methods as he does and who has publicly stated them. That is to say, anyone who procures the means to do so – although he must be diligent and have good will – can verify the matter.

But what does Professor Traub say? He says:

I may have to become a historian, physicist, chemist, in order to be able to check independently.

He admits that if he doesn't understand a thing about chemistry, then of course he can't talk about chemistry, and if he doesn't understand a thing about history, then of course he can't talk about history. He admits all of this. But now, my dear audience, he continues:

The theosophical truths, on the other hand, I cannot verify if I am not clairvoyant.

But I cannot verify the chemical truths either if I am not a chemist. Yet Traub says:

I can only check them in a negative way, ...

— that is, he can only say that he does not know them —

... I can determine whether they contradict logic.

It is interesting that anthroposophy is supposed to be different from physics, history and so on. For chemistry, Professor Traub claims that you have to be a chemist to test what it says; for history, he claims, you have to be a historian, and so on. For anthroposophy, he claims that he has to be able to test it, even though he has never bothered with its methods. He then says quite naively:

The question is whether they

— he prints this in bold letters —

... have been or can be verified by me, and that, apart from the formal-logical criticism, I must deny.

I believe that he cannot verify them! But it does not mean anything if some person who has never sniffed around a chemical laboratory and has not studied a chemical book cannot verify chemical truths. But you see what is being demanded and what people are saying about formal logic when they use such logic.

Some time ago, there were attacks from the Protestant side, and as a result of these attacks, some Protestant pastors and theologians became aware of anthroposophy. Now, if I wanted to talk in detail about the matters at hand here, I would have to characterize the development of the entire Protestant theological movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. But it is well known that within Protestant theology, not only a strong skepticism but also a strong nihilism has taken hold. And one day things were so that a whole number of Protestant theologians said to themselves: From the side of anthroposophy, a fertilization can come for theology. Something could come that would lead people back to Jesus Christ in a way that theology can no longer do today. And so it came about that a number of followers emerged among Protestant theologians, which of course terribly annoyed the majority of Protestant theologians. Then, gradually, those who approach it from today's Catholic theological perspective came forward. This was despite the fact that for a long time, and out of a certain prejudiced notion, it has been said that anthroposophy is Catholic and that therefore those who think in an evangelical way cannot find any favor in it.

I have already dealt with some of the ways in which people approach it. But first I would like to highlight two examples as really quite interesting details. Everything that I have presented since 1900, since my lectures 'From Buddha to Christ' to the 'Kommenden' in Berlin, was such that no one can say that there is no fundamental difference between what emerged as the culmination of earthly development in the Mystery of Golgotha and what is a teaching for many other people, Buddhism. At the time, I characterized the current from Buddha to Christ and pointed out that no one who stands on an anthroposophical point of view must confuse what appeared in Christ and what only allows for a single appearance in the world with what is seen as the ever-recurring Buddhas. I then repeatedly pointed this out in lectures given only to members. Nevertheless, the following is asserted today:

Buddhism speaks of transmigration of souls, ...

- I have never spoken of transmigration of souls, but always of repeated lives on earth.

... Steiner of reincarnation. Both are the same.

Dear attendees, transmigration and repeated earthly lives, as I represent them, are as different as black and white. It is further said:

Whether one says: such and such a person reincarnates or such and such a person's earthly life repeats itself, it comes out the same.

So please, now consider the logic that prevails here. First it is said that transmigration of souls and reincarnation, repeated lives on earth, are the same. Transmigration of souls is understood to mean that after death, human souls migrate into various animals. I have never even hinted at such nonsense in any way. The repeated lives on earth mean something quite different. They are what follows from spiritual-scientific foundations, just as the theory of evolution in the physical world follows from physical research foundations.

According to this theory...

- it is said -

... Christ is nothing more than a reincarnated Buddha or a re-appeared Buddha.

A blatant objective untruth of the boldest kind, because every time I have spoken about Christ and Buddha, I have said the opposite, and because anyone who wanted to listen must clearly have known that what I am being imputed here was rejected every time, firmly rejected.

The whole long argument reveals Steiner's sophistry and his alleged “scientific” approach.

Now I would like to know where the sophistry is. Admittedly, the sophistry that is revealed on that page is already one of the moral evils, not just one of the logical ones.

Furthermore, in those lectures that were only given to members - for a very simple reason, which I will discuss in a moment - it is expressly emphasized from all the sources that are only accessible to me that a certain forerunner of Christ Jesus was Jeshu ben Pandira. It is pointed out there as clearly as possible that the physical earth personality, spirit and soul, is also something quite different with that Jeshu ben Pandira than with the Christ Jesus. Nevertheless, my dear attendees, we read in that attacker:

This small example shows how far Steiner is removed from the true Christ impulse, proving that for him Christ is not a divine master (the way, the truth and the life), but only the “Sage of Nazareth” or, in theosophical language, a Jeshu ben Pandira or a Gautama Buddha, in German a re-embodied Buddha.

So the opposite of what I have said countless times is trumpeted out into the world as my opinion.

My dear attendees, when teaching elementary school students, you call every child into the elementary school; when teaching at the gymnasium, those who are to come to the gymnasium must have attained a certain level of maturity. When people are accepted into the medical or philosophical faculties, they are required to pass the school-leaving examination. No other principle underlay the fact that certain lecture cycles were printed only for a narrower circle of people who were sufficiently prepared, just as those who listen to higher mathematics must be prepared by lower mathematics. Anyone who wanted to listen to a lecture on elliptic functions without knowing the lower mathematics would naturally understand nothing of it and would have to mistake the whole thing for cabbages if he wanted to judge it according to what he could think. Nothing else was the basis for this selection of the one for a limited circle, which presupposed the foregoing. All that was presupposed has been presented by me again and again in public lectures for decades, and has been presented almost every year since 1907 in Basel.

I ask you: could anyone have expected that the Basel lectures, which have been held publicly in Basel for this same world view since 1907, would be discontinued after the construction in Dornach began, or that something other than anthroposophy would be done here in this building? What is it other than foolish talk when it is claimed that propaganda is now being done when it was said that no propaganda would be done? Nothing else is being done than what has been done in Basel since 1907, of course on a smaller scale.

Nor has anyone been attacked in the way that I am now. Go through everything I have ever said or written – I was never the first to attack anyone in this way. Everything I have ever written against anyone was always provoked. Check the facts. And it must be said that the attack that is taking place here, for example, was provoked. For no one here has attacked these attackers. Nevertheless, one of the articles is emblazoned with the title: “Defense and reply to the omissions of the theosophist lawyer Dr. Boos,” in order to throw dust in people's eyes in bold letters, to awaken in them the belief that the other side is defending itself, while we are truly being showered with buckets of foul-smelling objective untruths here, to our great dissatisfaction. We are not to make a sound, while we know full well what these objective untruths are intended for.

And, ladies and gentlemen, the fact that they do not just mean that they want to refute something with honest weapons – the last statement from the side of these attackers can prove that to you. From the statement that has just appeared, I would like to read you just a few sentences that begin:

Have you never walked past a swamp at night? You saw will-o'-the-wisps there. They appeared and disappeared. Such will-o'-the-wisps mainly appear after great catastrophes, also in the spiritual realm in world history. Be it Protestantism in and during the unfortunate Peasants' War, in the era of the Thirty Years War, be it the Kulturkampf during and after the Seven Years War. Today, the Jew, the Freemason and the Theosophist are emerging as the main opponents. ... The Church is a militant church.

Dear attendees, yesterday I read a new encyclical of the current Pope, where he calls for love and unity, where he says that the church strives to reconcile people and not to quarrel. Here we read:

The church is a militant church.

But then it is said – so the Church is a militant Church:

This time is today, when the triumvirate, the Jew, the Freemason and the Theosophist, is attacking the Church. Let us look the three in the face. The Jew, Judaism is old. Judaism fought against our Savior from the beginning. It was guilty of the deicide at Golgotha, it was guilty of the persecution of Christians...

— and so on and so on. And further it is said:

Another worse opponent has risen today, the theosophist. We do not hide the fact that Theosophy, based in Dornach, is perhaps the greatest danger for Switzerland, greater than Bolshevism, greater than any other danger. Theosophy is well enough known. Every believer could be educated in our newspaper.

Yes, let yourself be instructed, my dear audience, as one does when disregarding any factual material. That one wants something completely different than merely fighting against insights or supposed insights for my sake, you can see from such an omission. Well, I have presented you with some examples of what the “spirit” of these attacks is: the polar opposite of what one can hear here at the Goetheanum at least once a week is claimed outside that it is being said here. That is the fact. The polar opposite of what is actually said here is presented to the people in the local area as the opinion held here, as an explanation of Theosophy or Anthroposophy – the name is not important. For example, they talk about an interpretation I have given of the Lord's Prayer. Well, my dear audience – yes, things are very strange – for example, a tidbit is served up, a few verses of mine that only have a meaning if you know them in their full context:

It speaks to the universe,
Forgetting itself
And mindful of its origin...

- but the article of attack says “his emergency”. My dear audience, this continues line by line in terms of truth and accuracy. What is said with regard to my interpretation of the Lord's Prayer goes beyond anything imaginable in this direction.

As the most typical and practically instructive example of Steiner's exegesis, we mention his interpretation of the Lord's Prayer. First, the theosophical text. Or is there a new anthroposophical one? The improved “theosophical” Lord's Prayer reads: “Our Father, who permeates the universe! Your name resound! Your kingdom of peace come to us! Thy will be done on earth! (Theosophists do not believe in a heaven.) Give us all your bread of life! In you we forget our sins and forgive our brothers their faults. Lead us through the trials! Deliver us from all error! For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory from eternity to eternity! Amen.

The person who wrote the following and the following, namely, counts on the fact that no one from his readership will pick up my little booklet about the Lord's Prayer, because everything he writes here is not in it, because I give the text that Catholics pray every day for themselves - I hope at least - at home and every Sunday in church. No other text is interpreted than this. They are counting on the fact that this little booklet will not be picked up, that this check will not even be carried out.

The fact that they are not dealing with a highly educated person can be seen from another sentence. For example,

Just as light expresses itself in the world in seven colors, the fundamental tone in seven tones, so the seven-part nature of man (spirit self, life spirit and spirit man, physical body, etheric body, astral body and I) is expressed in the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer. Listen!

This “Hear!” is a phrase we read again and again in these articles. We know why. It is fair to say that even people who have read my booklet on the Lord's Prayer but have only superficially thought about it do not immediately realize how subtly the objective untruth is expressed here. For it is clever to say that I had claimed that the seven-part nature of man is expressed in the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer. That is simply not true. I stated something quite different. I tried to show that seven qualities of feeling arise in one who experiences the seven petitions one after the other, and that these point to seven nuances of feeling in the soul. And in these seven nuances of the soul there is a certain indication of the seven-part nature of man. So I did not say that the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer indicate the seven parts of man's nature, but that the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer represent seven nuances of feeling, and these seven nuances of feeling point to the seven-part nature of man.

If the article of attack had been written by a Catholic theologian – and I can tell you, I know Catholic theology very well, and I appreciate the strict logic that it used to have and still retains to some extent – he would have had to notice what the insertion of a link in the conclusion means. I cannot believe that a real theologian would write such a thing, unless I am proved wrong.⁵ Only someone who deals with my Father Our Exegesis with very clumsy logic can write something like that.

We must focus on how it has come about in recent times that such things have become possible at all. What is emerging here is basically only an imitation of what can be observed in many circles today. I avoid it, even though it is an absolute objective untruth to lump me together with all the excesses and aberrations of the Rosicrucians and the like, that it is nonsense to forge the sentence that I am dependent on Blavatsky and to prove it with the words:

Steiner also draws from Blavatsky's Theosophy. He supplements it...:

– all in the same breath! –

... 'We work best...

– now my words are quoted –

... if we bring what was closed to Blavatsky.

This is quoted as my words, as proof that I am bringing what Blavatsky brought! They claim that Blavatsky brought it, and as proof they quote a line from it that I want to bring what was closed to Blavatsky. Such is the logic of the attackers. One would like to understand, from a certain larger context, how such things are even possible.

Now I can only talk about this in aphorisms. I can only point out that around the middle of the 19th century, but especially at the beginning of the last third of this century, Catholic theology did absorb genuine spiritual-scientific seeds which, if they had been further developed, could have worked to the benefit of humanity. Perhaps, if such things as Möhler attempted in his Symbolik had met with progress instead of retrogression, something might have come of it that would have resembled the emergence of a spiritual-scientific school. Even if it had not come to the recognition of the truths of repeated earth-lives and of the fate of man's life conditioned by repeated earth-lives, which, objectively and scientifically, can be proved (as you can see in my books), there might still have been a certain progress in the direction of spiritual science. But no, Catholicism has broken with a very well-known world policy for the sake of what was moving in the indicated direction.

These are things that have become very clear to me, who have had a lot of contact with Catholic theologians and have come to know the ways of thinking of tolerant and educated Catholic theologians very well. It means a lot, for example, that the philosopher Franz Brentano was a Catholic priest before taking off the cassock and leaving the Catholic Church just after the declaration of the dogma of papal infallibility.⁶ He examined — and those who are familiar with this remarkable work will know this — certain truths concerning the Incarnation and the Trinity. He came up with quite different things that did not correspond to the infallibility dogma, as they are, on which one must indeed come, at least if one does not consider very specific formulations, for example that in 1773 a Pope has abolished the Jesuit order as harmful to humanity and in 1814 another Pope has reinstated it. Well, these are the things that lie on the surface. But also the very subtle things about the Trinity and the Incarnation, which 19th-century minds were also very much concerned with, they remained a mystery to someone like Brentano in the version of certain Catholic theologians. And in particular, it remained a mystery to him how the most diverse dogmas on these matters could have been established and recognized by the popes. It has always been a Catholic principle that only that which is generally recognized in Catholic Christendom may be established as a dogma. The Immaculate Conception was not, yet it was made into a dogma. And it is a straight ascent from the Immaculate Conception to the encyclical of 1864 and the Syllabus and further to the declaration of the infallibility dogma. Then it was natural for a man as great and in some respects as important as Leo XII to issue the encyclical Aeterni Patris. This then led with logical consistency to the demand for the anti-modernist oath from all those who were allowed to teach in Catholicism.

All you have to do, dear attendees, is go through the literature that has been published as a result of this anti-modernist oath and you will soon come across some amazing things, of which I can only mention a very few today, as time is running out. The following is characteristic, for example. There is a very learned doctor, the theology professor Simon Weber at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. He has to justify that the freedom of science is perfectly compatible with swearing the anti-modernist oath, which, for example, also contains a paragraph stating that anyone who represents Catholic doctrine, whether as a theologian or as a pulpit orator, should never believe that anything can be proven through history that has not been recognized by the Church as correct doctrine. He does not merely have to swear that he has not yet recognized anything that testifies to such a contradiction, but he must swear that it is his opinion that he will never be able to come to studies that could somehow represent a contradiction to what has been established by the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church. In order to justify the fact that there is a given body of teaching, a body of teaching that is simply commanded to be believed and that must be sworn to be believed, and in order to reconcile this with the freedom of scientific teaching, very strange views had to be put forward. Among other things, a view had to be adopted that is very strangely presented in the book “Theology as a Free Science” by Weber. If one proceeds conscientiously, one can conduct strange examinations of these things. There is now the Catholic scholar theologian who is obliged to prove that, as a mathematician, one must also teach the correct mathematics and yet not violate the freedom of science; so one must also be able to teach the teaching material ordered by Rome. He writes that it would not violate the freedom of science if a scholar were expected to test his new findings by refuting conflicting findings and not expecting any indefinite acceptance of his findings without this refutation, nor claiming them to be absolutely true. We will deal with this first sentence less now. But now comes the other sentence:

Furthermore, is it against the freedom of science as a path to truth if, on the basis of proven findings and results, the disciple of science is encouraged to take the starting point of his studies from the ground of such findings and results? I believe that one should not affirm the first question, nor deny the second.

That is what it said in this book. Now, my dear audience, let us read the second question again:

Furthermore, is it against the freedom of science as a path to truth if, on the basis of proven knowledge and results, the disciple of science is encouraged to take the starting point of his studies to the ground of such knowledge and results?

That is to say: is it contrary to the freedom of science to make a theologian swear that he may only teach a very specific body of doctrine? Then he can do whatever he wants, but he must always come back to this body of doctrine. The author then says:

I believe that one cannot affirm the first question, nor deny the second.

One could now believe that this is the case. But you see, the good Professor Simon Weber wrote these two questions one after the other, and he got so tangled up in a knot that he then wrote with a single logical thread:

I believe that one should not affirm the first question and deny the second.

People are very happy to grant him that you can't say no to the second. He just couldn't hold on to the thread – he only noticed that once the book had already been published, which is why there's a thick, black line stamped over the second “not”! You see, these sentences are written in such a way that they are not very consistent or logically coherent. Only when perhaps a friend of his came afterwards and said: Hey, what have you written there! All modernists agree on the “not”, and you have sworn the anti-modernist oath! - Now a thick line had to be printed over the “not” in every copy here with the stamp.

You see, you have to be more conscientious than our opponents are if you want to get at the facts of the matter. But the general public does not go in for such things; you can throw a lot of dust in their eyes. One of the sentences in which the freedom of science is justified as compatible with the fact that one has to teach a very specific, firmly and dogmatically defined body of teaching is the following. It says: Does it violate the freedom of the soldier, who has sworn to be with his regiment at a certain point in time, if he is given the freedom to choose whether to travel by coach or by passenger train or by express train? That is entirely up to him. It is the same with the Catholic theologian. He has sworn to arrive at his teaching material. He must prove it, no matter how he proves it, he must prove it, because whether he travels by express train or by passenger train or by coach is irrelevant. And this is the style in which the whole of “Theology as Free Science” is written.

Dear attendees, I have tried hard in my lecture, which I gave in Liestal, “Human Life from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”, to prove that it is impossible, if one really further development of Thomism, not to extend what Thomas Aquinas regards as the Präambula fidei to what is asserted through anthroposophy on the basis of truly attainable human spiritual powers. But what use is all that? Such matters are not taken into account. And what is compiled column by column is such that it runs directly counter to objective facts everywhere.

Summarizing what has been presented here today in aphoristic form, I may say: Catholic teaching, if it engages with its own method, has no right to say anything against anthroposophy, because it has no right to oppose the method of contemplation. But if it has no right to oppose the method of contemplation, then it must also leave untouched that which, from the points of view offered by today's human development, results from this method of contemplation.

Furthermore, I must summarize some of what has been said in such a way that for decades I have been careful to create something that should stand alongside scientific knowledge as spiritual-scientific knowledge. Everything I have envisaged has been envisaged with a view to elevating natural science to the spirit. Whatever has been done in this way has always been done with the intention that people who want to be enlightened about Christianity from a point of view that corresponds to the present day should be able to receive such enlightenment from the sources that spiritual science can provide. Therefore, everything that is undertaken by the attackers of Anthroposophy is merely rash. No cause has been given for it. When I hear these attacks, a word that Cardinal Rauscher, one of the first church princes in Europe, spoke to me about some progress resounds again. This word sounded to me when I came to Vienna as a very young student. It was still at that time, in which the great Catholic reaction had not yet fully taken effect, but was just beginning to assert itself. Then I heard the word that Cardinal Rauscher spoke in the Austrian House of Lords through his virile voice in the face of some progress that was also being attempted at the time by Catholic theology: The Church knows no progress.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot find anything other than the facts that I described here at Pentecost in my Thomas lectures: that in the time of high scholasticism, in the time of the scholastic realism of an Albertus Magnus and a Thomas Aquinas, a magnificent logic was present, but that nothing remains of it - as with many modern philosophers, so also within Catholic thought. The training that one can have, if one knows how to carefully distinguish between substance, hypothesis, essence, nature, person and so on, has also escaped from Catholic theology. More recent philosophers, such as Wundt, for example, polemicize against the substance of the soul because they know nothing of a substance. Therefore, they say, it does not exist at all – according to the principle: What I know nothing about does not exist. But precise thinking, which was highly developed in scholasticism, has not been resurrected from the encyclical Aeterni Patris either. Instead, there was the contortion of thought that was necessary to prove the anti-modernist oath.

If one must prove such a thing, my dear audience, then one cannot have much time for what one can learn through the strict logic of high scholasticism. And then it may well be said, as I have said here in the Whitsun lectures: Yes, in spiritual science there is a real continuation of what high scholasticism strove for in the 13th century. But is it not the case that Thomas Aquinas could not, of course, deal with natural science? It did not exist at that time. But anthroposophy wanted to engage with natural science. If one were to enter into such an engagement, a truly fruitful work would unfold from a spiritual scientific treatment of nature. I attempted such a thing here in the physicians' course, which wanted to carry methodically into the medical, into the therapeutic science, what can be carried in from the anthroposophical point of view. In Stuttgart, when the Waldorf School was founded, an attempt was made to illuminate education from an anthroposophical point of view. My dear audience, anthroposophy wants to do positive work; it has never wanted to attack anyone. Anyone who says otherwise is objectively speaking untruthfully. And anyone who acts as if they had been attacked and needed to defend themselves against any attacks is telling an objective untruth. Anyone who acts as if this were the case, as is happening now, against anthroposophy, anyone must start the reasons for attacks.

I was obliged to speak some harsh words today. Now, I believe that, in view of the attacks in question, the words I have spoken are not too harsh, for among the various attacks that have been made here, there are some that do not even address what I have said, but instead achieve the incredible feat of attributing to me the Theosophical nonsense that has been put forward here and there, and which I myself have always opposed. But my attackers lack the courage to discuss my views; they only have the courage to defame the person who champions anthroposophy. And among the many things that have come up, there is, for example, the claim that I am demonstrably Jewish. Well, ladies and gentlemen, here sits the man who presented the photograph of my baptism certificate from the lectern in Stuttgart, which shows how I was baptized immediately after my birth, out of a Catholic family, was baptized Catholic; and everyone was invited to see for themselves when the baptism certificate was shown. What was done about it? Just one example of the way they are fighting at present: they wrote all kinds of letters to my Austrian hometown to find out whether I really was a Jew or not. And after even the pastor of that Austrian hometown testified that I was an “Aryan,” as he put it, they did indeed find the objection that Jews are also Aryans. But leaving that aside, ladies and gentlemen, they did not shy away from having the following printed: Yes, of course, the baptismal certificate is available, the siblings also testify and the people of the hometown that he is descended from Catholic parents, but what prevents us from assuming that he is an illegitimate child, that he a Jewish father, who was unknown to his real father, was born out of wedlock to the mother, which neither his siblings nor the local pastor need know.

My dear attendees, today even such things are not shunned. Such things have become possible in the world in which we have come so gloriously far. I ask you: can we still hope to achieve anything by revealing the opponent's facts? — No. It is precisely the facts that are most unpleasant to the opponents. Therefore, they do not rely on the facts, but on what is objective untruth in every line they themselves have invented. And that is what they call “enlightenment of the people”.

Never would anyone have heard me say a word of attack, as I had to say today – seemingly attacking, however, only if each of these words were not challenged ten times as a defense. I would never have used such words in my defense if they had not been challenged in such an outrageous way. Because, ladies and gentlemen, what I am supposed to represent, what I have tried to explain to you today in a positive way through the historical events, what I have tried to explain to you in the spirit in which it arose from the underground from which it really emerged, as the polar opposite of what is being served up by the attackers, is something that I believe I have recognized as the truth that is appropriate for our present era. And anyone who has grown together in his soul with the search for truth will not let anything stop him from this search, but he also feels obliged to express this truth to everyone who wants to hear it from him. Therefore, when those people whom I characterized in 1897 as I have repeated to you today demanded the truth from me in 1902, I was obliged to present it to them. That is what matters: the inner connection with a real, honest striving for truth.

Anyone who, after having put forward such arguments as have been characterized today, can still find words like these:

Another even worse opponent has risen today, the theosophist. We do not hide the fact that Theosophy, based in Dornach, is perhaps the greatest danger for Switzerland, greater than Bolshevism, greater than any other danger....

- and so on, he may perhaps achieve something for some time. It may be that when those who are friendly towards Anthroposophy sleep, such opponents, who do not shy away from such outrageousness, may achieve much of what they want to achieve. But I have often said, as the words of a deceased Catholic theologian friend of mine, who was a professor of Christian philosophy at the University of Vienna, still ring in my ears - I have also had quite dogmatic discussions with many theologians, right down to the most intimate details - that a Christian never has to fear that the glory of God or of Christ will be diminished by gaining more knowledge about their creation. I have often said that those who admit this show more courage for Christianity than those who, at every opportunity, when new truths arise, even if only supposed ones for my sake, complain about the endangerment of Christianity – and now even about the endangerment of being Swiss. I have always said that to me a Christian and Catholic who speaks constantly of dangers seems a pusillanimous person, while to me a true Christian seems to be someone who says: No matter how many billions of new insights are gained, Christianity stands so firmly - and this has been said countless times on anthroposophical ground - that it cannot be shaken by anything. I would like to know who in truth is the better Christian.

But as I said, those who boldly dare to tell humanity that what they pass off as Theosophy and what has nothing to do with Anthroposophy is a greater danger than Bolshevism, in order to frighten people, and who speak many objective untruths to do so, may achieve something in the short term. But untruthfulness cannot be effective in the long run. My dear audience, from here, as long as it is possible, the truth that is meant as anthroposophy will be sought and taught. But nothing will be taught that is presented by those attackers as the view taught here through defamation. No matter what success may be achieved on their side, I shall at least see to it that an Anthroposophy be taught here that is in keeping with the demands of the present time. I have repeatedly endeavored to characterize such an Anthroposophy in my public lectures. I declare it to be an objective and very audacious untruth that I would ever have referred to Mahatmas for that which I personally stand for; this, like everything else in the attacks that have prompted today's words, is also untrue. This anthroposophy is, of course, also a human work. And even if it were a mistake, which would be incomprehensible to me, I know that in the universe only truth will ultimately triumph. Then the opposite truth will triumph over the error here, and then anthroposophy would meet the fate it deserves, for errors can never achieve lasting victories. Therefore, if it were an error, anthroposophy could not harm the truth, it would be refuted. But if it is the truth, then for some time and perhaps quite a long time, those who dare to pursue it, as I have had to characterize today, may achieve their goal through the persecution of individuals. But in the long run, my dear audience, the laws of the world will not speak differently than that in the end truth must triumph, not untruth.

Roman Boos: After the last lectures by Dr. Steiner on Thomas Aquinas, which were held here at Pentecost, a review in a newspaper criticized the fact that there was no opportunity for discussion. Anyone who wishes to enter into a discussion about today's lecture should be aware that the following things are available, which I would like to record for the record:

There is material here for a discussion. I have brought it with me physically in these four pages of the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt”, where at least two full pages were devoted to each of the topics presented to you. Anyone who, like the reviewer of the last lectures, is present today, may pick out any point from these lectures and may demand that this point be discussed and accounted for. And then, when it is discussed, he may form his own opinion. This is a topic that has been put forward for discussion. The discussion will begin in a few minutes in such a way that? the opportunity will be given to ask oral or written questions or to take the floor.

Break

Roman Boos: For the discussion to be conducted in a formally correct manner, in accordance with the rules of procedure, those who wish to speak orally and not just to ask a brief question are asked to come to the front and speak from there. Furthermore, it is requested that those who speak here state their names. It goes without saying that the form of decency must be maintained in every respect.

Who would like to have one of these four numbers or all four for review in order to pick out points on which he wants to demand accountability? - Who would like to claim on a single point that what has been said today in opposition to what has been written down in those four long articles does not correspond to the truth? Who would like to claim that the other corresponds to the truth? Who would like to claim that a single one of those twenty-three whopper lies that I nailed in the “Tagblatt für das Birseck-, Birsig- und Leimental” is not a lie? Who would contradict the assertion that people who do what has happened here and write what is now being written Sunday after Sunday in the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt” of the Canton of Baselland, edited by Father Arnet in Reinach, that such people are grossly abusing their priestly duty? Who would object to this?

I state: I have publicly accused Father Arnet of Reinach of having seriously violated the trust placed in him as a Catholic clergyman by those who read his newspaper. I have to state: Not a single assertion has been proven. Then another paper, the Spektator, came to his aid and claimed that it would provide proof of the accuracy of the allegations that Arnet had made in his paper. I declare that it is therefore right and justifiable that Father Arnet in Reinach has gravely and grossly violated the duties assigned and imposed on him as a Catholic clergyman. I declare that he continues to declare his solidarity with the content of the Spektator articles and that I therefore personally call him a slanderer and moral poisoner. I ask anyone who wants to contradict me to please tell Mr. Arnet.

Karl Sauter: Mr. President, esteemed attendees! You also requested that anyone who wishes to take part in the discussion go to the podium. I only have one sentence to say for the time being, so I will remain here. I object to the fact that such a meeting at the Goetheanum is considered public. A public meeting would be when the gentlemen, the friends of this direction, came down to Arlesheim and asked to present their case in the community hall. That is public. And then you also have to expect an opposition not only from one speaker, which may serve the truth in the sense of the public. But up here, the matter is not satisfied if you transplant the discussion up there - that is not public. I have closed for the time being.

Rudolf Steiner: I can only say in response what I have already said this evening: when someone is confronted with twenty-three lies, it is the duty of the person who has told these twenty-three lies to prove them. And it is impossible to ask those who are being confronted with these twenty-three lies to chase after the liars and tell them, wherever the liars wish, that they have lied. That is a strange way of demanding that those who have been attacked in this way chase after their attackers.

Karl Sauter: You cannot oblige the speaker, nor oblige Catholics, to go up there to speak up to the word. You are certainly given the freedom to take part in the discussion orally or in the sense of the press, and it is certainly an honor for us Catholics that you are scrutinizing the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt” in this way. It is not finished; development continues. That is why neither I nor you can finish speaking this evening. Come down to Arlesheim next time, and we will meet again.

Rudolf Steiner: That is a strange way to behave. Just when one has said that one has no reason to go down to Arlesheim, then to say that we should come.

But I would like to say the following in conclusion: Just consider that it has been said again that we should go down to Arlesheim to do I know what. From that side, twenty-three objective untruths have been spread in the world. These objective untruths were identified as such by us. This was done very much in public. In response, four articles have been published to date. None of these articles addressed any of the twenty-three points, but new untruths were added to the old ones. This is how things develop, this is how they progress. Now, my dear audience, in almost every article you will find the phrase that has just been spoken again: we should just wait until the last article comes. Well, ladies and gentlemen, until the last one comes! But it is not possible for anyone to demand that those to whom twenty-three lies have been thrown in the face should run after the other, so that the other can say new untruths in his own way before an audience that is willing to listen. Everyone is free to come up here and hear the truth from us. We only want to spread the truth from here.

Dear attendees, just think about the logic behind this. We are told: you said you don't do propaganda. — We have, I said this evening, not built this building to merely stage musical comedies in it, but to do anthroposophy. We did not agree to somehow carry down to Arlesheim what we have to say here, what we want to say here, but we said it here. What has been attacked has been presented here. And I must describe it as an outrageous audacity when what has only been presented here is embellished with lies. They demand that we should now go down to Arlesheim to clear up the untruth there. Or is this perhaps another cunning trick, so that they can later say: Now they are even starting their propaganda down in Arlesheim!

Roman Boos: Does anyone wish to speak? Please, Mr. Hartwig.

Walther Hartwig: Dear attendees! Allow me to say a few words. This evening you have heard what can be done against the spiritual good that we strive for. I can only add a few things: From this evening it can only follow that we must pull ourselves together and stand firm, each one of us like a rock, and do what we can to undermine this brood of liars. Roman Boos: I would still like to make one more observation. It was just stated by the teacher Sauter that the matter is not finished, but will continue. I will always insist that the matter started with the twenty-three whoppers, and that what is continuing is just a continuation of what started there. And that is why, above all, it will be important to allow something to take its course that does not have such a starting point. Would anyone else like to take the floor?

Curt Englert: Dear attendees, it is also about time that we Swiss said a word here. So far, Dr. Steiner has been speaking and he has presented his case. He could not speak as he might have done if he had been Swiss. And so it is the duty of those people who adhere to anthroposophy and are Swiss to say publicly what they have to say about what is going on from up here. I am Swiss and not a paper Swiss, but from good Swiss blood. And everywhere in our country, since the agitation began, we have always been accused: From Dornach, there is Pan-German spiritual imperialism represented, there Switzerland is contaminated with ideas from the “great canton”, as it is popularly called; Swissness, the Swiss way of life is in danger of being overwhelmed and destroyed by German spiritual imperialism. These reasons are given by all parties, both by the Catholic side, which stirs here, and by the nationalists, who stir and make their machinations.

In response to this, it should be said that purely in what is represented here, no national matters are ever represented. On the contrary, Dr. Steiner says that every people and every nation has its own value and its own task to help in the spiritual development of humanity. And if you are asking how it is that those who rail against foreigners here in Switzerland, and in particular against what comes from here, how is it that they get their instructions? Who listens to Rome? Is that Swissness, to listen to Rome? Or do those people in Switzerland who joined the League of Nations on May 16 still have the right to speak of Swissness? No, they no longer do. And it is our task, we who are free Swiss, to take up the thoughts of humanity in their true form and not to represent any group of nationalities. Therefore, we are Swiss and we will remain Swiss without giving up a single iota of Swissness. On the contrary, our nationality can only remain Swiss if we ennoble and deepen it from the depths of our spiritual science. And if our nation perishes from foreignness, if it is not healthy and strong enough to resist all foreign influences, then it is worthy of perishing.

Roman Boos: Mr. Sauter has the floor.

Karl Sauter: I would like to ask the assembly whether it has been unpleasant for her to have heard a different voice on the matter for a change. That is the first fact. And secondly, it is clear – I want to acknowledge this at the end – that this direction is one of those that have helped and are helping to dematerialize the spirit of the times, and also science. I am happy to admit that today. And I am not the one who would have wanted to start a fight on this matter; but you are calling for the discussion, and I have taken the liberty of using this. It will not be finished by tonight. I can believe you, and you will believe us, and it is perhaps good that the discussion is also being promoted among the general public through the press, be it from the left or the right, from above or below. So there will probably be clarity in the course of this year, and then next year we can talk about what remains. So in this sense I would like to conclude.

Roman Boos: Isn't Mr. Sauter perhaps the “Catholic teacher” who made the comment in the “Volksblatt”: “No opportunity was offered for a discussion”?

Karl Sauter: There was no discussion about that either.

Roman Boos: That was registered there in the sense that Catholics who would have liked to speak were not allowed to do so by us. That is why the opportunity was offered today. And now it is being said that we are challenging a discussion. If this is to be continued, this tactic will probably become more entrenched. Before a reasonable discussion can take place, the first thing to do is to clean up and remove the dirt, otherwise it could happen that a party with so much dirt on its weapons could cause an explosion. For it is by no means certain that victory must be on that side. It now depends on whether our Swiss people still have so much decency and inner feeling for cleanliness that they also judge by whether or not the weapons are clean. Does anyone else wish to speak?

A number of written questions have already been submitted before the lecture. Perhaps Dr. Steiner will be able to address them. This is meant in the sense of a final word, after which no further discussion will take place.

Rudolf Steiner: The questions that have been asked, my dear attendees, were asked before the lecture. First:

How is it that your science ascribes so much power to evil, since God is almighty and no power exists besides him?

Well, my dear attendees, that means positing a proposition that is, to begin with, extremely vague, because it is said: How is it that your science ascribes so much power to evil? — how much, then? But then the question here is only in the sense of how far one can comprehend evil, which after all represents a power, despite the fact that certain creeds speak of the omnipotence of God. I would like to hear someone who ascribes sole power to God and recognizes no other power besides him and who then identifies God only with what is not evil, I would like to hear that person explain how he reconciles the existence of evil with the existence of God. From our point of view, from what is advocated here at the Goetheanum, one can only say that the obligation is felt to explain the existence of evil despite the divinity of the world. Secondly:

Does reincarnation lead all people to the divine-spiritual? What about the sentence: Many are called, but few are chosen?

Now, dear assembled ladies and gentlemen, I actually spoke about the sentence, “Many are called, but few are chosen” – in its most abrupt form, in the form in which Augustine advocated it in his Whitsun lectures. And what is said here can now be linked to another question that was asked here, even before the lecture:

Why did Christ die for us after all, since in each person, through many earthly lives, that is balanced out which was incurred in past earthly lives?

Now, my dear audience, you must bear in mind that the Christ, the Christ-act, the event of Golgotha, has to do with humanity, with humanity as such, and you must above all consider what is said here about St. Paul's words: “Not I, but the Christ in me”. By understanding these two things together: that the Christ died for humanity and that the Christ in me – not me – is what is actually effective in the world process, lies the possibility of gaining insight into the difference that exists between the fate of humanity and the fate of the individual human being. Just imagine the consequences if it were proposed that man could remain purely passive and still be redeemed by Christ. But all these things are not at issue; rather, the issue is that spiritual science investigates repeated earthly lives quite independently of everything else, just as, for all I care, the physical sciences investigate mutation or some other process, and that spiritual science simply conquers this knowledge of repeated earthly lives. The question then is to investigate what power the Christ impulse has within world evolution, into which the repeated earthly lives are placed.

The way of thinking that leads to such questions is related to what now arises as a further question:

How does anthroposophy come to speak of the re-embodiment of man, since nowhere in the Bible is this said?

Dear attendees, just consider that the Bible also does not say that America exists - or is it said? I don't think so. Nevertheless, no one will be deterred from recognizing America's existence, even though they stand on the ground of the Bible. There is a big difference between really standing on the ground of the Bible and standing on the ground of people who imagine that they alone are allowed to represent the content of the Bible identically. You see, my dear attendees, in the Catholic Church it was forbidden for a long time to even give the Bible to the faithful to read. And one could tell a lot about what then led to the Bible now also being given to Catholic believers. But all the results of conscientious research would lead nowhere if the discussion were always to be based on the same principles as those we are discussing with. For someone need only glance through my writings to find what I said in my lecture: that a good part of my life has been spent refuting Kant's theory of knowledge. If someone then objects that I have introduced Kant into the lectures on St. Thomas Aquinas merely as a contrast for the sake of contrast, then, my dear audience, it must also be said: Everyone is free to think and express their thoughts as they please in their own circles, but anyone who goes public with their ideas must first convince themselves that they are allowed to make such an assertion before doing so. And one certainly cannot make such an assertion to someone who has been fighting against Kantianism for forty years.

Another question was asked:

Is Christianity the continuation of Oriental, theosophical wisdom? If so, how can the two be combined?

Well, I have already said a good deal about this in my lectures. In my writings, especially in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”, you will find a great deal about this, as the literature that comes from me says a great deal about these questions in particular. You see, it has been said that the lectures on Thomism have remained without discussion. Now, my dear audience, if I were to speak again, say, about Scotus Eriugena or, say, about Augustine or, say, about the later nominalism, about the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Kant, or if I were to speak about Schelling or Hegel or about Lessing, then, ladies and gentlemen, it must be up to me whether I want to express what I have acquired through decades of research or not, and whether or not a discussion can follow from it. That must be entirely up to me, and I will not allow anyone to take away my right to give lectures in the future, even if no discussion can follow from them. One could really lose all interest in discussions if one had to make the experience of being confronted with such a level in the discussion, as it is when someone says - I don't know from which side it was said, but it was said - when someone who has spent forty years trying to determine the relationship between Kant and other worldviews is told that he is only doing it for the sake of contrast. That is indeed difficult to discuss. When one has fought for every word one utters with one's heart's blood, then, ladies and gentlemen, one also thinks somewhat differently about the value of discussions than those who enter into discussions out of such motives, as I have just characterized them, can think - can I say emphatically. And so I must say once more: I find it at least very strange when someone who takes the side of those who have spoken twenty-three objective untruths against us, who has not yet made even a start at justifying anything of these twenty-three lies, despite four articles - not in the “Bayerischer Vaterland”, one could mistake it for that based on the style confused with it, no, in the “Katholischen Sonntagsblatt” it says - despite these four articles has not even made an attempt to somehow justify any of these twenty-three lies, if this someone says: Just wait and see, the matter will come up.

Well, my dear attendees, the twenty-three assertions that were made at the time are simply untrue, and no subsequent discussion will be able to prove them true. What do you want to discuss? Prove, try to prove, if you want to discuss, a single one of those twenty-three points! Start sometime and don't keep referring us to the end, otherwise you might end up coming to that end only when the matter has actually become too boring for us or when the matter has taken a different turn in some way.

I find it very strange, and others probably do too, that people are being asked to wait for the end when the beginning was done in such a way as it was done. What end should do anything differently from the twenty-three lies at the beginning, which can never be proven as truth? Is the discussion over when someone says, “Wait for the end”? The discussion would at least attempt to justify any of the twenty-three untruths. It would not be successful in any case, because they are untruths.

Roman Boos: This concludes the event.

• 1. Footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition: Anyone who is in a position to allow their views to be dictated by the society or community in which they live can hardly understand the position I have adopted towards the Theosophical Society. I have never allowed it to impose a view on me, but I have presented my views in it, as I do everywhere, where my views are wanted. This seems fully justified to me.
• 2. Footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition: I was able to speak these last sentences at the time because the essays referred to here had been published anonymously; I did not have to believe that they were written by Pastor Kully. They were later published in a collected brochure, and Pastor Kully confessed himself as the author. I leave the sentences as they are so that no one can say that I suppressed anything of what was said. 2
• 3. footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first print: The crowning achievement of objective untruths in Catholic newspapers in the local area is achieved with the article that has now been published: ‘The stolen threefold social order’. It is printed in the ‘Leuchtturm’ in Lorch. It is claimed that before I began to advocate the threefold social order, I received a written communication from a lady in which this threefold order was already contained. Now, firstly, this is all a lie, because I did not receive anything of the kind, secondly, I advocated the threefold order in front of many people even before the time when I am said to have received that written communication. Thirdly, for me – I received the pamphlet of that lady, which has only recently appeared, a few days ago – what that lady claims about her threefolding is complete nonsense, foolish, amateurish, unclear chatter. But the best thing is that even this lady cannot claim that my threefold order has anything to do with hers. That is why she says that I was familiar with her cause but botched it. The whole thing is too foolish to find it malicious. But the Catholic press thinks it good enough to print it. I advise every reader of this foolish talk to read the writing of that lady in which she accuses me of theft; it is called “3:5,5:8 = 21:34. The secret of being able to pay off the debts in the foreseeable future” and is by Elisabeth Metzdorff-Teschner. If anyone still believes in the stolen threefolding after reading this writing, whose content is as mystical as the title, I would like to know.
• 4. Footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition: It must be admitted that the method of the older church teachers, applied today by people, does not lead to the results that those claim as dogmas who declare anthroposophy to be heresy. But a truly logical way of thinking cannot but reject this slap in the face of logic.
• 5. footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first : As stated above, it was later proved.
• 6. Footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition: Perhaps, in order to not to give rise to misunderstandings, it is necessary that I should expressly say that by the “Catholic theologians” of whom I have just spoken I do not mean Franz Brentano.

Correction in the weekly publication “Threefold Social Order”

Defense against an attack from the university system. A few words about the attack by Fuchs

Some time ago, I stated in this weekly publication that I have no inclination for polemics. I believe that I have sufficiently proven this by leaving an impressive number of outrageous attacks, which mostly degenerated into wild personal insults, unchallenged. Above all, it seemed necessary to me to devote my time and energy to the positive development of the scientific research direction that I have been trying to establish in the world through my writings for thirty-five years. What is presented in these writings seems to me to provide others today with sufficient material to take on the necessary factual and scientific defense of this research direction. Recently, scientifically and artistically talented personalities have taken on this task. This line of research provides guidelines for the social question that has become so urgent in our time. In Stuttgart, a number of people have come together who, convinced of the fruitfulness of these social guidelines, are tirelessly doing relevant work through the Federation for the Threefold Ordering of the Social Organism. In other places, others have joined them, striving to work in an understanding, scientific and social way.

The experiences of two of these defenders of labor, Dr. Walter Johannes] Stein and Dr. Eugen Kolisko, with their lectures in Göttingen recently are described in the previous and in this issue of this weekly. I myself can only feel grateful, out of an interest in the matter, that they have taken on this not exactly desirable role.

Unfortunately, one must even defend oneself in matters that are brought to light, such as the claims of Professor Dr. Fuchs in Göttingen. All my writings speak with absolute certainty against such absurdities as that my anthroposophy spiritually transports one to the times of the Middle Ages, for anyone who wants to read. Anyone who follows how my anthroposophy arises in a straight line from what I already wrote in the 1880s of the last century will find it simply ridiculous to be told that I feed my readers and listeners oriental teachings that are borrowed in particular from northern Buddhism.

Evidence for or against the scientific nature of anthroposophy must be derived from completely different corners than those that seem to be available to Professor Dr. Fuchs, according to his previous, merely abusive remarks. If Professor Fuchs declares as natural science only what he thinks about the natural facts known to him, that is his private business. I have never declared that anthroposophy agrees with what he and those of a similar spiritual nature think about nature and spirit. I have repeatedly tried to prove that natural facts do not demand what he and the natural scientists of his school think, but what is demanded by anthroposophy. In this sense, I speak of the harmony between natural science and anthroposophy. Anyone who, like Professor Fuchs, turns this fact into its opposite and makes insulting statements on the basis of this opposite, speaks objectively untruthfully.

A researcher who is to be taken seriously must be required to have a sense of objective facts. Anyone who is presented with an anatomical specimen that speaks against an absurd claim can only be taken seriously scientifically if he first looks at the specimen and wants to consider its context with other facts. Professor Dr. Fuchs has heard that in Stuttgart my certificate of baptism was produced in refutation of the stupid claim that I am a Jew. He says, like so many others who unscrupulously spread the lie that I am a Jew, that there are also baptized Jews. Now, my baptismal certificate contains data that so strongly refutes my Jewish descent that the claim of my Judaism is revealed as pure nonsense from these data alone. I don't need to say that I myself do not attach any importance to my descent from this point of view. For me, it is merely a matter of the fact that it is a barefaced lie to make me a Jew. But as far as I am concerned, anyone who talks about facts in the way Professor Fuchs talks about my alleged Judaism, even if only in passing, is not a scientist. I have a more serious conception of conscientiousness in the scientific mode of presentation. Anyone who proves in one field that he lacks a sense of fact is someone I do not believe can have one in another field. An anatomy that is so seductive with its facts, as Professor Fuchs is with my baptism certificate, would be devoid of any scientific character for me. I will limit myself to these few sentences for the time being. What Professor Fuchs has said about priority and the like, I can confidently leave to those who really read my writings and who can understand their questions.

Final Word After The Members' Conference

The fact that people today absolutely refuse to give up their striving for a new structure – well, I will bring a small sample of how these things are taken here for reading one day. The latest report from the “Basler Volksblatt” of August 27, 1920:

Theosophical corner. (Ed.) The inhabitants of Dornach and the surrounding area can expect a huge surprise in the form of a theosophical “deluge” in September. The Steiner students are being called upon to rise from their incarnation of tranquillity (that is, insignificance), to show themselves to the world and to become famous.

The Steiner battalions are currently being mobilized for the revue in Dornach. Three to four thousand people (even more according to other reports), the majority from abroad, are expected to attend a large conference.

The 'mouse trap', as popular wit has rightly christened the temple disfiguring our landscape, is to be 'inaugurated' with the organ. The organ and the temple are to be 'wonders of the world'. We are curious to know on which day and at what time of day the 'consecration' will take place.

According to the reports, a huge demonstration is planned, a huge propaganda event. (Note: We believed that, according to the official promises made, the Theosophists do not engage in propaganda.

The event is planned on such a large scale that all the school buildings in Dornach are being requisitioned as cheap accommodation to alleviate the pain of foreign currency problems. Our ailing Swiss hotel industry has little or nothing to expect from the new humanitarians. Every free space in and around Dornach is to be confiscated. The original inhabitants will ultimately have to leave their houses and beds to them, to camp outside or in the “Angel Garden”, while the “new race” of the human race (according to Steiner, the Theosophists are the fifth) can comfortably settle in.

As can be seen, Dr. Steiner is a clever and skillful doer, propagandist, and businessman. It is in his blood, so to speak. The external fanfare is meant to conceal the internal hollowness of “spiritual science”.

What do the local and cantonal authorities say about this invasion, which would exacerbate the housing shortage in Dornach and the surrounding area to an unbearable extent if even a relatively small proportion of these people were to settle here?

What is the attitude of the federal authorities towards it? Do these crowds really receive entry permits?

You can see from the last words what the aim is and how this is thought about, which is represented by this building. But, my dear friends, especially in view of all these things, it is necessary for us to consider how great our task is and how necessary it is for us to act in accordance with this task. Nothing could be better than when many visitors come here and get an impression of how necessary it is to build this as an external representative for the ascent of humanity in the present declining times. But one should also bear in mind that in general at the present time, it does us quite a lot of harm when, throughout the whole day, especially in the beautiful summer time, while the other people are working, white clothes are constantly being pushed through the working people into the building throughout the whole day. It is so with certain people who do the work, constantly generating resentment and bitterness by the fact that there are always so many idlers around – from the way people feel, all those who stand around in white clothes during working hours look like idlers – quite apart from the fact that the work and especially our working members are constantly being disturbed. This is precisely how a mood is created that is actually not at all beneficial for us. There are truly many times when no work is being done in the construction site, when you can stroll around, loiter and the like, where you can do whatever you intend to do.

In general, it is not easy when you hear: Yes, you can't deny that everything here is very bourgeois! — By “bourgeois” many people understand that they have to work while the others, I might say, loiter between spades and so on. Well, there are issues of tact here that, if used, can truly ensure that one can still let everything that this building can be for humanity take effect. One should consider what kind of impression it makes, even on someone who is an anthroposophist but who just has to work, when someone else is sitting in the building and meditating for hours on end. Do you think people will allow us to preach social reform to them if we show our willingness to participate in the development of humanity in this way?

This is not meant as a diatribe, but only to draw attention to a few things that have come to light in the last few days to a particularly outstanding degree. If it had not been revealed to such an outstanding degree, I would not have said anything about it. But now, my dear friends, it is also necessary that a number of things be hinted at. Perhaps it is better to hint at things than to leave them unsaid.

Above all, I would still like to point out a few individual things. I have already done so from this very place some time ago. You see, this building was initially built mainly with funds from the Central European countries that were used to construct it. It was only made possible by the fact that funds came from Central European countries with a full understanding of the spiritual-scientific movement as we represent it. These Central European countries are now dropping out. There is nothing more that can come from the Central European countries. In a very commendable way, and particularly commendable in view of the circumstances, the countries that remained neutral during the war have initially taken a stand for what makes this building necessary. But that too will be exhausted before the building can be completed. The countries in the territories formerly known as the Entente during the war should not leave us in the lurch, as they have done so far; they should also do something. Because if they do nothing, then we are faced with a prospect that I can only describe as follows:

If there is no awakening to an understanding of what this building should be, if the present situation continues, then, my dear friends, we are faced with the prospect that this building will remain a torso. We will not be able to complete it; then this building will remain a torso, a testament to the destroyed Mitteleuropa, a testament to the perishing Mitteleuropa. But the fact that in this area only a testament can be made, an unfinished one, does not seem to be in the interest of the development of contemporary humanity. Central Europe can do nothing else, could do nothing else, than to make its testament in this regard. What is necessary is an active, genuine understanding of the non-Central European and neutral countries. If this does not come about, then this non-arrival is also a symptom of how one wants to preserve the world in decline there, how one no longer wants to rebuild it.

I know how little seriousness is applied to such things today, but that does not make them any less serious. We cannot go on, my dear friends, regarding the rest of life as a whole newspaper and anthroposophy as the entertainment supplement. But that is basically how it is still is. If people want to bring about improvements in the world, things they believe in, dream of, or have illusions about, they do so by automatically talking and acting in the old style; if they want something like the entertainment supplement of a newspaper, a kind of entertainment supplement for life, then they may listen to anthroposophical teachings. That will not suffice for the future. It is a matter of really realizing something like what this lecture was again about.

Final Remarks After The Members' Conference

You see, in addition to everything that I have already had to share with you – and it is actually extremely difficult for me to share these things – here is a small sample of what the present is like:

Basler Volksblatt, September 4, 1920

Dornach, from the surrounding area. Anthroposophy and Catholicism. A regional assembly of Catholics from Dornach, Arlesheim, Reinach and Aesch will be held on Sunday, September 19, 1920, at 3:00 p.m. in the large hall of the “Zum Ochsen” inn in Dornach. The purpose of the assembly is to thoroughly educate the Catholic people about this current issue and to duly reject the recent anthroposophical attacks against Catholic priests. The assembly was to take a stand against anthroposophical propaganda. A unified Catholic action against the anthroposophical essence is urgently needed. Since the people have long wished for something to be done about this, a united appearance of the Catholic associations and a large gathering of Catholics from the four communities mentioned is expected. The Federal Day of Prayer provides the right setting for this serious, religious-patriotic meeting. The meeting is being convened by the boards of the Catholic People's Associations of Dornach and Arlesheim. The program will be announced.

My dear friends, ultimately all this would still be bearable if the supporters were now standing in the same way in the face of this opposition, if what was needed were really there. But after swallowing such an unpleasant pill, then comes the bitter pill of a letter from one area saying: The work takes up so much time and costs so much money that they have decided to leave all the money they can raise in their own country; they understand that something has to happen in Dornach, but they will not give money to it; they want to keep the money in their own country.

So, my dear friends, this is how people think in a movement that is supposed to overcome everything that has gradually locked people into cages that can hardly be crossed anymore. So we are experiencing in the anthroposophical field the very consequence of this demarcation of the country, and we are being told clearly: We are indeed interested in Dornach, but we do not want to contribute to the completion of the building, because we need the money we have in the country for ourselves.

Now, my dear friends, the spirit will find its way, even if Dornach should remain unfinished, even if this Goetheanum should remain a torso. What it will come to symbolize, if it should remain unfinished, I do not wish to discuss today. But the danger is not small that the unfinished Goetheanum will stand as a symbol of what humanity did not want. It must be said that if it were important to feel some satisfaction in what has been achieved by the followers – I mean by some or other members of this following – there would be much to discuss. But then the area begins where I have to say: I am most distressed by what is happening here in Dornach.

My dear friends, the building has been listed here. We are happy to have the organ in this building. Multitudes of people come to visit this building – and there are members among us who, if they continue in this way, will gradually turn what is built here into a fairground attraction. It has come to the point that when strangers enter our building, they hear anyone who wants to play the organ. It is already considered a good right for anyone to sit down at the organ at any time of the day and make the organ sound, for anyone to squeal here – that is, he calls singing it. And then, under the random confusion that is created, the strangers are ushered in.

My dear friends, I have not yet found joy in what individual members do here. When I have to say that what has been brought forth from the deepest feelings of the soul, from the most sacred feelings of the soul, has been turned into a fairground booth by individual members, it is one of the most profound pains one can experience. I know very well to whom I should address this. It is not at all too strong to say that there is a tendency to turn that which has been brought forth from the most sacred feelings into a fairground booth, because one cannot conquer the desire to sit down at the organ and play around in any old way.

My dear friends, we could perhaps endure the opponents if only the supporters were as we would wish them to be in the interest of our cause. I truly mean no one any harm by saying this, and I say it out of goodwill. I hope that people will understand and that we will not continue in this way. It is not that I am saying this to spite anyone in particular, but to protect what should be sacred to us, especially from such profanation on the part of our members.

The truth of spiritual science and the practical life demands of the present. At the same time, a defense of anthroposophical spiritual science against its accusers.

Ladies and gentlemen, One might imagine that even the title of today's lecture would give rise to misgivings here and there. The title combines two aspects of spiritual science: the spiritual science that I have been privileged to represent here in Stuttgart for almost two decades and that is primarily concerned, as many believe, with the highest spiritual, with the supersensible aspects of the human being, and the directly practical life challenges of the present. And it will be my task today to overcome such prejudices, which the two fields cannot be reconciled with, and to show precisely how much depends on a correct understanding of the connection between spiritual knowledge and the most immediate practical demands of life, which we need today to get out of the great distress and misery of the time. I would therefore like to start with something directly practical.

Perhaps it might seem as if this has no connection with my lecture today: I would like to start with the temporary end of the English miners' strike, which was so frightening for the civilized world. The outcome, as you know, was quite uncertain for quite some time. The strike has been settled for the time being, settled through the negotiations of the parliamentarians with the working population. Anyone who has taken note of the way in which the parliamentary body and the working population have settled this strike through negotiations and who has an unbiased view of the course of events will have to say to himself: The way in which the measures have been agreed, it depends entirely on the development of the English economic situation in the next few years how quickly this strike will have to be repeated. For the question is: Will it be possible for the English economy to fulfill the conditions that have been agreed upon? In all likelihood it will not. It may be said that the clever Lloyd George sensed this. But this man has the ability to achieve results everywhere through forceful parliamentary speech. He has less opportunity to understand the conditions of reality and to bring about something through his measures that could have the necessary duration. He probably foresaw that too. That is why he advocated measures to the parties that would serve to bring into effect the forces of the state machinery the moment such a strike recurred. Now something very strange happened: the parties of the right, well into the center, were actually afraid of such measures. They did not really want these measures to become law. Everyone spoke out in favor of not letting these measures become law because they did not dare to point out what strict measures the state would take if the strike were to be repeated. Lloyd George gave a half-hour speech, and all doubts and fears were swept away. The speech had the effect that what he intended was seen as a necessity of state. This man, the very type of parliamentarian, had overwhelmed the people with his speech.

It is important to point this out if we want to consider the most important thing in the state of mind of the present, because it is actually in the processes of practical life that we see this state of mind of the present most clearly. The man had something to defend, something that pointed entirely to uncertainty, something whose outcome could not be known. He had no ideas that could have led to measures that seemed realistic, that would have been such that one could have said: these parties are throwing something into economic reality that promises to really help this economy. He had nothing like that. But he had the speech that dispelled people's fear, that motivated them to do something, which may not be realistic, but which first of all satisfies the way of thinking, the attitude, the state of mind.

This is characteristic of the present time. Above all, it is characteristic of what has emerged more and more in recent times, and is only now, in this time of great and terrible need, beginning to falter. It is characteristic of the particular conception of parliamentarism and its tasks. In parliamentarism, there are people who have general ideas about the course of necessary events, and there are people who take measures according to the interests they have, or even according to general, more or less even abstract ideas that they have of reality. And basically, for a long time within modern civilization, it was decided to intervene in reality based on ideas that could be talked about beautifully, but which did not have the power to intervene in reality based on an understanding of reality. And basically, this kind of thinking, this kind of outlook of present-day humanity is such that this outlook, this way of thinking, is alien to reality, that it is powerless to think out of reality and in turn to work through thoughts into reality.

Many examples could be cited of contemporary events that would prove the same as the settlement of the English miners' strike. One could point to many things that would show how people's way of thinking floats, as it were, above reality, but how, precisely at the points where decisions have to be made, the ideas that float above reality and should make the decisions cannot make them. Despite our materialism, despite our naturalism, despite our science that insists on experience, we have become a humanity that is out of touch with reality. This is basically the tragic fate of the present, that we have become a reality-alienated humanity. And do not the events of recent years stand before all of European humanity in their devastating, destructive effect? And do they not face the powerlessness of thoughts, the powerlessness of ideas, to conquer these events, to give them a form within which man can really live?

What does the truth of spiritual science have to do with all this? To answer this question, I must refer to a few things that I have repeatedly dealt with here in Stuttgart over many years, albeit before a smaller circle, I must first point out that this spiritual science is based on a special research method of soul development that conveys to man the view of his eternal core: of what man is before birth, before conception, and what he will become after death, but also what the soul and spiritual essence of man works on in the world of the senses between birth and death.

But in recent years, in addition to the spiritual-scientific knowledge that the human soul needs, in addition to the human yearning for knowledge, all kinds of practical institutions have been established. The Federation for the Threefold Social Organism has been added, which, from the particular type of spiritual-scientific way of thinking, wants to work in the social shaping of contemporary life in such a way that not ideas floating above reality in cloud cuckoo land are to prevail, but ideas that come from reality and can therefore also shape reality. Ideas that are practical in terms of reality are to be juxtaposed with social demands precisely from this spiritual science.

And it was out of this spiritual science here in Stuttgart that the Waldorf School was created, whose pedagogy and didactics, whose entire educational system does not seek to spread the world view of spiritual science, to instill it in children - that is not the case at all - but to apply the teaching and educational practice in the school that can arise from spiritual science. The Waldorf school wants to apply those practices through which the child, because it is educated by the spirit, can also become a truly practical human being through this spiritual education, to use Goethe's words, a human being who can stand in reality with his whole personality.

And even in recent times, the spiritual scientific way of thinking has given rise to the very practical institution of the “Coming Day”, which, from its circle, would like to have a healthy effect on economic life by replacing mere business routine with spiritual business and economic practice. And if these things are understood, my dear audience, then they will undoubtedly have many other things in their wake, because spiritual science is there for life, not for an unworldly brooding and pondering. In order to recognize it in this task, however, it must indeed be pointed out with some reference to its special nature.

This spiritual science, as it is meant here, grows directly out of the scientific spirit of the present, that scientific spirit that has emerged in the last three to four centuries within the development of civilized humanity, which has produced the special scientific attitude that today has such great authority. And I must point out, even if it may not seem popular at first, how, on the one hand, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that is meant here grows out of today's recognized science, but how, on the other hand, it completely transforms this recognized science, making it something completely different. The Dornach School of Spiritual Science course last September/October was intended to show that these individual sciences can become something different through spiritual science than they were before. This is also what the School of Spiritual Science course announced today and organized by the School of Spiritual Science students is intended to show.

To look at what spiritual science actually is, let us first consider the nature of today's recognized science, rightly recognized in its fields. This science, which has indeed celebrated its great triumphs particularly in the field of natural knowledge, and which has provided humanity with such indispensable services, attaches particular importance not only to recognizing the laws of nature, but also the laws of the historical development of humanity and other things, including social life, which are completely detached from the subjectivity and personality of the human being. Today's science regards it as its ideal to have ideas and to register the results of observations in such a way that these ideas of natural and other laws, these results of observation, are completely independent of the person who records them, who makes them. Today's science regards it as its ideal that man, as it were, completely eliminates himself by recognizing. And the more he eliminates himself, the more he lives completely impersonally in the abstract ideas, the stronger - one thinks - he is scientifically. But what does this science produce? The one who lives in this science can feel what it produces. It produces something like images of external reality, which, precisely because they must be impersonal according to the ideal of science, actually leave the human being completely cold, so to speak, inwardly separate from the human being.

Dear attendees, I would like to use a comparison to characterize what man experiences in today's science. Man strives to get external nature, external reality in general, through this science into himself in such a way that it lives in him like the mirror images that arise in a mirror from that which stands in front of the mirror. The content of this science is indeed something abstract, something pictorial. And no matter how much of this science one has within oneself, when one has, so to speak, crammed one's head full with the results of this science and one looks into one's inner being, into everything that lives in man in the form of a yearning for knowledge in relation to what he himself is, what lives in him, in order to warm himself to the world, so to speak, in order to find his way in the world, it is as if someone, in order to get behind the images of the mirror, would reach out his hand and grasp behind the mirror. Because one has only images, one does not grasp anything behind the mirror. Science is proud of the fact that its concepts and ideas are such that when one reaches into the immediate, warm human life, there is nothing of these images in it. Through this science, only recognition takes place, recognition in images, but it is not experienced. Nothing flows into the human being through the images of this science that answers the great, directly felt questions of existence: about the eternal in his being, about that which goes beyond birth and death. Nothing flows from the objective images of this science into the human being that points to the power that directly affects life from his inner warmth.

The nature of this science has often been described. Basically, it can only be described by someone who approaches it with a sense of insight, with a sense of what is truly human, and who then perceives in direct experience what I have just described, perceives how reaching into the soul of man, into the spirit of man, in relation to the images of science, is like reaching behind the mirror, into nothingness, in order to get behind the origin of the mirror images. The more we realize that we are grasping at nothing, especially when this science seizes upon its highest ideal in its field, the more we will also find why that which comes from this science cannot flow into practical life.

Yes, in the factory, in the industrial enterprise, in the commercial context, there is a need for leaders who work out of warm love for their fellow human beings, but also out of warm love for production and human interaction, for all external processes, who work out of the warmth of the soul. But our universities, our educational institutions, with their objective science, with their science that wants to be as impersonal as possible, send out into practical life those people who, on the one hand, look up to science, which lives only in cold images, and who, on the other hand, in practical life – because it cannot be warmed through by a spiritual life which starts from such spiritual science -, in this practical life only become routiniers, only become experimenters: no bridge between what the mind wants to see as science, which has the greatest authority in the present, and what one must do daily in direct life, and which therefore lives without ideas, purely according to routine!

Spiritual science, as it is conceived here, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, seeks to develop such a soul life, to shape such knowledge that one can say of it - I will again use a Goethean sentence -: this spiritual science should give an account of its method, of its entire procedure, to the strictest mathematician. But even though what is worked out in this spiritual science is to be completely permeated by the conscientiousness of the science of the present, which has celebrated such triumphs, even though this spiritual science is to have learned the full discipline of this science, it must, precisely because it works from this science, but with this spirit of science, not stop at the door of this science and rave about the limits of science, precisely for this reason this spiritual science must differ from ordinary science.

Ordinary science recognizes, it recognizes in unrealistic images; spiritual science experiences its spiritual content. The difference between the recognition and the experiencing of the soul is the difference between the external, scientific method and the spiritual scientific method. The one who wants to come to spiritual science in a searching way must come to the conclusion that in the depths of the human soul lie forces that can remain as hidden for the whole of human life as certain forces remain hidden in the child's soul if the child is not educated. One could imagine: If a child were not educated, it would remain at a certain stage of savagery. In this way, a sum of powers lives in every human soul, of powers of direct insight, which our present-day science - which wants everything to be impersonal and therefore does not want to develop the human being - does not want to extract from the soul, because that would be something personal, which is disregarded by this ordinary science. Spiritual science, however, proceeds as I have described in detail in my book “The Occult Science in Outline” or in “How to Know Higher Worlds?”. Spiritual science teaches that when the human soul undergoes certain exercises - exercises of which you can read the nature and essence in these works - the forces hidden in the soul emerge into consciousness and the human being becomes aware that he has other powers of perception than the powers of knowledge of ordinary science.

In the last lecture, I already pointed out that under our ordinary way of knowing, we have something that is very abstract, but which, in a certain way, aims at what is also decisive in the spiritual scientific method: it is mathematics. What we come to know as mathematical truths, we know through the direct intuition of the mathematical content arising from our soul. We need not establish anything externally. We also need not find anything externally confirmed. We know what we know through what arises from our soul. We consider the Pythagorean theorem to be true when we have understood it, and even if someone were to contradict it, we know through direct experience that it is a mathematical truth, and we do not demand any external confirmation. That which is admitted by the present-day scientific spirit only for mathematics can be comprehensively developed in the human soul, so that not only lines and line connections, numbers and number connections arise from this human soul, but that solutions to mighty world riddles arise, that truths arise about the essence of man and the essence of the world.

Why is this so? The person who does not gain an unbiased insight into the deep, intimate connection between man and the world will at first be amazed when he is told that truths about the nature of man and the nature of the world can arise from within man in a mathematical way. But the one who looks at what intimately connects the human being to the world, who realizes how everything that is out there in space and time basically lives in the human being, because the human being is born from the whole world and develops out of this whole world every day, it will not be surprising that the human being, who was formed out of the whole world, can also gain an insight into the whole content of the world. Spiritual scientific experience shows that this can arise because the human being is connected in his inner being, firstly, through his physical body with everything mineral, vegetable and animal in his environment; he carries these realms of nature in a higher form in his physical body. Secondly, however, he also bears within his spiritual-soul all that is spiritual-soul in the world. Therefore, if he only applies the appropriate methods for soul development, he can allow truths about the secrets of humanity and the world to arise from within him, just as mathematical truths arise within him.

But what is present in ordinary knowledge, which only comes to images, is different in this spiritual science; after all, it has to be brought forth from the most personal. The whole human being must go within himself to extract from within himself the treasure of truth about the world and about himself. In this way, the human being is also connected with what arises in him like a mathematical truth, but now like a truth that is intimately connected with his and the world's being. Those who only want objective images of the world can talk. It may be their need to have such objective images – but they will not come to the intimate truths about the life of the world and human beings through such images. The personality must be fully thrown into the process of recognition. But then recognition becomes experience. Then, my dear audience, by methodically developing the soul beyond the ordinary life, just as one must unfold the soul of a child in the ordinary life, the human being is inwardly transported in his entire soul-condition into an experience that is thoroughly different from the ordinary life of science.

In our ordinary, external life, we take an interest in what concerns us directly. We feel warmth when a friend tells us his fate; we feel anger when injustice is done; we feel pain when there is hardship around us, and so on. We are with our whole being, with our whole experience, with what confronts us in the external environment, which we experience through our senses and through other things in people, perceive. This is not the case in the experience of abstract science, which is of course good for nature, but not the case. After all, nature is basically dead to us. No wonder that dead science, which leaves us cold, is best suited for nature. But when man experiences that which can arise from his soul like a spiritual mathematics, then he takes a warm, living part in everything that really arises as an intuition of the world and of human life.

I would like to use two examples to clarify what I actually mean by this interest in the science that has been experienced. Some time ago, I gave a lecture here in Stuttgart that took up the famous book by Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West. Those of you who were present and heard this lecture will not accuse me of underrating Spengler. I have said many words of praise; I have even called Oswald Spengler's expositions ingenious, and they are so. But at the time I also pointed out the fundamental error in Spengler's arguments. Today I would like to draw particular attention to another aspect of these arguments. I would like to point out the whole way in which the ingenious ideas of Spengler settle in the soul of someone who has come to experienced spiritual science. One can follow these ideas, which are ingeniously taken from all sciences that are currently in vogue, in detail; one can absorb them. If one is a spiritual scientist, one has knowledge that has been experienced in oneself, and if one then brings Spengler's ideas into one's soul, then one cannot simply experience one idea after another in one's soul, nor can one point out the contradictions of one's own ideas with the other ideas of today's science or with Spengler's entire world of ideas with cold cleverness. That would be abstract knowledge. That would be mere logic. A scholar in the humanities cannot stop at such mere logic, at such mere abstract knowledge. The scholar in the humanities takes up, for example, Spengler's ideas, which are born entirely out of the scientific spirit of the present. But as he lets one idea take effect in him and lets the other idea take effect in him, as these ideas live in him because he has absorbed experiential knowledge into himself, one idea disturbs the other. One idea, so to speak, skewers the other; one experiences within oneself the pain of being skewered. One experiences within oneself something like one experiences the external contradictions of life that are close to us. That is the difference between the science of experience and mere knowledge. What we otherwise only know from ordinary life – that we experience pain and joy, rapture, warmth and cold – is bestowed upon us through ideas when we have absorbed the science of experience, when we have absorbed what I have been calling anthroposophically oriented spiritual science for almost two decades now. What streams in from the whole human being into soul and spirit is that which is pain and suffering and joy and delight, that which is personality - and yet the human being remains objective in relation to the outside world. Just as one cannot say that a person is being subjective when they feel pain in the face of a painful external event, so too one cannot say that a person becomes subjective when they radiate their personal experience into what would otherwise be a cold world of ideas, because they radiate the power of their personality into their knowledge and into their experiential knowledge.

And I would like to give another example. It often happens in the present day that mere cognitive wisdom, that wisdom that lives in abstract ideas, develops into philosophical thinking. This wisdom, which to a certain extent only produces mirror images, impersonal, bloodless mirror images of external reality, can celebrate its great triumphs when it develops directly from external experience, because then this external experience acts on the senses, and the sensual impressions contain the vitality. But if we disregard these external sensory impressions, if we do not describe minerals, plants, animals, clouds, rivers, etc., but instead spin out into philosophy the ideas, mere mirror-image ideas, that we have gained from the external world, then something like Keyserling's philosophy results – this Keyserling philosophy, which is particularly evident today, consisting of the most anemic abstractions, which develop ideas that are mere mirror images of external experience and spin them out, thereby naturally squeezing out the content that is otherwise gained from external experience. In spinning out these mirror-image ideas, they arrive only at the most empty-content, most phrase-like ideas.

Those who have truly living knowledge, experiential knowledge within themselves, also feel something personally and directly about the anemic Kaiserling abstractions that are now being imposed on humanity in the “schools of wisdom”. He feels something like the way one feels physically when one lives in a room that is not airy enough, when one suffers from a lack of air, when one gasps for air that does not come. The one who has learned to grasp reality with these ideas, who has learned to submerge his cognitive faculty in reality, feels a painful sensation as if he were in a vacuum in which he cannot breathe when he has to digest the bloodless abstractions of Count Hermann Keyserling. But it is precisely such things that are characteristic of the present, for they express what the present develops out of the science of mirror images, which becomes unworldly, which believes that it is developing something particularly noble when it floats in this unworldliness, but which can never submerge itself in reality.

And, my dear assembled guests, if we now look at practical life in the world, we say of the old religious creeds: certainly, they are there - they should, as I explained in the last lecture, be collected and united by well-meaning people, so that a spiritual impulse may again pass through humanity. But they have become, so to speak, abstract; they are cultivated only to warm the abstract inner life of man. They no longer intervene in real, outer life. Just ask yourself how many of the real ideas of the denominations are still present in today's economic life, for example; they no longer have the strength to have an effect on it. And also, what people, out of a certain conservatism, retain of the spiritual life from ancient times: it is certainly venerable and also contains immeasurable truths, but it no longer has any life force today. What I would call the mirror-image scientific spirit seeks to have life force, but cannot have it due to its own inner essence.

This mirror-image scientific spirit has been absorbed by all those who are reflecting today on the possible shaping of social life. Lenin and Trotsky basically took up this mirror-image scientific spirit and wanted to implement it in the shaping of economic life; they wanted to create something new. The destructive spirit of a militarized economic state lives in Eastern Europe, and it is already conducting fairly insistent propaganda far into Asia. The spirit of mirror images wants to bring into reality of social life, and it will only be destructive. Because people believe in social theories and social paradises that are made out of this spirit of mirror images, the worst illusions arise, for they will plunder what practical life has brought forth in the past; what will be consumed and destroyed that which an economic system no longer appealing – perhaps more or less justifiably no longer appealing – has brought forth, but nothing new will emerge, because no reality can develop from mere images if it is to penetrate into practical life. But this spirit, which to a certain extent has emerged from mere thinking, schooled in the reality of the last centuries, especially the 19th century, this spirit has prevailed wherever those powers have emerged that then led to the terrible catastrophe disaster of 1914, because – I would like to say – you can see with your own hands how this spirit, which gradually gained more and more authority, but lost more and more and more of its sense of reality, how this spirit worked. I would just like to give a few examples.

I have already pointed out how a personality like Lloyd George, who is basically imbued with this spirit of unrealistic ideas, has a parliamentary effect but not an effect on reality. But one can cite something else: with the newer times, with the same times in which the spirit of science just described developed, humanity's call for freedom and democracy has also arisen. The states wanted to imbue themselves with freedom and democratic forces. It has been mentioned many times: in the Germany that has now been thrown to the ground by its enemies, what was the external state configuration in this Germany? It was expressed in the words “universal, secret, equal suffrage.” From the point of view of the right to vote, it was the freest constitution one could imagine. But where did this live? It lived on paper. The constitution was there; people were so little involved in reality with what was expressed there in an unrealistic idea that they could even bear that a person in the German Reich had the most free right to vote, but that the same person, who had the general, secret, equal right to vote for the Reich, voted in the most restricted right to vote in the individual state.

So one lived in a reality-alienated way, in a reality lie. And a personal regime, which basically had nothing to do with what was on paper, that was reality. There was no bridge between the beautiful ideas that were on paper and were therefore abstract, and what was external reality. And, ladies and gentlemen, after all, we also live now in some beautiful things that only exist on paper. Compare what people's aspirations are with what happens daily in intellectual, state and economic life, and you will see how, on the one hand, people have illusions, unworldly ideas, learned from unexperienced scientific and on the other hand, live in a reality that degenerates into routine because it is uninspired and devoid of ideas, and in which everything that is educated because it is unrealistic only gets as far as the word. There, I would like to say, one can point out the most painful things.

For example, in the country in which I myself spent three decades, half of my life, in Austria, there lived a man who particularly loved the German influence on Austrian civilization, who had grown entirely out of this German influence on Austrian civilization. The man understood what the word “fatherland” means. He had a living sense of the word “fatherland”. He was a man whose mind reached out beyond the mirror-image ideas of the present into a realistic view of the soul, even if he did not get very far with it, which was impossible in his age. He wanted to think in a realistic way, and he looked at his Austrian fatherland at least with a realistic feeling; his fellow countrymen, the Germans, lived there. He wanted to experience the feeling of home and country together with them. The political configuration of Austria, which was born out of the unreal spirit described today, learned from modern science, made him feel with pain that over there, beyond the Erzgebirge and the Bohemian Forest, his kindred Germans lived, with whom he felt he belonged to the same fatherland, but with whom he could only share the feeling of home. The person I am referring to is Robert Hamerling, the German-Austrian poet. I would like to say that out of a yearning for reality he coined a word that only those who have suffered greatly from the unreality of the present, through which the individual structures [of Austria] were gradually imbued with unreality as state structures, will feel in all its depth. Hamerling, with his sense of reality, could not bring himself to say what millions of Germans on the other side of the Ore Mountains and the Bohemian Forest have said in the phrase: “Austria is my fatherland”. For in saying that, they were saying something that was out of touch with reality, something born of cloud-cuckoo-land ideas, something that had no basis in reality. Hamerling said: “Germany is my fatherland, Austria is my motherland”. He needed a supplement to find reality. Spirits who want to be connected with reality had to resort to such expressions as Hamerling's “Austria is my fatherland, Germany is my motherland” if they wanted to assert their sense of reality against the sense of unreality that surrounds them, that surrounds us all in the surrounds us all in the present – that sense of unreality that grasps ideas only like mirror images, that, when it wants to reach behind these ideas into the human, into the reality of the human, finds emptiness, just as one finds nothing when one reaches behind the mirror. In past epochs, the best minds suffered from a longing for a reality that is completely practical, that directly engages life and yet is not spiritless, not without ideas, that can carry into reality that which is most valuable to man, that must be most meaningful to him, that can carry the ideas he has experienced.

Thus spiritual science is that which, on the one hand, through knowledge, strives towards the highest spiritual content that man can experience. But these are not experienced in mirror images; on the other hand, they are experienced in connection with the whole human being, and are drawn out of the whole human being. They therefore educate the human being to reality again. If spiritual science becomes a cultural element in the present and in the near future, as its representatives strive for, then it will not be what emanates from the existing educational institutions and what does not find the bridge to life, but rather something that connects idea, knowledge, and realization with warm human life at its very source, with that through which the human being is also involved in practical life. Anyone who strives for spiritual research on the one hand and on the other hand still has warm interests in everything human will have encountered many people in the recent past who have been placed in this or that place in life by the routine of life, the mindless mechanism of life. They felt the mechanistic aspect of their profession, which consisted in their standing in one place like a wheel in the state or economic machine. They felt, to a certain extent, that the way they stood was degrading to humans, because these professions sucked the essence out of people. After all, everything that existed as a configuration of economic and state life had emerged from unrealistic ideas. Oh, how alien to external reality were the ideas that people thought out of the science of mirror images, just as the ideas of the mechanic are alien to the machine. There we experienced science in all fields, whose ideas were as alien to external social life as the ideas of the mechanic are to the machine. There we experienced social politicians and statesmen, whose ideas were just as unrealistic in relation to practical life. No wonder that we are immersed in a practical life that absorbs people like a mechanism, like a machine. This feeling of being in a machine is the terrible, underlying cause of the burning social issues – unfortunately, they are not seen in their true form, everything else are just their offshoots.

If, instead of abstract science, instead of mirror-image natural science, the personality-warming spiritual science will radiate from the educational institutions, then this science will shape life in such a way that there can be no people who, at some point in their lives, feel as if they are in a wheel. For whatever is thought out from the deepest, most intimate humanity and really enters into social life as a social form will in turn have a human impact on everyone, even on those who, so to speak, occupy an outwardly low social position. What is recognized and seen as human at the top will resonate down into the human heart of the worker. What is already connected with the human being in theory, which is life, will be able to be life when it takes hold in practice at the bottom. Such a spiritual science can only flourish in freedom. Therefore, what has grown out of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science as a social impulse demands the free development of spiritual life, not state paternalism, not state supervision, and not the dependence of spiritual life on the economy, but its self-government. This is necessary so that the human being may find in the free spiritual life what he can only find in such a life: living knowledge, not mere mirror-image knowledge. This mirror-image knowledge is what the state and the economy in its abstractness squeeze out of itself. A living spiritual life that sets people free will be able to arise through the free self-administration of the individual members of the social organism.

And economic life will never be able to develop among people in such a way that one only talks, so to speak, about ideas that are unrealistic, that one only talks like routine parliamentarians, for example like Lloyd George, that one talks about ideas that have so little to do with economic life and so little prospect of being realized in the near future. In our parliaments, much is said about unrealistic ideas, learned from the wisdom of mirror images. What we need is a prosperous development of the economy, which is cracking at the seams. We can only achieve the recovery of our economy by handing over the economy to the people who manage it, that is, to all people, for free self-management, just as we hand over the spiritual life to free self-management.

Some people feel that economic life can only flourish if the economic operators themselves have it under free administration. But, again, they demand half-measures out of touch with reality. They demand, for example, that decisions be made in parliaments, where they are made by the majorities of the parties, who naturally do not judge from a technical and objective point of view. They demand that parliaments be advised by colleges of experts, formed from the professional associations and from the combination of consumers and producers and the like. But that, in turn, is an unrealistic half-measure, because imagine the sovereign parliament, advised by the economic body – and then the decisions are again made by the majorities.

No, that is not the issue. The only issue is that what happens in economic life should arise from the associations themselves that arise from the economy. The economic entities must conclude their contracts among themselves. They must disregard what people say who are not involved in any branch of the economy. Each branch of the economy must assert itself through direct negotiations from association to association. A free economic life based on objective and professional negotiations between economic entities must be established. Economic life, just like intellectual life, in free self-government – that is the only thing that can lead to a healthy future.

Then, between the self-governing spiritual life and the self-governing economic life, there will be the remaining area in which all people, as equals, can democratically deliberate in parliament. If we first eliminate the spiritual life, which must be based on abilities and grow out of abilities, and the economic life, which must be shaped out of the factual and the technical, if we first eliminate the right and the left, then what remains is the reality that depends on speeches, on the effects of words. Then there remains that into which constitutions can be fulfilled if they are not to remain merely on paper, as was the case with the former constitution of the German Reich.

This threefold order emerges directly from the true, inner character of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science as a way of satisfying practical demands in life. And many other practical things arise from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, for example the Waldorf school, which is set up in such a way that it already serves the free spiritual life in its configuration, which depends on nothing but only on the abilities that can arise from the human being, from teachers and students.

This, I believe, characterizes what makes spiritual science eminently practical. Spiritual science does not take hold of abstract knowledge, or mere conceptual knowledge, but of the essence of knowledge. It therefore educates the human being in such a way that he can also carry into the management of everyday life that which is first taught to him in science. The science of the spirit is practical in its origin, and therefore it will establish a practice that, in its ramifications, despite being full of ideas, can be life-affirming and liberating for people.

And now, dear assembled guests, allow me to characterize the following with a few words: Like everything that has ever presented itself to the world as such a radical view, this spiritual science is also fought by those who simply cannot imagine that man could get out of the accustomed tracks. Today, most people who have anything to do with science have become so immersed in the spirit of unexperienced, merely conceptualized science that they cannot imagine that there can be a living spiritual knowledge as I have described it here over the past decades, and which I have only sketched out in its basic features. And they are capable of saying that what this spiritual science sees could perhaps be based merely on suggestion, whether it be self-suggestion or suggestion from others.

One hears very strange things – I must, especially when I am characterizing the nature of spiritual science as I understand it, conclude with a few words about such externalities – one hears very strange things. For example, it is said that what I have presented could be based on suggestions that came to me from reading the books of such personalities as Blavatsky and Besant. And now it is even being pointed out with a certain scientific rigor that I immersed myself in the writings of Blavatsky and Besant from 1900 or 1901 and that what is found in these writings is recurring in my spiritual science. Well, there is much in these writings that is ancient tradition. Just as the person who presents geometry today must present the geometric truths of the centuries again, so naturally much of what is in earlier books is also found in my writings again. But anyone who then claims that everything in my books can already be found in earlier ones [by Blavatsky and Besant], that nothing has been added, is either blind or is blatantly lying, because it is not true — as can be seen by anyone who compares my books with these other books.

But the approach is even more seemingly scientific. For example, it is said: Yes, Steiner was an esoteric disciple of Besant from 1901 to 1913. Well, I will tell you a fact. In 1900/1901 my book “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the 19th Century) was published, which those people who like to fish for contradictions in my work count among my “naturalistic” books. Almost at the same time, my essay “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and its Relationship to the Modern World View” was published. This writing was translated and published in an English magazine immediately after its publication. I was invited to give lectures within the Theosophical Society and was also invited to attend Theosophical meetings in London itself. There, my English translation of the writing 'Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life' had already been read. And one of the most important authorities among these English 'Theosophists' told me quite clearly at the time – I am just reporting: 'What is written in your “Mysticism” actually contains much of what we are striving for with our Theosophy.' – Well, the person to whom this was said truly had nothing to learn from Besant or Blavatsky. I am not saying this out of immodesty, but simply based on the facts.

But they went about it in an even more scientific way, thoroughly scientific. They even, as has been stated, went to Weimar, where I lived from 1889 to 1897, and made a fuss about it. And as a result of this trip, one could even claim that some lady, whose name one is willing to mention, said: “Steiner was an atheist during his time in Weimar.” Well, I have often had to explain that scientific conscientiousness sometimes goes as far as gossip. But I would like to tell you a small fact from my time in Weimar, so that you can get an idea of the alleged atheism of that period: it was roughly in the middle of my time in Weimar, at least after the publication of the first edition of my “Philosophy of Freedom”, when a Protestant clergyman who was extremely well respected in Weimar at the time gave a lecture in Weimar on “The Free Christian Personality”. You can read this lecture in the journal “Die Wahrheit” (The Truth), published by Christoph Schrempf; I don't know in which year, but not many were published, so it should be easy to find. There is a reference to the “Philosophy of Freedom” at one point. But at another point in this lecture there is a reference to me again, only the lecturer omitted to mention my name at this point. Of course, that doesn't matter; but it may be important, especially in view of the gossipmonger's claim about my Weimar atheism, to point out this passage in the lecture, which was also printed and given by a serious personality. This personality said roughly the following in the lecture:

Recently someone said to me that if one sees in the right way that God has infinite love within himself, one cannot speak of God's existence in the way one speaks of the existence of ordinary things, because love is devotion to another. And if God has the fullness of infinite love within himself, then he passes out of the fullness of this love into all beings through an outpouring of his being, and then one can no longer speak of God's self-existence in the ordinary sense.

This personality said at the time, from his purely evangelical point of view: Why should love be the Moloch that drives God out of Himself? —

Now, the deeper philosophical question that lies in this, I will of course not deal with today. But the one who spoke of divine love for this man in this way was I. And I ask you whether someone who speaks about the personality of God in such a way can be called an atheist? That is a truth, and this truth is to be documented. And as far as this truth is concerned, it makes no difference to me what can still be asked about my alleged atheism from this or that Weimar personality today.

And so I could cite fact after fact in refutation of the accusers of spiritual science, but the accusers are mostly not interested in really looking at the facts. They are only interested in shining their own light and therefore putting spiritual science in a correspondingly different light. I am never curious to hear what these people say, because it can usually be predicted what, for example, Count Hermann Keyserling, whom I have already mentioned today, said as a characteristic of my anthroposophy in his abstract book, which has the character that I have described today. This could be constructed from the outset out of Keyserling's empty wisdom. This is just as well known as what such a person has to say about spiritual science, who parrots Eduard von Hartmann's ideas like Drews. These people, even if they are Count Hermann Keyserling, always have one thing in common: since they basically lack the will to go into the matter, they always have one thing in common at one point, and I say this with all radicalism: they always have to lie. You find in one place in the book “Philosophy as Art” by Hermann Keyserling the assertion that I started out with what he considers my “materialistically shaped spiritual science” - which he only calls that because he has no idea about it, not even a blue one. You find there the assertion that I started from Haeckel's ideas, that the origin of my anthroposophy lies in Haeckel's ideas.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I wrote about Haeckel at the end of the 1890s, and I must mention a fact here: in 1893, I presented the one-sidedness of Haeckel's world view in a lecture on a spiritual monism at the Vienna “Scientific Club”. I then returned to Weimar, where I had written my essay about the Society for Ethical Culture in one of the first issues of “Zukunft”. Haeckel wrote to me about this essay, and I sent him a copy of my Viennese lecture against materialistic monism. And Haeckel established the connection that led to Haeckel being very friendly towards my endeavors at the time. And it also led to a confrontation with Haeckelism, which was necessary from the scientific and spiritual development of the time, because Haeckelism was a force to be reckoned with. From this one can see - I say this truly only forced by what is being said by the enemy side, I have not said it long enough, I am not saying it out of any immodesty -: It is not true that I sought any connection with Haeckel; Haeckel approached me on his own initiative, in the way of the aspirations that I cultivated. I did not pursue Haeckel, but Haeckel, despite being Haeckel, came to me, just as I did not pursue the Theosophical Society, but the Theosophical Society came to me and requested my lectures. Hermann Keyserling is lying when he says that I started with Haeckel, because it can be proved that he is lying if you read the relevant chapter of my arguments with Haeckel in my “Einleitungen zu Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften” (Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings) from the 1880s. Anyone who claims that I started from Haeckel, despite the fact that this dispute with Haeckel is available, can be said to be lying, even if he founds wisdom schools.

This is the peculiarity of opponents of spiritual science: because they have no will to go into the matter, they always have to lie at a certain point. Whether they lie like Count Hermann Keyserling, somewhat more refined, in patent leather boots, or whether they lie like Professor Traub, or whether they lie so crudely, so “ferkelig” as the neighboring Rohm in Lorch, it does not matter. For there is an inner reason why these people, in what they bring forward against spiritual science, pass over to lies. If there were anything that would scientifically speak against spiritual science, I would be the first to take it up and discuss it. As I said in my last lecture here: the one who really goes through the psychological development that I have characterized, which must be gone through to become a spiritual researcher, knows that it cannot be a matter of suggestion. Just as I know that when I lift a kilogram weight, I have to strengthen my inner strength to do so, that in a sense my ego has to strengthen itself through the resistance, so I know that my ego has to strengthen itself if I want to have spiritual insight, whereas it does not strengthen itself through suggestion.

But people also put forward other arguments. For example, the absurdity is being repeated today that one should not recognize and pass on the spiritual-scientific knowledge that lives in my anthroposophy through mere thinking, but that it should be verified in the same way [as it has been researched]. Now, my dear audience, what is the reason for this verification? Mathematical truths are the model for spiritual-scientific truths. For example, approval and recognition by others of the Pythagorean theorem is not necessary; one learns to understand it from one's inner experience, others agree with it out of their free judgment, not out of any external experience. Spiritual truths need no confirmation, any more than mathematical truths do. They arise out of the free spiritual experience of the human being, not in the way that some of the opponents of spiritual science today believe. And then I have often said: spiritual training is part of the process of exploring spiritual knowledge, but not of processing it; this can be done with ideas, with ordinary common sense. Mathematics is also a model for this. To make mathematical discoveries, special mathematical abilities are necessary. Once the discoveries have been made, anyone who has mathematical ideas and has developed them to a corresponding level can substantiate, prove and carry them further. And so it is in spiritual science. And those who want to pick on such points simply do not understand the inner structure of spiritual science.

Now, I could continue this litany – I myself feel it is a litany – which actually only serves to hold up the proceedings, for a long time. And if those who now act as accusers of spiritual science, and there are very, very many of them, would go down to the ground on which spiritual science stands – which, to use this Goethean saying again, would like to give account to the strictest mathematician with regard to their methods and their discipline. If these accusers would only enter the terrain of spiritual science, they would realize that spiritual science is not at all opposed to today's scientific method, but that it recognizes this scientific method in terms of its discipline and its strict methods. Spiritual science recognizes this scientific method in its strict methods, only it leads them beyond themselves, as it should be shown by the thirty lecturers at the Dornach University courses and is to be shown here at further university courses. Other things would be brought to spiritual science, and indeed those things that - but in their true form, not in their caricatured and distorted form - have often been mentioned and refuted by this spiritual science itself as possible objections.

Today, my dear attendees, if you are completely grounded in spiritual science, as it is meant here, you are basically dealing with more important matters than with such a confrontation with insubstantial opposition. Today you are dealing with the answer to the question: How does the human being move from his life-filled knowledge to a social practice of life that is permeated by love? Cold mirror-image science introduces into practice what is loveless and empty of love. The knowledge that must be inwardly experienced as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science appears to the human being in such a way that he brings his whole personality into his outer activities, including his immediate life. And no matter how complicated the community may be, anyone who has been educated in spiritual science can also carry into their outer social life what they experience in spiritual science with the most intense part of their personality, regardless of whether they are in a leading or a non-leading position. For what is experienced with the whole personality also becomes an experience when it is put into action. But the outer experience in which the personality must be completely involved is the experience in love. A knowledge that strives for the world of ideas in the spirit, that engages the whole human being in such a way that this human being places himself in love in the social life, that he lets love permeate social ideas. Just as in spiritual research the direct experience of the spirit lives inwardly, so through the threefold social organism spiritual science brings love into the social life, into the community. It places the ideas as such into reality, so that love can be the bearer of these ideas in reality. Love in the social life can only be connected with experienced, not merely with cognitive science. Therefore, when one is grounded in spiritual science, as it is meant here, one's gaze is first of all directed to the connection between these spiritual scientific insights, this spiritual scientific life, with social love, with socially loving practice, which is not merely routine, but which is carried in love, by radiant ideas. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we need if we do not want to descend into barbarism but want to arrive at a new civilization.

We need a spiritual life that does not live in cloud cuckoo land, but that descends into practice; a practical life that does not look down on the unworldly spirituality with contempt, but that allows itself to be permeated with love by real ideas. We need a spirit that does not float ethereally in clouds, but that lives in practice. We need a practice that does not become an uninspired routine, but a practice that is filled with the Spirit. We need a spirit that illuminates the practice; we need a practice that is warmed by the Spirit. Then we can embark on a fruitful path into the future.