The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, its Results and its Scientific Justification.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen! I have often had the opportunity to speak here in Basel about the nature of anthroposophical spiritual science. Since I last did so, in September and October, courses were held at the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, the place to which this anthroposophical spiritual science is dedicated. The aim of these courses was to show how this anthroposophical spiritual science, which is the subject of this talk, can have a fruitful effect on the individual sciences. About thirty personalities from the fields of science, art and practical life have tried to present what they could present from the spirit of their particular subject and from the whole sense of anthroposophical spiritual science in these university courses. The aim was to show how, precisely when one proceeds in a strictly professional manner, this anthroposophical spiritual science can reveal itself in its significance.

Now, admittedly, these college courses have touched many in a very strange way. I would like to highlight a remarkable one from the last few days from the series of judgments that have been passed. A German university professor of education and philosophy has now felt impelled, as a result of these university courses, to take a book of mine and read it, which was first published in 1894, my “Philosophy of Freedom”, which I have already mentioned here on the occasion of earlier lectures. He came to this conclusion after decades of neglecting this “Philosophy of Freedom”, that what the efforts set as their goal for a revival of science and public life - as was expressed in the university courses at the Goetheanum in Dornach, that this requires first of all a thorough revision of the ethical foundations, which are illustrated in a questionable way, as he believes, by this philosophy of freedom. There we have - I just want to report - a judgment from one side.

Strangely, this judgment is juxtaposed with another. One could say that recently the brochures that were initially written against spiritual science, as it is meant here, have grown into quite respectable books, and in the last few weeks such a book has appeared, with 228 pages. It cannot truly be said that the author of this book, the theology graduate Kurt Leese, is in any position to understand spiritual science, nor can it be said that he is a follower of it, because the whole book is written — at least apparently — with quite good will, but despite this good will, it is not at all imbued with any understanding of anthroposophical spiritual science. But even this opponent feels compelled to say the following in the preface. I must point out that the book, which is called “Modern Theosophy”, is only about “Anthroposophy”; the author also expresses this by saying here:

When the following remarks speak of Theosophy and Theosophists, they always mean Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical School. The terms Theosophy and Theosophist have been retained only because they are more familiar to the general consciousness than the terms Anthroposophy and Anthroposophist.

So when Kurt Leese speaks of Theosophy, he really means only Anthroposophy. Now, from his opponent's point of view, he says:

If Theosophy were just a collection of random ideas from some obscure sect fishing in troubled waters, it wouldn't be worth the trouble to pay it any attention.

In particular, it wouldn't be worth writing books about it! And then at the end of this paragraph, he said that Anthroposophy

... contains the foundations of a comprehensive and powerfully ethical worldview.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, on the one hand we are told that the ethical foundations need to be revised, and on the other hand we are told that the ethical foundations already exist! Kurt Leese reinforces this in his final remarks by saying:

There are also various ethical recommendations scattered throughout Steiner's writings. These could be separated out from the context of clairvoyant insights and used as practical wisdom. The value of this wisdom would not be affected.

He therefore believes that if one were to throw overboard everything that comes from the supersensible world and only select the ethical and moral wisdom, there would still be enough left for him. I think it is clear from this how unsuitable the judgments of the present day are for really saying anything about the value of what is meant here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. One of them, who is an academic, virtually denies its ethical basis, while the other, who is also an academic, emphasizes that even if it were worthless in all other respects, there would still be a residue of ethical wisdom that should not be dismissed out of hand.

Now, however, it is precisely from this latest book, “Modern Theosophy” — as I said, it should be called “Modern Anthroposophy” — one can see what the discord that emanates from our contemporaneity is actually based on when judging anthroposophy or the anthroposophical worldview. Kurt Leese, as he himself says, does not try to take an external point of view, but has actually read everything that has been published by Anthroposophy, and he even tries in his own way to judge this Anthroposophy from within. But at one point he betrays himself in a most remarkable way. He does talk about how confused this anthroposophy is and the like in a number of places, but at one point he betrays himself in a remarkable way, calling what anthroposophy brings “annoying and unpleasant”. Now, it is certainly not a point of view that one takes within science when one speaks of “annoying and unpleasant”. When one becomes annoyed, something inside one rears up, as it were. One does not want what is confronting one there, not out of logic, but out of one's feelings, because otherwise one would not become annoyed, otherwise one would refute it, otherwise one would present logical counter-arguments and the like. One may well ask: why does an opponent who claims to want to be objective become annoyed, yes, why does he even call anthroposophical spiritual science “unpleasant”?

I believe that if one takes the essentials of this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as I will explain again today, one can understand why certain people become annoyed by it, because this anthro posophically oriented spiritual science, on the one hand, departs completely from all present-day scientific habits and aims to carry these scientific habits into the knowledge of the spiritual, of the supersensible. On the other hand, however, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is pushed to start from a completely different, at least seemingly different, state of mind, from completely different conceptions and ideas than this ordinary science. In this way, the thinking habits of a great many scientists are broken in the most eminent sense by anthroposophical spiritual science. It can hardly be doubted by anyone who looks impartially at the more recent spiritual development of civilized humanity that the most significant thing that has emerged in this spiritual development is the methods and results of natural science research. These scientific results have transformed our whole life. These scientific methods of investigation – anyone who can compare them with the so-called scientific views of the time, say still from the 12th or 13th century – these scientific methods of investigation have brought about a certain methodical discipline of all research, of all investigations of knowledge, a scientific discipline that basically no one today should violate if they do not want to be accused of dilettantism.

With this fact, my dear audience, with the importance of scientific thinking, scientific attitude, scientific conscientiousness, anthroposophical spiritual science is reckoning. But precisely because it is reckoning with this, it cannot possibly remain on the ground on which, externally, science still stands today in its investigations, in its observations, in its experiments. Anthroposophical spiritual science cannot remain on this ground. For if it wants to incorporate the supersensible, the spiritual, into human knowledge in the same way that natural science investigates the sensible, then the spiritual science in question, when it moves in its very own field, in the field of spiritual facts, the spiritual entities, precisely because it wants to be a genuine child, a true successor of scientific conscientiousness, must proceed in a completely different way than natural science does in its field, in the sensual field.

And so, in order to be true to it, spiritual science must broaden the concept of knowledge in a very essential way, and we will see that it is essentially this broadening that annoys people who would like to stop at what is there, who find it uncanny. If one is to characterize that by means of which anthroposophy wants to penetrate into the spiritual world as a real science, then one must say: it relates to what is offered in ordinary science as a real thing to a mere formal thing. When a person has reached a certain level of maturity, that is, when he has developed his innate qualities and what his human environment can offer him through his education and studies, when he has thus developed a certain degree of intellectual and observational skills, then he can become a scientist. He can also, as is desired today, extend this scientific thinking to the historical and social fields. But it is always only a formal progression. You continue your work as you began it. You observe, you logically dissect what you have observed, and then you reassemble it.

The process of acquiring knowledge of anthroposophical spiritual science is different. This is something that really intervenes in the development of the human being when it is applied to the human being himself. To begin with, one can say comparatively: the researcher certainly gets further if he researches for five years, he also becomes more adept at handling the methods, but he does not come to use a different kind of cognitive faculty within these five, ten, fifteen years; he always uses the same cognitive faculty. The anthroposophical researcher cannot do that. It must be said of him: just as a child, when it has reached a certain age, has some power of judgment, some ability to observe, how it develops this judgment, this ability to observe, when it is five years older, how it then relates quite differently to the things of the environment - both in terms of thinking and in terms of the power of observation , then anyone who becomes a researcher in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must not merely maintain their cognitive ability like the natural science researcher, making it somewhat more skillful or meticulous or the like, but they must further develop their inner soul abilities in the same way in real terms, they must make something different out of them.

The method of anthroposophical spiritual science demands that a person does not stand still, that he continues to develop in relation to his cognitive abilities. In this way, the person himself attains a completely different inner soul disposition. And just as a child, after five years of development, sees the world differently than before, so the spiritual researcher, after applying the method of spiritual knowledge to himself, sees the world differently than before , that is to say, he sees it spiritually, supersensibly, whereas, as is generally admitted, the methods of natural science see only the sensual facts as such, and, if one watches closely, only want to see these sensual facts. But the fact that man, when he believes he is finished, is now being asked to develop further, is something that annoys many people who believe that they have achieved everything that can be achieved in science; they find it intolerable, because they face it in the same way that a child faces someone who is five years older.

You see, you only have to say this, and you will understand that it annoys contemporaries tremendously, because it is a challenge that first confronts these contemporaries. This challenge, however, why does it confront contemporaries? Here too, one need only look at what scientific research has achieved. It is enough to point out that these natural scientists emphasize everywhere - and their most important representatives admit this - how they are reaching the limits of their knowledge. But beyond the limits of this knowledge lie precisely the great questions that concern the human soul, that concern the human spirit above all. Science does not lead us any further than to an understanding of what lies between birth and death. But the riddles that lie at the depths of a human being's nature confront us with tremendous force: What lies beyond birth and death? What is eternal in the human being in contrast to the transitory? What is the basis of that which we call human destiny, which appears so mysterious because, with regard to this destiny, inner human feeling seems to harmonize so poorly with the outer course of the world, so poorly harmonized that someone who is good inside can be severely affected by fate, and someone who perhaps does not bring any particular goodness to it is initially treated very well by it. These are, however, only the important, the decisive questions of the human soul, those questions that reach into every feeling human heart. Time and again, natural science, which has indeed achieved such tremendous conscientiousness, must confess time and again how it has to stop before that boundary, behind which solutions to these questions can perhaps be sought.

Spiritual science now stands on the following ground in relation to this: precisely because it professes the scientific spirit of modern times in the truest sense, it considers the boundaries of scientific research to be correct. It says: with the ordinary abilities of man, as they are developed in accordance with the present state of human development, one cannot but stop at these boundaries. But these limits are not invincible. Man is capable of developing beyond these limits of knowledge.

First of all, two soul abilities should be mentioned which are capable of a higher development according to a very special, supersensible kind of knowledge. First of all, we should consider what we must have, so to speak, as a fundamental faculty for our healthy life between birth and death: it is human memory, it is the human ability to remember. From other points of view, I have already pointed out in spiritual scientific lectures the special development of this ability to remember through spiritual scientific methods. If only something in this ability to remember is not intact, then the whole human interior is actually torn apart. If we feel that what we have experienced since childhood, up to the point where we can remember back, is interrupted, then our I is, so to speak, not healthy. We feel disoriented within ourselves; we cannot find our way around within ourselves. We do not really know what to do with ourselves inwardly, spiritually. This ability to remember preserves what we experience in our existence for the time between our birth and our death. What we experience in the moment gains permanence through the ability to remember. This is where one of the methodological endeavors of spiritual science begins, in that it takes up, so to speak, the power of the soul that leads to memory, but then develops this power of the soul differently than it develops by itself, so to speak, when the soul is left to its own devices. What spiritual research applies here is what I have called meditation in my writings – an intimate process of the human soul.

But, dear listeners, you must be aware that the paths into the supersensible worlds are intimate soul paths. Anyone who, in the Schrenck-Notzing way, believes that one can see the supersensible by imitating the external method of experimentation, who believes that one can see the supersensible in the sensual as something sensual, will naturally find any interest in the spiritual science referred to here, for this spiritual science must start from the premise that it is absurd to want to get the supersensible into the sensory, that it is absurd to want to make the supersensible sensual. The question cannot be to apply the ordinary scientific method of experimentation in order to experiment with spirits in the same way as one experiments with substances and forces in the laboratory, but it can only be a matter of moving towards the supersensible in intimate soul paths.

Meditation is such an intimate path of the soul. If you would like me to describe it, I can do so briefly in the following; you can find it in detail in my books, especially in my “Occult Science” and in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” Briefly, I would characterize this meditation in the following way: it consists in not merely formulating one's thoughts as they follow from external observations or ordinary life, but in taking in images, thought connections, through willpower, that one either lets a knowledgeable spiritual researcher advise or that one brings to oneself in some other way. While otherwise we only think a thought for as long as our own perception lasts or for as long as our inner organization holds it in our memory in our present soul life, while in the ordinary course of thought we thus surrender to the involuntary, in meditation we bring the thought into our soul through the arbitrariness of a real development of the will, and we then dwell on this thought. One holds fast to this thought in the soul. What I mean here cannot be experienced quickly; it requires years of practice in such holding of the thought if one wants to achieve something. But it must be emphasized that the methods that are recommended by anthroposophy alone in this direction, they certainly keep the soul processes within a certain sphere. And one must actually be well prepared for this sphere before one can develop any kind of useful spiritual scientific method, and that for which one must be well prepared can be attained only through conscientious training within modern scientific research. There one first learns to stick to the objective, not to interfere with arbitrary sympathies and antipathies in the objective. But one also learns to adhere to the pure intellectual context, to a certain logical sequence of thoughts, in that these thoughts follow the external observations at the same time. What one can gain from this ability to follow a thought logically must be preparation, because nothing may be brought up from the subconscious or unconscious, but the whole process must proceed as consciously and deliberately as anything that is done deliberately in a laboratory through experimentation.

When one has struggled through to logical thinking, to thinking that could hold an account with the strictest mathematician, to use Goethe's expression, when one has struggled through to such thinking, when one can dwell purely in the element of thinking, then one can present such thoughts to oneself, in order to now - without the help of memory, without the help of external observation, without any involuntary action - to hold on to this thought through inner arbitrariness. What happens when we continue such exercises over and over again? We continue within the soul-spiritual that process which we have unconsciously allowed to run its course in ourselves by developing the faculty of memory. The child grows up, and as it grows up physically, it develops the faculty of memory at the same time. The spiritual researcher, so to speak, reproduces this process of making the presentation permanent in the pure soul by holding such thought-elements in mind. In so doing, he continues in reality this process, which has developed to the point of the ability to remember. And by continuing this process more and more, one arrives at inwardly feeling how something stirs that was not there before. Just as inner powers are awakening in the fifteen-year-old child that were not yet present in the ten-year-old child, so inner powers awaken through such exercises that were not there before. Before, one only knew how to live in memory with the help of one's body. Now, through a new experience, one knows how to live in the purely spiritual-soul realm. One grasps inwardly, in inner activity, the spiritual-soul, and the result is that the ordinary power of recollection develops further into a special power, the origin of which I will now describe.

There comes a time for the spiritual researcher when something quite different is added to ordinary memory through such exercises, something is added that no longer requires memory, with regard to which memory is basically no longer possible. By inwardly grasping oneself in this way, what is added is that from a certain point in one's life onwards, one has one's previous life since birth, or at least since the point in time up to which one would otherwise remember, as a whole, unfolding in pictures. As if the stream of time were, so to speak, running simultaneously, the tableau of life stands before the spiritual researcher.

But something special has been achieved with this, dear audience. The fact that the spiritual researcher then sees what otherwise only wells up from his inner being in individual memories means that he is confronted with an entity – albeit now his own entity as it has developed since his birth – that he has not previously faced in this inner unity. That from which the memories emerged, like, I would say, individual waves from a sea surface, that stands there like a closed current. But as a result, one's self is outside of this being, which one is otherwise oneself. Consider what is actually happening in the human soul that is so significant. The human soul is, after all, this being from which the memories emerge. Now the consciousness remains completely intact, but one's own being appears objectively, appears separate from oneself. One first surveys that which, as an enduring being, permeates us from birth to death. But the one who now really wants to devote himself completely to spiritual research must continue on this path, which I have now called meditation.

Above all, he must now develop another ability, which is also already present in the soul, but he must develop it in order to progress: the ability to love, to love the world and the world's entities. This is something that is almost annoying for many of our scientific contemporaries, when one has to point this out. Let us take a look at love as it manifests itself in ordinary life. It is the devotion of the soul to another being, to a process or the like. What is love when it occurs in life? We may say: it is an intensified unfolding of attention. Where does love begin? It begins when I turn my special attention to an object as the world passes by me. I single out an object; I concentrate on this one object. By concentrating on an object, as it were, I allow my soul to flow increasingly into the essence of that object, so that selfishness fades away. By becoming absorbed in the other being, attention then turns into love. This love must be developed from an ordinary everyday quality into a true quality of knowledge. This can be done by still further increasing the power of concentration, by becoming more and more aware of the will, just as one has previously introduced duration into the life of the imagination. Before, one applied the will in meditation; now one does not just see to it that one meditates at will, but now one watches oneself unfold this will. One pays special attention to the will. You see how this will concentrates on this or that, which you have brought into consciousness. And by increasing this inner soul activity – it is again an intimate, inner soul activity – you now come to have a new inner experience. One arrives at this by bringing to consciousness what is otherwise immersed in the twilight of the unconscious or subconscious, namely, the interrelationship between waking and sleeping.

Man walks through the world. From waking to falling asleep, he unfolds his consciousness, which represents external objects to him, which he then processes inwardly through his thoughts. He interrupts this consciousness through the unconsciousness of sleep, from which at most the images of dreams emerge. By concentrating in this way on the will and its development, by surrendering, by surrendering in love, one's power of concentration to something that has been brought into consciousness, this inner soul life has gradually strengthened to such an extent that now, by putting himself in a certain state, a person knows that he can consciously repeat the same process that he would otherwise repeat when he falls asleep. And now a person knows, he knows through direct insight: When I fall asleep, I leave my spiritual and soul self with my physical body. From the moment I fall asleep until I wake up, I am a spiritual-soul being outside my body. But before a person has undergone such exercises as I have described, he remains unconscious of the state from falling asleep to waking up: this undifferentiated, initially still quite unorganized spiritual-soul - which in ordinary life is only organized that it is in the body and receives its forms and inner forces from the body. Through the kind of activity I have described, through this human activity, through meditation and concentration, the soul and spirit become inwardly organized in a way that otherwise only the body is. Just as the body with its senses can see within the sensual world in which it is, so the soul-spiritual, when it has organized itself through inner strength, will come to consciously leave the body in the same way as it otherwise leaves it unconsciously when falling asleep; it will come to the point that it can consciously return to the body, as it otherwise only returns when waking up. And one now gets an idea of where one actually is between falling asleep and waking up; because one has awakened to inner activity, one gets an idea of this soul. Now, however, one faces it in a different way from what previously seemed like a panoramic picture of life since birth.

By developing the spiritual and soul life through meditation, one first gets a review of the life since birth, but one does not yet know one's way around in the review. It has become more objective, but one does not yet consciously face it. If you concentrate on the work of will, as I have described it, you are so active that you can now hold that which otherwise can only be outside the body during sleep outside this body. Then you see a process according to its true reality, which you otherwise cannot see because the powers through which you can see it have not yet been developed. Then one sees the process of the incorporation of the spiritual-mental into the physical body and the other process of the re-expulsion of the spiritual-mental from the physical body. If one comes to understand, consciously understand, what falling asleep and waking up means, then with this knowledge one also comes to see and understand what being born and dying means. For just as little as the soul, which begins to unfold in the morning, is reborn when we wake up, it does not perish when we fall asleep. But just as little is born with birth or with conception what is the human being's soul, and just as little does it perish with death. This can be decided by really looking.

If one learns to recognize in inner activity that which really underlies the human being, then one learns to recognize it as that which rises above birth and death. Then one learns to recognize it as that which connects itself with the physical body through birth or conception, in that it simultaneously organizes the physical body and connects itself with it in the same way as otherwise - though now not by reorganizing, but only partially, I might say mending the organization - the spiritual-soul element enters the physical body upon waking, for an existence that continues with its experiences from morning to morning. In this way one learns to recognize that which actually organizes the human being as something that in turn goes out into the spiritual world at death. In this way, through the unfolding of the soul to seeing, one learns to really see clearly the eternal that exists in man. One cannot speculate or philosophize about this eternal - one will only ever come to sophistries. But one can receive an enlightenment about this eternal by recognizing what is otherwise unconscious as eternal, what lives as unconscious without the body from falling asleep to waking up. If one has done this, then one recognizes at the same time that [which is otherwise unconscious] as an eternal.

This shows you how spiritual science actually understands the real development of the ability to know. It is not a matter of us standing still and only continuing logically or experimentally, at most becoming more adept, but rather of us really, as it is with the growth of the body itself, bringing our spiritual and soul life to grow, to unfold anew, so that it grows into the supersensible world and experiences the eternal. By experiencing this supersensible realm, by gaining an overview of life as one might on a day and recognizing what precedes and follows this life, one comes more and more to — especially if one now tries to from the concentration; one can push the concentration so far that one is completely absorbed, but still retains the strength to withdraw again and again; one must not lose consciousness. One comes more and more to the point that one is completely absorbed in what one is concentrating on. Then you also get to know the person in terms of their essence in that state when they are just outside of their body. I have said that you first learn to recognize the life since birth in a kind of pictorial review. You then learn to recognize what becomes this life, what descends from spiritual worlds to be embodied, what passes through the gate of death to return to the spiritual world. But by immersing oneself in this, one learns to recognize: Yes, the ordinary perceptions are not present in this eternal realm; the perceptions that we have in ordinary life are only produced in the physical organization.

One only becomes clear about what this bodily organization actually is for the human being when one gets to know the significance of the outer, bodily organization for the spiritual-soul. Only then does one learn to recognize that in order to form ideas in the ordinary world, one must return to one's body. But he takes the power of thinking, he takes the power of the ability to form ideas with him into the spiritual-soul realm, and he takes, by developing a new imagining for a higher, supersensible consciousness, only a part of what is in his body, I say, only a part of feeling and of will; he does not take the ordinary imagining with him. He must develop a completely new concept for existence outside of the body. But he takes with him from his ordinary existence, which fills him between birth and death, a part of feeling. And the will in its true form, this will, it is indeed something extraordinarily dark, something like what can be experienced in sleep; one need only think of what the ordinary soul teachings and psychologists have to say about this will. This volition is indeed something dark in life. It becomes light when the human being rises in the appropriate way to see, but at the same time it is recognized that it is connected with the eternal. And when one succeeds, through loving concentration, in removing even this last remnant of egoistic individual feeling – that is to say, what still holds one to the body – and thus, as one has developed a new conception in the purely spiritual-soul, to develop now also a pure feeling outside of the body, still remaining is the volition as it is in the body. But now one gets to know it through the new feeling and new imagining; one learns to recognize it in such a way that one must give it a name, perhaps using the word desire. One gets to know the will as a desire, as an ability of desire, as a power of desire. But now, outside of the body, it appears as a power of desire, but what is now desired? It is the existence in the body itself that is desired. One thus now learns to recognize the power by which one actually penetrates from a prenatal life into this life in the body.

One learns to recognize this desire as something that belongs to the world and that permeates us before we become an earthly human being, and that remains with us as we pass through the portal of death. And now one learns to recognize how this desire is something that rules in man and what the content of the desire has to do with becoming human itself; one now gets to know something strange, one gets to know within oneself the desire for becoming human as such. One gets to know this life between death and birth; one gets to know the eternal in it. You get to know the desire to live another life, and you get to know the will that you have discovered as the one that has brought you from the human life of the past, which you yourself have accomplished, into this [present] life. You get to know the will in its spiritual form.

Dear attendees, when you look at the will as such, which you have brought out of the physical body, then you learn to recognize the fact of repeated lives on earth, then you learn to recognize how the content of a life passes through the time between death and a new birth, developing purely spiritually, then one learns to recognize how that which develops purely spiritually again and again generates out of itself the desire to become human. That which we develop here in life between birth and death as desire, whereby we desire external things, is recognized by supersensible vision as a faint reflection of the desires that live in us and carry us over from one earth life to another. That which makes us human, that which organizes us from one earthly life to another, appears in a faint reflection when we desire this or that out of our physical body.

I have only been able to sketch out for you how a person grows into the spiritual and soul world through an intimate development of their spiritual and soul life, how they first become aware of what they are between birth and death, how they becomes aware of his eternal self, which lies beyond birth and death, but also how he becomes aware of how that which lives in him between birth and death includes an eternal element that goes beyond this shell, passes through death but has a desire for a new life. I would have to speak not only for hours but for weeks if I wanted to elaborate on what I have now outlined in detail. It can be described in detail, but the only thing that needs to be shown here is how anthroposophical spiritual science arrives at its results and what those results are. It arrives at them by developing the human capacity for knowledge beyond itself, to results about the nature of its own being, about the eternal, about the repetitive nature of its earthly existence.

One can imagine that what I have just described is unusual compared to today's thinking habits. Above all, people do not want to admit that they still need to develop in order to recognize. They want to stop at what they have already achieved, at most they want to state the limit. But in this way the truth about the highest matters of the human soul cannot be discovered. It can only be discovered if a person has the intellectual humility to say to himself: I must still go further, I must bring the supersensible to consciousness within myself if I want to develop a consciousness of the supersensible and see through my belonging to the supersensible world.

When these things are mentioned, people come and say: Yes, this anthroposophical spiritual science, it wants to overcome materialism, but it is not scientific itself. Because what it describes as images of life since birth, what it describes as inspirations through which the eternal is recognized, what it describes as intuitions that take hold of the desire of the will, which works from life to life, that - so some people say - that cannot be objectively justified, that could just as easily be hallucinations. And strangely enough, it happens that precisely those who, on the one hand, say that anthroposophical spiritual science is trying to overcome materialism — and thus actually express a sympathy for overcoming materialism — that precisely those who, in wanting to refute anthroposophical spiritual science, reduce it to a materialistic level.

So, just recently, here we could read – I cannot speak from my own experience, since I was not present when the matter was discussed, only from a newspaper report: If it does not exactly match what was said, then it refers to what was reported, but one can also speak about what was reported in the sense in which I will now do so. It is claimed that what is now called intimate development is in fact nothing more than the inhibition of mental images, their inward accumulation, so to speak, their initial suppression, so that nervous energy and that then through these suppressed, through these inhibited and suppressed mental images, the spared nerve energy would arise in these images, of which the spiritual researcher speaks as of his seeing.

Now, follow exactly what I have objectively and truthfully described today as the processes that the spiritual researcher really undertakes with his soul in successive states: Has there been any mention of inhibiting and restricting the images of thought? No, the opposite was mentioned. It was mentioned that the images are not suppressed, but that they are precisely raised, that they are precisely placed in the consciousness full of light. The opposite of what is being objected to in order to demonstrate the unscientific nature of anthroposophy has been mentioned. It is simply thoughtlessly asserted that the experiences of the spiritual researcher are the result of restricted, suppressed, inhibited images of thought. No images of thought are inhibited at all; on the contrary, they are brought into the full light of consciousness and unfold. If it were a matter of these images being inhibited, of something being dammed up, of nervous energy being saved, as it were, and then of that which the spiritual researcher has in his visions unfolding, then the same would have to be present in the spiritual researcher as occurs in pathological hallucination or illusion. But the opposite is the case. Pathological hallucination or illusion is linked to the suppression of ordinary consciousness. But what is present in the spiritual researcher is not linked to the suppression of ordinary consciousness. This ordinary consciousness remains fully intact. Therefore, the spiritual researcher can always think with this ordinary consciousness just as the person who fights him, if he wants to be scientific, thinks with this ordinary consciousness. How can the person who faces this fact claim that it is a matter of inhibited nervous activity? The person who is said to be working under the influence of this inhibited nervous activity is not merely working afterwards, but at the same time in exactly the same way as his opponent works with the supposedly uninhibited nervous activity.

What happens here is no different: the person concerned becomes annoyed because, in order to penetrate the spiritual world, he is now expected to bring his own supersensory abilities to consciousness, and he therefore says: These spiritual researchers are all very well to fight materialism, but... - now the man, who is so terribly sympathetic with the fight against materialism, becomes the most blatant materialist, in that he drives down into the subconscious that which the spiritual researcher expressly emphasizes as being entirely within the sphere of the methodical-logical. The spiritual researcher knows exactly where the subconscious begins. The fact that he brings his will into it everywhere is precisely the essential point.

The fact is, therefore, that here a fight is being waged against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science without worrying about what really underlies this spiritual science. One would only have the right to say that it is based on stored nervous energy, one would only have the right to fight against it if anthroposophically oriented spiritual science were to rebel against ordinary science. But that is precisely its starting point. It does not rebel against ordinary science. In the field that ordinary science deals with, it thinks, observes and researches in the same way as ordinary science, it only penetrates what ordinary science can research with what can be spiritually perceived by it. It takes nothing away from ordinary science, it only adds something. And so the opponent must not claim that it takes away from the spiritual abilities, that it dams up, limits, inhibits ideas, because it works with the same uninhibited ideas as he does, only it adds something different.

You see, my dear audience, the point is that people simply do not want to enter the path of spiritual science; they say, “I don't want to, I don't like it” – everyone has the right to do that. But to say: I don't want to, therefore the other person shouldn't either, and therefore nothing about this spiritual science should be said to anyone at all [you don't have the right to do that.] You stand in front of an audience, fight this spiritual science, but you don't know it, you fight it by attributing to it a materialistic structure, from which it is far removed according to its entire method.

Now, while the opponents have at least already come so far as to write books and say that anthroposophy is not a matter of “arbitrary ideas of a fringe sect fishing in troubled waters,” but rather of something to which one must “pay attention,” that it provides “foundations for a comprehensive world view powerfully imbued with an ethical spirit”. The course will be that, although they become “annoyed”, the opponents, out of the depths of their being, will have to make an effort to at least recognize the seriousness of this spiritual science. So the time will also come when all those who fight this spiritual science out of apparent science will disintegrate into nothing. Until now, basically nothing else has happened but that one continually accuses spiritual science of something that one has just invented oneself, and then fights one's own caricature - not what spiritual science really gives.

What, then, can it actually be when there is talk of such a “scientific explanation” that contemporary science alone claims to provide, even for the humanities? If we consider the misunderstandings that prevail from the outset, then we can also come to terms with the matter a little. One cannot demand that the ordinary way of seeing should be scientifically justified, otherwise it should not be used; and in the same way one cannot demand that the higher way of seeing should be scientifically justified, otherwise it should not be used. Nor can anyone demand that the vision through imagination, inspiration, intuition, as I have described it today – imagination gives the lasting of earthly life in images since birth, inspiration gives the eternal, intuition gives the repetitive earthly lives – nor can anyone demand that this vision through imagination, inspiration, intuition first be scientifically justified before it is applied. No, just as the eye does not allow itself to be scientifically justified before it sees, so imagination, inspiration and intuition cannot allow themselves to be scientifically proven before they are applied. That is simply a matter of course.

It is a different matter when one speaks of the scientific basis of anthroposophical spiritual science. Here it is only a matter of trying to investigate the essence of hallucination, the essence of vision, the essence of illusion, the essence of ordinary sensory perception, the essence of memory, the essence of thinking, in the same way that one seeks to understand the physiological basis of the human organism. Here one must say – one could speak even more physiologically, but here I want to put it more popularly: Anyone who studies hallucinations, for example, knows that they are imaginations of images, an imagination of images in the face of which the faculty of will is so strongly suppressed that the person is not aware of himself in what he is hallucinating, therefore considers the hallucination to be an objective, whereas it is not related to any objective at all. The point of anthroposophical spiritual science is that the person is oriented within himself. If he is oriented within himself, he will suppress at the same moment what wants to occur as a hallucination by opposing it with inner activity. This inner activity is what matters. This inner activity is developed precisely in the spiritual research method of anthroposophy. But the person who has an unbiased overview of the soul life also knows that there is always a residue of hallucination. This residue of hallucination comes to light precisely in the act of remembering; in the act of remembering, only the pictorial quality of the hallucination is expressed. There are still residues of hallucination in the act of remembering, only they are imbued with activity. We would have no memory if we did not, to a certain extent, have the capacity to hallucinate and could stop this hallucination in the right way. If, without what is supposed to remain subordinate to the human organic soul capacity, this ability to hallucinate predominates, then it becomes pathological, then the person emerges from the sphere where he has a certain balance between body and soul – in the ordinary imagining that becomes memory – he emerges into the corporeal; he becomes more material than he otherwise is. He descends into the corporeal and thus becomes hallucinatory. Likewise, the illusion arises from a descent into the corporeal.

Everything that leads to imagination, inspiration, intuition, does not descend into the physical, but rises up out of the physical. Therefore, one cannot use any kind of blocking of mental images, any kind of inhibition of mental images, but one must move the mental images up into the bright consciousness in the same way that one otherwise moves the mathematical conception into the bright consciousness. There can be no more question of hallucinating than there can be of hallucinating when imagining mathematically. One learns to distinguish between immersing oneself in the physical world as a human being, as is the case when hallucinating, and rising up from the physical world, as occurs when imagining, when being initiated and so on. These things present themselves to spiritual research with just as much scientific objectivity as any laboratory experiment presents itself to the senses.

Thus one can say: it is precisely the physiological, the psychological knowledge of something like a hallucination that leads to an understanding, to a purely physiological understanding of the imagination. Just as one wants to understand vision, so one can want to understand imagination, inspiration and intuition. That is then real scientific reasoning. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with any kind of science when people say that before imagination or inspiration is used, it should first be 'scientifically proven'. What scientific proof is, one must first know in general. And those who today demand of spiritual science that it should “prove” are only showing that they have not really understood the nature of proof at all, otherwise they would know that one can only prove something if one can trace it back to other, simpler facts. Even in mathematics, one proves something by tracing something complicated back to simple, unprovable axioms. That from which the proofs are taken must first be examined. But the spiritual can only be examined when we first become aware of the supersensible, the spiritual in ourselves.

Now, spiritual science, as it is meant here, is often treated with hostility, especially by scientists. But then again, these scientists complain that spiritual science does not address itself exclusively to them, but, as they say, to the “educated laymen”. And precisely such men as Kurt Leese find this incomprehensible and say - I will translate it for you again, as he himself wants it translated, “Theosophy” into “Anthroposophy”:

But are all those who consider anthroposophical propaganda to be a swindle that does not require psychological clarification and is not worthy of epistemological treatment aware that anthroposophy undertakes a remarkable examination of the history of philosophy, in particular of Kant, Schelling and Hegel, and seriously seeks an epistemological foundation for its teachings? If philosophy considers itself called upon to lead intellectual life, it cannot be indifferent to what is happening outside the field of its specialized research, how and for what purposes philosophy and philosophers are used to profoundly affect the world of educated laymen. The philosophical side of anthroposophy has so far been far too neglected, if not completely unknown.

The man says, then, that researchers cannot be indifferent to what is made of their philosophy – and he admits that anthroposophy dominates it – by educated laymen. There is a kind of lament in the fact that what anthroposophy is does not first turn to the university chair and from there, in the jargon concerned, only speaks to those who are considered authorized to do so from some particular side.

Now, in response to this, one thing must be said: what is now available in my Anthroposophy, albeit in a more extensive and detailed form, is something that I began to describe in spirit and attitude at the beginning of the 1880s; in fact, in terms of its direction, it has been in place for forty years. I first carried it out by applying it to an interpretation of Goetheanism. At that time I wrote my “Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings”, steeped in this anthroposophical spirit.

What happened? I was not treated as badly as I am now by my contemporaries. These writings, which are based on Goethe, were largely recognized, but they were understood as something that some literary historian or some modern historian writes about Goethe. They were understood as something that is written about Goethe. That there should be something in it that is directed to the time as a renewal of human thinking in the spiritual was not seen. Why? Because the scientific world had lost its drive. It was true that they still wanted to rise to the level of acknowledging that Goethe had thought this or that, but they lacked the courage to recognize truths that had to be grasped directly in the spiritual, in the supersensible, and to deal with these truths themselves. They felt justified in saying: Goethe believed this or that — but one did not have the courage to recognize such truths directly. And so all that was said about the further development of Goetheanism at the time faded away. And finally, my “Philosophy of Freedom” — those who study it as “educated laymen” will know that they have a tough nut to crack. It is written in such a way that it can be presented to those who deal with specialized philosophy.

Anthroposophy did not address itself to “educated laymen” until it had become clear that those who would have been called upon to deal with it had simply ignored it, had not taken an interest in it. For that is the gratitude of scholars towards anthroposophy: at first the scholars, the scientists of the present day, did not care about it; one had to go to the “educated laymen”, because truth must prevail, no matter by what means. And now that they see that among the “educated laymen” there are some after all who could cause their own learning to falter a little, now that they see that these “educated laymen” even go to Dornach to hear scientific lectures by thirty lecturers thirty lecturers speak differently from the way they speak at the other educational institutions. Now they feel - but without having studied the matter, for which they would have had decades of time - now they feel, without knowing the matter, called to refute it.

Well, there will have to be other things. But this may be said: When spiritual science has turned to the “educated laity”, it was because it is necessary for the truth to be done right. Truth must seek its own way, and if those who are called to seek it do not take care of it, then it must turn to those who are perhaps considered “uncalled” by the former, but who can show precisely by doing so that they are the truly called. And so the urge for supersensible knowledge must come from the educated laity, which did not want to come from those who had to deal with the search for truth professionally.

Dear attendees, from what I have presented to you today in a more conceptual way and by showing the observed methods, by showing what can be experienced supersensibly, I will show tomorrow what value it can have for direct human life, for human morality, for human satisfaction, for human understanding of fate, for human peace of mind in the passage through birth and death. And I will show how the spiritual world that reveals itself in spiritual research can work in art and how it, penetrating into the human heart, can truly make man religious. Today I wanted to show only what the paths of this anthroposophical spiritual science are and how one has to think of its relationship to science. I wanted to show that man must, as it were, develop the strength within himself to grow together with the truth that permeates the world.

For only in this way – let me emphasize this once more – only by awakening in himself that which is supersensible in him, by raising it to consciousness, does he rise to behold the supersensible, and not only integrates himself as a body into the sensual world, as is otherwise the case, but integrates himself as spirit and soul into the spiritual-soul world. But man has the urge to recognize himself as spirit, as soul, out of the dark feeling that he himself is spiritual-soul. In man, spiritual-soul truth seeks spiritual-soul truth. And the one who can thus understand the relationship to truth can and may be reassured that this truth cannot be destroyed by its opponents. For truth must triumph in the course of time just as surely as human development itself must advance. Man needs the development of truth, because only out of this truth can he develop his own true nature.

Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, its Value for the Human Being and its Relationship to Art and Religion

Dear attendees,Yesterday I took the liberty of speaking during the lecture about one of the most recent critics of the anthroposophical world view, about the book by the licentiate of theology Kurt Leese, who, as I said yesterday, strangely enough, speaks about anthroposophy from beginning to end, but explicitly says that he retains the term “theosophy” in order to accommodate the general consciousness, but that he always means Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical direction.

Now, today, I would like to start with something that, to a certain extent, is one of the results of Kurt Leese's investigations into anthroposophy. After this man, who, as I also remarked yesterday, has read pretty much everything of mine that has been published, after he has illuminated anthroposophy and what belongs to it from his point of view, he comes to record a strange sentence on one of the last pages of his book. I will read this sentence first:

What is all the talk about the worship of knowledge, about the riddles of life and their solutions, what is all the soaring of knowledge into primeval depths and primeval heights, if the Theosophist...

— that is, the anthroposophist —

... is unable to say why it is better to be an ego than a non-ego, and why, then, seven world ages are so important for the becoming and the perfection of this ego!?

Now one could initially believe that the man means that only the anthroposophist does not know how to say why it is better to be an ego than a non-ego, but actually it is clear from the following that he means something completely different, that he actually believes that no one can somehow figure out why it is better to be an ego than a non-ego. Because he goes on to say:

In the face of such mysteries of the world and life, even the theosophist...

- that is, the anthroposophist —

... nothing more than a positivist who no longer explains, fathoms, solves, but who accepts the ethical-individualistic fate of Western-Christian cultural development as a matter of course that can no longer be justified because he simply cannot escape it.

This, ladies and gentlemen, actually means nothing less than the following: No one really knows how to say anything about the great question of life: Why is it not just as good to be a non-I as an I? And since the author of this book obviously concedes that one should simply take it for granted that one is an I, without brooding over it, he thinks that anthroposophy has nothing to say about it either.

Now, let us recall some of what emerged from what was said yesterday, and then allow me to add, in more of a lecture format, some of what you can find in the already extensive literature on anthroposophy.

As a human being grows up, emerging from unconsciousness into ever greater consciousness, awakening, as it were, from childlike slumber and dreams to a more conscious life, he feels confronted by the world. It is fair to say that this confrontation with the world is initially one that presents a truly human mind, a humanly spiritualized mind, with riddles, the solutions to which must be sought from within. As the human being grows up, the riddles of the world itself are revealed to him. At first, he feels, one may say, in a very vague way, as an ego. He feels, so to speak, this I as an inner point of life, to which everything he can experience flows, from which he also knows that everything he can do flows out. But he comes to realize, and he must gradually come to realize, that this is precisely the great question of life: How does this I relate to the whole environment that presents us with such a vast number of life and world riddles? This question, “How does the I relate to the whole human environment?” basically contains everything else that is there in the way of life and world riddles.

Now one can say that in a certain way, something of the relationship between the I and the environment is already evident in ordinary existence, in that this I grows together with the environment in a certain way. We develop from childhood on, which does not just show itself at some later age in the form of us awakening to full self-awareness, but we develop, above all, our inner life through memory, which was characterized in its significance yesterday, that connects our experiences, that allows our life to appear to us as a whole when we look back to the point in time up to which we can remember. We can say that by holding still and looking back on our lives, we feel our selves connected to all our experiences. We have gone through these experiences, we have taken them into our ideas, into our thoughts, we have experienced joy and suffering through them, we have experienced happiness and pain through them, we have been inspired to do this or that in our actions, which then flowed out of our strength into the strength of life. But when we stand still and look back, we also feel connected to what our experiences were in this form, and we cannot say that there is a moment in our lives when we are not fundamentally what we have been left with in our memories of our experiences, of the suffering and joy that we experienced in these experiences, the happiness and pain that we experienced in these experiences, the satisfaction or dissatisfaction that came to us from the fact that we were able to accomplish this or that from these experiences. We are what we have experienced. It becomes pathological when this thread of thought of memory breaks somewhere in a person. In medical literature, cases are well described where such pathological conditions occur, where a person's coherent awareness of memory for this or that breaks down and he feels, as it were, hollowed out, no longer able to fully experience his being.

You see, here life presents itself to us first as an expansion of our ego over that which our existence has brought us since our birth; life presents itself as an inward growing together of our ego with that which has come to us. Yesterday I showed how the human being awakens his supersensible nature by unfolding that which can be developed in him beyond the ordinary powers of knowledge and perception into the supersensible worlds, and thereby comes to an even broader overview of the world. And yesterday I was able to hint at some of the results of the anthroposophical world view. I was able to say that by rising to imaginative knowledge, the human being first comes to perceive his life not only towards birth as a sea from which individual memories emerge, but as a life panorama, as a large tableau, so that he can see the lasting in this earthly life. But I was also able to point out how, through a further development of the supersensible faculty of knowledge, man comes to the contemplation of that which goes beyond birth and death, that which is eternal in him, that which thus connects him with a world that is more comprehensive than that which he can experience between birth and death. And I then showed how this knowledge can continue to ascend to the contemplation of repeated earthly lives. There we have already seen how this I now grows beyond the ordinary contemplation of the I, how the I, which otherwise feels connected in ordinary life with the life events flowing to it, how this I expands its consciousness to include a broader world.

If you now add to what I was able to hint at yesterday the anthroposophical literature, you will see that by developing this cognitive faculty it is also possible to grasp the connection of the I with the whole rest of the cosmos. One may scoff at what Anthroposophy has to say about worlds and world transformations, as indicated, for example, in my “Occult Science”, but only someone who cannot put himself in the method by which such things are found can actually scoff. The essential point of today's reflection, however, is that anthroposophy finds nothing in the cosmos but what is connected with the nature of the I. The essential point is that anthroposophy teaches us to look at the whole cosmos, to see the whole cosmos in such a way that the I is connected in some way with everything in this cosmos, with this whole macrocosm as a microcosm, in the same way that in ordinary life the I is connected with its experiences. One is tempted to say that anthroposophy succeeds in expanding what is otherwise only a 'small' memory in our experiences into a world memory, into a world overview. Thus, through anthroposophical knowledge, we feel expanded, standing within the whole universe, the whole cosmos, we feel the I in its consciousness expanded beyond this cosmos, we feel this cosmos itself as spiritual and the I spiritually connected to this spiritual cosmos.

Those who cannot feel how such an expansion of consciousness affects what a person can actually long for in the world cannot judge the value of anthroposophical world knowledge for the human being either. What Anthroposophy can give, and what these ideas can then be for the perception of the world soul, for the longings of the human soul, must be inwardly experienced by each individual. And this can be experienced in such a way that it is felt as the solution to precisely this fundamental riddle: How does the I, which initially exists only vaguely like a point within us, how does this I relate to the world as a whole? How does that which we ourselves are for our consciousness confront us from the entire world?

The fact that, as this line of inquiry shows, no one can really say why it is better to be an I than a not-I, is answered by showing that such a question is not really posed correctly. What we want is not to answer this question from some abstract point of view, but what we really want is something that belongs directly to life, to growth, to the whole development of the human being. One could just as well ask: Why does a child want to become a great person, an adult? It becomes an adult. But it is not self-evident that one becomes an adult; rather, one must develop that which belongs to the adult. The child has consciousness within it, as it were, asleep; the adult expands consciousness over himself. The person who awakens to consciousness expands consciousness, this I, throughout the spiritual cosmos. In this way, the human being grows into the world in a way that is in keeping with nature. For his feeling, this gives rise to the question of the value of the I, because this value of the I is felt in relation to the value of the world. And anyone who does not want to know about what is far removed from the world and about world development will never be able to develop a true feeling for his ego, because this ego is rich within; it emerges from the whole content of the world. And only if one has a feeling for what is far removed from the world and for world development can one also feel from these what the ego has as its deepest longings. But one must have an inwardly fresh and courageous mind in order not to find it too uncomfortable, so to speak, to send one's mind into world distances and into world developments, so that one can have the rich, inward perception of the I and thus also of the value of the I. And it is a remarkable question that Leese asks: Why are seven world ages necessary to develop this I? If you look at the development of these seven world epochs, you will find everywhere how they contain forces that are connected with the development of human egos. You will find that you are grasped by the world, you feel, you grasp, you also find the forces for your actions from what will arise from the consciousness of your connection with the cosmos.

My dear audience, it is very strange when people judge everything that is to be recognized through anthroposophy, as they must judge it according to what they already have, when they do not engage with it, and then, having basically understood nothing of anthroposophy, say: Yes, what is it worth? What does it explain to you? What is not understood does not explain anything, but that is the fault of those who do not want to understand. But those who are open to what the anthroposophical worldview can be, who enter into the far reaches and the vast expanses of the world with their soul and their spirit, will find a complete answer. In the course of these contemplations, he finds a full answer to the riddle of the value of the human ego, for the whole world answers him. But nothing but the whole world is suitable to answer the question about the value of the I, and anyone who does not want this answer from the whole world will always come to a speech like this critic of anthroposophy, who says: What use can all this be to us, since it does not decide the question of why it is better to be an I than a non-I. But what is expressed here with a certain generality is then expressed in detail when such critics as Leese approach the specific tasks of anthroposophical science. For example, within anthroposophical science it must be said that when the human being observes that which, as it were, holds together as a reality, that which appears in thoughts, feelings and will impulses, anthroposophy speaks of the the carrier of thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will, regardless of whether or not it calls this carrier of the soul the astral body - as I said, words are not important, no special value need be placed on them. Now the same critic, the licentiate Kurt Leese, comes along and says: Why is it necessary, when one is already observing and describing the soul, the thoughts, the feelings, the impulses of the will, why is it necessary to assume a special vehicle?

Now, at this point, the complete inability of the approach that leads out of ordinary life into the truly supersensible life of the soul to follow what is going on becomes apparent. First of all, taken in the abstract, it can seem rather superfluous whether I stop at describing the life of thoughts, feelings and will, or whether I also speak of a vehicle. But one never comes to a real essential insight into what lives in the soul if one does not pass from what merely appears as thought, feeling, will, to the carrier. For, my dear audience, as I was able to show yesterday, when the soul becomes aware of its supersensible abilities, it becomes aware of what it is in those times when it is otherwise in an unconscious state between falling asleep and waking up. And the one who becomes a spiritual researcher experiences how this soul relates to the bodily life just as it otherwise relates during sleep, except that now it is not unconscious but conscious. Thoughts, feelings and will can only be observed during waking life; from falling asleep to waking up, no one can observe this except as after-images, often distorted images of the imaginative life in dreams; no one can observe what is of the soul without the spiritual-scientific. One comes to the reality of the soul precisely by observing the soul in the states where it stands out from ordinary thinking, feeling and willing. If one remains within the ordinary thinking, feeling and willing, one does not grasp the essence of the soul. What then is meant when the anthroposophist says that one passes from imagining, feeling and willing to a “medium”? It means that the anthroposophist wants to suggest that we free ourselves from what never sheds light on the nature of the soul, that we should make an effort to grasp what life of the soul is.

And so it shows here what I mentioned yesterday, when such a critic says as a result: Anthroposophy is actually annoying and ill-tempered. He finds it annoying and ill-tempered because it makes a certain demand of him at every moment. He is supposed to go beyond what he has in his thinking and soul habits of ordinary life – he does not like that, he perceives it as an unreasonable demand that should not be made of him. And so he says: Why are you talking to me about a 'vehicle'? If he were to make this effort and speak of this vehicle, then he would find the way into the spiritual world.

You see, what at first appears to be mere mental games — something like the combination of thinking, feeling and willing in the bearer of this thinking, feeling and willing — is something that wants to achieve something real, that wants to provide an impetus for the development of the higher abilities of human nature, through which the essence of the human being is recognized. Thus, even what appears to be a mere intellectual game in the anthroposophical world view is actually meant as something very real for the value of human life. But another passage from this same book shows even more what the value of anthroposophical world view for the present and future life of science is to consist of; I will speak first of the life of world view and science.

In the appendix to my book Von Seelenrätseln (Mysteries of the Soul), I pointed out that for several years I have been speaking about how the human soul is actually connected to the human body. I have pointed out that it can really be seen that our thinking, our feeling and our willing are connected with three different aspects of the human being: that our thinking is connected with the actual nervous activity, but that what we develop as feeling is not is not directly but only indirectly connected with this nervous activity, what we develop as feeling is directly connected with the rhythmic activity, especially with the rhythmic activity in breathing and blood circulation, but that our will activity is connected with the metabolism. I only mention this here in a reporting way. I stated in my book “Mysteries of the Soul” that I had only been studying this subject for thirty years before I dared to publicly express the results of my research. It is commonly believed that the entire life of the soul is connected with the nervous system. The new aspect of this view is precisely that in reality the three aspects of the life of the soul are connected with three different activities of the human organization. Now, however, I was obliged to set something apart in this presentation that is completely foreign to today's habits of thought. In order for me to make myself understood about what is actually meant here, I would like to preface the following.

You see, today, especially in the field of philosophy, one often has a very negative judgment about what is presented in the development of spiritual life as medieval scholasticism. Despite the fact that anthroposophy and my own personality are attacked in the most nonsensical way by certain church authorities, this cannot prevent me from saying what can be said about a certain field, purely objectively, even if this field is linked, or at least seems to be linked today, to current church life. Those who are able to really delve into the blossoming of medieval scholasticism, namely the heyday of this scholasticism, the time of Albertus Magnus, of Thomas Aquinas, know that this scholasticism - it is so little recognized today - that this scholasticism has one thing that basically made it greater than any period in the development of human thought to date. It developed in those who belonged to it a gift for subtle thought development, for the finest dissection of thought. And this gift, which was developed in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, as an ability for the finest development of thought, would be very useful to us today, especially in the pursuit of science. For if, for example, a philosopher like Wundt had had a real inner understanding of the fine distinctions of scholasticism, his investigations would have produced different results from those which they have produced. For only a thinking that really has the will to enter into the finest distinctions, only such thinking can also delve into the foundations of reality, for this reality is complicated, and with a rough thinking one does not enter into reality. When one has to throw light on one or other of these subjects from the standpoint of spiritual science, one is obliged to arrive at such fine distinctions of thought.

And so I was obliged to say in my book “Von Seelenrätseln” (Soul Mysteries) in order to characterize what underlies the threefold human being, the nerve-sense human being, the human being with the rhythmic organization, the human being with the metabolic organization: One cannot get along with this threefold human being if one imagines, for example, that these three parts are arranged spatially next to each other, the head at the top, the circulation human being in the middle, and then the metabolism human being at the bottom. I have shown how even in the nerve there is rhythm and metabolism, but that in the case of the activity of imagination in the nerve, rhythm and metabolism are not taken into account, but another activity, whereas in the case of the activity of feeling or of the activity of the will, rhythm and metabolism in the nerve are also taken into account. I had to make the subtle distinction that what one has to highlight, so to speak, in order to understand the human being, one sees interwoven in outer reality. A man like Kurt Leese reads through this and finds it to be a tour de force of thinking. And precisely because he finds it to be a tour de force of thinking, he says: It is precisely at such a point that anthroposophy becomes annoying and intolerable.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, the value of the anthroposophical world view will consist precisely in the fact that it cultivates not only clear but also highly discriminating thinking, thinking that reaches into the finest structures of reality. People do not want that; they become angry and ill-tempered, and that is why they say: Anthroposophy is annoying and unpleasant. But precisely this training of thinking to follow reality, which carries the finest distinctions and which cannot be followed with such coarse thinking as is so beloved in the present day, will be the value of the anthroposophical worldview for modern science and thus for modern man.

What should be cultivated through the anthroposophical worldview – and with this I will find the transition from what comes from anthroposophy for the value of the human being in an intellectual relationship, in a purely scientific respect — that which should be cultivated through the anthroposophical world view, that which really comes to the soul's eye through this anthroposophical world view: that is the transition to the moral. As the I expands more and more in its awareness of the content of the world, as the I feels itself as a member of the cosmos, having grown out of this cosmos, it feels its great responsibility within its world existence. The self knows that the thoughts and feelings that develop within it are part of the entire, immeasurable cosmos; the self learns to be responsible for what goes on within it by recognizing itself as having been born out of the entire cosmos. When one feels this responsibility towards the whole world, then one stops carelessly speaking over what the world is supposed to explain.

Such careless talk comes to mind when a critic like Kurt Leese, for example, says that anthroposophy tries to understand the world as developing, but that it does not take what he now understands by development - and he understands this to mean only the emergence of the later from the earlier — but that it is said of anthroposophy: in the course of development, in addition to what is the emergence of the later from the earlier, there is an inflow of something that comes from a completely different side. To his horror, says Kurt Leese, I would even talk about entities that develop in certain world ages being inoculated, and he particularly criticizes the fact that I say in The Education of the Child that the etheric body of the human being is born at the age of seven, just as the physical body of the human being is born at the time of physical birth. That is not development, he says, because it does not show that the etheric body develops out of the physical body.

Ladies and gentlemen, consider what is actually at issue here. Someone comes along and makes an abstract concept of development – the following must arise from the earlier -, he criticizes that I would not show how the etheric body arises from the physical body. But the etheric body does not do that, it does not arise from the physical body at all! If the person in question were to understand what is being presented, he would realize that the process is much more complicated in the development at hand. But when I now speak of the moral, I must nevertheless point out that for the real natural scientist of today, the development is by no means as simple as Mr. Leese now imagines.

You only need to read the first pages of Oscar Hertwig's book, which is truly leading in this respect, about a correction of Darwin's theory of descent, and you will see that Oscar Hertwig is obliged to include the concepts of natural science: firstly, evolution, the emergence of the later from the earlier; secondly, panspermia, that is, the coming into effect of that which is in space alongside the organism; and thirdly, epigenesis, that is, the emergence of completely new effects. Thus the concept of development in science today is such that it is constantly developing, that is, it itself is in a living development. What appears in anthroposophy as the idea of development is precisely what most conscientiously takes into account the idea of development in science. And people who come from such a side to criticize have simply not gone along with scientific development, but have only taken a few scraps out of it and criticize from these scraps. And they then call what is working with the full science “unscientific” because it does not agree with their prejudiced assumptions, which, however, do not coincide with the full science. In this respect, anthroposophy will have a great educational effect on a person's inner conscience and lack of prejudice. It will release forces in people that are particularly lacking in people today. Therefore, this spiritual-scientific worldview can find the courage to intervene directly in practical life, because it wants to develop a way of thinking and a whole human behavior that can be immersed in practical life.

We wanted to show this in the most diverse fields, for example in the field of education, in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and established by me. It has existed for more than a year. In this Waldorf School in Stuttgart, it is shown how the anthroposophical worldview wants to have a practical effect on pedagogy and didactics. This Waldorf School is truly not about raising children in anthroposophy – the Waldorf School does not want to be a school of a particular worldview – but rather about the fact that anthroposophical spiritual science, because it is directly immersed in reality, can be pedagogically skillfully applied so that the pedagogical as such is created by spiritual science in a certain way as a pedagogical-didactic art. And in this respect, without wishing to boast, the first school year at this Waldorf School has already achieved something that can be talked about. Above all, we do not have the usual system of reporting at the Waldorf School. In some classes we had quite a large number of pupils last year, but nevertheless we do not need the strange relationship between teachers and pupils that arises from the fact that the teacher wants to find out, let's say, among twenty, thirty, fifty pupils, whether one or the other deserves an “almost sufficient”, “half almost satisfactory” and the like in this or that subject. We were able to avoid all of this, which was reduced to an abstract scheme. Instead, I would like to emphasize this: at the end of the previous school year, we were able to give each child a report card in which the child found something very remarkable: a life saying that was completely and utterly felt for the child's soul, spirit, and physical organization. Even in classes with fifty or more pupils, teachers were able to find a way of penetrating and immersing themselves in the individuality of the pupils so that they could write a core saying of life in the report that was completely individual and appropriate for the individual child. This report should not be a dead piece of paper on which one assesses this or that individual with “almost satisfactory”, but it should be something that the child remembers with a certain strength because it contains something that, when it works in his soul, can become life in him. I just wanted to emphasize this point. I could also speak of much that has been attempted, especially in practical application of anthroposophical spiritual science in the didactics of this Waldorf school.

Now, I have often mentioned here how anthroposophical spiritual science at a certain point in time found itself compelled to draw the social consequences from what emerges from its practical thinking. These social conclusions were first drawn in my book 'The Core Points of the Social Question'. They are now being drawn for practical institutions. People today complain a lot about these practical institutions because they have no idea how the apparent practice, which lives in a world of illusions, has led precisely into today's crisis, and how a real practice of life must flow out of a renewal of all thinking. It could actually be amusing if it were not distressing on the other hand, when today the schoolmasters of practice come and remind us that you cannot manage with idealism and belief in the future. They do not know that this economic activity is really not about idealism and faith in the future, but about direct practical intervention with a way of thinking that is more practical than that which the last decades have been able to produce. Through that which, in connection with real life, brings about a life-based grasp of this reality, it will be practically confirmed what Anthroposophy is, because reality is spirit through and through. And if we want to master reality in practice, we must connect with the spirit of that reality. We will succumb to illusions if we do not want to immerse ourselves in the spirit of reality. Therefore, anthroposophy will have to reveal itself in its value for people by making the spirit effective in practical life.

But the central question of life – and it is this that makes anthroposophy particularly relevant to human life – is the big question: how are the moral impulses of the human being, how is what the human being builds up inwardly in the moral world connected to the world of external reality? Let us look at what modern world view has produced: a universe conceived in such a way that at the origin there is a planetary nebula from which suns and planets have formed through circular motion. In the course of time, I would say purely mechanical events arose from this, agglomerations, which then developed into the human being, into the impulse of morality in the human being, which is felt by the human soul as the most valuable thing. But then our gaze is directed to the physical end of the world, when, as it were, what has come together sinks back into a frozen state, when a world grave will stand, and what man has developed within himself in his valuable moral ideals will be buried in this world grave.

One need only visualize this image to see how this modern world view has been unable to bring about harmony between what man feels to be most valuable within himself, his morality, and what surrounds him in the external world and what he seeks to understand in a mechanical-materialistic way. We have only to look back at what I was able to say yesterday, even if only in the most general terms, to see how anthroposophy builds a bridge between what is spread out in space and the world of morality within. There we grasp ourselves first on earth, so that we learn to recognize ourselves in the course of our awakening as the physical-sensual human being, born out of the physical-sensual universe; within us we unfold our supersensible will. Yesterday I showed how this supersensible will contains precisely that which is not accessible to ordinary sense perception, which only becomes accessible when the soul frees itself from the body and experiences the will outside the body. In this will we have something that is thoroughly spiritual. But at the same time this will contains as a power that which constitutes our moral will, our moral feeling, our moral ideal and which remains in the future. We know that in this future our own existence develops in such a way that our body falls away from us, that the elements of this physical body initially disperse into the physical world, but that, as I indicated yesterday, what is contained only as spiritual desire in the will passes through the time that lies between death and a new birth; this builds a new physical body in the future. We see into the future and see our physical body arising again, but out of the spiritual.

If you then turn to the rest of the anthroposophical literature, you will find that this also applies to the worlds. We look at the external worlds, we see light and color in them, we hear sounds in the external world, we hear a whole range of sounds in the external world; we see the three realms of nature. We look at the past in spirit, we see spiritual beings in the past in spirit. We know that what is physical here now has been formed out of spirit. But this physical of the present, this present beauty of the earth, carries spiritual in its lap, and when it will once have solidified as physical, then the spiritual will emerge from it. But the spiritual now only exists in that which is volitional. Future worlds will be built from present morality, just as the present physical world is built from the moral forces of past beings. We see that which shines towards us as stars, that which appears to us as the sun, as the results of that which was once moral. We see in what is moral now the germ of what will shine as worlds in the future, what will appear as worlds to the beings that will inhabit these worlds in the future. By looking at the moral with the insights that only arise when one develops the supersensible powers of the soul, a bridge is built between the moral and the physical. This bridge cannot be built if we look at the world only through the lens of today's natural science: in that case, the world falls apart into the world of mechanical-materialistic events and the world of morality, which then dissolves into illusions, whereas in the anthroposophical worldview, the moral contains the germ of the cosmic, and in this way that which we can call responsibility grows. We know that the outcome of our moral deeds and impulses is not due to some arbitrary assessment of guilt, but is rooted in the laws of the world themselves. And if we look at the starry worlds that affect our eyes, we recognize in them the physical consequence of moral impulses from the distant past. We feel that we are not only in a physical world with moral illusions, we feel that we are in a world of physical and moral realities, where the physical is the metamorphosis of the moral, and the moral is the metamorphosis of the physical.

This, esteemed attendees, gives strength to the human being by steeling his sense of responsibility by placing him with his ego in the whole world. Thus, by opening our view into the spiritual and by showing the physical in connection with the moral in relation to the spiritual, this anthroposophical spiritual science can meet the deepest needs of the present day in the field of art. Anthroposophical spiritual science wanted to achieve this in the field of art, as far as possible at the beginning of its existence. In my four mystery plays, entitled 'The Portal of Initiation', 'The Soul's Trial', 'The Guardian of the Threshold' and 'The Awakening of the Soul', I myself have tried to show how one can artistically embody, from a spiritual-scientific world view, what arises from supersensible observation. And in our Goetheanum outside, everything that this Goetheanum presents - in terms of its external architecture, in terms of its sculptural and painterly design - is shaped from this spiritual-scientific perspective.

Do we not see in the artistic development of the last generations how art longs for new impulses? Today, we need only look back to the time of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Dürer to see how that ancient conception of art, which strove upwards out of the physical-sensual, had indeed developed to the greatest heights, to depict the physical-sensual in such a way that the physical-sensual reveals the spiritual. One need only think of how human figures are first depicted in the Sistine Madonna, surrounded by the natural world, but how the spirit that embodied this image conjures up spiritual secrets from what it could see with its senses, and how it elevates the sensual so that this sensuality can reveal spiritual secrets to man.

In an age of scientific thinking and scientific research, we have ceased to have the intuitive perceptions that a Raphael or a Michelangelo had, in that they conjured up from the sensual-physical reality that which appeared like a reflection of the spiritual from this physical-sensual reality. Thus we see that in the naturalistic age, art also wanted to become naturalistic. But what is naturalistic art supposed to achieve if it does not unconsciously contain some idealistic factor? Do we still need to somehow transfer what nature presents to us outside onto the canvas or otherwise embody it, for example in drama? Can we really depict the secrets that nature holds in a naturalistic way? No, we cannot. Anyone who has traveled throughout Italy and been exposed to even the most beautiful and greatest works of art and then comes from Italy, let's say, to the top of the Rigi and watches a sunrise, knows immediately that what speaks out of nature is greater than what any painter, any sculptor, any artist could gain from nature. Only when artists, like Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo, could not stop at nature, but conjure up the spiritual from the physical and sensual, is this artistic endeavor justified. But precisely those artists who are perhaps to be taken most seriously in the present have within them the deepest yearning for a new source of art. They feel that the impulse has been exhausted, which consisted of conjuring up the spiritual out of the physical-sensual. When we look back to ancient times of human cultural development - wherever the human gaze looked, it saw the spiritual in natural things, the nymph of the spring in the spring, the spirits of the air in the air. Thus it is a final, I would say a certain human ascent, when now the artists have conjured up a spiritual out of the physical-sensual existence.

Today we stand at a point in the development of the world where the longings of the most serious artistic natures of the present point to the fact that new sources must be opened for the artistic. And so the opposite must enter into the development of human civilization today. The old artists have demystified the spiritual from the physical-sensuous. The spiritual must be revealed by looking at the spiritual world, as anthroposophical spiritual science intends. But just as the artist, if he has artistic feeling, is compelled to reveal the spiritual in the physical-sensuous, so the man who beholds the spiritual has, if he has artistic feeling, the direct, naive need to shape the spiritual into forms, to translate the spiritual into material. The old school of art idealized the sensual; the new school of art will realize the spiritual. This will not be a creation in symbolism. Those who find only one single symbol in it are slandering the Dornach building. There is no symbol in it, but what is directly contemplated is poured out into forms. Everything should work in artistic forms. Those who speak of the symbolism of the Dornach building only show by doing so that they have not really grasped the characteristic style expressed in the way the whole artistic aspect of this building is managed. They have not seen have seen how the artistic spirit of nature herself was sought to be joined with the creative spirit of nature herself in the artistic work of this Dornach building, and then to express oneself artistically in forms towards which this spirit strives.

What was idealizing in the development of art in ancient times will be realizing when it is based on such a spiritual view as is meant by the anthroposophical world view. And this artistry will be naive in the best Goethean sense. As the spiritual researcher looks into the universe, he senses the secrets of existence, and he deeply feels what Goethe expressed from his artistic vision: “When nature begins to reveal her manifest secrets to someone, that person feels a deep longing for her most worthy revelator, art. He to whom the world reveals its secrets in the mind cannot leave these secrets in the mind as they are, just as a child cannot remain at the age of three or five; it must grow older. What is seen in the spirit wants to take shape. What art creates out of spiritual vision is not didactic, it is not symbolic, it is not in straw-like allegories, it is a real standing within life. And this standing within the spirit brings the human ego together with the whole cosmos. Today I have pointed out how those forces in man that lead to his actual human existence are feelings of responsibility towards the world, I could also say feelings of responsibility towards social existence. And I could list many other ways in which these feelings are aroused, by developing those ideas that initially lead the human being into worlds far away and worlds wide, that present him with all the development that the world must undergo in order to reach the summit, the summit of the self. Those who take such ideas into themselves, by incorporating them into their souls, do not merely absorb cold ideas; they take in something that seizes the feeling and the will, something that warms the feeling with that which flows out of the immeasurable greatness of the world. From these ideas, they take what each individual action that they perform places under the responsibility of the world's wisdom-filled guidance. Summarizing all this, one can only say: religious sentiment flows from what is handed down in anthroposophical spiritual science as images, as ideas, from all of this.

From the outset, spiritual science did not want to be something that would stand alongside any religion as a modern religion, especially not alongside Christianity. From the very beginning, it was asserted within anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that Christianity is the religion that encompasses all others, and that for anthroposophy it is important to explain the mystery of Golgotha in the sense in which it is necessary for modern humanity. But through Anthroposophy nothing religious should be placed beside it, other than what is the meaning of the earth itself, coming from the Mystery of Golgotha. Only those who, in a spiritually tyrannical way, want the world-wide mystery of Golgotha to be interpreted in only one sense - namely, their own - can defame anthroposophically oriented spiritual science as something that would be detrimental to Christianity.

But is it not necessary, my dear attendees, that although not in the essence of the mystery of Golgotha, new elements are included in the understanding of Christianity? One looks at the way in which the knowledge and the realization of this Christianity has developed in the course of the 19th century. One need only look back to earlier centuries. Those who can look at history not only in the abstract, but also with feeling, know that Christ Jesus was regarded as something that poured out of higher, supersensible worlds into the physical, sensual world. A connection between the spiritual world and the physical world has been established through the mystery of Golgotha. In older times, this mystery of Golgotha was understood according to the cognitive abilities of those older times. But as the modern age dawned, with its scientific advances, the old understanding gradually became impossible for those who conscientiously want to take the progress of humanity seriously. And so we have witnessed the strange spectacle of precisely the most advanced theologians of the 19th century having lost the Christ as a supersensible being and having arrived at the mere description of the simple man from Nazareth; because of naturalistic thinking, they could not see the Christ in Jesus. For the most modern theology, Jesus became an outstanding human being, perhaps the most outstanding, but that something took place in Jesus through Christ that cannot be grasped merely with the senses has been shown in the entire theological development of the modern age. We need a path back to spiritual science in order to spiritually comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ-secret.

What natural science has taken from Christianity for those who conscientiously want to take in this natural science, spiritual science will give back to Christianity for those who need an understanding of this Christianity from the depths of their soul. Just as little as all the progress of natural science could take away from man of the post-Christian era the mystery of Golgotha, just as little will spiritual-scientific progress be able to take away from man that which, out of the religious mood, but illuminated by spiritual-scientific ideas in accordance with the demands of the new time, flows to the divine, to that which is also given through Christ. The modern human being needs a spiritual view as the basis for his art and for his religion. Those who have lost the Christ through modern science have lost him because modern science was not initially a spiritual science. And I would like to remind those who today often slanderously claim that Anthroposophy wants to deliver something detrimental to Christianity: Is it courageous to say, in the face of the greatness of the Mystery of Golgotha, which towers above all other earthly forces and events, that those who seriously endeavor to understand this Mystery of Golgotha, in accordance with this or that science, in accordance with the progress of humanity, are anti-Christian? Is it courageous?

No! Again and again, I see before me that Catholic theology professor, who was my friend in the 1880s and 1890s, who, as a professor of Christian philosophy at a theological faculty, gave a speech about Galileo that fully lived up to Galileo by said at the time: No progress in science should be challenged by those who want to be truly Christian, because in truth everything that science can find of worldly secrets only serves to make people more aware of the magnitude of the wonders of divine guidance in the world, not less. Those are fainthearted who believe that Christianity can be shaken by any scientific progress. No, my dear audience, spiritual science knows: Even if millions of insights come in physical or spiritual fields, the event that gives meaning to the earth will stand in ever greater splendor precisely before spiritual-scientific contemplation.

But here it can also be seen how little impartiality there is in the world today. While one should understand - and if one were impartial, would also understand - that the spiritual-scientific world view is what certain people need in order to be led today to the mystery of Golgotha, anthroposophy, the spiritual-scientific world view, is being slandered. But perhaps this is only because there is too little religion in those who want to take on religion. Should it not be the case that one recognizes in particular the religiousness of the soul mood by the fruits, by the way the people concerned appear in life? Should there not be some phenomena today that show in the most intense way how an elevation, how an internalization of the religious mood is also necessary? Let me give just one small example.

Among the many recent refutations of anthroposophy, there is one in which there is a sentence to which I would like to draw your attention here. I will read it out loud:

Because the consciousness of the mind is lacking, ...

— namely, among anthroposophists, one might think.

... in theosophy there is also no savior of sinners. Despite all the praise and despite the exaltation of Christ to the “Sun-I”, Dr. Steiner's Christ is a completely alien personality to us. Here, too, a certain pantheistic tendency is disconcerting. Anthroposophy starts from the human being, and its goal is the ideal human being.

I have just shown how all of anthroposophy strives for the opposite; but the author of this brochure continues:

This and God apparently coincide. A nine-meter-high statue of the ideal human being is currently being carved in Dornach: with “Luciferian” features at the top and animalistic features at the bottom.

Now, my dear attendees, what is being carved out of wood in Dornach has been seen not by hundreds but by thousands of people. The one who has seen that something is being formed that has 'Luciferic traits above and animal features below' — I cannot do other than recall to the one who has seen this the anecdote that contains an instruction on how someone who comes home in the evening can tell whether he is drunk or sober. The advice was to go to bed and put a hat on the bed. If he sees the hat once, he can consider himself sober; if he sees it twice, he can consider himself drunk. Now, the person who sees the hat twice reminds me of the person who sees that something is being chiseled in Dornach - in reality it is carved out of wood -; the person sees something that is not there at all, because at the top is a completely human face, nothing of Luciferic features, a purely human face, below, there is nothing done at all yet, there is still a block of wood, there will also come human features, but below, there is nothing done at all yet. And then someone comes along who does not say that someone told him this – then one might believe that someone has told a tale – no, someone comes along who claims this as strict truth: a nine-meter-high statue of the ideal human being is currently being carved in Dornach, with Luciferic features at the top and animalistic features at the bottom. Thousands of people have seen that this is an objective untruth, and that it is not even just an objective untruth, but that it is one of the most incredible, idiotic distortions of what is intended. And, my dear attendees, what is more:

“This ideal human being...”, Steiner said to the observers present, “...must necessarily be the true image of Christ.”

Not one of the thousands of onlookers who were there will be able to say that I ever said these words. There are enough witnesses here in this hall who know that I have always said nothing but, carefully weighing my words, that the one I am forming here appears to me, according to spiritual vision, as the one who walked in Palestine. I cannot describe him any differently than he appears to me. I do not force this view on anyone. - Never, ladies and gentlemen, has it been said that what is here in quotation marks: “[...] must necessarily be the true image of Christ”.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is how one approaches the truth - that must be said. The name of the author of this brochure is preceded by the ominous “D.”, which stands for Doctor of Theology. So apparently, here too, as everywhere else, something like this arises from religious sentiments of the present time. Is there not a need for a renewal of people's religious sentiment when something like this can arise from religious teaching today? Can anyone seeking a spark of truth in such a work find such an example of objective untruth?

Oh, my dear assembled guests, what is leading to the fight against the anthroposophical worldview must be sought where one perhaps does not want to seek it: in the comfortable habits of thought and feeling of the present. I must say, quite apart from how one feels about the fact that the attack is directed against one's own cause, it can hurt, really hurt, when books are written today that are inspired by such a sense of truth. We need an increase of the sense of truth, of the sense of truth, and with it precisely an increase of the religious sense of people today.

And finally, my dear attendees:

Are people of such a nature allowed to claim that anthroposophists indulge in illusions?

Well, no one will find such an illusion in me. Above, one will find a human head, which has absolutely nothing of Lucifer, which is preserved from everything Luciferian; below, a block of wood that has not yet been worked at all. Anyone who looks at this with such an illusion that they see Luciferic features at the top and animal features at the bottom, anyone who can indulge in these illusions, should truly not ascribe to the anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientists a tendency towards illusions. The illusions may lie precisely with those who, out of these very comfortable illusions, would like to fight anthroposophy today.

Ultimately, everything that arises from such foundations is ultimately connected with what has been drawn upon as the materialistic view of the world. And we must go beyond this materialistic view. No matter how imperfectly anthroposophically oriented spiritual science may be today, it only wants to be a beginning, but a beginning that has within it the germination of vigorous further work in the fields of science, art and religion, a vigorous continuation that will be able to bring to people, precisely in these three fields, that which is demanded from the deepest longings of the human soul in the present, which will be demanded more and more in the future, and which ultimately also underlies the core of the burning social question. We must enter into true reality. The materialistically conceived realities that have formed the content of the world views of the last centuries and especially decades are not the true realities.

The true realities must be sought in ways such as those that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science at least attempts; however imperfect it may still be today; for the reality in which man wants to immerse himself when he wants to create something real, he does not find it if he only strives materially, if he does not strive spiritually. But he strives spiritually only when he does not allow a spirit hostile to human knowledge to be placed at the boundaries of so-called knowledge of nature, which says: No entry to the spiritual worlds. No, when he courageously fights his way out of his own strength to see the true inscription at the boundaries of knowledge of nature. This true inscription comes from the spirit to which man actually belongs, and it reads: Welcome the entry into the spiritual world at the boundaries of the knowledge of nature. For it is true, as it sounds from an important work of poetry to him who does not want to see the spiritual depth of the world: Your heart is closed, your mind is dead. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants nothing more than to find those counsels for the human soul and spirit that will lead to the heart being opened and the mind being enlivened, because through the closed heart, through the dead mind, we only enter into the material world. We can only enter into true reality through the spirit, when the mind is illuminated by the light of the spirit, when the heart opens to the true love of the world that comes from spiritual knowledge, and which brings the I into connection with the whole whole universe and thus brings together the human spirit in cognition, feeling and will in right responsibility, in right love for the universe with the whole of being in the universe - in cognition, in the life of the beautiful, in social life.

Spiritual-scientific Results and Life Practice

Dear attendees, Anthroposophical spiritual science, which I have had the privilege of representing here in Stuttgart for many years, was initially viewed by representatives of intellectual life, who are considered authorities by most people, as something that should be disregarded because it should be viewed as a kind of sectarian movement. It may be said that precisely in those circles that are regarded as authoritative from this point of view, this view is increasingly being abandoned. In recent weeks, a theology graduate who has written a thick book entitled “Modern Theosophy” has, after all, uttered words that testify to the desire to move away from the view that one is dealing with an obscure sect. The book is called “Modern Theosophy”, but strangely enough, the author explicitly states on page 18:

When the following expositions speak of Theosophy and Theosophists, it is always meant to refer to Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical School. The terms Theosophy and Theosophist have been retained only because they are more familiar to the general consciousness than the terms Anthroposophy and Anthroposophist.

It is even a well-intentioned book in part. The author says:

If one had it in Theosophy...

– that is, he means Anthroposophy, one must always translate this in the whole book –

... with the random ideas of a fringe sect fishing in troubled waters, then it would not be worth the effort to pay it more attention.

Now he further characterizes that this anthroposophy is something that must be described as based on the foundations of a comprehensive worldview, powerfully imbued with an ethical spirit.

It is, after all, remarkable that even today the opponents – because you can certainly call the licentiate of theology Kurt Leese, who wrote the book, an opponent – it is, after all, significant that even today the opponents speak like this. Now, it is not my intention in today's lecture - which is intended to form the basis for my remarks next Friday, when I will then delve into practical life - it is not my intention in this lecture to take up anything polemically, but only in such a way that I choose starting points here and there in order to characterize the results of anthroposophical spiritual science. I do not wish to be polemical, but would like to take this or that as a starting point in order to be able to characterize spiritual science, especially in relation to practical life. Today this will be done more in relation to the inner life of the human being; next time it will be in relation to the outer life of social and economic life.

Since anthroposophy has made the attempt to intervene energetically in life, some people seem to have had to admit that this attempt has caused them some headaches. And so we see that since the Dornach School of Spiritual Science courses last fall — which I have already reported on here and which have recently been joined by our Waldorf school teachers and other experts on anthroposophy here in Stuttgart have been added to these, we see that since Anthroposophy has been more actively engaging in life in this way, some people are trying to think about this world view current in their own way. But the thoughts of these people are strange when you put them together, and you have to realize that when you are talking about the consequences of anthroposophy for the practice of life.

For example, a professor of education at the Jena School of Spiritual Science felt compelled to say that the promise of the anthroposophical college courses in Dornach for a revitalization and recovery of scientific life could only be fulfilled if a better ethical foundation were laid for anthroposophy. However, something very peculiar is now happening to this college teacher. He does not like the ethical worldview that I presented in my Philosophy of Freedom; he does not like it. He actually finds it unsuitable for human beings, but suitable for angels. Well, that may be his personal opinion. But something very strange happens to him, which points to a peculiar ethics of modern science. He discusses my book 'Philosophy of Freedom' as one of those books (for there is no other way to understand the things he says) that arose out of the chaos of the war catastrophe and that are indicative of the kinds of quests and longings that are present today. My book 'Philosophy of Freedom' was only mentioned in the second edition, which appeared in 1918, by a good gentleman who, as a university professor, would be obliged to take the matter a little more seriously and thoroughly. He therefore obviously considers the book to have been written after the war catastrophe, and he also characterizes it as if it had been written out of anthroposophical efforts. Now, my Philosophy of Freedom was published in 1893. So, for all the decades that the book has existed, the professor in question has not bothered with the matter, which is of course excusable. The title page of the new edition says 1918, and now he starts pontificating. I just want to mention this as an example of the kind of scientific thoroughness that is present when it is demanded that a better ethical basis be created for what the anthroposophical worldview is. Here, then, we have the voice of an academic who finds fault with the ethical side of anthroposophy.

The other academic, the licentiate of theology, finds, as you have heard, that the following are particularly significant:

...the foundations of a worldview powerfully imbued with an ethical spirit.

Now, to expand on this, he adds towards the end of his rather thick book that even if you think your way out of this anthroposophical world view, everything that it contains from the results of supersensible seeing, from results about supersensible world facts, still remains, and this academician characterizes in the following way:

The value of this worldly wisdom would not be affected by this...

- that is, by removing the supersensible side.

Also, there are many scattered ethical benefits in Steiner's writings. One could separate it out as worldly wisdom from the embrace of clairvoyant insights.

So this other critic finds: If you leave out everything else from the anthroposophical worldview, then something remains that has at least great ethical value.

Today, it can already be said that this anthroposophical worldview is, in a sense, being wildly raved about, but it cannot be said that it is uniformly understood by those who feel called upon to judge such things from certain curule chairs. And so there is nothing left for us to do, dear attendees, but to speak again and again about the foundations of this world view, about how it comes to its truths, to its insights, and what these insights themselves are and how they can then intervene in life itself.

This is precisely where one can start, if one wants to characterize anthroposophy from the perspective of the contemporary attitude, so to speak. I do not want to comment on the content of some of the assessments, but on the whole way in which these assessments are made. Kurt Leese, for example, who wrote this book 'Modern Theosophy', tried hard to read a large number of my writings. He even claims that he does not want to approach from the outside to criticize, but that he wants to characterize from within. At one point, however, to which I may perhaps return, he does make a strange statement that allows a deep insight into the state of mind from which criticism of anthroposophy is exercised. At a certain point, after he has talked a lot about logic and the like, this Kurt Leese says that my remarks are “annoying and unpleasant”. So it is not a rational objection, not an objection taken from logical grounds, but an objection based on emotion, on a bad mood. One feels offended, hurt, one feels annoyed. - With this I do not merely touch on what Leese says, but I touch on the mood that is felt by many sides of anthroposophical spiritual science: one becomes angry about it, one feels something that one would like to push away, not for logical reasons but for emotional reasons. If one investigates this fact, one finds that it is indeed connected with something that is very much a part of the nature of this anthroposophical method of research, which I represent.

When we speak today of any kind of scientific path, of any path to a worldview, then we are clear about the fact that we must tread the paths that we have been accustomed to walking in one way or another differently than they are trodden by this or that person. But it is not easy to admit what anthroposophical spiritual science expects of our contemporaries. Today's scientist and those who allow science to educate them for life say to themselves: At a certain point in life, you are finished as a human being. You have certain inherited qualities that have been transformed through education, perhaps even perfected or modified by certain experiences in the outer world, and you have reached a certain point in your life's development. From this point one now enters into some field of science. One is obliged, in this field of science, perhaps to formulate logic more precisely, perhaps to develop in some way still conscientiousness and thoroughness in the old form, to equip oneself with a telescope, microscope, X-ray apparatus, and so on, in order to make progress. But one wants to remain at the level of the powers of cognition that one has once acquired through ordinary inheritance, ordinary education, school teaching and life. Anthroposophical spiritual research cannot agree to this. For it is clear to it that if one only investigates existence, human life, the world, and wants to be active in them in this way, one comes up against certain limits, limits at which dissatisfaction arises about questions that arise, about riddles that life presents one with. Such questions, such riddles arise, in the face of which it is not enough to simply say: here the human being reaches the limit of his cognitive powers. For one feels quite clearly that if one does not come to a satisfactory, at least relatively satisfactory, solution to these questions and riddles, one cannot come to terms with life at all.

Now, anthroposophical spiritual science, as it is meant here, does not say that one may stop at these limits, but it says: When one has developed everything that can be attained today through the usual education or from ordinary life, has developed all of this, there is still the possibility of awakening dormant powers in the soul and of bringing these powers, which one can take into one's own hands, if I may use the expression, to a higher level of knowledge. Then, when one has reached these levels of higher knowledge, it is also possible to penetrate deeper into life than with ordinary science, ordinary education, and ordinary life practice. And then certain life questions and life puzzles take on a different appearance than in ordinary science.

Now, I have often spoken here about the development of such abilities of the soul, but these things can be presented again and again from the most diverse points of view. The peculiarity of spiritual science as it is meant here is that what is presented in it can only be truly brought to light by repeatedly and repeatedly viewing it from the most diverse points of view. Spiritual science does not appeal to any external processes for its methods; it does not form external apparatuses for its starting points or develop laboratory methods. It takes the standpoint that the supersensible cannot, of course, be made vivid through external activities, but that the supersensible can only be attained by supersensible means. Therefore, it points to intimate methods of inner soul training, to a stepping out of the soul beyond what is usual in ordinary science and in ordinary life practice. But it does not tie in with anything hidden and mystical, with anything in the bad sense of secret, but it absolutely ties in with abilities that are already present in the soul in ordinary life, only that it does not merely cultivate these abilities to the degree in which they are present in ordinary life and in ordinary science, but that she cultivates and nurtures these abilities further, thereby bringing certain powers in the soul to development, which actually remain dormant in this human soul due to today's culture.

The first thing that can be linked to is the research method, which is an inner soul path, and that is the ordinary human ability to remember, remembering – I have characterized this from the most diverse points of view over the years. The spiritual scientific research method does not link to something hidden, but to something that is quite accessible to people in their ordinary lives. We recall our experiences. We can draw from our memory the images of what we have experienced years ago – in other words, we can constantly do what we experience inwardly in the outer world. We bring it to a certain point in relation to this soul ability of remembering, and ordinary life is quite right to stop at this point for the time being. For the fact that we can remember in a healthy way, continuously back into our childhood, what we have experienced, the entire health of our soul, indeed the health of our human life, depends on it. And everyone can know what it means for the health of the soul to somehow lose the memory of something one has gone through in life. If there is a kind of blank space that we cannot go back into in the stream of life, then it means not only an erasure of our images of experiences, but in fact an erasure of our ego, or at least a partial erasure of our ego; our self-awareness is interrupted. We notice from this how intimately our self-awareness is linked to this ability to remember, and it is with this ability that spiritual science, with its method of research, first connects. Certain ideas that can be easily grasped are brought into the center of consciousness. In my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” I call this method of bringing certain easily comprehended ideas into the center of consciousness and then remaining there constantly meditation and concentration.

What happens when this method is practiced over a long period of time? What does one actually do? I would like to say: You consciously take in what you would otherwise do unconsciously by developing the power of memory since childhood. By remembering our experiences, we make our inner images permanent. We surrender to life and our organism; we draw from ourselves the images that have remained permanent, depending on what life causes us and our organism can do. But we do not control this lasting of our imaginative life in ordinary existence; spiritual science goes beyond this to controlling this lasting in the inner life of our imagination. Images are made lasting. And if you do this kind of exercise over and over again for years, it turns out that you have acquired a certain ability, just as a muscle acquires a certain strength when it performs an activity over and over again. But by voluntarily evoking durations of mental images that one would not otherwise voluntarily evoke, something is formed that, on the one hand, grows out of ordinary memory but, on the other hand, is quite different from it. A power arises from the depths of the soul that one does not have in ordinary life and in ordinary science. One releases something that otherwise remains dormant in the soul. One now realizes that by inwardly releasing this power in the soul, one stands in a completely new relationship to the world.

Now I have to make one comment today to prevent popular prejudices and misunderstandings against the spiritual scientific method from being carried forward. All sorts of people come who deal with spiritual science with the opposite of thoroughness and say that the spiritual scientific method is used to bring up repressed ideas from the subconscious. Suppressed nervous energy and all kinds of things that one usually pushes into the subconscious are brought up into the ordinary consciousness, so that one is not dealing with something that the spiritual researcher, who lives in such ideas, has acquired through a new power of the soul. Such objections are indeed raised from many sides.

But in answer to this, it may be said, first of all, that something is emphasized everywhere in my writings that is a fundamental condition of these inner soul exercises, namely, that the whole process of making ideas permanent, of immersing oneself in meditation in a certain content of thought – when one is dealing with the right spiritual scientific methods – must proceed in the same inner state of soul as the state of soul of the mathematician when he devotes himself to the combination and analysis of geometric figures or mathematical tasks in general. The soul's activity in the humanities must be just as permeated by the will as the mathematician's activity is permeated by the will. The soul's activity in the humanities must be as permeated by the will as the mathematician's activity is permeated by the will; everything that is done is fully permeated by the light of consciousness. That is the one thing I would like to say to those who repeatedly say that things are being brought up from the subconscious, and that the person who claims to be a spiritual researcher has no idea that it all comes from his subconscious. And those who make such criticism, who can see from their superconsciousness, from what they call science, these suggest how naive such a spiritual researcher is.

Now, my dear audience, I ask you to go through my writings. Leave out everything in them that belongs to spiritual science and try to see how ordinary scientific problems are treated. Then you will see that there is already a complete awareness of the state of mind of such critics. So what such critics demand of their scientific approach is well known. It is not suppressed or even dispensed with – no, in spiritual research, while fully maintaining this scientific approach, the other path is developed alongside it through the soul's activities. It must be taken into account: Only when the spiritual researcher shows himself incapable of following this ordinary scientific method, only then can one say that he is naive in his spiritual research, that he is presenting something that is cloudy, nebulous and mystical. But this is not the case, at least as far as the striving of the spiritual research method is concerned. In this method, the aim is to achieve an absolutely mathematical state of mind by bringing those abilities of the soul into consciousness that are initially higher abilities than the ability to remember.

What is the result? I said: One enters into a different relationship with the world. And here, by developing this transformed ability to remember, one enters into a new relationship with one's own human experience. When this soul ability, which I have just spoken about, really flows up out of the soul, then one begins to look at the life one has gone through since birth as if at a continuous stream that stays there and remains. How else does this life proceed in ordinary existence? It proceeds in such a way that it stands before our soul as something indeterminate. Individual memories arise like waves from a stream. We can look back at these images of our experiences, but the current itself remains in a certain vague darkness. We are, to a certain extent, in this current ourselves. As I said earlier, in a healthy soul life, one's self-awareness is connected to this current. Now one is outside of this current; one has torn oneself away from it. The life one has lived since birth stands before you like a panorama. Time has become space, as it were. What one has striven for by constantly forming images has been conquered by looking at the life between birth and the present moment as a continuous whole, as a panorama of life.

But such an inner state of mind is linked to something else: by the fact that one overlooks this life - and one only overlooks that which is outside of oneself, in the past one did not overlook life because one was in it - by the fact that one has been torn out of life through the development discussed, one gains an experiential understanding of the alternating states of sleeping and waking in ordinary life. And one learns to recognize how sleeping and waking truly relate to one another in ordinary life. A person falls asleep and then wakes up again. It is self-evident that the interplay of the soul forces, as they are present in connection with the body, does not cease and then resume when the person wakes up. But the human being's consciousness is initially such that he does not have the inner strength to grasp what takes place in his soul between falling asleep and waking up. As a result, it remains unconscious. But now this is becoming conscious. One first gets to know a state of soul experience that is, on the one hand, very similar to sleep: one feels free from the body; one feels outside the body in that one has learned to survey one's life since birth. And one learns to recognize what the moment of falling asleep and waking up is; one learns to recognize that the soul is a real thing, that when one wakes up one connects with the soul that leaves the body when one falls asleep. For one learns to recognize that the forces that one has developed from memory are rooted in the soul, insofar as this soul is something independent of the body in its essence. One learns to recognize that when one wakes up, the soul enters the body, and that when one falls asleep, it leaves the body. And just as in any other external science one begins with the simpler and adds complications, thus becoming acquainted with the more manifold, so it is here too. When one learns to recognize, through inner vision, the nature of falling asleep and waking up, this vision is ultimately expanded to include what birth and death actually are in human life. But in order for it to be expanded, some practice is still needed.

I have said: the exercises must be such that man does that constantly, which otherwise only fleeting images, caused by life or by the body, are in the memory. But it is not enough for the further progress in spiritual research that one merely develops this resting on a certain idea; one must go further, so to speak, push the will further. One must come to a point where one can rest on a certain idea as long as one wants, but is not captivated by it, not hypnotized and captured by this idea, but can reject this idea again at the moment one wants to. And this: to surrender to an idea, to withdraw again and to remain as if in an empty consciousness and not to let oneself be captured by any other idea – that must be practiced in the second place. Then one is indeed practising something that is an inner working of the soul forces, like inhaling and exhaling, like systole and diastole. One places an idea into consciousness, lets it last for a certain time, removes it, takes it up again into consciousness; inhaling into consciousness, exhaling out of consciousness. It is not a physical breathing process, but to a certain extent a spiritual breathing process, which one exercises and through which one draws up from the life of the soul the ability to perceive spiritual worlds. And now what one brings up from the soul as a new ability permeates the contemplation of waking and sleeping, and expands it into the contemplation of birth and death. And one learns to recognize, as a second result of spiritual science, what I would call: the eternal in man. For now one learns to recognize that what is outside the body from falling asleep to waking up was present before birth or conception in spiritual worlds. One learns to recognize that the simpler act that takes place each time one wakes up, and which consists in the soul and spirit returning to the still-present body, that this simpler process has a more complicated one, which consists in we live in a spiritual world before our birth or conception and that we then do not, as when waking up, move into our body that is available from the previous day, but that we move into a body that is made available to us in the hereditary current from father and mother. We become familiar with the more complicated waking up through conception or birth, and we become familiar with the complicated falling asleep through what is called death when we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual worlds.

In the second stage of supersensible knowledge, then, the result of spiritual science is the realization of the eternal. The first thing that arises is the realization of the lasting since our birth, which we survey like a stream of life that stands there, in relation to which time becomes like space. The second thing that arises is that we recognize ourselves as rooted in an eternal being that goes through births and deaths, that between death and birth leads a life in spiritual worlds that is just as full as here. One can describe this. I have described it in my writings. People call these descriptions fantasies, but for the one who acquires the abilities I have spoken of, that is, for the one who wants to become a spiritual researcher, these are not fantasies but objective realities that are present as the objective world of colors is before the eye, the objective world of sounds for the ear, and so on.

And I will mention a third step, in which one must indeed further develop an ability of the soul that is also present in ordinary life. And by speaking of the further development of this ability, one is naturally decried as a dilettante by those people who today believe they have a monopoly on science, because they demand that science should completely avoid this ability. But this ability, which I will characterize in a moment, can certainly be developed as a cognitive faculty, and it works like this: The first step is to create a certain image through meditation and concentration. The second step is to remove this constant image from one's consciousness and to control at will, like systole and diastole, the arising and sinking of the perception, then the third consists in further developing the ordinary ability to turn one's attention to some object in the external world. I would call this attention 'noteworthy'; it is the special ability to focus on something precisely, to contract the soul's abilities in such a way that this noteworthy quality is directed at individual objects or at individual beings. This ability, which in life is only prompted by external things – or also by internal things, which is irrelevant here – can be systematically developed by increasing one's noteworthy quality, one's ability to pay attention, by making more and more effort to concentrate the soul on individual objects, so that the soul is completely absorbed in an object, does not skim over it, but puts its whole being into the object. By cultivating this ability, you increase it to what I would call active, inner interest. Then you already notice how something rises from the depths of the soul, which permeates this ability from within. And you notice the affinity of what comes from within the person with a very, very necessary human ability in ordinary life, with the power of love.

Dear attendees, a straight line can be drawn between attention and love, with attention at one end and love at the other. This is because love is nothing more than highly developed attention, a complete surrender to the beloved object. Of course, one will be decried as a dilettante if one says: If one particularly develops that which otherwise unconsciously, instinctively, from attention to a person or to an object becomes love, and if that, through arbitrariness, in turn, becomes a state of mind that is permeated by such an inner consciousness as otherwise only mathematical life, if that is developed, then love is not just an ability of ordinary life, a quality and adornment of ordinary life, then it becomes a power of cognition, such a power of cognition through which one can truly live in the object. But this is necessary if we want to experience the spiritual contents, the spiritual processes of the world. We must develop love, which otherwise only appears in relation to external sense objects, in such a way that it becomes the power of knowledge, that the soul can truly give itself fully to the objects, because the spiritual world demands that we give ourselves to the objects when they reveal themselves, when they are to reveal themselves. This, then, is the third result of developing love into a power of knowledge. Then one learns to look at human life in a new way.

For example, one says to oneself: Now, I live somewhere, surrounded by people. Hundreds of people are around me, some of them I don't even know; I know others, but I pass them by indifferently; some of these hundreds are particularly close to me. An event occurs, a death within this group of people surrounding me. It may happen that I am indifferent to this; it can also happen that this death is a blow for me, because I have had a closer relationship with the person who has died. And now you learn from such things: When you see that from the fullness of life certain things are closer to you, certain events are more connected to you than others, you learn to look back on the way you came to these experiences. If you are endowed with the ability to recognize that is developed out of love, then you see the path you have taken in this life since birth. You get to know an inner, rational connection that otherwise runs unconsciously. You learn to say to yourself: I look back from now. Thirty years ago, I did something that was very far removed from the events I am experiencing today. But when I connect what I undertook then with what I undertook twenty-five years ago, twenty years ago, ten years ago, and then follow the current to what I am currently experiencing, then I notice an inner connection. Above all, I realize one thing: what otherwise seems to me as if only an external, mechanical life has pushed me, now appears to me as emerging from my will. I was not aware of it, and yet it was the will working within me that undertook things thirty years ago, which in their further progression lead to my present experiences of destiny. I experience fate in its connection with the will. Fate in its connection with the will of the innermost human nature reveals itself, but in such a way that one can now look back to earlier earthly lives with the power of recognition of love. One sees: the impulses stem from previous earthly lives, which initially remain unconscious and which make that one is not pushed by external mechanical natural laws toward one's experiences, but that one is pushed toward that which was planted in one was planted in you in a previous life, which was then further developed spiritually between death and the last birth and which now lives in you, which leads you from one life event to the next, insofar as these events are of such a nature that they take hold of you directly. You get to know the connection between your present life and previous lives.

Dear attendees, you do not learn to recognize such connections if you do not make love a force of knowledge. Because by making love a force of knowledge, you go deep, deep inside yourself, to where the causes lie that otherwise elude our awareness. And it is these causes that point us from this life to earlier earthly lives. It is really the case that through this ability to recognize, which is the transformed power of love, something is, as it were, laid bare out of ourselves, just as we otherwise lay something bare in a chemical laboratory out of certain substances through reagents, which one only sees through these reagents. When the spiritual researcher describes this, he does so entirely from the perspective of thinking that is as exact as it is through the mathematical conscientiousness, mathematical thoroughness and mathematical sense of responsibility that he has acquired. Just as this mathematics is created from within the human being, but is valid for the external world, so too is that which occurs as the third result, by looking back to earlier lives on earth. This is achieved through the faculty of knowledge, which develops through a transformation of those soul forces that otherwise only appear in external life and there place themselves in life as a practical force.

Now, my dear audience, I have now described the results of spiritual science anthroposophy. By looking at what can be described in this way, one easily sees that it is truly not something that is merely theoretical, but something that must take hold of the whole human being, because today I have presented precisely those insights that relate directly to the human being himself. Certainly, not everyone can become a spiritual researcher, just as not everyone can become a chemist or an astronomer. But with the help of common sense it is quite possible to comprehend what astronomy, chemistry and physics teach. In the same way it is possible to comprehend with the help of common sense what the spiritual researcher brings up from the depths of the human soul, if only one does not wall oneself off from these things through scientific prejudices. But when it is brought up and becomes wisdom, then it also becomes life practice. And because I do not like to describe in general abstractions, I would like to show by concrete examples how these things become life practice when they flow into people by permeating them with the insights of anthroposophical spiritual science.

I have mentioned before how this anthroposophical spiritual science has been applied not as a worldview but as a way of life in the Waldorf School founded here in Stuttgart by Mr. Molt. This Waldorf School does not aim to instill a particular worldview in children; anyone who claims otherwise is slandering the Waldorf School. It is not a school of world view, but rather a school that seeks to take the whole person, mind and will, by making the spiritual-scientific impulses fruitful; that through the application of spiritual-scientific ideas, the mind, feelings and will are changed and strengthened. And the methodology of the Waldorf school is concerned with what the art of education can gain through this transformation of the soul, this strengthening of the will. We do not want to teach the children a specific content, but we want skill in the art of education, in the practice of life, to follow from what can be gained through anthroposophical spiritual science, from the way we handle education and teaching.

Now, I would like to show you a practical example of what applies to many areas, indeed to all areas of life in relation to spiritual science. When a child enters a Waldorf school, they are at an age that is of great social importance to those in the know. This phase of the child's life, from the beginning of the change of teeth to the beginning of sexual maturity, is the one we are called upon to foster through education and teaching in the Waldorf school. Above all, it has great social significance. The social question is not solved by institutions. Those people who think that if only this or that in life were organized in such and such a way, a satisfactory social order would come about, are indulging in social superstition. It is only with a certain melancholy that we can observe social or socialist experiments that only look to external institutions. No, human life is not primarily shaped by institutions, by any external circumstances. Human life is shaped by people themselves. Whether or not this human life can be a socially satisfactory entity does not depend on how we make the institutions, but on how people behave within the institutions. One should not speak of social institutes and institutions, but of socially minded [and socially acting] people. Therefore, when we look at the social question as a practical question in life today, we must, above all, find ways of instilling social sentiment and social understanding into the human soul. That is why the Federation for the Threefold Social Order calls for the social order to be structured into an independent spiritual life, an independent legal or state or political life, and an independent economic life, because it believes that by looking at these three aspects of the social organism in their independence, the forces that make them social beings can be drawn from them. But the independent spiritual life, to which the educational system in particular belongs to a great extent, is of very special importance for the shaping of the social organism.

I have often explained here how children up to the age of puberty are primarily imitative beings. I have explained how, especially towards the end of this period of life, towards puberty – it continues a little beyond that – the child's nature strives to reproduce in its own activity what is being done in its environment, and even what is being felt and thought in its environment. This changes with the change of teeth. Although imitation remains a force to be reckoned with by the teacher in elementary school until the eighth or ninth year, something of particular importance occurs. It occurs in the child's soul, which I have characterized as the effect of a natural sense of authority. One can argue whether this authority should be cultivated in school or not. If one looks through the natural necessities of existence, one can argue about this just as one can argue about whether one should light something somewhere if one wants a fire, or whether one should choose some other inappropriate activity for this. If someone does not want to light a fire for particular reasons but still wants a fire, that is an impossibility. And if someone wants to guide children in a certain way from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, then they must place teachers and educators alongside them, who will be their authority and whom the children will look up to as their natural leaders. And all the declaiming about lively lessons is worth less than realizing what it means for the child to be drawn to a truth, to an insight, to a moral impulse, to an aesthetic sensation because the revered teacher and educator is oriented towards these impulses. From the child's experience, from the experience of the educating, teaching adult through the child, a force arises that must be developed between the ages of seven and fourteen. If the child is to flourish, it must be developed in the same way that life during the day must be illuminated by sunlight. What we are touching on here is a vital necessity.

What is being cultivated here? — To recognize this, my dear audience, one must go through life in its entirety. One must not have that artificially fueled pedagogical worldview or philosophy of life that only looks at the child, but one must have such a worldview that encompasses the life of the whole human being. We must ask ourselves: How does a child's life relate to later stages of life? Just as the laws of physics can be studied and, when they occur rhythmically, the effect is sometimes far removed from the cause, so the connections between cause and effect also occur in human life. From what is experienced by the child's soul from the seventh to the fourteenth year, during which years it naturally has a sense of authority towards the revered teacher and educator, during which it absorbs, on the basis of authority, what the teacher exemplifies, the child develops something that then, so to speak, descends into the depths of life and only emerges again between the twentieth and thirtieth year of life. And what comes out of it? It comes out transformed, metamorphosed. What develops in the child's soul through authority alongside the revered teacher is transformed, element by element, into social feeling in the twenties – this becomes social practice in life. What we have acquired as children from the individual teachers we have come to revere to a greater or lesser extent, we transfer to our dealings with other people. Anyone who takes a look at how life is practiced today and sees how much that is unsocial is alive in our present time will see that this unsocial element is looking back at an inadequate pedagogical art that was unable to develop in those who are now in social life, in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, what I have just characterized. But this will be developed by someone who has allowed their will and mind to be stimulated by the impulses of spiritual science. This will be encouraged by a teacher who has digested spiritual science in such a way that it has become skill, art, and the ability to act in the outer world. We can see, then, what can be done for social life in a limited field, such as education and teaching, when one has an understanding of life — and one can only understand life when one also understands it in relation to its spiritual foundations. And so, ladies and gentlemen, it is the same in the most practical areas of life — I will show this in more detail.

I would like to begin with a contemporary statement, again not to be polemical, but to show how this connection between anthroposophical world view and practical life actually manifests itself. It is strange – Kurt Leese, who has a doctorate in theology, accuses me, precisely where he says that anthroposophy is annoying and ill-tempered, of having performed a brilliant feat in terms of concepts. Well, I will only mention the matter briefly – I have already dealt with the fact to which this refers on several occasions. Those who do not immediately understand the matter can also read about the facts in question in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Puzzles of the Soul), where I have presented them in the appendix. After devoting thirty years of research to the matter, I was obliged to show how the human being is structured in threefoldness. This has nothing directly to do with the threefold social organism. It is not that I am playing with analogies, as I expressly stated in my book 'The Core Points'. But it is a fact: the human being is a threefold creature. He is a threefold creature when we look at him physically, mentally and spiritually. He is also a threefold being in his bodily constitution. First of all, he is a nervous-sensory human being. This is an organization that manifests itself primarily in the head, but which is spread throughout the whole human being. Secondly, the human being is permeated by a rhythmic organization. This rhythmic organization expresses itself particularly in the rhythm of breathing, in the rhythm of the heart and so on, but basically it is spread throughout the whole organism. Thirdly, the human being is a metabolic organism, which expresses itself particularly in the abdomen and in the limb system, where it is especially evident in the work of metabolism and in muscle movement; this metabolic organism shows itself, but it is spread throughout the whole human being. Now I had to say that if you want to understand something like this, you can't use such schematic concepts: the head is at the top of the human being, so you draw a line there, even if you don't literally cut off the head; the rhythmic being is in the middle, so you add a third part. Because that is not possible, because, to a certain extent, each of the systems permeates the other, one must therefore adopt a different structure for one's thoughts than the structure to which the present-day scholar, accustomed to the schematic and pedantic, is accustomed. That, says Leese, is a conceptual tour de force.

Now, today's thinking could learn a lot from scholasticism. I certainly have no external reason to be particularly friendly in this direction, but I am not concerned with merely repaying enmity with enmity. Despite all the attacks from a certain quarter, I must emphasize that even today's philosophers could learn an extraordinary amount from the inner discipline of the scholastics. If you have learned from scholasticism, if you have learned to be as elastic, as internally mobile, as unschematic with your thinking as reality is unschematic, then you have learned something with which you can not only schematize scientifically, but with which you can immerse yourself in life, because life, reality, practice, they demand elastic, mobile thinking. And when we enter into the most delicate ramifications of practical, commercial, and technical life, we can only do so if we have been educated to think flexibly and adaptably. If we look at today's routine practitioners of life, we see what has been neglected in this respect on the part of intellectual life.

Today's natural science places particular emphasis on becoming objective, on investigating things in such a way that the human being does not add or bring anything to the process when he or she summarizes the facts into laws. So one occupies oneself, and that in a certain area absolutely rightfully, with an external fact of nature, by taking as little consideration of the human as possible, by eliminating everything human when one speaks about nature. And it is only and alone in relation to natural science that the present age has grown great; there one excludes everything that is human feeling and human will. But today, because the naivety, the instinctive nature of social life in its transition to a conscious one, one must consciously approach social actions and social institutions with a practice of life. We have learned and are learning through all the popular instruction that is given to the people today only to know something that stands apart from the human mind, from the human will. But then, when we are supposed to reflect, consciously reflect, on how industrial, technical, social life is to be mastered and treated at all, we are supposed to face the mind, the will of the other person. Today, people learn a great science that does not extend to the mind and will, and then want to apply it in practice. But it does not contain what nature provides; in life we face other people, people with minds and wills. And now, because of the way we are educated, we are not accustomed to reflecting on the mind and will.

You see, that's where spiritual science comes in, which doesn't just focus on what is outside of the human being, but which places the human being at the center of the whole cosmos, which treats the whole person. Spiritual science is by no means unintellectual, it is thoroughly intellectual, but in such a way that the intellectual passes over into mind and will, seizing mind and will. That is why this spiritual science can also become directly social knowledge and thus social living science, that is, social life practice. Now, one gets to know something else: one gets to know the spiritual; through the spiritual-scientific impulses, one approaches the spiritual. In this way, one takes hold of the whole human being. If one studies natural science today, one learns to recognize the causal connection in nature. This is far removed from what the moral world order is, from what moral life forces are. In the classification of minerals, plants and animals, in the phenomena of clouds, in the course of the stars across the sky, we do not observe any moral life forces today, according to our scientific method. If we now begin to attack the practice of life with what we are accustomed to from this science, then we stand amateurishly, insensitively, towards our fellow human beings, because we cannot think ourselves into them, cannot imagine ourselves into the feelings and wills of people, and above all we cannot carry ethical, moral, spiritual into the practice of life. But since spiritual science encompasses the whole human being, the moral element is present in the whole human being at the same time. And we discover the moral element together with the theoretical. We do not found a worldview without permeating it with the moral element. In anthroposophy, we do not look out into a world that is an indifferent natural order, but we see a world that is permeated by the moral throughout, not by fantasizing the moral into it, but by seeing the moral emerging from its own order. We see this in past lives, where morality appears to us directly in its causal effect within the natural order, but belonging to our world order. This is what springs from spiritual science as a correct practice of life when it permeates the human being.

But this also deepens this practice of life with religious impulses, with religious warmth. Because when the intellectual leads to spiritual facts, when it is ethically permeated, then at the same time it is carried by religious impulses. And when a person approaches the practice of life with spiritual, moral and religious impulses, arising from an understanding of his own nature, then he alone will be able to have a healing effect on social life. For then he stands at the point which I have often characterized and which spiritual science wants to reach, at the point from which it can truly be said: the moral life and the theoretical, the scientific life become one; they grow together completely. And through the fact that the moral and the scientific life grow together, we do not have some spiritual thing into which we want to withdraw as escapists, we do not have a nebulous mysticism into which we want to flee – no, we have the spiritual as a living force in us, so that we carry it into material life. With the spiritual in us, we become conquerors of the material. We imbue the material with the spiritual. We do not become dreamy, unworldly mystics who live in a web of lies, but life-affirming spiritual scientists who immerse themselves in the practical, material side of life with that which is enlivened by the spiritual. For it is not the one who speaks of the lowliness of matter and wants to flee from it, who, as a nebulous mystic, flees to some nebulous spiritual realm, but the one who clings to the spirit and makes his impulses into impulses of life practice, who at every step of life knows how to carry the spirit into the material, into the outer practice of life.

This is precisely what meets with the most resistance today. The writings that are written against anthroposophy are gradually becoming countless. In one of the most recent writings we read a passage that characterizes their attitude very well. There we read that through anthroposophy and what is related to it, the sacred untouchedness of the eternal is fatally dragged down into the lowlands of the earthly-sensual and that in this way man is deprived of the best forces for his moral uplift. So these things are being put forward today. This has been proclaimed from a university professorial chair. It is even said that it would be a sin against the Holy Spirit if people were to be deprived of their best abilities in this way. Today people are being made aware that anthroposophy sins against humanity because it wants to educate the whole person, because it wants to bring the spirit into every aspect of life. This anthroposophy will not let up in its efforts to introduce the spirit into the practice of life. For, my dear audience, anyone who looks into today's social disaster and knows how to see through it with understanding knows that it is precisely from such views, which do not want to carry the supersensible out of its sacred inviolacy into the lowlands of earthly-sensual life, that today's unwholesomeness in the social order stems. We live in social chaos because those who have held the leadership have wanted to carry the sacred untouchedness with the spiritual up into a mystical fog, and have no sense or heart for carrying the spirit into the practice of life. He is therefore not present in the most important places of this practice of life.

If this means that I will be reproached for being polemical, I still want to tie in with one thing in order to truly characterize something other than what attacks the anthroposophical worldview. You see, in Dornach, as I have often mentioned, a center for anthroposophical spiritual science is being built. Inside, when it is finished, there will be a nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group that will represent the essence of the human being, but thoroughly translated into art. In the middle of this wooden group is a figure similar to Christ. This figure – I showed a photograph of the head of this figure in the lecture I gave here in the Kunsthaus, and those who saw this head at the time will also have seen that it is a truly idealized human head. Not hundreds, but thousands of people have seen the work being done on this group in Dornach. They have seen that what is involved here is a thoroughly idealized human head. The lower part is not yet finished; there is only a block of wood. Now the work has progressed a little, but until very recently there was only a block of wood. Now, among the many such things that have appeared recently, there is also a little book by not just a licentiate, but by a doctor of theology named Johannes Frohnmeyer. I would perhaps not mention the little book if it had not been published in Stuttgart – “Calwer Vereinsbuchhandlung”. Therefore I may mention it, even if I expose myself to the accusation that I call those opponents who objectively want to characterize spiritual science. I must mention what can be found on page 107 of this strange book. There it is said - not that the things were told to the author by someone, but as if they were objective facts:

A statue of ideal man is being sculpted in Dornach, nine meters high. Its features are 'Luciferian' at the top and bestially beastly at the bottom.

Such madness is being written today by a Doctor theologiae, namely D. L. Johannes Frohnmeyer. Now, I may be accused of desecrating the podium here by bringing up such things, when I openly call them lies. I would like to ask: What do those people desecrate who bring such untruths into the world in such ways? I would like to ask - in view of the fact that this man is also a lecturer and, through his missionary work, the teacher of countless people -: How much truth will there be in the teaching of a person who is so concerned with the truth? Today it is already important that we can carry the spirit of truthfulness into our view of life from our spiritual view, from being permeated by Christianity.

Now, my dear audience, this Frohnmeyer, this Kurt Leese and others, they keep coming back to us with the idea that there is all sorts of fiction in anthroposophy, all sorts of fantasies, all sorts of myths. Well, myths are something our opponents seem to be able to do, even if they are not particularly valuable, because they fantasize the most incredible things about anthroposophical spiritual science. It is a myth to say, in this case, that what is at the top of an idealized human head has luciferic features, and at the bottom even animal features – and it was just a piece of wood at the bottom. Those who see in what is in Dornach remind me of an anecdote I once heard about the way certain people examine their state of mind when they come home in the evening. They lie down in bed, and in front of them is a top hat. If they see the top hat once, they feel sober; if they see the top hat twice, they know they are drunk. I believe that you can only make up myths like that about anthroposophical spiritual science if you see the top hat twice. And I would like to point out how, especially with regard to practical life, the realistic basis of spiritual science must be emphasized. And how little people appreciate this sense of reality is sufficiently demonstrated by such an example. Therefore, in a sense, one can be reassured when thick books today conclude with:

Theosophy...

- one means anthroposophy, because wherever the word theosophy appears in the book, it is meant to be anthroposophy, as stated in the preface, for the sake of general comprehensibility.

Like all forms of mythology, Theosophy is a tragedy of the mind.

Now, dear assembled guests, let me say it in conclusion: the one who has learned to research according to the pattern of the strictest mathematical experience and yet ascends to all heights of spiritual life and descends into all depths of the soul, who has learned to research as one must research in real spiritual science, will a certain sadness see how in many cases today the paths to practical life are blocked for spiritual science because it is not approached with a sense of truth but rather with myth-making, in that myths are invented about it in order to be able to defame it. On the other hand, however, we can also rely on the fact that truth will ultimately prevail against all those who, even in an idealized figure of Christ, see Luciferic traits above and animalistic traits below. The truth must prevail. And one day in the future – one can trust this with reassurance – it will be shown whether anthroposophy is really a mythology and therefore a tragedy of thought, or whether everything that many opponents, sometimes even well-meaning ones, still bring forward against it today will be revealed, not as a tragedy of thought, but as a comedy of thought.

Announcement before the lecture on the occasion of the “Free Anthroposophical University Courses”

Please allow me to say a few words before I begin my lecture. A few minutes ago I saw the newspaper that published the “Reply to Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Emil Molt and Dr. Carl Unger in Stuttgart”. The article is signed “Major General (retired) von Gleich”. I will not bother you with a detailed response to the matter, but would just like to make the following comment.

I became aware of the statement that was printed in the Stuttgarter Tagblatt and that was made by Dr. Unger and Mr. Emil Molt after it had been written and already printed in the Stuttgarter Tagblatt. I did not exert the slightest influence on this declaration and need not point out to you here that I declare myself in retrospect in complete agreement with the content and with the fact of the declaration. But the other fact is, of course, that I have not addressed any correspondence to Mr. von Gleich – printed or otherwise – and I would like to emphasize this in particular. Mr. von Gleich has the audacity to send me a reply for which there is no request. I would just like to address these words to you so that you do not believe that I sent any request or any correspondence to that Mr. von Gleich, handwritten or printed - one could assume that one could have overlooked the matter. Of course, I would not personally address anything to a person who slimes himself out - excuse the expression - like Mr. von Gleich, but would only comment on it if the person in question could somehow manage to take some part of the public by surprise, and then I would not address Mr. von Gleich, but rather the public. Regarding such jostling, as it has been perpetrated there, I am in the habit, after reading it, to do nothing more than wash my hands. I want to stick to that in the future, but I don't want to fail to point out to you that a reply has been sent here to something that did not happen. Whether it is due to a brain diseased by hatred or to something else, I for one can only understand it in such a way that I would naturally write on such a reply letter: “will not be accepted” and that only if no reply is received does it appear to me as an impertinence.

Anthroposophy and Threefolding: Their Nature and Their Defense

Dear attendees! It has not been my custom to say a special word of thanks after greetings. Today I want to do it because I really thank you very much for this greeting in the interest of the matter. Anyone who is attached to the matter I represent here may also express his thanks when he sees that it has retained its old sympathies despite the attacks it has suffered here. For almost two decades I have been giving lectures here in Stuttgart every year on the anthroposophical worldview, and in these lectures everything has been mentioned that makes it possible to form an opinion about the anthroposophical movement. More recently, I have also spoken about things that are more loosely connected with what I represent as the anthroposophical worldview: the so-called threefold social order. And I do not believe that any of the words I have spoken in the latter context have in any way violated the spirit and content of what, as I said, I have been advocating for almost two decades as an anthroposophical worldview.

Today, however, I face the outside world as if before a caricature of what I myself have to describe as the anthroposophical worldview. From all sides, I am confronted with descriptions of what this anthroposophical worldview is supposed to be. I must confess that most of these descriptions are such that I do not recognize the picture of the anthroposophical world view that I have drawn here. Everything seems so alien to me, just as what has been said in numerous personal attacks from all sides seems alien to me. It will therefore be forgiven if today I depart from the custom I have otherwise almost always observed here of speaking purely impersonally about the anthroposophical world view, and that I also take into account in a few places the personal attacks that have been made against me. But I promise you that I will not go into these things any further than they are related to the matter in hand in any direction.

First of all, dear ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk about the origin and starting point of the anthroposophical world view. This origin and starting point lies entirely in the scientific world view of modern times. Anyone who goes through the somewhat long series of my writings will be able to see that my starting point never lies in any religious problems, even though, of course, anthroposophy, by its very nature, as we shall see, must lead to religious feeling and religious views. The starting point was not religious views, the starting point was the scientific world view that I grew into in my younger years. Anyone who grows into this scientific worldview of the present day will initially feel an extraordinary respect for what science has achieved in modern times, and above all, they will gain an even greater respect for both the experimental and observational methods of scientific research and for the training in thinking and methodical schooling that contemporary science can introduce to people. And I must confess that, for me, since I entered the natural sciences, the most valuable thing about them was this training of thought, this conscientious discipline of thinking and researching. And more than from individual results of natural science, I have always started from what natural science research brings up in you as a training in thinking. But in doing so, one thing became clearer and clearer to me. When I — and I believe that what I am about to say is sufficiently clear from my 'Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings', which appeared in the 1880s — when I repeatedly looked at what lives in the human soul in terms of yearning for the spiritual world, what views of a spiritual world live in the human soul, then the fundamental question arose for me: How can that which undoubtedly forms the great triumph of modern times, scientific research, be reconciled with these longings, with these justified impulses of the human soul?

Dear attendees! This question has brought me together with personalities in particular who, familiar with the scientific way of thinking of modern times, led a tragic inner life of the soul in dealing with the same question. An example: In my early youth, I encountered a person who, I might say, was completely infiltrated by the scientific way of thinking - a way of thinking that is fully justified in its field and points to the origin of our planet Earth, our entire world system, as a purely material primeval nebula, through whose inner forces all being has gradually formed, ultimately including man. But in man, so this personality said to himself, the processes of this concentrated nebula world took on very special forms; ideals arise in man, religious convictions, the longing arises in man to know something about that which lies beyond birth and death, because a life that only covers the period between birth and death seems so meaningless. But everything that appears in the so-called life of the soul in a human being is, as this personality put it, just smoke and fog, something that arises like a haze from what alone can be scientifically accepted. And the mental life of this personality was tragic, for it said to itself: It must be a mere deception, a mere illusion, what emerges from material life and presents itself to man as a mirage.

One may find such a way of thinking more or less justified, more or less opposed, it was there in numerous cases, and it was there in such personalities, for whom it was in vain to object: Yes, natural science on the one hand is an exact science, on the other hand the world of faith is the subjective world. Our ideals arise from this subjective world, our religious convictions arise from this subjective world. One must know the one, believe the other. There were just so many such personalities who could not do this, who said to themselves: If it is the case that the human being has arisen from what science presents to us, then ethical ideals and religious convictions are illusions. I could cite many examples along these lines. But what I want to say with it is sufficiently indicated. And so the question arose for me more and more out of life itself: Is there not a possibility, between what lives inside of man in terms of spiritual aspirations and what natural science has established, is there not a connection in between, is there not a bridge from one to the other?

And now, what offered me above all the possibility of finding such a bridge, that was not, at first, looking at inner, subjective visions; that had become clear to me from the beginning. No matter how convincingly or intensely subjective visions may present themselves to the soul, one has no right to accept them as objective on account of their subjective appearance, if one is not in a position to build a bridge from the scientifically established to the spiritual world. I have already tried to build this bridge in my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings”. I then devoted special attention to this in the elaboration of my small work “Truth and Science” and my larger book “The Philosophy of Freedom”.

It is quite certain that if the scientific world view alone is right, then we as human beings are the works of a necessity, then the idea of freedom is impossible, then even in this so convincing experience of our inner life, the fact that we have free will seems to stand only as a deception before our soul. And so for me the question of the justification of freedom became one of those problems, one of those riddles that occupied me intensely as a young man, and I saw that it is impossible to find a foundation for the question of freedom without a foundation for all of philosophical thinking. That was therefore the task I set myself at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s: to find a foundation for philosophical thinking. I first put aside everything that might arise to me as visions of a spiritual world. Above all, I wanted to have a secure philosophical foundation that was in harmony with the scientific research of modern times. And starting from this point of view, I examined above all the nature of human thinking. I tried all possible ways of arriving at the answer to the question: What is human thinking essentially according to its nature?

Anyone who reads my “Philosophy of Freedom” will find how these paths to fathoming the nature of human thinking were sought. And for me it turned out that only someone who sees something in the highest expressions of this thinking that takes place independently of our physicality, of our bodily organization, can understand human thinking correctly. And I believe I succeeded in demonstrating that the processes of pure thinking in man take place independently of bodily processes. In bodily processes, natural necessities prevail. What emerges from these bodily processes in the way of dark instincts, will impulses and so on is, in a certain respect, determined by natural necessity. What a person accomplishes in his thinking ultimately turns out to be a process that takes place independently of the physical organization of the person. And I believe that through this “Philosophy of Freedom” nothing less has emerged than the supersensible nature of human thinking. And once this supersensible nature of human thinking had been recognized, then the proof was provided that in the most ordinary everyday life, when man rises to real thinking, through which he is determined by nothing other than the motives of thinking itself, then he has a supersensible element in this thinking. If he then directs his life by this thinking, develops himself in this way, is educated in this way, that he goes beyond the motives of his physical organization, beyond drives, emotions, instincts, and bases his actions on motives of pure thinking, then he may be called a free being. To explain the connection between supersensible pure thinking and freedom was my task at that time.

One can stop at this point and pursue such a train of thought merely in theory. But if such a train of thought is not pursued merely in theory, but becomes a fulfillment of one's whole life, if one sees in it a revelation of human nature itself, then one pursues it not merely in theory, but in practice. What is this practical pursuit? Well, once one has grasped the supersensible nature of thinking, one learns to recognize that the human being is capable of becoming independent of his bodily organization in a certain activity. One can now try whether, in addition to pure thinking, the human being is also capable of developing an activity that is modeled on this pure thinking. Anyone who calls the method of research that I use to underpin my anthroposophical spiritual science clairvoyance must also call ordinary pure thinking, which flows from everyday life into human consciousness and into human action, clairvoyance. I myself see no qualitative difference between pure thinking and what I call clairvoyance. My view is that through the process of pure thinking, man can first develop a practice of how to become independent of one's physical organization in one's inner processes, how to accomplish something in pure thinking in which the body has no part. In 1911, at the Philosophers' Congress in Bologna, I explained in a very philosophical way that pure thinking is something that is carried out in man without the physical organization having any part in it. And here, in a large number of lectures, I have confirmed this from the most diverse points of view.

But then, when one knows the process by which one arrives at such pure thinking, something can be developed through what true, deeper philosophy gives, which I then presented in the most diverse ways as a method of knowledge for the higher worlds in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Secret Science”. Just as pure thinking ultimately emerges from the ordinary everyday activities of the human soul, for which no special training is needed, so, by further developing this process, one can arrive at what I have called in the above-mentioned book and in the second part of my “Occult Science” the stages of higher knowledge — that is, imagination, inspiration, intuition. What is expressed in pure thinking becomes our own simply by virtue of being born; it is inherited by us in our present stage of human development. That which, in accordance with the pattern of pure thinking, can appear as imagination, inspiration, or intuition, must likewise be cultivated in the adult, just as certain abilities are cultivated naturally in the child.

If some people find it astonishing, some paradoxical, and some even curious, what I describe as methods in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then it must be clear that when a person tries to develop an inner life within himself, he needs something other than what is available in everyday life. Therefore, other terms are needed. Anyone who penetrates the meaning of these terms without being malicious from the outset will see that the only intention of my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is to show people how to develop certain abilities that are latent, that is, dormant, in every soul: the ability to have certain images present in consciousness. The fact of the matter is that through those methods – which I will not describe again today, I have described them here very often – that through those methods, which I have described in the books mentioned, the human being makes himself capable not only of attaining such abstract concepts as are contained in pure thinking, but that he makes himself capable of presenting to his soul fully substantial, if I may use the expression, more saturated contents of consciousness, which are as full of content as otherwise only sensual impressions. What is called for here is essentially a strengthening of ordinary thinking power, and if one wishes to call it clairvoyant power, so be it. Certain exercises must be done to develop such abilities, just as certain exercises must be done by the child to develop certain abilities.

Professor Wilhelm Bruhn, who lectured on anthroposophy and related subjects in Kiel for a semester, has observed that the preparations to be made in order to arrive at such imaginative and then at an inspired knowledge are, in a certain respect, of an ethical nature, that certain ethical forces must be applied, must be trained if man is to penetrate to the knowledge of the higher worlds. And this Wilhelm Bruhn, who is an opponent of the anthroposophical world view in the strongest possible terms, emphasizes the ethical seriousness of these preparations, which is unmistakable. Bruhn alone – and I may well base myself on him here precisely because in his small work, which appeared in the collection 'Aus Natur und Geisteswelt' (From Nature and the Spiritual World), he has a kind of compendium of everything that can be said against anthroposophy – he particularly asserts that by encouraging people to develop their inner soul abilities, I am in fact leading them to initially have pictorial representations that are expressed in colors, lines or figures. This is one of the gross misunderstandings that must be corrected if Anthroposophy is not to be completely misunderstood.

In my “Theosophy” I expressly pointed out what is important here. I said: It is not important that the one who, as a spiritual researcher, seeks the way into the higher worlds, sees exactly the same thing that is described in the sensual life as yellow and red, as pointed or blunt, but rather, said: the person who has a somewhat finer perception does not simply gaze at yellow, at green, at red, but has an inner experience of the yellow, of the green, of the red. You can read about these interesting inner experiences of colors in Goethe's Theory of Colors in the chapter “Sensual-moral Effect of Colors.” When you have this experience, this particular specific experience of yellow, green, red, blue, then you know something that is purely spiritual. And you get this experience when you rise to imaginative knowledge. By soaring to imaginative knowledge, one has, as I say in my Theosophy, an experience such as one has with yellow, an experience such as one has with blue; the experience is a purely soul process. If one wants to have designations for it, then one expresses oneself in such a way that one experiences something that is illustrated by yellow, by blue, and one speaks just as little of this color yellow and blue as one speaks of a reality, as one, when one draws a triangle or a square on the blackboard, which is to depict something, confuses this triangle or square with the reality that is to be depicted.

Everything that is striven for in this anthroposophical schooling is striven for in full consciousness; nothing unconscious or subconscious prevails in it. Everything is striven for in such a way that one emulates those inner soul processes that one has acquired through mathematical schooling. In such consciousness, in such inner development of the will, one strives for that which is to lead up into the higher worlds. One simply comes to a visualization that one depicts through colors. And when one has progressed so far in a certain way that one can have a new world, a completely new world before oneself, a world that one is urged to represent by colors or by other sensualizations, then one is ripe to advance to inspired knowledge. When one develops the element of love, which is present even in ordinary life, to its highest expression as an inner soul power, then one is given the opportunity not only to have such images arising in one's consciousness, but also to be able to remove them from one's consciousness. One is not a slave to these images, nor is one a mere psychic; one is in full command of them. But just as one knows when one puts one's finger on a hot iron that one is not just dealing with the idea of the hot, but with a reality, as one can only state this through life, through the context of life, it turns out that what one experiences inwardly in this way in imaginative experience refers to an objectively spiritual reality. And if one develops the ability to love in the appropriate way, then one comes to erase these images from one's consciousness, so to speak, and then one has spiritual substance in one's pure, inner experience.

This spiritual essence, as far as it is accessible to me, I have described in my books, and at the same time I have followed the method that on the one hand, through books like my “Theosophy” and my “Secret Science”, I have described what arises from such research. And on the other hand, in such a book and in some other books, such as 'How to Know Higher Worlds', I have described exactly the path by which every human being can come to such knowledge. And I have expressly made it clear that every person can come to such realizations; but I have also made it clear that the one who handles the inner essence of pure thinking does not need schooling of the mind, but he can, when the knowledge gained by such schooling of the mind is communicated to him and he receives it without prejudice, he can receive it inwardly as a conviction, just as he receives what astronomy gives, without becoming an astronomer himself.

This, esteemed attendees, is the method for entering the spiritual world. One enters the spiritual world as into a reality, which one then knows to be a reality as that which is handed down to us by science. If we now turn back to the method of natural science, we say to ourselves: After all, we do not really apply any other method, any other inner soul activity, to the supersensible world than the one we have already applied in natural science, but adapted to things outside ourselves that can be perceived by the senses. Yes, one finally realizes that natural science has become great precisely because, I would say, the same inner training of thought was used in the first stage, which can then be applied to supersensible knowledge.

That is why I said that what interested me most about science was what emerged from it as a training in thinking. I have wrestled with such problems as those presented by Du Bois-Reymond in his “Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis” (The Limits of Natural Knowledge), where he comes to the conclusion that one can only arrive at the supersensible by going beyond science. But I have seen that one can only make such a statement as Du Bois-Reymond does here if one believes that the way in which one masters scientific facts, brings them into laws, is not already dominated by thinking, which is similar to the supersensible capacity for knowledge.

As for how the world judges such things, there are only a few hints. I must start by saying that Wilhelm Bruhn fundamentally misunderstands much of anthroposophy. He reproaches me, for example, with offering nothing more than a kind of filtered sensuality in supersensible knowledge. What I say in the passages quoted in my Theosophy and what I say in my Occult Science cannot be applied to words such as Bruhn utters. He says:

In any case, Steiner also teaches a sufficient knowledge of reality in some sensory form.

No, I have never taught that. Every such statement as Bruhn's is simply a misunderstanding of what I have always said as the most essential thing. When someone misunderstands so thoroughly, it seems understandable that he should make the strange statement: 'What I am giving as exercises to get up into the supersensible worlds is exactly the same as the spiritual exercises that Jesuit pupils have to do. Now, yet another Protestant theologian has found a similarity between what I write in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and the Jesuit spiritual exercises. But a Catholic theologian, Canon Laun, firmly rejects this and says that anyone who claims that my exercises are similar to those of the Jesuits does not know the exercises of the Jesuits.

Dear attendees! In this case, I must absolutely agree with Canon Laun, even though I do not agree with him on anything else, but what I have now explained to you in principle has truly nothing to do with the Jesuit retreats. No wonder that when something is misunderstood in the way I have indicated, people are led to believe that I am describing the content of the spiritual world as a series of cinematic images – that is how Bruhn expresses himself. Now, it is true that Whoever rises to the spiritual world, as I have described, also grasps his own spiritual soul, grasps this spiritual soul as it is as eternal. Through contemplation, he penetrates the riddles of death and immortality, for whom a scientific path to the eternal forces of that which lives in man reveals itself.

But if we consider the temporal forces that live in man between birth and death, what do we find? Well, we do not just have a consciousness of the moment. In our ordinary life, we look back to a very early point in our childhood, and we know that the human soul would be ill if one could not look back to this point in childhood in a continuous stream of memory. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that, fundamentally, we are nothing more at this moment than what we have become through our experiences, which can be brought up again through the memory stream. If one delves into one's temporal existence between birth and the present moment and reveals to oneself, not cinematically but in inner experience, the recent past of one's own self, then, if one sees through this process in the right way, it will no longer wonderful that if you now familiarize yourself with the eternal, with the immortality of the soul, which was present in all processes that preceded even our formation on earth, you can also familiarize yourself with what this eternal part of the soul has experienced. If you familiarize yourself with what the soul has experienced eternally, then you have the cosmic environment around you, just as you have your personal environment around you through ordinary memory. This supersensible ability to read is in the so-called Akashic Chronicle, that is, in what one surveys through the experiences of the soul in relation to the soul's eternal; it is nothing other than that the soul these experiences are presented and revealed, so that one's ordinary memory, which otherwise reaches back to birth – or at least to a point near birth – is expanded to cosmic vision.

That, my dear audience, people who listen to ordinary mystics cannot see through in its true essence. These ordinary mystics usually take what has been seen by others and embellish it with all kinds of nebulous things. And in this way, what I would like to call the justified rejection or even the justified caution towards everything that appears as spiritual-scientific results has also come about. Nebulous mystics have brought too much all kinds of number symbolism and the like to that which is observed just as accurately, only by applying the developed soul abilities of man, as for example in physics the rainbow or the seven-color spectrum. The true spiritual researcher, when speaking of the sevenfold human being, can only speak as one speaks of the seven-coloured rainbow, and he means nothing mysterious by it, any more than the physicist means anything mysterious when he speaks of the seven-coloured spectrum. But then come the mystics, the nebulous ones, who attach all kinds of stuff to these things; as a result, much of honest spiritual research has been discredited. And if one is forced to use the number seven or the number nine somewhere, it is resented.

You see, Bruhn, as I said, provided the compendium for the opposition. Bruhn, the Kiel professor, finds a kind of mythology in what I present and finds, affirms what he says about mythology by the fact that I have to use such numbers as 7 and 9 and the like. I find this strange in a gentleman who, for his part, admits: there is intuitive knowledge, there are intuitive truths, supersensible truths – and who now lists what he calls supersensible truths in this way, and he numbers them : 1. one's own ego, 2. the ego of others, 3. the existence of things in space, 4. events in time, 5. beauty, 6. morality, 7. the divine.

Yes, my dear audience, it does not occur to me to accuse Mr. Bruhn of some nebulous number mysticism just because he mentions seven truths. However, these truths are, I would say, very meager. And even though he admits that the content of these seven truths was attained intuitively, that is, in a way that signifies a purely inner vision, he must also admit the possibility that this path, which leads to these simple, meager truths, can perhaps be developed as a very exact path like the mathematical one, and that one can then also come to other, richer, more substantial truths. Instead, such seven truths are nailed up, and what is basically drawn from the same sources – only after these sources have first been sought in the right way – is called mythology.

In a peculiar way, one relates to what appears here as an anthroposophical worldview. Recently, a newspaper here turned to an authority so that this authority, which belongs to a neighboring university, would give an authoritative judgment on anthroposophy. Now, among the many things – and you really can't read them all – that now appear to be opposed, I just got this article and read it. I came across a passage where the author objects to my statement about supersensible facts and supersensible beings. He says that in my spiritual realm, supersensible beings move just as tables and chairs move in the physical realm! Now, ladies and gentlemen, just imagine the logic that leads to saying that tables and chairs move by themselves in physical space. I am aware of states of human life in which there is a subjective appearance of tables and chairs moving by themselves, but I do not believe that the good theologian meant to refer to such a state. Now, Bruhn also betrays himself through a similar kind of logic, but I would like to say explicitly, just so that I am not misunderstood, that the earnest way in which he approaches anthroposophy is thoroughly commendable. You have to take Bruhn seriously, so I take him seriously. But now he also says that I am clinging to the gross-sensual and that I only present the supersensible, the spiritual, as a sensual, which is why one has to object that one does not get closer to the unknown spiritual through such a method. You get just as little close to this unknown spiritual as a mountaineer – so says Bruhn – who moves away from the earth and climbs up a mountain; he may move away from what is below, but the sky is still just as far above him.

Now, my dear audience, the sky that arches above us is, as is well known, not there at all; one looks out into the infinite space of the universe. One can see from the sensualizations that these people give when they want to hit something that comes from spiritual science that their logic is in a strange way ordered. And so I would like to point out right away that it is said that in the account I give of the course of the world through supersensible knowledge, one could understand Christ in the same way as any other particularly distinguished personality, such as Socrates, Plato or Buddha. — This is simply an objective untruth compared to what I have presented in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. There I showed how everything in the pre-Christian era was directed towards the mystery of Golgotha, but how nothing in the pre-Christian era can be compared with what appears in the being of Christ Jesus. I have characterized it concretely in the course of spiritual history, and I have further shown how everything that has happened since the mystery of Golgotha is thoroughly impelled by this event. I have expressly shown that anthroposophy leads to the placing of this event of Golgotha in the center of the becoming of the earth. But this is what must be taken into account, what must not and should not be criticized by simply applying quite different, alien thoughts to the same.

And so a critic like Bruhn also finds that what I present as supersensible intuitions I actually only get through my thoughts operating in some way unknown to me, that I construct them out of thoughts without knowing, however, that what then becomes an image only proceeds in the unconscious, that thus, so to speak, the intuitions are only ideas after all. In his essay on Theosophy and Anthroposophy, Bruhn says that Schiller had already objected to Goethe's Urpflanze, saying that Goethe's image of the Urpflanze was an idea and not a vision. In my books and lectures, I have often described how Goethe defended himself against Schiller's statement, and Bruhn says that I must accept the same objection. Well, I am happy to do so! But I would like to point out that such an objection arises from the fact that the objector does not recognize how imaginative knowledge, how beholding, rises from the abstract idea to something more saturated, to something more fully substantial, and only in this way can that which is still a formal element in the abstract become a visualization of higher spiritual realities.

If one misunderstands in such a way what is expressed by the spiritual science meant here, then one can also very easily come to the conclusion that this spiritual science wants to be a substitute for religion. And then one says, as Bruhn has often said, that religion must not be something that one grasps in clear recognition, but that religion must be something irrational. Bruhn expresses it, I admit, very beautifully. He says it should be a blissful enjoyment as a closeness to God and a homesickness as a distance from God. It should not be a supersensible knowledge, but it should be a touch of the divine.

Now, the error lies in the fact that anthroposophy does not want to be a substitute for religion. Religion is formed, however, through a personal relationship with the founder of the religion. This personal relationship to the founder of the religion is irrational, just as, on a smaller scale, every relationship we have with any human being is irrational. The relationship we have with any human being is something we naturally refrain from reducing to any kind of idea, however supersensible, because we would accept any tittle-tattle from him. Thus the relationship one has to the Christ Jesus is something irrational, something that should not be conceptualized, not even in supersensible concepts, but should become a fact in the inner, fully human experience alone. On the other hand, especially for those who have knowledge of nature, there is the necessity to strive for supersensible knowledge in order to have the possibility of penetrating to the soul and spiritual as something real. Once one is familiar with supersensible knowledge, one will seek to find through this supersensible knowledge that which is most valuable to one in the world. And so many people have the urge to understand that which they have as an irrational nature, which they blissfully enjoy as being close to God, which they feel homesick for as being far from God, in terms of its historical and cosmic reality. It can be understood in a philological way; this has been achieved through external science. It can also be approached through supersensible knowledge; this has been achieved through anthroposophy. The aim is not to shake people out of their irrational relationship with religion, but to seek a path of knowledge to Christ Jesus. The human being who needs it - and many people already need it today, and more and more will need it - must, on the one hand, form his view of the world of the senses and of the spirit, and on the other hand, of that which has become religiously valuable to him, in order to then find harmony between the two.

This is what tears the soul apart if one is not able to bring one's knowledge to what has become religiously valuable to one. Anthroposophy is not intended to found a religion. Anthroposophy is neither a sect nor the founding of a religion, but rather the realization of the supersensible. And since that which has embodied itself through Christ Jesus in the Mystery of Golgotha is a supersensible being, and since the event of Golgotha itself is a process in which the supersensible lives, there must be a path from supersensible knowledge to this Mystery of Golgotha. The aim is not to create a substitute for religion, but to expand our knowledge so that we can also understand what we experience religiously. This does not make religious experience more superficial, nor does it strip religious experience of its piety. Rather, it allows us to turn our inner gaze to what is religiously valuable to us in the mystery of Golgotha through contemplation, with firm inner strength.

Dearly beloved attendees, I can only give examples of what I have to say about the nature of spiritual science, of anthroposophy, and what I have to say in its defense. But just as the points I have touched on, others could be presented here if I were able to give many lectures and did not have to content myself with one lecture. Therefore, I will now move on to what has been added in recent years to what I have previously presented here over many years as the anthroposophical worldview: the idea of social threefolding.

The fact that this social threefolding exists at all can be traced back to the fact that a number of people came to me during the sad days of the war and afterwards and wanted to know my thoughts on how social life could progress from these tragic events of the war. I was asked, people came to me, ladies and gentlemen. I mention this explicitly for the reason that it is far too little seen, because usually things are presented as if I were some kind of fanatical agitator who would forcefully bring things to people. I have never done anything else in the anthroposophical worldview, except give lectures, dear attendees. I appealed to those people who wanted to come to these lectures; they came – whether they were from the aristocracy or the proletariat, they were always equally welcome to me. And those who then became my so-called followers became so because they heard me. I did not go after anyone – I would not say such a thing if I were not compelled to do so. And if anyone presents these things as if I, as a fanatical agitator, had followed one person one time and another person another time, then it must be said that I have never followed anyone with any idea. The social threefolding is even used today to cast suspicion on that aspect of the anthroposophical world view from which it actually draws its very best roots. And here I would like to come back to Bruhn, who at least is to be taken more seriously than other critics.

Bruhn says: No matter how much he may have to fight it, something like anthroposophy has its origin in the “bankruptcy of our intellectual culture”. One has to get out of this intellectual culture, and he attributes to me that I did not strive to get out of this intellectual culture in the same way as those whom I 97 as the nebulous Theosophists, but that I had gone through Goethe and Haeckel, had struggled through German idealism, that I was “occidentally” oriented, that the roots of my view would rest in “western-Germanic culture” and in “scientific training.

I am not saying this out of immodesty – you can read it in Bruhn's small writing, and you will find that this can be important to me in the face of the various hostilities that are now coming from all sides. As a young man, I was among those who, in Austria in the 1880s, had to fight a difficult battle in defense of Germanness against the other nationalities. I edited the Viennese “Deutsche Wochenschrift” for a short time. I got to know all the difficult struggles that one had to go through, especially in Austria, if one wanted to make the German character and German abilities, which are considered valuable for humanity, part of the content of the whole of human culture.

Dear attendees, I only refer to such small episodes in a spirit of urgency: when I was once asked to speak at a Bismarck Commers in Weimar, where I was in the 1890s, I concluded with the words of our Austrian poet Robert Hamerling – one only needs to know his works to know that his Germanness could not be doubted – I concluded at the time, when I spoke in Weimar, in Germany, as an Austrian at the Bismarck Commers, with the words of Hamerling: “Germany is my fatherland, Austria is my motherland!”

Dearly beloved, in all my life I have never for a moment deviated from this view. And those who approached me in 1918 to ask me what Anthroposophy thought about how to proceed from there knew full well that my answer was rooted in German spirituality. I have – I make no boast of this, but in the face of the fierce attacks it must be said – I have given lectures from Bergen to Palermo, from Paris to Helsinki; I have given them everywhere in German. In May 1914 – please note the date – I gave a public lecture in Paris in German, based on German spirituality, not to a German colony but to the French. Every sentence had to be translated afterwards.

Now, out of the same spirit, what was then called the “threefold social order” has emerged. I would like to start by quoting something, again from an opponent, so that one can see how opponents think about the threefold order, which actually does not even belong to the most serious ones, because they overlook something, although they are nevertheless trained in thinking, as for example the Jena professor Rein. To begin with, he is preaching to the converted when he says: All ideas are sterile when the concept of humanity plays a decisive role in them. I quite agree, because the abstract, nebulous, mystical concept of humanity makes no sense. Humanity consists of people, of nations, and anyone who wants to work for humanity must, of course, move out of the national and into the general human. How one can do that, everyone who has any impartiality at all should admit that one can have a definite opinion based on one's own assumptions. And now Professor Rein goes on to say that the state cannot be overcome without further ado, because the state has already developed to such an extent among us Germans that one cannot go back to earlier conditions. Again, I agree! Yes, one can even completely agree with what Rein now cites as individual state demands. He says: The state must, first of all, be responsible for the care of art and science, morality and religion. Secondly, it must advocate the equalization and reconciliation of contradictions, the cooperation of the estates and professions, of employees and employers. All this, says Rein, must work together in the state as the three limbs work together in the human organism, of which Rein says - in a discussion of threefolding - that it is also threefold.

Now, just to make it clear how the three limbs should work together in the threefold social organism, I used the comparison with the threefold human being. It never occurred to me to speak of a “tripartite division”. Just as one cannot have the head separately from the human being, one cannot have the circulatory system separately, one cannot have the metabolic system separately, so one cannot have spiritual life, economic life and legal life separately in the social organism. Just as the blood supplies everything in the human organism, so within the state there are impulses that supply everything in all three limbs. And the opinion was that the three limbs of the social organism – spiritual life, legal life, economic life – work together in the right way when they exist in relative independence, just as the three limbs of the human organism are characterized by relative independence.

What, for example, does someone like Professor Rein want, who admits all this but then says that he must nevertheless fight the threefold order? He says, for example, that the state cannot be creative, but only regulatory and controlling. So what does he demand for spiritual life? A cultural parliament! And Professor Rein imagines this cultural parliament to consist of school chambers, state school chambers and so on; he imagines it to a certain extent as self-governing. And if I examine objectively how this cultural parliament of Professor Rein differs from what I have stated as the self-government of the spiritual member of the social organism, I find no difference other than that Professor Rein - and and this is open to discussion - wants to have the parents elected to his cultural parliament, but I would like to hand over the self-administration to those who are experts in this field, to the teachers and educators themselves. I do not want a cultural parliament, but something that arises without parliamentary chatter as a proper administrative organism made up of experts.

It is indeed strange that people like Professor Rein should fight against the threefold order. I really must ask myself why Professor Rein fights against the threefold order and describes it as dangerous to the state. Well, one may well ask why he does so. For in the same article in which he does so, he says: We Germans have every need to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. – So says Professor Rein, and then he says: Threefolding, rightly conceived, shows the way in which this can be done – namely, to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. And further: This way will be especially welcome to those who aim to eliminate the political parties, together with parliamentarism, which they repeatedly present as a corrupting institution.

I asked: What does Professor Rein want more than for threefolding to fulfill this ideal task of his? I cannot find any reason why he opposes it, since he says that, properly understood, threefolding points the way for what he wants to happen. I cannot find any other explanation than the one that emerges from a few words of Professor Rein: He says that he has explained his understanding of this threefold order in the new edition of his “Ethics”, which will be published soon. I am very interested to see when this threefold division appears in his Ethics, but I could not help speaking of this threefold division earlier, since I was asked about it earlier. And it seems to me that gentlemen like Rein are only angry because I forestalled them. I cannot help that.

Now, there is one more point I must mention: I have spoken here again today - and as I said, for 15 to 16 years - about supersensible knowledge. I have not only spoken of these supersensible insights as something that is, so to speak, shot from a pistol, but I have spoken of them in such a way that I have given precise details of the paths by which one comes to such insights. And with that, everyone is given the opportunity to verify it. Anyone who wants to go this way can come to the verification. And it is therefore quite unjustified when, today, out of the thought habits of the present — the thought habits that I have to fight against in many respects — the demand arises that what I call clairvoyant knowledge should be examined in a different way than the way I have indicated. I have said in my book “Theosophy”: For everything that I present in this book, I advocate that it be presented as a fact to me, as external sensory facts are. The one who has written them down does not want to present anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to how an experience of the external world is a fact for the eyes and ears and the ordinary mind.

Dear attendees, through such a method, the way is to be found to create a bridge from one human inner being to another. Above all, a pedagogical path is to be sought, the pedagogical path on which we base our teaching at the Freie Waldorfschule, founded by Emil Molt and led by me, the path without which a truly free spiritual life in the three-part social organism is not possible. We must seek such a path for the child too. But such a path is far removed from today's materialistic age; it is so far removed that it seeks the path to the child in a completely different way. And this has given rise to a strange psychology of the soul, which, according to many people, should also find its way into education. Because it is no longer possible to find the way to the child's soul through inner experience, the child is to be subjected to all kinds of procedures according to the methods of experimental psychology, whereby one determines what abilities the child has, for example, from the speed with which it absorbs certain words or with which it forgets words — quite externally, as if one were experimenting on an object because one can no longer do it inwardly. This examination of abilities is applied in a particular way in that area of Europe that has reached the extreme development of social materialism in social terms; this principle of examining children externally - as one examines external apparatus - is applied in a particular way in Bolshevik Russia. This has already been officially introduced there as a method of testing children's abilities – basically a terrible procedure, an indictment of the ability of the human soul to build a bridge to a person's mental abilities. And it is quite characteristic that it is precisely Bolshevism, this destructive worldview that destroys everything human, that is advancing to this pedagogical practice.

Now there are certain people who would like to apply this method to spiritual vision as well. They demand that I or one of my students should submit to such tests as one examines external apparatus. My dear audience, I have presented to humanity for decades what is created through my methods. I have indicated the methods by which it can be tested. I have shown how people who think of such tests, such as Professor Dessoir, who now even wants to form a society for such tests, approaches the anthroposophical spiritual science that I mean. I have shown in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' how he has presented objective untruth about objective untruth about anthroposophy. Well, anyone who wants to test any kind of fortune teller, card reader or sorcerer may demand such methods. I have never presented fortune telling, sorcery or such so-called soul abilities or clairvoyance, which Professor Dessoir or Professor Oesterreich or similar people speak of, who might also want to test mathematical abilities in such an external way. I can only say: anyone who demands such tests does not understand the slightest thing about what lives in anthroposophical spiritual science. And it would not occur to me to engage in what arises from a Bolshevist attitude. No, my dear audience, people may behave as German national as they like – but they shall be recognized by their fruits! If they make such demands as these, then it is not worth discussing their Germanness with them, and I will not engage in any further discussion. I have given my answer.

Now I come to something else. And there I would have to demand that the gentleman who asked the question, “What evidence can you give for your clairvoyant abilities?” First explain who “Mr. Winter” was, by whom I was supposedly converted to anthroposophy in 1900, before he acquires the right to ask me such questions. Dear attendees, the gentleman who wants to ask me questions today once spun his audience a yarn about how I was converted to anthroposophy by lectures given by a “Mr. Winter” in Berlin in 1900. He has probably read as closely as one reads when one only reads the first words of my writing about these winter lectures. In fact, I myself gave these lectures in Berlin in the winter of 1900/1901, through which I am said to have been converted. These, my winter lectures, became “Mr. Winter's” lectures in this gentleman's mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, I further demand that my Jewishness not be mentioned again and again in any insidious allusion, after I have spoken here in sufficient detail about my family tree. And I further demand that I not be slandered by saying that I worked under the tutelage of Mr. Liebknecht. What I experienced at the beginning of this century, however, is that I was thrown out of the proletarian schools where I taught because of my representation of a spiritual conception of history by the satellites of old Liebknecht; I was thrown out of the workers' training schools because I never bought into [the materialist conception of history] and the like.

And I demand that the claim of any kind of suggestive influence or even of post-hypnotic suggestion, as it has been raised by this side, be retracted. And I further demand that the first thing to be done is to clarify what has been stated by this side about my relationship with the late Chief of Staff, Field Marshal von Moltke. My dear audience, I have no need to entertain you this evening with these matters, but I do want to say something about some of the things that have been said here. I have, as I have already said this evening, never followed anyone. I never appeared at Mr. von Moltke's house without having been invited, without having been requested to do so; and so I have been a guest at Mr. von Moltke's house almost every week since 1904. I have learned to respect Mr. von Moltke, I have learned to respect him so much that I may describe him as one of the noblest of men; I want to leave no doubt about that. I have never been to his house without having been invited. Before the outbreak of the war, I never had a conversation with Mr. von Moltke about anything military or political. Whatever was discussed arose from Mr. von Moltke's need to get to know spiritual science. That was his personal matter; I accommodated him.

I was asked to come to Berlin in the first few days of August, as I was not in Berlin when the war broke out. I refused, in anticipation of what might come from a malicious source about these things. For only once, on August 27 [correctly: 26] of 1914, was I in Koblenz, but not at headquarters, but with a family of friends. Herr von Moltke visited me there for half an hour. My dear attendees, there was truly no reason to talk about war at the time. We were in the midst of the triumphal march; it was still relatively far to the Battle of the Marne. Not a word was spoken about military or political matters during that half-hour conversation that Herr von Moltke had with me back then, certainly not at a time when he could have missed something, because the triumphal march continued even afterwards. I did not see Herr von Moltke again until October, long after the Battle of the Marne. There is no way to place anything I discussed with Herr von Moltke before his dismissal in a political or military context. But what was said between Mr. von Moltke and me is one of those personal matters that no one should allow another to prohibit; and it would be sad if we had come to a point where snooping into such matters were considered justified today. From this, the objective untruth arose that some kind of theosophical events in Luxembourg had a paralyzing effect on Mr. von Moltke's health. Mrs. von Moltke herself has now stated that this is an objective untruth. None of this really concerns me; I have no business to speak about it.

Other untrue things have come to light in connection with the threefold social order. And it will be considered justified that, after I have been personally insulted in this way – I do not usually need the word personally – after I have been personally insulted in this way, I would not find it dignified to enter into a discussion with these people before these things are not taken back – despite the fact that I am open to any other discussion.

That is why I sent a registered letter that arrived a few days ago, with “General von Gleich” as the sender, back unopened by return of post. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how individuals would behave in such a case; I know how I behave. General von Gleich then wrote an open postcard – which of course I could not return because it was put in the letterbox – in which he repeated what he had said in his letter and in which he expressly confirmed that he had received the letter I had returned. Well, my dear attendees, with my understanding of the mutual relationship between people, I cannot understand such intrusiveness.

My dear attendees, it has been said at this time, and even in a well-known German weekly magazine, that the former minister Simons is supposed to be my student, that he was inspired by me for all the horrible things he did in London. Now, it seems to me necessary to look at this matter a little more closely. Some time ago I came across an interview with a French journalist. This French journalist said that he had just had an interview with Minister Simons. Minister Simons had spoken to him about the threefold order and said that he found something agreeable in it, just as he did in the views of the Italian minister Giolitti. It seemed to me that there was something fishy about it – I had never got to know Minister Simons very well before – and for me there was only one thing, and I said it in front of many people at the time, even in public meetings, long before the accusations against Simons started here. I said that a German minister would be more likely to know about the threefold order than a French journalist. You see, perhaps out of a prejudice that comes from national backgrounds, I had more sympathy for a German minister than for a French journalist. Then, however, I was urged to talk to Mr. Simons, and lo and behold, Mr. Simons told me that he had not known about the threefold order, that the French journalist had only just told him about it. Well, then I saw Mr. Simons again when he spoke here in Stuttgart about the politics of the time. He wanted to see the Waldorf School. How this visit went has been presented here in a public announcement.

No one who is familiar with what happened at the time will be able to deny that I did anything other than be courteous to the German Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs. Politeness, especially in such a case, does not seem to me to be particularly punishable. And anyone who claims that a different relationship existed is claiming an objective untruth. In this case, however, I am not surprised at this objective untruth. For when this public notice was posted, a letter was produced that was said to have been written in Cologne and which stated that I had boasted in Cologne that I had spoken to Minister Simons here in Stuttgart about the threefold order before his London mission. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have not been to Cologne for many years, and I have not been to Cologne at all recently.

Bruno Roos: Here is the letter!

That may be. The letter can only be a forgery! And that is no wonder, because a lot of work has been done here with forged letters. I don't care what the letter says. The truth is that there was never any relationship between me and Minister Simons other than the one I have described here, and that I have not been to Cologne at all in the last few years, I don't think I've been there for four or five years. So it is a lie that I could have said anything in Cologne. Someone may read or show you a letter – if it says what appeared in the newspaper, then the content of the letter is a blatant forgery. There is no need to engage with people who use such letters to wage a fight.

Dear attendees, many other things have been brought up recently. It is late, and I will only be able to address a few of them. The aim of all these opposing arguments is to distort the essence of threefolding and to present it as questionable by slandering me. For example, there is repeated mention of certain changes that I am supposed to have undergone in my world view. Now, anyone who reads what is contained in my first “Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings” about my engagement with Haeckel will see that I was not a blind admirer of Haeckel in my entire life, but that I did struggle with it in the nineties, trying to come to terms with the things said, even in the details, by such a brilliant naturalist as Haeckel. At that time, it was around the time when Haeckel's “Welträtsel” had not yet been published, but his Altenburg speech on “Monism as a bond between religion and science” had been published. At that time, I gave a speech against this monism at the Vienna Scientific Club about my spiritual monism. And at that time I wrote an essay on ethical questions in the “Zukunft”, and it was Haeckel who approached me at that time, at the beginning of the nineties. I answered his letter and later sent him a copy of the lecture I gave on spiritual monism. Then Haeckel developed the material that became his one-sided book 'The World Riddles'. This led to a fierce battle against Haeckel, especially on the part of philosophers. And I still admit today: the one who was the greater at that time, on whose side the principal right was, was not Haeckel's opponents, it was Haeckel. And I stood up for the one who was relatively more in the right. And from this point of view one must understand what I have often said. Anyone who wants to do spiritual scientific research must be able to immerse himself in everything. This must not be just a phrase; one must also be able to immerse oneself in foreign worldviews. That was always my endeavor: to be able to be objective about foreign worldviews. This may have justified the view of those who from the outset held malicious opinions that I somehow stood in the position myself, in which I found myself; no one who cannot find themselves in foreign points of view can come to spiritual-scientific views. This reproach regarding “changes” is settled by what I presented in an issue of Das Reich, where I showed how what I represent as spiritual science grows out of my original epistemological views in a completely consistent way.

However, I only want to point out these things. It has even been claimed – and this shows how everything is dug up today that can somehow lead to the disparagement of the bearer of the threefold idea – that I was connected with an occult society that practices some evil practices. Dearly beloved, whatever I have advocated, internally or externally, is contained in what I have said in my “Theosophy”: the person who has written it down - and I must say, who has spoken it - does not want to represent anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to which an experience of the external world is a fact for the eye and ear and the ordinary mind. The fact that a gentleman, who later in Berlin even became the director of a larger theater, once introduced me to a person as being in need of support does not change that, and that person then received support from me for years through a kind of, I would like to say foolish, good-naturedness. No other relationship than that I supported this person, who would otherwise have had nothing to eat, has led to the assertion that worthless things, which were spoken and agreed between me and this person, have led to the assertion that I had some kind of occult relationship with this person or with an order he represented. I never had a single spiritual scientific conversation with this personality, not least because this personality understood nothing of spiritual science. And when the brazen claim is now made that I received something of the content of my spiritual science from that side, it means that one has understood nothing of what courses through my writings and my speeches.

When such things are stated, one need not be surprised if the claim has also been made that the un-German, the un-national nature of anthroposophy has been revealed in its position on the Upper Silesian question. No one who has sought advice from us in any way has been given any advice other than that those who stand in our ranks should vote for Germany when it comes to the vote. No one was ever given any other advice. What was said in addition to this was, however, that one should not only bring about this vote, but that one should bring about such a relationship for Upper Silesia as an integral country, so that it would be united internally with the German spirit. The idea was not just to call for a plebiscite, but at the same time to introduce a nuance into the agitation that would not only result in a worthless yes-saying in the face of the terrible will of the Entente, but would also lead to something being established that would show Upper Oberschlesien as a region turns out to be, which, through its inner structure, through what it can develop in terms of German spiritual impulses precisely in these difficult struggles, can, I would say, establish its inner affiliation with Germany in the germ. That, my dear attendees, I say in response to all those variously nuanced and from all sorts of dark backgrounds emerging accusations regarding the Upper Silesian question.

This question has been used particularly as a slander because one knows how it works, even by those who then added: One does not get the impression that Steiner's mother tongue is German. - Well, my dear attendees, I have not yet shown anyone outside of this room a document that I have here right now. Those who know me are aware that I do not use such documents to boast about myself or to engage in any kind of self-aggrandizement, but I may read out a sentence here from a letter I received many years ago, immediately after the publication of my first independent work, 'The Epistemology of the Goethean Worldview':

I can only say here that your struggle to gain a firm point of view between idealism and realism is extremely interesting to me, that your booklet has revealed a meaningful life of thought to me, that so many fine and pretty remarks have spoken to me from it and that the tone and style of the whole - despite some content-related suggestions for objections - has touched me sympathetically from beginning to end.

Dear attendees, I have only ever made use of this document in my thoughts when people complained about my style. I have not yet responded to it, but I have remembered that what I have read to you was written to me from Graz on January 30, 1887 by the German poet Robert Hamerling, who probably also understands something about the German style and the German mother tongue. So when the threefold social order emerged here, it was born out of German idealism, oriented towards the West, and it is born out of the longing to present to the world what has emerged from the world forces in Goethe, Schiller, in German Romanticism, in German philosophy, as a German creation, as German power.

Dear attendees, do you think it was easy to work on an eminently German construction in the northwestern corner of Switzerland during the entire war, in a highly visible location? Do you think it was easy to be labeled a Pan-German, that is, an All-German, by the French and the English throughout the entire period? That is what happened to me: across the border I am an Alldeutsche, within Germany I am an enemy of the Alldeutsche and their like-minded people, a traitor to Germanness. Well, that is how the views face each other, just as the views of the Protestant and Catholic priests face each other. Whether I give people Jesuit or anti-Jesuit exercises, both are essentially a distortion and have nothing to do with what threefolding really wants to be. It wants to bring to independent existence that which is genuine German spiritual life. Therefore, it wants the self-administration of spiritual life. In order that man may rightly relate to man, everything that can exist among equals and that can sustain the other two members of the social organism, which must shape themselves out of their own specialized activities in self-government, must unfold in the state. The threefold social organism in Germany will certainly be a vital organism, arising out of the genuine German spiritual life, and if it is only understood, it will bear its fruits. It will work in such a way that German spiritual power will become for the whole world what it can be by its very nature. Much of this German spiritual power has now been shaken, and much of it is slandered, which wants to work precisely from the deepest German essence.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, they go to great lengths in this regard. And I would like to share the latest product of such processes with you at the end. Just a few days ago, an article appeared in the Chicago Daily News with the following content:

Chicago Daily News

The Germans have a pale pink theory about losing the war. The Battle of the Marne was lost because Moltke was studying science.

By Georg Witte. Spezial Kabel: Chicago Daily News, field service. Copyright. 1921. By the Chicago Daily News Co.

Berlin, Germany, May 4. – “Anthroposophy”, a new communist theory of the pale pink variety, is directing the fortunes of Germany according to the enemies of Foreign Secretary Simon. Yesterday they came out with the confirmation that he was only a puppet in the hands of his anthroposophical directors. The Vossische Zeitung, which has continually attacked Dr. Simon during the past week, prints the following:

"Dr. Steiner, creator of a new theory.

Recently, during a meeting of opponents of the new theory, it was confirmed that the influence of Dr. Steiner, the creator of the Theosophical theory, extended as far as Wilhelmstrasse and Dr. Simons, who, before leaving for the London conference, visited Dr. Steiner in Stuttgart and also had lunch with Director Molt, the founder of the Waldorf-Astoria School, where Anthroposophy is taught.

It has also been established that Dr. Simons is in constant touch with the exponents of the new theory, who are never refused entry to his house, even at this critical time.

Was General von Moltke a victim?

The anthroposophical theory was first widely noticed when its enemies claimed that the Battle of the Marne was lost because General Moltke, the chief of staff, neglected to go to the front because he was too absorbed in studying the new theory, which completely governed all his actions. General von Gleich, who makes this accusation, describes Anthroposophy as a “very dangerous idea, destined to have a pernicious influence on both the individual and family life, undermining the authority of the state and dissolving national unity.”

Dr. Steiner's theory, according to the Vossische Zeitung, provides for a division of national strength into three parts, with a communist system under anthroposophical auspices as the ultimate goal.

Now, you see, when someone spreads such a slander that General von Moltke lost the Battle of the Marne because of anthroposophy, and then makes a weak retraction of this claim, this does not prevent this disparagement of General von Moltke's personality from crossing the ocean to America, and that as a result of this slander, General von Moltke's good name is dragged through the mud across the sea.

I also had to mention this fact here, because I was asked by a certain party whether I had inspired a writing that was written against General von Moltke by a person close to him. Just as Hofrat Seiling once became an enemy and wrote a book full of objective untruths against me – because a book by him could not be accepted by our publishing house and was returned to him – so, basically, all of General von Gleich's hostility stems from the fact that a person close to him married someone whom he probably does not consider to be his equal. I am supposed to be responsible for this fact. Well, I can only say that the lady to whom that personality married spoke to me only once, long before the marriage; if she were introduced to me today, I would first have to get to know her again. I knew so little about this connection, and so far I have not been notified of the marriage by an announcement in the papers. I believe that in those circles where such outward appearances are highly valued, one could even argue that I know nothing about this marriage at all, because it has never been objectively indicated to me. And when the writing in question was composed, it was sent to me in Dornach. But I forgot about it. And when I was asked on the telephone about this writing - there are witnesses for it - I said: I completely forgot to read this writing. - That was just before it appeared in print. I have no connection whatsoever with this writing, and I am very far from infringing on anyone's freedom.

My Philosophy of Freedom, ladies and gentlemen, is meant seriously and honestly, and therefore do not count it as immodesty on my part if I - to affirm that threefolding originated in the attitude I have described to you today, I quote here the judgment of an opponent of my Philosophy of Freedom, for ultimately the idea of threefolding rests on my Philosophy of Freedom. I will read to you at the end, because time is already so short and I do not want to bother you any longer with going into all kinds of details - perhaps this will come up in the question - I will therefore read to you at the end the judgment of a fierce opponent of my “Philosophy of Freedom.” In this judgment, it says right at the beginning:

These lines are addressed exclusively to the philosopher, not to the anthroposophist Steiner. And in the main, to his by far most important book, 'Philosophy of Freedom', which the later work 'The Riddles of Philosophy' does not come close to. It goes without saying that Steiner the person is not considered here. I count myself among Steiner's most outspoken opponents and have also publicly expressed this opposition (in my writing “The Thinker”). But the form in which the polemic against Steiner often degenerates into wild agitation is more than unpleasant. And there it must be said...

— Please do not accuse me of immodesty, here it is written:

... that a man capable of a book like “The Philosophy of Freedom” could not possibly have the small and lowly character that is made out of him. In their clarity and noble calm, Steiner's philosophical and anthroposophical writings are among the most formally noble products of our new philosophical literature.

Dear attendees, in no other situation than the one in which anthroposophy and threefolding find themselves today would I somehow bother you with reading such a passage, which might seem immodest; but today it seems to me to be a duty to point out how someone can be an opponent but at the same time a decent person.

It has been said that I do not expose myself to scientific discussions. My dear audience, take the long series of my writings; they are available to the world. It is not my fault that the internal lectures are only now beginning to appear in public. They were urgently requested, but I did not have time to review them. It is not because of the slanderous intentions that they state that they have not been reviewed by me – for my sake they could always have been published for the greatest possible public after I had reviewed them – but I really have not had the time to review them, just as I really do not have the time to deal with all the possible hostile writings that have sprung up from all sides in recent times.

After today's allusions and after what a large number of you have heard in my many lectures over the past years, allow me to say: I stand for what I stand for because, from the innermost strength of my soul, I cannot stand for anything else, and because what I stand for lives in me in such a way that I must stand for it. If it is the truth, it will work its way through despite all opposition. If it is not the truth, which is, however, quite unlikely, then it will be replaced by the truth, because that which is truth will find its way through even the greatest obstacles. But anyone who believes that they can represent the truth from any side must do so. I have always stood before you from these underground bases, I stand before you today from these underground bases, and I will work from these underground bases as long as it is granted to me. No matter how many attacks are made, I will always use honorable means against honorable opponents. But what has emerged in recent times cannot claim that it can be dealt with by means of personal vilification, because it tries to attack the cause indirectly.

But I have to think in terms of standing up for this cause. I will stand up for it. That is what I must express to you today at the end of this discussion, and I have the confidence that if what I have to advocate is the truth, it will prevail because truth itself is something spiritual, something divine, and that which must triumph over all hostile powers is, after all, divine, spiritual truth.

After the previous great unrest in the hall.

Dear attendees, after this heated discussion, I would now like to answer the questions put to me in peace.

How is it possible, if, as you quite rightly noted, our thoughts are a resultant of previous impressions in the cerebral cortex, i.e. changes in a part of our body, that one can free oneself from the influence of the body with one's thoughts, as you explained at the beginning of your lecture. Do you have the ability to free your thoughts in this way?

Now, I have already spoken quite clearly about this matter; I now want to state here some more that follows from spiritual science itself for this question. We humans have in us, in a physical sense, an ascending life and also a descending life. This, I might say two-fold current of our life is usually not sufficiently taken into account. All ascending life consists in our developing growth forces and those forces that drive the absorbed nutrients to all, even the finest, organizational links in our organism. Now, alongside these processes, which are thoroughly constructive, others take place that are destructive, so that we constantly have destructive processes within us. This too is something that can only be established through spiritual science, which is not yet sufficiently known to ordinary materialistic physiology today. Now, all those phenomena that dampen our consciousness and put us into a state of partial or complete sleep are connected with the organic anabolic processes. The processes of our thoughts now go hand in hand with the catabolic processes in our organism, and all the other mental processes, such as instinctive perceptions, perceptions of drives, which actually always put us in a down-tuned state of consciousness, are connected with the organic ascending processes; the actual life of thinking is connected with the catabolic processes. This thinking life is already so in every single person that it develops independently of the organism; there must only be a process of degradation, that is, a process of dissociation in the brain, if thinking is to take hold in us.

If you consider this, my dear audience, you will say to yourself: Our organic building processes extend as far as thinking, then they recede, and thinking is precisely tied to the organic processes limiting themselves. So one becomes free of the organic processes through thinking, and one then continues this freedom by rising from thinking to higher spiritual knowledge. It is therefore absolutely the case – as is explained in more detail in my “Philosophy of Freedom” – that thinking, when it is practiced as pure thinking, is already a clairvoyant process. Even if people do not recognize it in ordinary life, we learn to know the peculiar true nature of higher knowledge precisely when we grasp ordinary thinking in terms of its essential being.

Why were you in a neutral country during the war and not in your homeland?

Dear attendees, I have had my work in Dornach. During the war, I was really, I may say it, more in Germany here than in neutral foreign countries, and I have done what could be done by me as a job, which has been recognized from various sides, during the war. And those who want to know about it, look at the events. It is not true that I did not work for the German people during this time.

Is it true that the ideas of threefolding are partly based on extrasensory knowledge and insights gained through it? And what are these extrasensory experiences and insights?

Dear attendees, I have specifically said that the idea of threefolding has loosely connected to the anthroposophical worldview because what appears in the anthroposophical worldview is a result of supersensible knowledge. For threefolding and for everything that I have presented in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, one does not need clairvoyance. Look through the entire Kernpunkte and see if at any point it appeals to anything other than common sense. Any association of clairvoyance with the threefold order is pure nonsense and malicious slander.

Anyone who follows the method according to your books “Geheimwissenschaft” and “Erkenntnisse höherer Welten” and so on, you claim that he will achieve supersensory knowledge or vision. As a master of this method, I can demand of you that you can do this. And so I ask you, tell me the feeling, not the physical one, that I have gained from you through your lecture: the feeling is, I ask you, is...

The rest cannot be read. Well, what the questioner asks on this piece of paper cannot be brought out, cannot be read.

Why does a doctrine, if it is good, have to defend itself? Good never needs to defend itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, no one would be happier than I if I did not need to defend myself in any way. And to the one who asks why the good must defend itself – if he regards what I have just presented as the good – I refer him to the address of my opponents, because what one clings to with all the fibers of one's soul must, when it is attacked, be defended.

If anthroposophy has nothing to do with Buddhism and Theosophy, then why are the Sanskrit words karma, reincarnation and so on used?

Reincarnation is not a Sanskrit word. And I use the word karma only because — and not even I always use it, those who have heard my lectures often will know this — because in an old, instinctive spiritual vision, the word “karma” was used. However, I very often replace it by saying: fate as it unfolds through successive earthly lives. I do not attach any importance to these words, but they are often used by others and by myself for the reason that our modern world view is intimately connected with our coinages and therefore one often has to go a long way for the words one has to form.

At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Steiner said that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion. Why then does anthroposophy not remain neutral?

Dear attendees, I did not say that. I said: Anthroposophy, as I represent it, has arisen from natural science; it has its sources in natural science. — I said: It is not a substitute for religion. —- And I have said: It leads from the side of knowledge to that which is irrationally as a religious experience in the human soul. — And there I can say nothing other than: Just as external philology leads to the dissection of the Bible, so does a supersensible knowledge lead to the knowledge of the spiritual that underlies world development in a religious way. I did not say that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion, I only said that it did not arise from it and that it does not want to be a substitute for religion.

Why is the neutrality of true and pure theosophy and Christianity not more sharply outlined and clearly presented?

Well, I have never lacked clarity in this respect in the various lectures I have given here, for those who are at all able to grasp the fundamentals of the anthroposophical worldview. And to anyone who demands that anthroposophy should relate to some religion in some subjective way, I can say nothing other than that, according to what I can discern, Christianity is at the center of earthly evolution , that all the other religions of antiquity are moving towards Christianity, culminating in the Mystery of Golgotha, and that everything we have in the way of civilization since then comes from the Christ impulse and is influenced by it. If someone wants a different neutrality, I cannot offer a different neutrality. It is not out of some subjective wish that I place Christianity at the center of earthly development, but out of what I believe I can support as objective knowledge.

I distinguish between what lives irrationally in man as Christianity, as a religion, and what then leads to the spiritual interpretation of the content of this religion. Anthroposophy is concerned with the latter in the sense in which I have expressed it. I will not allow myself to be influenced by the fact that non-Christians may not take kindly to my placing Christianity at the center of attention. For me, this is not a subjective fact, but an objective one. Those who disagree in any direction may be willing to go along with Anthroposophy as far as the discussion of religious questions; after that, they can leave.

But I believe I have presented the relationship between my anthroposophical worldview and the Christian religion very conscientiously in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. And in addition to all that I have said, I will only add this: When a malicious source says that I have taken something from Anglo-Indian Theosophy, the fact is that I wrote “Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” entirely on my own, before I had any relationship to Anglo-Indian Theosophy before I had read any book that had emerged from the Theosophical Society, I wrote my “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” and that I was invited to give lectures to Theosophists.

I said in the lecture: I did not follow anyone; I did not follow the Theosophists either. They came to me because they wanted to hear me. I did not tell you anything that I learned from the Theosophical Society; I said what came from me, and I will defend that in the future everywhere where people want to hear it. I will not ask what views or what kind of societies prevail among those who want to hear me, but I will take it as my right to speak whenever I am wanted in any circle.

Concluding remarks after the member's lecture

Dear friends,

On several occasions at the end of such meetings, I have had to tell you some unpleasant things, and I cannot change that because there are many things that have to be brought to the attention of the Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, I would like to share a few samples with you – I could multiply them – from the camp that rebels against everything that comes from spiritual science.

A brochure has been published that is now being distributed not in the thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands in Germany. This brochure tells a variety of stories about contemporary life and takes the opportunity to lash out at what the anthroposophical spiritual science, with all that it entails, must introduce into contemporary spiritual life, not of its own free will, but out of a recognition of necessity, speaking from the signs of the times. Now, this brochure points out what is to be done from certain quarters in order to set up large collections in Central Europe for the radical-revolutionary parties, for Bolshevism above all. And since Central Europe is very afraid of Bolshevism and Western Europe is even more afraid of it, it is always something with which one can create the right mood today by accusing someone of something along these lines. And that is why you will find the following sentence in this brochure:

We need only recall the collections that Rathenau organized at the Zoologischer Garten station and Councillor of Commerce Hermann Bamberg in his apartment at Landgrafenstraße 12 during the Kapp Putsch. We recently heard that a confidential meeting took place in southern Germany before the last communist uprising in central Germany, in which Rathenau, Rudolf Steiner, Parvus, Oscar Cohn and about 20 rabbis participated.

Furthermore, this brochure states that a widespread organization has formed that has addressed an indictment to the appropriate authorities, to the Chief Reich Prosecutor, regarding the necessity of prosecuting the former German Reich Chancellor Fehrenbach in league with his Foreign Minister Simons. And the discussion of this application of the widespread organization to the Chief Reich Prosecutor is conducted here in such a way that it is said:

The publisher Ludwig Schroeter has also filed a complaint with the public prosecutor's office regarding the latest act of high treason committed by the lawyer and former German Chancellor Fehrenbach, in league with the theosophist and follower of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, former German Foreign Minister Dr. Simons, as they laid Germany's future without reservation into the hands of the President of the United States with dog-like humility, the publisher Ludwig Schroeter has also filed a complaint with the public prosecutor's office, which we will follow.

Today, things have the content of agitation, of action, and they are not to be understood as something that can only be laughed at. Then, a little pearl is added, where it is spoken about Heise's book about Freemasonry. It says:

Karl Heise has done a very diligent job in his book “Die Entente-Freimaurerei und der Weltkrieg” (The Entente-Freemasonry and the World War), which was published in 1919 by Ernst Finckh in Basel. Heise is not a Freemason, but he is quite well informed. He is an enthusiastic admirer of the late Guido List and an ardent supporter of the traitor Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Kraljewic, whose nationality has still not been definitely established. The confusion of the ideas of these two theosophists with the political events makes Heise's book so difficult to understand that it is really only of value to those in the know who can easily separate the wheat from the chaff.

I would like to make it clear that I would not have shared this with you if I did not know that it is a very widespread organization that knows very well how it works through such things and also knows very well why it has these emblems: a wild boar that sticks out its tusks. That is on the title page, on the cover: a wild boar sticking out its tusk, next to it is written: “With God for Germany's resurrection”. The magazine is called “On Outposts”.

Now, my dear friends, I don't want you to think that these things stop at the Swiss borders. Outside, it has already come to the point that there is a reasonably organized defense organization that, as I mentioned eight days ago, brought together 1,400 participants at the Stuttgart Congress. Here, however, it is absolutely impossible to wake the sleeping people in any way. But I will leave it at that.

My dear friends! Before I begin my talk today, it will be necessary for me to say a few introductory words. We are experiencing a certain crisis in our Anthroposophical movement, which is becoming apparent in the ever-increasing opposition, especially in the character that this opposition is taking on. It is indeed something extremely unpleasant to talk about this antagonism, so I will not do so – or at least only in a very limited sense – but it is necessary, especially at the present time, that we become aware of the directions in which the individual endeavors within our anthroposophical movement have developed in the course of recent years.

I need only evoke the memory of those members of our movement who have been with us for a long time, those members who have participated above all in the older phase of our anthroposophical movement, which had a more esoteric character, which worked, I would say, more out of the spiritual substance itself. I would like to begin by evoking memories of the special way in which anthroposophy was disseminated to the public in those days. Its esoteric character has become particularly evident in recent times through the publication of the Munich cycle in 'Drei', which was intended to provide a forum for discussion of the contrast between the oriental and occidental spiritual views. The aim was to show how the Christ impulse has shaped the development of the occidental spiritual view in the world. And anyone who delves into what was discussed in that cycle – which is now publicly available – will be able to envision the particular way in which efforts were made at the time to bring Anthroposophy first to smaller circles and then to ever larger circles, but how the whole thing nevertheless bore a kind of unified character, which was dominated by a certain esoteric core. The fact that in recent years the anthroposophical movement in general has taken on a somewhat different character did not depend, my dear friends, on those who have to lead this anthroposophical movement in an active sense. I would like to say: what has become necessary in recent years was not something we sought; it has come to us as a demand from the outside world. Through the dissemination of anthroposophical literature – which has gradually become quite extensive – a wide variety of circles, which initially did not go along with the gradual esoteric development, have become acquainted with the anthroposophical worldview and then judged this anthroposophical worldview from the points of view that were accessible to them.

In particular, I would like to draw attention to the way in which scientific and scientific-theological circles gradually began to occupy themselves more and more with the anthroposophical worldview. As a result, anthroposophy, which can certainly take on a scientific character if it wants to, was in a sense dragged into this scientific character from the outside, and it was only natural that a number of younger co-workers with a good scientific training should now take it upon themselves to impress this scientific character on the anthroposophical movement. As a result, the public work of the anthroposophical movement, as it has emerged in recent times at congresses, university courses and so on, has taken on a completely different character than it had before. And perhaps, if that sounds a bit radical, I can describe this different character by saying — this is neither a criticism nor a praise, but simply something I want to state: When I look at some older members of the anthroposophical movement, I see that they say: We have found our way into the esoteric anthroposophical movement through the cognitive and religious needs of our hearts, insofar as it has lived out its spiritual substance; we have absorbed the character of this esotericism, even if it is, of course, in the way as it had to be lived in the public lectures of the earlier days of our anthroposophical movement, but now we hear a scientific keynote where anthroposophy is represented, which in a certain way also gradually and logically builds up the anthroposophical from the most elementary, as one is accustomed to in external science.

And so many such members would like to say: This is something that does not really interest us; in part we take it for granted, in part it only slows us down; we come much more quickly on the inner path of spiritual understanding to the insights that anthroposophy can give than if they are built up piece by piece through all sorts of thoughts and logical constructs that we don't need at all, that actually seem extremely superfluous to us and do not interest us. Why, my dear friends, should we not simply say these things as they exist in the feelings of many of our members? Today, I would say, we have these two currents — these two currents in the main. The fact that we have these two currents would actually be enough to satisfy everything that Anthroposophy must want from its own soul and everything that is demanded from outside, if it were not for another thing; and we must bring this other thing to our attention with a certain inner strength and a certain seriousness.

It is entirely possible, starting from the elementary discussions – for all discussions are elementary, and should be permeated by the forms of today's science – it is entirely possible, starting from these elementary discussions to establish anthroposophy scientifically on the basis of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history, sociology and so on, in order to gradually ascend to that which is inwardly esoteric. However, to do this we would need a much larger circle of active collaborators, and above all, I would say, a work that would be dedicated solely to this. For the older members will not be able to complain that the esoteric tone of the older anthroposophical movement does not emerge at least where branch meetings are held, where what was previously practised in branch meetings with a certain esoteric character is continued. If what has been introduced into smaller circles as a certain continuation of esoteric life cannot now be continued in the appropriate way, it is not because this could not happen out of the inner forces of the anthroposophical movement, but only because the members involved have not taken it seriously enough and have treated it in such a way, especially in relation to the outside world, that they themselves have made its continuation impossible for the time being or have jeopardized it. I do not want to talk about that. But the fact that the old esoteric character has been preserved in the branch meetings can be seen from each of the branch meetings that have been held here in this place. On the other hand, the completely esoteric, which is based on science, has emerged more in our public lectures.

Today, there is an abyss between the two tendencies in our movement; there is no mediation, no bridge over this abyss. And we cannot build the bridge because we simply do not have the co-workers, and because those who are co-workers lack the time to build this bridge between what the world demands of us today – a scientific basis for anthroposophy – and what must be worked out from the esoteric. This is, of course, something that should actually be added in principle, that should be sought, but for which we still lack the time and manpower today. However, it cannot be denied that it is precisely because of this abyss that our anthroposophical movement as a whole is suffering to a certain extent, both externally and internally. For one thing, we shall always have a certain section of our members who love one aspect of it but are extremely critical of the other. Those who believe that they have the scientific character of anthroposophy in the fullest sense of the word within them often disdain that which, after all, also arises from justified reasons. And the opposite is also the case, understandably, but no less damaging to the movement as a whole. Those who can more quickly arrive at the final results find the slow path, which is already given by the demands of our time, the slow, scientific path, boring and uncomfortable and unnecessary. But quite apart from that: the fact that there is an abyss between the two currents, over which there is still no bridge today, so that I myself, for example, am obliged to maintain the scientific character as far as possible in public lectures, then to delve into the esoteric in branch lectures, means that our whole movement has something that hinders it, that does not allow it to advance in the appropriate way.

For there is something unhealthy, my dear friends, when, for example, let us say, a university course or a conference is held here or there, and then people come from outside; there are - and this There is no denying that people come who initially have no idea of what is to be given to the world through anthroposophy, what is to be given to science and also to practical life through anthroposophy. They now hear there what we are presenting today at such congresses and on such college courses, and most of them will reject it. But of course there are also those – and they are the ones who really matter, even if they are still so few in number – there are also those who already feel the seriousness and scientific character of anthroposophy, who can say to themselves: this is something that needs to be examined further. The reason for this is that they are addressed in the very forms in which all kinds of worldviews are discussed in the world today. If such a person were to come into a branch meeting in which something particularly intimate and esoteric was being discussed, and they would hear something that is completely out of context and for which they lack the prerequisites, it is quite possible that they would say: “They present this to us in public, but in their actual more intimate meetings, it is clear that they are completely insane.” You see, my dear friends, that is something that is entirely within the realm of possibility – it does not depend at all on the degree to which it is already becoming reality today. It has become a reality to a high degree because we have always had members among us who lack all sense of tact in their dealings with other people, and who throw all kinds of things at them about anthroposophy that the others then do not understand. As I said, all kinds of things happen. But it does not even depend so much on the extent to which these things become reality as on the nature of the movement itself, on what is possible within it, for its prosperity, its health and its illness depend on this. It is, of course, all too easy to fall prey to all manner of prejudices when it comes to spreading anthroposophical knowledge, because people believe that this person or that could easily be convinced of this or that. Yes, you see, I would like to tell you an example of this that I have often spoken of.

When the anthroposophical movement was still working within the theosophical movement, albeit quite independently, the chairman of a branch of the Theosophical Society once came to me. He was a very important scholar, a well-known scholar in his field; it was quite early on in the anthroposophical movement within the theosophical movement. Because I was dealing with a specialist in his field, I initially tried to touch on his subject here and there, to present to him something that could lead from his field to anthroposophy. I presented to him something about plant growth, about the plant's place in the universe, and then gradually moved on to more anthroposophically substantial things. He was not at all interested in that. And the right thing to do was to draw back at the right moment and say to oneself, when this man works as a teacher at his university, he wants to lecture in the same way as the others lecture; when he is in his botanical cabinet, he wants to instruct his students in the usual way and, with regard to how he presents himself to the world as a botanist, he wants to be left in peace: this has nothing to do with Anthroposophy. On the other hand, he immediately warmed to it when one began to speak directly of the astral body, to speak directly of the etheric body. He could have his erudition on one side of his bookkeeping, and on the other that which was given to him anthroposophically-theosophically. But it did not occur to him to want to establish any connection between the one or the other, so that it was self-evident that what was given was to be left out of the effort.

Of course, this is something that has not always been taken into account in recent times. People want to bring anthroposophy into the specialized knowledge of those people who do not want it at all, who want to get it out with all their might. Of course, there is no harm in making public what the various sciences have to say about anthroposophy, or in bringing it to those who can understand it with common sense. But time and again, we encounter the prejudice that when we discuss botany, we should invite botanists; when we discuss zoology, we should invite zoologists; and when we discuss aesthetics, we should invite aesthetes. What prevails there is a certain unworldliness. It is this unworldliness that has done us so much harm, especially in recent years, and it is this unworldliness that we should overcome. One should not think that we can spread anthroposophy indirectly through specialized learning. We should be clear about the fact that specialized learning must be forced from the outside to accept the anthroposophical – it will not do so of its own accord. This is not about slackening in our zeal and saying: so things have to be done differently. It is about seeing things in a healthy way, as they are in the world.

Exactly the same things that I have said now in relation to the scientific in anthroposophy, the same applies in relation to the social and the sociological, only that there is an even stronger tendency towards unworldliness, and we have thus ended up in the unfortunate situation that is expressed today in an opposition that is not at all interested in anthroposophy. This opposition wants something quite different, and it is regarded in a completely false way in our own midst and is therefore of course underestimated, so that the belief always finds adherents that is directed against what I have actually been saying for a long time: that one should not believe that this opposition is not spreading. It will spread, it will take on ever larger forms, and it is now on the way to actually wanting to gradually make every public activity for anthroposophy within Germany impossible. We must not be under any illusion that this endeavor already exists in a very forceful way today: to prevent all public activity for anthroposophy within Germany. It is my duty to say this, especially here, because of what has been undertaken here in recent years, and because it is impossible here to harbor illusions.

And you see, my dear friends, this gives us a picture of how we must become more and more aware of the conditions of anthroposophical life, how we must not get caught up in our favorite ideas, how we must always familiarize ourselves with the demands of the time, and how we must, above all, take the most serious approach to what is to penetrate the world through the anthroposophical movement. It has gradually become our custom to start things at many points, to do this and that and to completely forget that each individual thing only makes sense if the whole anthroposophical movement is healthy and if the necessary things are really done from each individual thing to the whole of the anthroposophical movement. And that is what is missing. Above all, there is little response to what I myself have said in the various branches, again and again and for years, especially since the movement has become more externalized. What has been said has simply not been taken seriously enough.

Above all, we must adhere to the basic facts that are peculiar to the contemporary anthroposophical movement. We must hold fast to these fundamental facts. We must realize that from the middle of the 15th century until well into the 20th century – or more precisely until the end of the 19th century – human development was primarily one that, firstly, engaged the mind, the intellect, for the progress of humanity, but secondly brought it to a certain level. The intellect has been wonderfully developed in the past centuries. But just as each individual age, childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age, corresponds to a particular kind of development of soul and body that does not carry over into the next stage of life, so it is with the development of humanity in general. The age that has passed is that of the intellect, of the mind. And this development of the intellect, it should not - this is in the laws of human development - go into the further progress of this development. It is so that we are now standing before the beginning of a spiritual development of mankind. That what the intellect can achieve, it has achieved for the time being; it can only be carried into the further development of mankind as it has been trained in past centuries, as an heirloom. On the other hand, human development depends on taking into account the wave of spiritual life that is flowing from the spiritual heights into the physical-sensual world in which man lives, and to replace pure intellectual development with a spiritual kind of development.

It may well be that the human race, which has so far been civilized, says to itself: We hold fast to the old mind; we hold fast to experiment and observation and to what the mind can make of them ; we reject what individuals claim: that precisely in our time a mighty wave of spiritual life is penetrating from spiritual heights into earthly life; we want to know nothing about it, we want to continue to serve the intellect. — They cannot do this, because the intellect has passed its peak, it can only be propagated; but this propagation also means that it is going into decline. Indeed, the intellect is declining; we can already see the beginning of this decline today, and can even prove it outwardly. What is the use of closing our eyes to such things? We only have to look impartially at a single phenomenon that can shed light on the matter. Look, for example, at how young people who devoted themselves to study some forty years ago, even together with their teachers, still had something of the individual in their intellectual activity. You could approach people forty years ago – they were good intellectuals, they sought to penetrate from the intellect into the sensory and spiritual world, as well as one can penetrate with the intellect. When you met them – sometimes they were quite young people – what they said was interesting in the first five minutes; individual things came out of a human personality; you said to yourself, now I am curious to hear what he will say next, and you listened with a certain satisfaction. Today, if you approach such people, young people for all I care, and you listen to them for the first five minutes – or maybe not even that long – so you listen to them at first, it turns out that their minds are already running down, like something coming out of a machine; you are not curious about what they will say next, because you can know it in advance: the machine continues to clatter on. It is as if people have become entirely mechanical; individuality has been completely lost, even in the realm of the intellect. You can't even tell the individual people apart anymore, because everyone says the same thing, especially in certain groups.

This phenomenon allows us to study the decline of the intellect in an extraordinarily clear way – quite externally, without going into the spiritual side of it. In short, the intellect has just passed its peak; it can be inherited, but it will be subject to decline, and humanity needs the reception of that spiritual life which flows from the spiritual heights into physical life on earth. This can be rejected. But if it is rejected, precisely for those people who reject it, the possibility of human progress, human culture, human civilization, ceases, and the further development of humanity must seek other peoples, other regions. That is what must be emphasized here with all sharpness, what should also be seen or heard with all sharpness. For, my dear friends, we not only live in an age of change in earthly conditions, but this change in earthly conditions is only an expression of the change taking place in the spiritual realm, which first reveals itself in the world of the senses, but which underlies this world of the senses as a spiritual realm.

Within the world that we can survey with our senses, we have the solid-earthly, the liquid-watery, the airy-gassy; we have that which lives in the warmth of the ether, and we then have the ether region. The way humanity has become, it speaks of earth, water, air and so on in a very external sense, as the senses see it, and it is not taken into account that all these effects are based on facts that take place in the solid, earthy: spiritual elemental beings and their activity. Nowhere do we have to do merely with gold, silver, granite and so on, with what is earthly; everywhere we have to do with underlying spiritual entities. The solid earth is inhabited by spiritual elemental beings. These spiritual elemental beings have been sensed in the old instinctive clairvoyance; they have been called gnomes. One need not, for the sake of poetic license, continue this designation for my sake, for the clever humanity of the present day laughs when it is said that gnomes exist, but they do exist, just as electricity, magnetism and so on do. There are also beings in the solid, earthly world that are not visible to the external senses, but they have a mind that is essentially wiser, smarter, more cunning than the human mind. One might say that in their entire being, these elemental spirits that underlie the earthly world are active minds, active cunning, active cunning, but also active logic. No matter how clever a person is in the intellectual field, he can never become as clever as these elemental spirits of the earth, not even a quarter as strong. We must realize that the intellect, as it is in us, can only ever reach a certain degree. And these elemental spirits are effective, they are there, they are truly there in the whole of the world just as much as people are.

People have brought their minds to a certain level in the age of the last few centuries. I would say that this was a time of dryness and drought for the elemental spirits that I have just described and characterized. They saw themselves, as it were, restrained in their rule by the interaction of what human beings developed as intellect. They also held back, but since the human intellect has been in decline, since that time, this intellect of the elemental spirits has been emerging in a very noticeable way into the reality of human life as well. And if people are such functioning automatons as they are today, it is because they are actually under the influence of the clever elemental spirits of the mind, which would never actually work in the very uppermost part of the mind. But in those people whom we do not want to listen to because they always say the same thing, the activity of the intellect has slipped down a little from the brain, and in these lower parts the characterized elemental spirits immediately assert themselves. They assert themselves so strongly that unsuspecting minds have opened up in recent times, imagining something like the following. They say: 'We don't know anything about this mind, which reveals this or that about the world to us; it is nothing special; there must be much, much more in the subconscious. Much comes up from the subconscious. You can no longer talk to people at all, because what you talk to them about does not reveal what is working in them as their mind. You have to analyze them, and then what has slipped down as the mind can be brought up through the analysis. In truth, all this analyzing is nothing more than a demonstration of how powerfully the cunning, the sly elemental spirits work in all sorts of hidden corners of human beings. Many minds are unsuspecting in the face of these phenomena because they themselves are suggestively influenced by the mind that has gradually become automatic, as it works in science. This is the difficulty of communication that has a real understanding of the facts in this area, in contrast to what is still powerful in many ways today, but powerful in such a way that it is simultaneously crumbling the whole of civilization.

Just as the spirits of cunning and intellect work within the solid, earthly realm, so within the watery element those spiritual entities work that are related in their whole being to human feeling, but can live this feeling in a much more intense way. We humans place ourselves before things, we place ourselves before the blooming, fragrant rose, we are in a sense delighted, enchanted by the blooming, fragrant rose. But the beings of whom I am now speaking do not place themselves before things, but they weave and live through things, they themselves then live through in the fragrance of the rose the feeling of well-being through and through, which we only have in its external effects; they live through the liquid, they live through the warming and cooling; they live in that within which emanates on its surface what we humans have in feeling. But the more people are given over to the decay of the mind, the more everything that belongs to the human emotional life in the human organism will be exposed to these spiritual beings, which have their element in the liquid; and again, the human being will be permeated in his subconscious regions by these spiritual beings.

The breathing of humanity will be influenced more and more, deep into the organization, by those entities that are more akin to the human will and that live more in the aerial element of our earthly existence. These entities are characterized above all by the fact that they exist as a multitude, as a diversity, so that one can say: their number is incalculable. Just when you approach the host of those elemental spirits that live in the solid, earthy, when you, let us say, come to a lump of the earthly – what use is it then not to express these things as they are? It must be possible to express these things as they are, even if the world then and presents it as twisted and paradoxical – when you touch such a lump, which is full of such clever, cunning creatures, they come out from all sides. You have a very small lump in your hand, but the number of creatures inside is immeasurable; it increases before the spiritual vision, everything wells up. You can start counting what you thought was a unit: 1, 2, 3, 4 - you count, you are used to counting what you otherwise have in your external life, but now you realize: If you are supposed to count these entities, their number is such that when you count: one, two, three, while you are going from one to two, it has multiplied so much that it is no longer correct. The three is already there before you have finished counting to two. Even our mental operations are not sufficient to penetrate, in terms of numbers, into the realms we are dealing with here.

Now, you see, that is the one world that is there. Today we can do wonderful chemistry and also make what is done in chemistry anthroposophical through all kinds of intellectual skills – initially quite justified – because oxygen, hydrogen, chromium, bromine, iodine, fluorine, phosphorus, carbon and so on, they are there; potassium, calcium are there, they have certain relationships to each other, certain effects on each other. We can do all that, and that is very nice. But all that we do is based on spiritual effects, on spiritual beings and their deeds. And we have to penetrate from what we consider externally, or even externally anthroposophically, to what is there as a spiritual basis. We have to penetrate to the spiritual elemental beings, we must not reject that. We must therefore be aware that if we merely continue the culture of past centuries in a rational way, even in the branches of science, we will not make any progress. We must be aware that we will only make progress if we take into account the wave of spiritual life that wants to enter our physical world everywhere and that we must meet halfway if we as humanity do not want to decline with our culture.

As soon as we ascend into the ether, we encounter the warmth ether, the light ether, the so-called chemical ether and the life ether. When we see through these ether forms with the spiritual eye, with the eye that finds the elemental beings of which I have just spoken, then we also find the elemental beings of the ether spheres. We find the beings of light, we find the beings of number, we find the beings that make life flow through the cosmos, that carry it. We find all of this. These entities have a completely different character than the entities in the lower elemental realms. I will characterize the qualities of the upper beings and the lower beings and will do so today only with number. I said that the essential feature of the lower elemental spirits is that their number is immeasurable, that we cannot keep up with the counting. The essence of the upper beings is that they all flow into one another; the beings of light still relatively little – they have a certain individuality – but the further we come to the life ether, the more we find in the beings have the endeavor to form a unity; and we begin to be no longer able to distinguish the one being from the other being, because the one being lives in the other, wants to connect with it to form a unity. A corresponding realization, which was particularly directed towards the ether, towards the spiritual aspect of the ether, therefore came to the monotheistic concept of the spirit, which reached its peak in the Old Testament Jewish monotheism. Yahweh is essentially the summary of what the various ether elemental spirits want to make of themselves by flowing together into a unity. Today's human being is not free to merely look at what lives in outer physical culture and civilization; it is incumbent upon him to see the happenings of the universe in an intensive, more comprehensive sense.

And there you can see how - if man does not grasp the spiritual that wants to flow into physical culture and physical civilization - you can see how these entities will achieve their specific goals if man does not decide to pay attention to the seething host of intellectual, sentient and volitional beings, that is, the earth, water and air beings, to the influx of all the beings that are connected with the etheric effects. Then these beings, uninfluenced by human knowledge, will go their own ways. And we can already see today, if we have an ability to observe such things, how the elemental spirits of the lower realms, of the earthly realm, of the watery and airy realms, have more or less decided to make something different out of the earth than what is suitable for human beings. These elemental spirits have decided to gradually turn human beings more or less into automatons, to turn the earth into something essentially different from what is suitable for human beings as an earthly existence. The form of the earth that I had to describe when I had to depict world evolution in the sense in which, I might say, it lay in the intentions of the beings who lived at the starting point of world evolution, these elemental beings do not want to have this form, for all these elemental beings of the lower realms would like to develop as the host of Ahriman. And as the human intellect declines and man does not develop that which he has developed as his intellect, enlightened by spirituality, so the human intellect, during its decline, is converted by the elemental spirits — who, if I may say, at their congresses know something much more intelligent than we do at our congresses, the human intellectual achievement is converted by the elemental spirits into the Ahrimanic intellectual achievement of the earth. And those elemental spirits that live in the etheric being join the luciferic beings and also want to work on this other-becoming of the earthly. I would like to say: the lower elemental spirits would harden and permeate and interweave the earthly in a different way than it should happen in favor of man; the higher elemental spirits would give that which is permeated by the lower spirits a character that would allow it to have an effect on the cosmos. But man would merely develop further in what is being worked on, I would say as a kind of vermin of this planet, which is to come into being in this way.

The only way to escape this is if humanity decides to pay attention to the fact that a spiritual wave wants to enter our earthly development, that this spiritual wave wants to guide us to feel and see the Christ impulse in the form in which it must be felt and seen in the present. This Christ impulse is, after all, most fiercely opposed by today's theology, and it is characteristic, my dear friends, that a theologian at the University of Basel, a colleague of Nietzsche, Overbeck, as a theologian in the 1870s, was led to reflect on whether today's theology — since as a professor he also had a say in the matter — is at all Christian. And in a very ingenious book, which made a very deep, if not exactly pleasant, impression on Nietzsche, Overbeck proved: There may still be much that is Christian in people's minds today, but there is certainly nothing Christian left in theology; it has certainly become unchristian. - This is how one would summarize what Overbeck presented. People are not even aware of this. They are not aware, for instance, that in a work like Harnack's Essence of Christianity, wherever Christ or Jesus appears, the name can be crossed out and simply replaced with Yahweh or Jehovah, and the meaning does not change at all. For he particularly emphasizes this meaning when he says: It is not the Son but only the Father that belongs in this Gospel; that which is called the Son is only the teaching of the Father. —That the essence of the Gospel is the message of the Son, that is the Christian element. But Harnack no longer has that; he is no longer a Christian.

There we can already see the effect of what happens under the influence of the higher, ethereal elemental beings, who only strive for unity, but not for the unity interwoven with the Christ impulse. We must absorb this Christ impulse within us, and we can only absorb it fruitfully if we turn to the insights that can come through the spiritual wave that wants to come in, wants to come in through many gates into our present physical earth. Those whose senses are open to it can perceive everywhere how the spiritual wants to come in and how the spiritual is only now, in our time, imparting to us the true form of the Christ, the Christ impulse and the mystery of Golgotha.

All this, however, has its strongest enmity in those who, even as theologians and philosophers - albeit speaking in terms of concepts and ideas - have become materialists, crass materialists. It is of no use today to speak in the same formulaic words about the mystery of the world as one speaks about chemical, magnetic, electrical phenomena. Our culture and civilization can only advance if we penetrate from the outside inwards to the inside, if we really have the will to look at the spiritual world in the same way as at the physical. It is remarkable how people today immediately say: Yes, we want to profess belief in the unified God and the unified spirit, but leave us alone with the many spiritual beings. The one who knows the truth in this field cannot leave them alone for the reason that there are really quite a lot of them, as I showed you with the example of earthly elemental beings, of which there are so many that one is surprised to come across any at all. In its lower realm, in the one sphere, the spiritual, where today it tends towards the Ahrimanic, is present in an immeasurable number - there it is dominated by number; in the realm where it strives towards the ethereal, towards the higher, it is dominated by the striving for unity, for union. But today there is a tendency within these realms for the many to connect with the one and for the one to connect with the many. However, this connection can only take place in the sense of the right development of humanity if humanity is willing to include these spiritual realms in the field of its knowledge and insight in the same way as that which can be seen with the senses.

And now, my dear friends, I have endeavored today to present to you, I would say, a very esoteric chapter, an esoteric chapter, but one that is at the same time connected with the most important phenomena of our time, of our present time. Today we cannot merely describe in historical terms what is happening externally; today we must also point out the facts that are taking place in the next realm – in the next realm, where the lower and higher elemental beings are preparing to take possession of the earth, to snatch it from people, through the decline of the human intellect and people's resistance to spirituality. They want to snatch it from those people to whom the Christ Impulse has been given, which went out from the Mystery of Golgotha, in order to develop the Earth with it in the sense in which it is to develop further according to the intention of those spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies who stood at the beginning of this development and who have given the Earth the direction of its development from the very beginning. Humanity must find its way into this direction, into this line.

Now, my dear friends, yet another must one day come before our soul. Every time spirituality has appeared in humanity and wanted to assert itself, the enmity of the opponents of this spirituality has also appeared. And indeed, there has always been a struggle within human development around spirituality. We see today among us how a wild fight is now beginning against that which wants to spread as an anthroposophical world view, a fight from sides that fight with means that can only be overcome if the mask is torn from their face at the right time. Not to criticize, but to draw attention to what is necessary, I would like to mention a few things. You see how much is going on today in the fight against anthroposophy by certain people, who are fighting in an outrageous, brutal, inhuman way, because they are fighting and fantasizing with lies and untruthfulness, people who actually know nothing about what they are fighting against. There has always been a struggle, my dear friends.

You see, it was many years ago that I was suspected, for example, by a certain group, of being a Jesuit emissary, that everything I do gets its impulses from the Jesuits. This accusation came from certain quarters – it was many years ago. Later came the other accusation: that what I was doing came from the Freemasons and that the Jesuits would have to oppose it with all their might. And I could mention many other sides from which the fight was waged, and the feathers with which the fight was waged – I mean the pens, because birds were not, at least not very beautiful ones – were not always dipped in the purest ink. But now a fight is beginning against which the other fight, which I have just characterized, was a really noble one. Such a fight is beginning now. And about this fight, one should have no illusions, especially not that one could somehow do something with refutations and the like. Of course, one cannot say in all details that this or that should be done, but one would like to evoke an interest in things, a compassion for things.

You see, with a personality whose name has been mentioned a lot here in Stuttgart, there is still a lot of brutal opposition. I am not saying that everything comes from there, but a lot of it is connected with it. Now, another brochure has been produced here recently against this personality on the occasion of a lecture she gave. I must always ask why such things are presented to us in private? Why are they not made known to a wider public? Why are these things, which we are dealing with, not discussed in our magazines? As I said, I do not say this in a reproachful way, but only to make a note of it. If things continue to be modern, if things continue to be done in such a way that on our side what should be done is not done, while - it is not believed, I have been saying it for years - on the other side, work is being done, and will continue to be done, in the most intensive way, with all means, in all ways - if, on our side, only when or there is a fuss, it goes without saying that individuals are doing their very best, and that is commendable, but the other side is not doing anything commendable, even those who are directly involved are twiddling their thumbs in the face of the subversive activities or at most writing philosophical treatises against them, which is of no use at all.

These things must be considered by each individual. Perhaps they will be considered when, on the other hand, it is seen how truly our physical culture is endangered by world conditions today, but how behind this physical culture there is a world that must be characterized spiritually, as I have done today, and to which we must turn when we want to talk about the fate of humanity at all. For it is not true that the fate of humanity can only be characterized by what can be perceived externally. The fate of humanity is intimately connected with those spiritual beings and their deeds that stand behind the outer nature kingdoms as the elemental kingdoms, which we must also recognize if we want to recognize how the world is run. This does not only mean that we pursue theories, but that we absorb with all our being the reality of the activity of the elemental and higher spirits, of which true spiritual science proclaims to us, just as we absorb through the external food that which maintains the processes of our physical body. Only when we know ourselves in a world of spirit as well as in the world of matter will we find the possibility of gaining the right position that we must take if Anthroposophy is to fulfill its task.

If this is not taken very seriously, then perhaps it will soon be seen in this now expanded house that the great hopes that many have placed in the anthroposophical movement cannot be fulfilled. But it can be considered! We could look up — in a living, not just theoretical, inwardly moved and enthusiastic, not just comfortable way — from what is happening on the physical plane to what is taking place in the spiritual world.

This is what I wanted to develop here today before your souls. I would just like to add: It must also be taken into account, of course, that what is now happening in the form of a noisy agitation against anthroposophy is only the outward product of the untruthful agitation that has been going on for years by the personalities behind it, who are often regarded as very spiritual. Some of the things that occur in scientific circles are, through their inherent untruthfulness and lack of will to really penetrate into the matter, have contributed their fair share to the fact that those who are driven into the fight blindfolded today, act in a somewhat unruly manner and agitate against Anthroposophy. I would like to say that those who are often regarded as “masters” have contributed their fair share to what the henchmen are doing, because the scientific fight against anthroposophy has not been fought with clean weapons either.

The Goetheanum, which has been under construction in Dornach for the past ten years, no longer stands there; the building has been lost to the work of the Anthroposophical Society, and what an appalling loss it is! One need only weigh what the Goetheanum has meant to the Society to form some idea of the enormity of that loss and of the load of grief brought upon us by the catastrophic fire of last New Year's Eve.

Until 1913, when the foundation stone of the Goetheanum was laid in Dornach, the Anthroposophical Society served as the guardian of the Anthroposophical Movement wherever it had established branches. But then the Society began to feel that it needed a central building of its own. Perhaps members here will appreciate especially keenly what the Society as a whole has lost in the building that became its home, for in Stuttgart the Society has its own building. We have been privileged to carry on our activities in it for many years, and Stuttgart members therefore know from experience what it means to work in a building of their own, conceived as a suitable setting for the Anthroposophical Movement.

Up to the time when the Anthroposophical Society felt moved to establish its center in the building at Dornach, its only way of carrying on its work—except, as has been said, in Stuttgart—was in meetings. It had to rely solely on words to convey the possibility of a connection of man with the spiritual world such as has become a necessity for present day human evolution. Of course, the medium of the spoken word will always remain the most important, significant and indispensable means to that end that is available to the Movement. But additional ways opened up to us with the building of the Goetheanum. It became possible to speak to the world at large in the purely artistic forms striven for in it. While it is true that people who lack a sense for what anthroposophy has to offer through the medium of words will also evince little feeling for the artistic forms they perceive in the Goetheanum at Dornach, it is nevertheless true that people of our time tend to find it easier to approach things with their eyes than to rouse themselves to inner activity through what they hear. The Dornach building thus vastly widened the possibility of conveying the spirituality so needed by the human race today. In its visible forms and as a visible work of art, the Goetheanum spoke of the secrets of the spiritual world to an immeasurably greater number of people than had previously been able to learn of them through spoken words. Anyone with enough goodwill to look without prejudice at the building and at the anthroposophy underlying it found in the Goetheanum proof positive that anthroposophy is not tainted with sectarianism, but rather addresses itself to the great task of the age: that of taking up and embodying in every facet of our civilization and our culture the rays of a new spiritual light now available to humankind. Perhaps it was possible for an unprejudiced person to detect a sectarian note in one or another of the many meetings held in rented lecture halls. But that became impossible for people of goodwill as they looked at the Dornach building, where every trace of symbolism or allegory was studiously avoided and the anthroposophical impulse confined itself to purest art. People had to see that anthroposophy fosters something of wide human appeal, not something strange and different, that it is trying to fructify the present in a way that has universal human meaning in every realm of modern endeavor. The Goetheanum whose ruins are now so painful to behold had become in this sense a powerful means of expressing what the true nature of the Anthroposophical Movement is. We tried to carry our intention of keeping to the universally human into every least detail of the building. We strove to achieve pure art, for such a striving is profoundly part of the anthroposophical impulse. So the Goetheanum became a means of communicating the lofty concerns of the Anthroposophical Society even to people who had no interest in the Society as such.

This is the way things were for almost ten years. But a single night sufficed to end it.

To speak these two sentences in sequence is to be plunged into feelings that defy expression. Anything that could be reported of the work and worries of the past ten years falls into insignificance beside the irreparable loss of this vital means of showing what the Anthroposophical Movement is.

Now that the Goetheanum is gone, everyone who loved it and had a real sense of what it signified longs to have it rebuilt in some form or other. But the very thought of rebuilding should remind us that ten years have passed since the building was begun, and that the Anthroposophical Movement is of a nature that attracts enemies. In these grief-stricken days we have been given a further taste of what enmity means. Yet, on the other hand, the catastrophe also brought to light what hosts of true friends the Goetheanum had made for the Anthroposophical Movement. For along with messages from members, so gratefully received by me—messages in which they wrote of their grief and anguish—there were many from individuals who, though they had remained outside the Society, wanted to express their fellow-feeling in the matter of our catastrophic loss. Much warmth toward our cause came to light on that occasion.

Indeed, it was love that built the Goetheanum, and at the end, too, it stood under the sign of love. Only a boundlessly sacrificial spirit on the part of those who, when we began building in 1913, had long been devoting themselves to the movement, made the building possible. Immeasurable sacrifices were made—material, spiritual and labor sacrifices. Many friends of the Movement joined forces in Dornach and worked together in the most selfless way imaginable to bring the building into being.

Then the terrible war broke out. But even though the building tempo slowed down considerably during those harrowing years, no breach was made in the cooperative anthroposophical spirit of the members who were working together. The Dornach building site was a place where representatives of many European nations at war with one another worked and thought and carried on together in peace and loving fellowship. Perhaps it can be said, without any intention of boasting, that the love built into this building will stand out when historians come to record the waves of hatred set in motion among civilized peoples in the war-time years. While that hate was raging elsewhere, real love prevailed in Dornach and was built into the building—love that had its origin in the spirit. The name anthroposophy bears is justified: it is not mere learning like any other. The ideas it presents and the words it uses are not meant as abstract theory. Anthroposophical ideas are not shaped in the way other kinds of learning have been shaping ideas for the past three or four centuries; words are not meant as they are elsewhere. Anthroposophical ideas are vessels fashioned by love, and man's being is spiritually summoned by the spiritual world to partake of their content. Anthroposophy must bring the light of true humanness to shine out in thoughts that bear love's imprint; knowledge is only the form in which man reflects the possibility of receiving in his heart the light of the world spirit that has come to dwell there and from that heart illumine human thought. Since anthroposophy cannot really be grasped except by the power of love, it is love-engendering when human beings take it in a way true to its own nature. That is why a place where love reigned could be built in Dornach in the very midst of raging hatreds. Words expressing anthroposophical truths are not like words spoken elswhere today; rightly conceived, they are all really reverential pleas that the spirit make itself known to men.

The building erected in Dornach was built in this reverential spirit. Love was embodied in it. That same love manifested itself in renewed sacrifice during the night of the Goetheanum fire. It was spirit transformed into love that was present there.

I cannot speak at this time of the deeper, spiritual aspects of the Goetheanum fire. I can understand someone asking questions close to his heart such as, “How could a just cosmos have failed to prevent this frightful disaster?” Nor can I deny anyone the right to ask whether the catastrophe could not have been foreseen. But these questions lead into the very depths of esoterics, and it is impossible to discuss them because there is simply no place remaining to us where they can be brought up without at once being reported to people who would forge them into weapons for use against the Anthroposophical Movement. This prevents my going into the deeper spiritual facts of the case.

But what was cast in the mould of love has called forth bitter enmity. Our misfortune has unleashed a veritable hailstorm of ridicule, contempt and hatred, and the willful distortion of truth that has always characterized so large a part of our opposition is especially typical of the situation now, with enemies creeping out of every corner and spreading deliberate untruth about the tragedy itself. Our friends present at the scene of the fire did everything in their power to save what simply could not be saved. But ill-wishers have had the bad taste to say, for example, that the fire showed up the members for what they were, that they just hung about praying for the fire to stop of itself. This is merely a small sample of the contempt and ridicule we are being subjected to in connection with the fire.

I have been warning for years that we will have to reckon with a constantly growing opposition, and that it is our foremost duty to be aware of this and to be properly vigilant. It was always painful to have to hear people say that our enemies in this or that quarter seemed to be quieting down. This sort of thing is due to people's willingness to entertain illusions, unfortunately all too prevalent among us. Let us hope that the terrible misfortune we have had to face will at least have the effect of curing members of their illusions and convincing them of the need to concentrate all the forces of their hearts and minds on advancing the Anthroposophical Movement. For now that the wish to build another Goetheanum is being expressed, we need to be particularly conscious of the fact that without a strong, energetic Anthroposophical Society in the background it would be senseless to rebuild. Rebuilding makes sense only if a self-aware, strong Anthroposophical Society, thoroughly conscious of what its responsibilities are, stands behind it.

We cannot afford to forget what the bases of such a strong Anthroposophical Society are. Let us, therefore, go on, on this solemn occasion, to consider the way a strong Anthroposophical Society, aware of its responsibilities, should be conceived in the situation we are presently facing.

Until 1918, my dear friends, the Anthroposophical Society was what I might call a vessel to contain the spiritual stream believed by leading members to be vitally needed by present day humanity. Up to that time the only additional element was what grew out of the heart of anthroposophy, out of anthroposophical thinking, feeling and will. Even though the Dornach building was everything I have just described—an expression of the Anthroposophical Movement in a much broader sense than words can ever be—its every least detail came into being out of the very heart of anthroposophy.

But anthroposophy is not the concern of a separatist group; sectarianism is abhorrent to it. This means that it is capable of making whatever springs from its center fruitful for all life's various realms. During the hard times that followed upon the temporary ending of the war in Europe, friends of the Movement saw the tragic shape of things that prevailed on every hand in the life about them, and they realized how essential new impulses were in every realm of life. Much that grew out of the Anthroposophical Movement after 1919 took on a very different character than it would have had if anthroposophy had gone on shaping its efforts as it had been doing prior to that time. It is certainly true that anthroposophy is called upon to make its influence felt in every phase of life, and most certainly in those fields where friends of the Movement, motivated by anthroposophy, have sought to be fruitfully active. But external events have somehow brought it about that much that has been undertaken did not, in fact, spring directly from an anthroposophical spirit, but was instead founded and carried on alongside and unrelated to it. So we have seen a good deal happen since 1919 which, though it cannot be called unanthroposophical, has nevertheless been carried on in another sort of spirit than would have prevailed had the Anthroposophical Movement continued to pursue the course it was following up to 1918. This is a fact of the greatest importance, and I ask you not to misunderstand me when I speak about these matters as I must, in duty bound.

I am most decidedly not referring to such appropriate undertakings as Der Kommende Tag, [DER KOMMENDE TAG. A public corporation serving economic and spiritual concerns in Stuttgart. It was to demonstrate cooperation between economic and cultural institutions. Founded in 1920 and liquidated in 1925, the enterprise became a victim of inflation and other unfavorable events.] undertakings that came into being in close connection with the Anthroposophical Movement, even though they carry on their existence as separate entities. What I shall have to say does not apply to this type of enterprise. Please, therefore, do not take my words as reflecting in the least on the standing of such undertakings in the material sphere as these, for they have every intention of proceeding along lines entirely in harmony with the Anthroposophical Movement. What I am about to say refers exclusively to the Anthroposophical Society as such, to work in and for the Society.

This Anthroposophical Movement, which is partially anchored in the Anthroposophical Society, has been able to demonstrate its universally human character especially clearly here in Stuttgart, where it has proved that it did not spring from some spiritual party program or other but had its origin rather in the full breadth of human nature. Unprejudiced people probably realize that the proof of anthroposophy's universally human character is to be found here in Stuttgart in one area in particular: the pedagogy of the Waldorf School. [The first “Free Waldorf School” according to the pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner was founded at Stuttgart in 1919. At present, there are some seventy Waldorf Schools in many countries.] The proof lies in the fact that the Waldorf School is not an institution set up to teach anthroposophy, but to solve the problem of how to teach for the best development of the whole wide range of human capacities. How can education best serve human growth? Anthroposophy must show how this problem can be solved. A sect or a party would have founded a school for teaching its views, not a school based on universally human considerations.

The universally human character striven for in the Waldorf School cannot be too strongly emphasized. One can say in a case like this that a person who is a genuine anthroposophist is not in the least concerned with the name anthroposophy; he is concerned with what it is about. But it is about universally human concerns. So when it is brought to bear on a certain goal, it can function only in the most universally human sense. Every sect or party that sets out to found a school founds a sectarian school to train up, say, Seventh Day Adventists or the like. It is contrary to the nature of anthroposophy to do this. Anthroposophy can only give rise to universally human institutions; that is what comes naturally to it. People who still treat the Anthroposophical Movement as a sect despite these facts are either unobservant or malicious, for the Waldorf School here in Stuttgart offers positive proof that anthroposophy is concerned with what is universally human.

But circles within the Society should also pay close heed to this same fact. The way the Waldorf School was founded, the whole spirit of its founding, are matters for the Society's pondering. This spirit should serve as a model in any further foundings related either to the Anthroposophical Society or to the Movement. Perhaps we may say that the Goetheanum in Dornach and the Waldorf School and its procedures show how anthroposophical activity should be carried on in all the various spheres of culture.

To make sure of not being misunderstood, let me say again that I have used Der Kommende Tag as an example of something that has its own rightness because of the way it was set up, and it is therefore not among the institutions that I will be referring to in what follows. I am going to restrict my comments to what is being done or contemplated in the way of anthroposophical activity within the Anthroposophical Movement itself. I want especially to stress that the Movement has succeeded in demonstrating in the Waldorf School that it does not work in a narrowly sectarian, egotistic spirit, but rather in a spirit so universally human that the background out of which its pupils come is no longer discernible, so universally human have they grown. It is superfluous, in the case of the Waldorf School, to ask whether its origin was anthroposophy; the only question is whether children who receive their education there are being properly educated. Anthroposophy undergoes a metamorphosis into the universally human when it is put to work. But for that to be the case, for anthroposophy to be rightly creative in the various fields, it must have an area—not for its own but for its offsprings' sake—where it is energetically fostered and where its members are fully conscious of their responsibilities to the Society. Only then can anthroposophy be a suitable parent to these many offspring in the various spheres of culture and civilization. The Society must unite human beings who feel the deepest, holiest commitment to the true fostering of anthroposophy.

This is by no means easy, though many people think it is. It is a task that has certain difficult aspects. These difficulties have shown up especially strongly here in Stuttgart too since 1919. For though on the one hand the Waldorf School has thus far preserved the truly anthroposophical character I have been discussing, we have seen just in this case on the other hand how extraordinarily difficult it is to keep the right relationship between the Anthroposophical Society as the parent, and its offspring activities. This may sound paradoxical, but if I go into more detail you will perhaps understand me also in this.

The comments I am about to make are not intended to reflect in any way on the worth of the various movements that have sprung up since 1919 in connection with anthroposophy; all I have in mind is their effect on the Society, so no one should mistake my words for value judgments. I am speaking exclusively of effects on the Society. The enterprises that I shall be referring to have not always been conceived by those responsible for them with what I might call up-to-date feeling for the spirit of the commandment, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord giveth thee.’ The moving spirits in these projects have often—indeed, usually—been members of the Anthroposophical Society. The question now arises whether these members, active in fields connected with the Society, have always kept the parental source clearly in mind, competent though they undoubtedly are in their chosen fields. Is the effect of their professional activity on the Society desirable? This is a very different question than whether the persons concerned are professionally competent. Speaking radically, I would put it thus: A person can be the most excellent Waldorf School teacher imaginable, one wholly consonant with the spirit in which the Waldorf School grew out of the Anthroposophical Movement to become a universally human undertaking. He can carry on his work as a Waldorf teacher wholly in that spirit. The school can shape itself and its work in the anthroposophical spirit all the better for not being a school to teach anthroposophy. The individual Waldorf teacher may make most excellent contributions to it without necessarily doing the right thing by the Society as a member. I am not saying that this is true in any given instance, just that it could be true. Or let us say that someone can be an able officer of Der Kommende Tag, a person with the ability to make it flourish, yet prove most inadequate to the needs of the Anthroposophical Society. But the failure to give the parent entity what it needs in order to foster all its offspring properly is cause for the greatest anxiety, for really deep worry about the Anthroposophical Movement.

My dear friends, the fact that this situation prevailed in a certain field was what forced me to speak as I did about the Movement for Religious Renewal¹ in my next-to-last lecture at the Goetheanum. I most certainly do not mean to criticize the Movement for Religious Renewal in the slightest, for it was brought into being three and a half months ago with my own cooperation and advice. It would be the most natural thing in the world for me to be profoundly delighted should it succeed. Surely no doubt can exist on this score. Nevertheless, after it had been in existence for three and a half months, I had to speak as I did at that time in Dornach, directing my comments not to the Movement for Religious Renewal but to the anthroposophists, including of course those attached to the Movement for Religious Renewal. What I had to say was, in so many words: Yes, rejoice in the child, but don't forget the mother and the care and concern due her. That care and concern are owed her by the Movement for Religious Renewal, too, but most particularly by the members of the Anthroposophical Society.

For what a thing it would be if the Society were to be slighted, if anthroposophists were to turn away from it to an offspring movement, not in the sense of saying that those of us who have grown together with the Anthroposophical Movement can be the best advisors and helpers of an offspring movement, but instead turning away from the Anthroposophical Movement of which they were members with the feeling that they have at last found what they were really looking for, something they could never have found in anthroposophy! Though there is every reason to be overjoyed at the parent's concern for the child, it must be clearly recognized that the child cannot prosper if the mother is neglected. If anthroposophists who join the Movement for Religious Renewal leave much to be desired as members of the Anthroposophical Society, we would face exactly the same situation as would have to be faced in the case of a Waldorf School teacher who, though a first-rate man in his field, contributed too little to the Society. But this is just the fate we have been experiencing since 1919, little as the fact has been noticed.

We have witnessed the well-intentioned founding of the Union for the Threefolding of the Social Organism. [UNION FOR THE THREEFOLDING OF THE SOCIAL ORGANISM. The Union had its seat in Stuttgart and published the weekly review, Dreigliederung des Sozialen Organismus.] This Union was largely responsible for the failure to get a hearing for the threefold commonwealth in nonanthroposophical circles. What it did do was to try to hammer the threefold impulse into the Anthroposophical Movement, which was already permeated by everything basic to it, and this in a far deeper way than could ever be matched by its quite external, exoteric expression in the threefold commonwealth. We had the sad experience of seeing that some anthroposophists who worked so zealously and intensively at this task became less valuable members of the Society than they had been.

Such has been our fate for the past four years. The situation has to be described as it really is, because it will take a strong, energetic Anthroposophical Society to justify any thought of rebuilding the Goetheanum. We must remind ourselves how significant a phenomenon it was that Stuttgart was just the place where an excellent beginning was made in a wide range of activities. But to be realistic we need to ask the following question (and I beg you not to misunderstand my speaking of these basic matters on the present solemn, sad occasion).

To avoid any misunderstanding, let us return to the example of the Waldorf School. It is of the first importance to grasp the difference between spreading anthroposophy by means of words, in books and lectures, and concerning oneself with the welfare of the Anthroposophical Society as such. Theoretically, at least, it does not require a society to spread anthroposophy by means of books and lectures; anthroposophy is spread to a great extent by just these means, without any help from the Society. But the totality of what comprises anthroposophy today cannot exist without the Anthroposophical Society to contain it. One may be a first-rate Waldorf teacher and a first-rate spreader of anthroposophy by word and pen in addition, yet hold back from any real commitment to the Society and to the kind of relationships to one's fellow men that are an outgrowth of it anthroposophy. Must it not be admitted that though we have a superb Waldorf School and a faculty that performs far more brilliantly in both the described areas than one could possibly have expected, its members have withdrawn from real concern for and a real fostering of the Society? They came to Stuttgart, have been doing superlatively well what needed doing in both the areas mentioned, but have not committed themselves to serving the Anthroposophical Society; they have failed to take part in its fostering and development.

I beg you to take these words as they are meant. We have had people working energetically and with enthusiasm on the threefold commonwealth. The more active they became in this field, the less activity they devoted to the Society. Now we face the threat of seeing the same thing happen again in the case of able people in the Movement for Religious Renewal. Again, in an especially important area, resources of strength could be withheld from the Society. This is a source of deep anxiety, particularly because of the immeasurably great loss we have just suffered. It makes it necessary for me to speak to you today in the plainest language possible.

For clarity's sake and in order somewhat more adequately to characterize the way we need to work in the Society, I would like to point out another thing that I will have to describe quite differently. In the past four years, during which the Society has seen so much happen, there has been a development with two different aspects. This double way of evolving is characteristic both of the movement I have in mind and of the Society. I am referring to the student, or youth movement.

Let us recall how it began a short while ago. At the time it called itself the Anthroposophical Union for Higher Education. [ANTHROPOSOPHICAL UNION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION publicized in 1920 the two courses on Higher Education given at the Goetheanum in the fall of 1920 and spring of 1921.] It is hard to press these things into any sharply defined form, since they are alive and growing, but we can try. What were its founders (and more especially its godfather, Roman Boos), more or less consciously aiming at? Their goal was to bring the influence of anthroposophy to bear on study in the various scientific fields, to change and reform tendencies that those individuals active in the movement felt were going in the wrong direction. The movement was conceived as affecting what went on in classrooms in the sense that young people studying in them were to introduce a new spirit. That is the way the program adopted at that time should be described.

Then, a little later on in fact, quite recently—another movement made its appearance. I don't want to call it a counter-movement, but it differed from the earlier one. It appeared when, here in Stuttgart, a number of young students came together to foster a concern for universal humanness, humanness with a spiritual-pedagogical overtone. It was not their purpose to bring the influence of anthroposophy directly into classrooms, but instead into another setting entirely: into man's innermost being, into his heart, his spirit, his whole way of feeling. There was no talk, to put it radically, of giving a different tone to words used in the classroom; the point was rather that, here and there among the young, there needed to be some individuals who experience their present youth and their growing older with a different kind of feeling in their hearts because the impulse to do so springs from their innermost being. Since they were not just students but human beings as well, and were growing older as human beings do, they would carry their humanness, conceived in the universally human spirit of anthroposophy, into the classroom also. These young students were not concerned with academic problems encountered in classrooms, but with the young human beings in them. The place was the same in both instances, but the problems were different.

But the Anthroposophical Society can do its work properly only if it is broad-minded enough to be able to find its way to the innermost being of everyone who turns to it for help in his searching and his striving.

Among the various exercises to be found in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, you will discover six that are to be practiced for a certain definite period of time. One of these is the cultivation of a completely unprejudiced state of mind. Indeed, dear friends, the Anthroposophical Society as a whole needs to cultivate these six virtues, and it is essential that it strive to acquire them. It must be so broadminded that it reaches the humanness of those who turn to it, and so strong that it can meet their needs. One of the problems of the Society showed up in the fact that when I came here a short while ago and found the young people in the picture, the Society had completely withdrawn from them, making a patching up of relationships necessary.

I am speaking a bit radically, but that may help to make my meaning clearer. I wanted, in this example, to show how important it is for the Society to be able to meet life's challenges.

Now let us turn our attention to another matter. For quite some time past, able members of the Society have been at work in the most varied branches of scientific endeavor. I am truly speaking with the greatest inner and outer restraint when I say that we have absolutely top-notch scientists who are not being given the appreciation they deserve from us. They have taken on the responsibility of developing the various branches of science within the Society. In the Society's beginning phase it had to approach people purely as human beings. It simply could not branch out into a whole range of different fields; it had to limit itself to speaking to people from its innermost heart, as one human being speaks to another. Its task was first to win a certain terrain for itself in the world of human hearts before going on to cultivate any other field. Then, since anthroposophy has the capacity to fructify every aspect of culture and civilization, scientists appeared as a matter of course in the Society and were active in their fields. But again, my dear friends, it is possible for a member to be a first-rate scientist and yet ignore the Society's basic needs. A scientist can apply anthroposophical insights to chemistry and physics and the like in the most admirable way and still be a poor anthroposophist. We have seen how able scientists in these very fields have withdrawn all their strength from the parent society, that they have not helped nurture the Society as such. People who, in a simple and direct way, seek anthroposophy in the Society are sometimes disturbed to hear, in the way these scientists still speak with an undertone reminiscent of the chemical or physical fields they come from, for though chemistry, physics, biology and jurisprudence are still connected by a thread with the universally human, the connection has become remote indeed. The essential thing is not to forget the parent. If the Society had not fostered pure anthroposophy in its innermost heart for one and a half decades, the scientists would have found no place in it to do their work. Anthroposophy provided them with what they needed. Now they should consider how much their help is needed in so fostering the Society that some return is made to it for what anthroposophy has contributed to their sciences.

This will perhaps help us to look more closely at what has been going on in a wide range of activities and then to admit a fact that, though it may sound trivial, is actually anything but that. Since 1919, anthroposophy has given birth to many children, but the children have been exceedingly neglectful of their mother.

Now we have to face the frightful disaster of the fire that has left us looking, broken-hearted, at the Goetheanum ruins there in Dornach. We are also confronted by an Anthroposophical Society that, though its roster of members has recently grown a great deal longer, lacks inner stability and itself therefore somewhat resembles a ruin. Of course, we can go on holding branch meetings and hearing about anthroposophy, but everything we now have can be wiped out by our enemies in no time at all if we are not more thoughtful about the problems I have laid before you today.

So my words today have had to be the words of pain and sorrow. This has been a different occasion than those previously held here. But the events I have described and everything that has gone with them force me to end this address in words of sorrow and pain as profoundly justified as my expression of gratitude to those whose hearts and hands helped build the Goetheanum and tried to help at the fire. They are as called for, these expressions of pain, as is the recognition of everything heart-warming that our members far and near have lately been demonstrating. Their purpose is not to blame or criticize anyone, but to challenge us to search our consciences, to become aware of our responsibilities. They are not intended to make people feel depressed, but rather to summon up those forces of heart and spirit that will enable us to go on as a society, as the Anthroposophical Society. We should not let ourselves turn into groups of educators, religious renewers, scientists, groups of the young, the old, the middle-aged. We must be an anthroposophical community conscious of the sources that nourish it and all its offspring. This is something of which we must be keenly aware. Though the Dornach flames have seared our very hearts, may they also steer us to the realization that we need above all else to work together anthroposophically. Let me express this wish to you today, my dear friends, for the special fields too would lose the source of their strength if they were unmindful of their parent. We will certainly have to admit that, due to the difficulties inherent in such relationships, the parent has often been forgotten by just those of her offspring who were most obviously her progeny. But despite the fearful enmity we face, we can perhaps accomplish something if we change our ways before it is too late, as it soon may be. We must realize that we are going to have to work anthroposophically in the Anthroposophical Society, and that our chief common task is to forge a connection between man and that radiant spiritual light from heavenly worlds that seeks him out at the present moment of his evolution. This is the consciousness and this the task to which, while there is still time, we need to be steeled by the Dornach fire whose flames we feel in our very hearts.

Let us bring this about, dear friends! But let me ask you to take with all due weight as well what I have had to say to you today with a sore heart. May my words call forth the strength to work, the will to work, the will to pull together in the Anthroposophical Movement especially. Nobody should take personally the statement that he has been an outstanding contributor to the work of Der Kommende Tag, the Waldorf School faculty, the Movement for Religious Renewal, and so on. May everybody—those both in and outside special fields, the old, the young, the middle-aged—be mindful of the parent society that has brought forth and nurtured them all and in which, as a member of the Society, every specialist must join forces with everybody else. Specialization has flourished far too strongly in our midst, only to decline again because the parent was not kept sufficiently in mind. May the Dornach fire kindle our will to strengthen ourselves to serve the Anthroposophical Society and to work sincerely together with clear purpose!

• 1. MOVEMENT FOR RELIGIOUS RENEWAL. The Christian Community with its center at Stuttgart. The next to last lecture at the Goetheanum on December 30, 1922, is contained in the book, Man and the World of Stars, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1963.

A week ago I commented here on the grievous event of the Goetheanum fire and other current concerns of the Anthroposophical Society. Today I planned to speak about purely anthroposophical matters, but I find it necessary to say a few introductory words about Society problems. I was able to attend at least the second part of yesterday's meeting, and saw how easy it is to misunderstand matters involving the nature of the Society such as were brought up by me last week. It is not a moment too soon to correct these misconceptions. My introductory remarks tonight will nevertheless still have to do with an anthroposophical view of life and perhaps on that account prove worthwhile to this or that listener.

I am mainly interested in going on with yesterday's discussion about judgment-forming in the Society. A challenge was issued, quite independently of anything I said, to the effect that every member should form his own independent judgments about matters affecting the Society. Now of course nothing could be truer. But we need to concern ourselves with the fact that when a challenge of this kind is presented one has to consider the whole context of what is under discussion, no matter how right the isolated statement may be in itself nor how fully I agree with it in principle. Something can be perfectly true but it may not necessarily apply in a given instance. Every truth can be presented as true in itself, but it is colored by the context in which it is brought up, and in the wrong place it can lead to the gravest misconceptions.

Now the point of view on judgment-forming was expressed in connection with my lecture of December 30th last in Dornach, in which I discussed the relationship of the Anthroposophical Society to the Movement for Religious Renewal. The comment was made that members should make their own judgments and not be influenced by mine. Of course they should! But in the form in which this advice was presented, it was and is profoundly at odds with the state of mind that comes from a real grasp of anthroposophy. For the anthroposophical world conception is not based on merely exchanging the view of things prevailing today for a different view similarly arrived at. As becomes evident in the whole posture of anthroposophy, it is not enough to think differently about all sorts of things, but—far more importantly—to think these different thoughts in a different way, to feel them with a different attitude of soul. Anthroposophy requires that thinking and feeling be utterly transformed, not just changed as to content.

Anyone inclined to test the great majority of my lectures in this respect will find that I keep strictly to what I have just expressed, and that it lies in the very nature of an anthroposophical view of the world to present things in such a way that hearers are left wholly free to form their own judgments. If you go through most of my lectures, including those on subjects such as that treated in the lecture of December 30, 1922, you will find their chief content to be simply facts, that they present facts, either those of super-sensible realms, of the world of the senses, or of history, and that their presentation is such that the reader can always draw his own conclusions about them, completely uninfluenced by me. Indeed, one of the lecture cycles held in Dornach even carries the sub-title, “Presentation of Facts on which to base Conclusions,” or the like. Since this is the case, the results are such as to remove any justification for saying that people were told what to think. For one person will draw one conclusion from my lectures, another a quite different one, and each thinks his is the right view of the matter. Each could be right from where he stands, because I never try to pre-determine the outcome, but simply to provide facts on which conclusions can be based. I thus deliberately expose myself to the danger that a series of facts I am presenting can be quite variously interpreted. For my interest is solely in communicating facts, and anybody who wants to look into the matter will find that the only time I express a judgment is when something needs to be corrected or refuted.

This has to be the case. A world view such as that based on anthroposophy must always be keenly conscious of the time context to which it belongs. We are now living in the age of consciousness soul development, a condition of soul wherein the all-important thing is for individuals to draw their own conclusions and learn to give facts an unprejudiced hearing, so that they can then make fully conscious judgments. The style of my presentations springs from an awareness that man has entered upon the development of the conscious soul. This accounts, as I said, for the varying conclusions that can be drawn from my words. I try to present the facts as clearly as possible. But there is never any question of “should” or “shouldn't.” Anthroposophy is there to communicate truth, not to propagandize. This has often been emphasized as, for example, in my refusal to take sides about vegetarianism. When I describe what effects a vegetarian diet has on people and what the effects of meat-eating are, I do so merely to present the facts, to make the truth known. In the age of the consciousness soul, anyone really acquainted with the facts of any case can confidently be left free to form his own judgments. It is essential to an anthroposophical view of things to be really clear on this point.

So, taking my style from the Anthroposophical Society rather than from the Movement for Religious Renewal, I tried in my lecture at Dornach on December 30, 1922, to show what the relationship between the two groups is. On that occasion I followed my general rule of merely presenting facts, and anyone who reads the lecture of that date will see this to be true. What action to take was a matter left to everyone's free weighing. The lecture makes this clear, and I expressed myself on the subject here a week ago as plainly as could be.

The matter of context has to be taken into consideration if one is to make really responsible assertions of an anthroposophical nature. One cannot make the remark that people should form their judgments independently of Steiner at utterances based in the strictest sense on anthroposophy. For except when Steiner is refuting or having to correct a statement, his hearers are even being forced by the way he puts things to form their own judgments; they are given no chance to adopt his.

An overall view of things anthroposophical is far better served by emphasizing this than by what some were emphasizing here yesterday, and the inappropriateness of what was said could encourage many seeds of misunderstanding. It is exceedingly important that I state this here, because it is a matter of anthroposophical principle.

There is a further matter to consider. In forming independent judgments it is not enough to be sure they are one's own. One must be equally sure, before expressing them, that one has taken all the pertinent facts into consideration. Anybody can draw his own conclusions. The point is to arrive at the correct ones when a sufficient overview of the facts of the case permits it or when facts that obviously do not apply have been discarded. I must therefore emphasize—and I bring up these introductory problems in duty bound, not because I have the least desire to do so—that what was said yesterday about all kinds of reports about the Movement for Religious Renewal having been carried to Dornach, so that my words could have been influenced and my opinions shaped thereby, is simply incorrect. The lecture in question was completely unrelated to any such reports, as fair-minded reviewers will see for themselves.

A third item was brought up in connection with my lecture, namely, that one faction was having chances to be heard while the other had none. If I am not mistaken, the Waldorf School faculty was named as a case in point, because I meet regularly with it. The truth is, however, that the matter had never even been discussed with the Waldorf faculty up to the time of giving the lecture. Here again is an example of a judgment made in ignorance of the facts. It might easily be thought that, since I meet frequently with the Waldorf faculty, there had been frequent discussions of the matter. But pedagogical matters naturally form the agenda of such meetings; anthroposophical gossip definitely has no share in them.

As I said, I stress these things in duty bound because they have to do with the nature of anthroposophical work, and we are at the point of at least trying to put that work on a healthy basis in the Society. Of course I was able, right after the founding of the Movement for Religious Renewal, to hand over to appropriate persons the task of giving the Society all the necessary information about it; I didn't have to do this myself. That was apparent to anyone who heard the closing words I spoke on the occasion of launching the Movement for Religious Renewal. It is always a terrible thing for me to be forced to break off communicating facts in order to say the kind of things that I was compelled to say yesterday. But as things are now, the whole weight of everything connected with anthroposophical activities is burdening my soul, and unless something really adequate is done to clear up just those misunderstandings that are escaping notice because they are not as crassly evident as others, our anthroposophical work cannot progress. But the work must progress; otherwise, we would obviously have to leave the situation of the Goetheanum as it is. Resuming work on it depends entirely on strengthening the Society and freeing it of misunderstandings that sap its very lifeblood.

That lifeblood is sapped when, for example, no attention is paid to the principle involved in speaking of ethics in the sense required by the Spirit of the Time for the age of the developing consciousness soul and delineated by me in the Philosophy of Freedom. At the time I wrote it, I did not exactly relish exposing myself to the reproaches certain to issue from narrow-minded quarters because of my repudiation of authoritarian ethics. But every sentence I set down was formulated in the way I am always at pains to do, taking the greatest care to leave the reader free, even in relation to the development of thought and feeling under discussion in the book mentioned. So I must point out how out of place it is to bring up the question of a lecture like that of December 30, 1922, influencing the conclusions drawn by members of the Anthroposophical Society. There might be many other occasions where such a question could be raised. But it creates misunderstandings to raise it in connection with the lecture referred to, and to do so disregards the fact of my sacred concern to avoid influencing people's judgment by what I say on the subject of vitally important aspects of activities within the Society.

So I have again expressed my intention of formulating what I have to say in such a way that nobody's judgment can be influenced. It is therefore unnecessary to warn those who attend my lectures to preserve their freedom of judgment.

Now let me continue in the spirit of my previous comments and go on to consider how a spiritual-scientific judgment is arrived at. I am speaking now of judgments that express spiritual-scientific truths.

It can give one a strange feeling to observe how little aware people are of the seriousness with which the communication of spiritual truths is weighted. All one has to do to form and express judgments about things of the everyday world of the senses is to practice observation or logic at a given moment. Observation and logic are perfectly adequate bases for forming judgments about sense-derived and historical data. In the realm of spiritual science, however, they are not adequate. There, it is not enough to deal just once with forming a particular judgment. What is required is something quite different, something I shall call here a twofold re-casting of a judgment. This re-casting usually takes more than a short period of time; indeed, the period tends to be quite a long one. Let us say that one forms some judgment or other on the basis of methods you are familiar with from descriptions given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment and in the second part of An Outline Of Occult Science. Following these procedures, one arrives at this or that conclusion about spiritual beings or processes. At this point one is obligated to keep this conclusion to oneself and not to express it. Indeed, one is even obligated to regard it simply as a neutral fact which, for the time being, one neither accepts nor rejects. Then, perhaps even years later, one comes to the point of undertaking the first re-casting of this judgment in one's own soul life; one deepens and in many respects even transforms it. Even though the content of the judgment may remain the same after its re-casting, it will have taken on a different nuance, a nuance of inner participation, perhaps, or of the warmth one has spent on it. In any case, it will incorporate itself in the life of the soul quite differently after this first re-casting than on the previous occasion, and one will then have the feeling of having separated oneself in some way from the judgment. If it has taken a matter of years to accomplish the first re-casting, one cannot, of course, have been turning the judgment over in one's mind every minute of the time. The judgment naturally disappears into the unconscious, where it carries on a life of its own quite independently of the ego. It has to have this independent life. One must stay away from it and let it live all to itself. Thus the ego element is eliminated from the judgment, which is then turned over to an objective faculty in oneself. When one first makes an observation and draws a logical conclusion from it, the ego is invariably involved. But when—possibly after a lapse of several years—a judgment is re-cast for the first time, one has the distinct experience of its emerging from the soul's depths to confront one like any other fact of the surrounding world. All this time it was out of sight. Now one comes across it again, one re-discovers it, and it seems to be saying, “The first time you formed me imperfectly, or even incorrectly, but now I have corrected myself.”

This is the judgment the true spiritual scientist seeks, the kind that develops its own life in the human soul. It takes a lot of patience to re-cast it because, as I have said, the process of re-casting can take years, and the conscientiousness that spiritual science demands means keeping silent while letting things speak.

But now, my dear friends, after re-casting a judgment in this way and experiencing its emergence out of an objective realm, one has the strong feeling that it occupies a place somewhere in oneself despite its objective recovery. So one can still feel that, in view of the responsibility one has to let the thing speak while remaining silent oneself, one should not express this kind of judgment on a spiritual-scientific matter. One therefore waits again, and perhaps again for years, for the second re-casting. As a result, one arrives at a third form of the judgment, and one will find a significant difference between the process that went on in the period between the first forming of the judgment and its first re-casting and the process it underwent between the first and second re-casting. One notices that it was comparatively easy to recall the judgment in the first time-interval described, while in the second it is extremely difficult to summon it up again, into such soul-depths has it descended, depths into which the easy judgments gleaned from the outer world never descend. Re-cast judgments of the kind I mean sink to the deepest levels of the soul, and one finds out what a struggle it costs to recall such a re-cast judgment between its first and second re-casting. By judgment I mean here an overview of the whole area covered by the fact in cases where the facts are of a spiritual-scientific nature. When one then arrives at the third form of the judgment, one knows that the judgment has been in the realm of the thing or process under study. In the period between its first forming and first re-casting it remained within one's own being, but in the second such interval it plunged into the realm of the objective spiritual fact or being. One sees that in its third shape the thing or being itself gives back the judgment in the form of a certain outlook one now has. Only now does one feel equal to communicating this view or judgment of a spiritual-scientific fact. The communication is made only after completing this twofold re-casting and thus arriving at the certainty that one's first view of the matter has pursued a path directly to the facts of the case and returned again. Indeed, a judgment of super-sensible things that is to find valid expression must be sent to the realm where the relevant facts or beings dwell.

No one with a right approach to presentations of basic and significant spiritual-scientific facts will find this hard to understand. Of course, a person who reads lecture cycles just as he would a modern novel will not notice from the way it is presented that the all-important thing, the real proof, lies in this twofold re-casting of a judgment. He will then call such a statement a mere assertion, not a proof at all. But the only proof of spiritual facts is experience, experience conscientiously come by and based on a twofold re-casting of judgments. Spiritual things can be proved only by experiencing them. This does not hold true of understanding them, however. Anyone with a healthy mind can understand any adequate presentation. But to be adequate, it has to have supplied that healthy mind with all the pertinent data, so pertinently arranged that the very manner of the presentation convinces of the truth of a given conclusion.

It makes a strange impression to have people come and say that spiritual-scientific truths ought to be as susceptible of proof as assertions about facts observed in the sense world. A person who makes such a demand shows that he is unfamiliar with the difference between perception of things spiritual and ordinary experience on the physical or historical level. Individuals who acquaint themselves with anthroposophy will notice that the single truths it presents fit into the picture of anthroposophy as a whole, and that this whole in turn supports the further single truths they hear. These further truths then illuminate things heard in the past. An increasing familiarity with anthroposophy is thus constant growth in experiencing its truth. The truth of a mathematical statement can be discerned in a flash, but it is correspondingly lifeless. Anthroposophical truth is a living thing. Conviction cannot be arrived at in a single moment; it is alive, and goes on growing. Conviction about anthroposophy might be compared to a baby just starting out in life, uncertain at first, scarcely more than a belief. But the more one learns, the more certain one's conviction becomes. This growing-up of anthroposophical conviction is actually proof of its inner aliveness.

We see here, furthermore, that what one thinks and feels about the concerns of anthroposophy is not only different from what one thinks and feels in other areas today, but that one must think differently, feel differently, take a different approach than is usual elsewhere. This different approach or attitude is basic to an understanding of anthroposophy, and it forms the basis for an anthroposophical fructification of all the various fields of life and learning.

This fact will have to be kept particularly clearly in mind by scientists coming into the movement. They should not only make it their goal as scientists to develop a different picture of the world than that striven for by external science, but should also be aware that their chief responsibility consists in bringing an anthroposophical frame of mind and an inner aliveness to bear on the various scientific fields they enter. This would keep them from resorting to polemics against other types of science, and instead help them to proceed in the direction of developing aspects of those sciences that would remain undeveloped without anthroposophy. I must stress this in a time of crisis for our Society, a crisis due in no small measure to the way scientists have been conducting themselves in it.

I must add here that the battle over atomism that the journal Die Drei [DIE DREI: an anthroposophical journal.] has been waging can only mean the death of fruitful scientific exchange. This debate should not be carried on with resort to the same kind of thinking practiced by opponents and with a failure to see that in certain vital points their assertions are correct. The all-important thing is to realize that physics is just that field of science that has brought out facts quite ideally suited to serving as the foundation of an anthroposophical outlook, provided one takes physics just as it is, without polemics. As we have seen in the polemical debate in “Die Drei,” polemics unrelieved by an anthroposophical approach can only lead to unfruitfulness.

I had a further reason for stressing this: I want to make it fully clear as a matter of principle that everything that is done in the name of anthroposophy cannot be laid at my door! I respect people's freedom. But when harmful things happen I must be allowed to exercise my own judgment about bringing them up. Complete independence must be the rule in anthroposophical concerns, not opportunism. Least desirable of all is the comradely spirit so frequently met with in discussions about scientific questions.

Now, my dear friends, as I often point out, we have to be clear when we are presenting anthroposophy that we are now living in the age of consciousness soul development. In other words, rational and intellectual capacities have become the most outstanding aspects of man's present state of soul. Ever since the time of Anaxagoras, a philosopher of ancient Greece, we have been sifting every judgment, even those based on external observation, through our intellectuality. If you examine the rationalistic science of today, particularly mathematics, which is the most rationalistic of all, and consider the rationalistic working over of empirical data by the other sciences, you will form some idea of the actual thought-content of our time. This thought-content, to which even the youngest children are exposed in modern schools, made its appearance at a fairly definite point in human evolution. We can pinpoint it in the first third of the fifteenth century, for it was then that this intellectuality appeared on the scene in unmistakable form. In earlier times people thought more in pictures even when they were dealing with scientific subject matter, and these pictures expressed the growth forces inherent in the things they thought about. They did not think in abstractions such as come so naturally to us today.

But these abstract concepts educate our souls to the pure thinking described in my The Philosophy of Freedom. It is they that enable us to become free beings. Before people were able to think in abstractions they were not free, self-determined souls. One can develop into a free being only by keeping the inner man free of influences from outside, by developing a capacity to lay hold on moral impulses with the aid of pure thinking, as described in the The Philosophy of Freedom. Pure thoughts are not reality, they are pictures, and pictures exercise no sort of compulsion on us. They leave us free to determine our own actions.

So, on the one hand, mankind evolved to the level of abstract thinking, on the other to freedom. This has often been discussed here from several other angles.

Let us now consider how things stood with man before earthly evolution brought him to a capacity for abstract thoughts, and so to freedom. The humanity incarnated on the earth in earlier periods was incapable of abstract thinking. This was true of ancient Greece, not to mention still earlier periods. The people living in those early days thought entirely in pictures, and were therefore not as yet endowed with the inner sense of freedom that became theirs when they attained the capacity for pure (that is, abstract) thinking. Abstract thoughts leave us cold. But the moral capacity given us by abstract thought makes us intensely warm, for it represents the very peak of human dignity.

What was the situation before abstract thought with its accompaniment of freedom was conferred on man? Well, you know that when man passes through the gates of death and casts off his physical body, he still retains his etheric body for a few days thereafter and sees his whole life, all the way back to the moment of his first memory, spread out before him in mighty pictures, in an undetailed, comprehensive and harmonious panorama. This tableau of his life confronts a person for several days after he has died.

That is the way it is today, my dear friends. But in the time when people living on earth still possessed a picture consciousness, their experience immediately after death was that of a rational, logical view of the world such as human beings have today, but which those who lived in earlier times did not have in the period between birth and death.

This is a fact that proves a signal aid in understanding human nature. An experience that people of ancient as well as somewhat later periods of history had only after death, that is, a short looking back in abstract thoughts and an impulse to freedom, which then remained with them during their lives between death and rebirth, came, in the course of evolution, to be instead an experience that they had during life on earth. This constant pressing through of super-sensible experience into earthly experience is one of the great secrets of existence. The capacity for abstraction and freedom that presently extends into earthly life was something that came into an earlier humanity's possession only after death in the form of the looking back I have described; whereas nowadays, human beings living on the earth possess rationality, intellectuality and freedom, exchanging these after death for a mere picture consciousness in their reviewing of their lives. There is a constant passing over of this kind going on, with the concretely super-sensible thrusting itself into sense experience.

You can see from this example how anthroposophy obtains the facts it speaks of from observation of the spiritual, and how subjectivity has no chance to color its treatment of a fact. But once we arrive at these facts, do they not affect our feelings and work on our will impulses? Could it ever be said of anthroposophy that it is merely theory? How theoretical it would sound to say merely that modern man is ruled by freedom and abstraction! But how richly saturated with artistic feeling and religious content such a statement becomes when we realize that what gives us modern human beings freedom in our earthly experience and a capacity for abstraction is something that comes to us here on earth from the heavenly worlds we enter after death, but that makes its way to us in a direction exactly counter to the one we take to enter them! We go out through the gates of death into spiritual realms. Our freedom and capacity for abstraction come to us as a divine gift, given to the earth world by the spiritual. This imbues us with a feeling for what we are as human beings, making us warmly aware not only of the fact that we are bearers of a spiritual element, but of the source whence that element derives. We look on death with the realization that what lies beyond it was experienced by people of an earlier time in a way that has now been carried over into the modern experiencing of people here on earth.

The fact that this heavenly element, intellectuality and freedom, has been thus translated into earthly capacity makes it necessary to look up to the divine in a different way from that of earlier ages. The Mystery of Golgotha made it possible to look up in this new way. The fact that Christ came to live on earth enables him to hallow elements of heavenly origin that might otherwise tempt man to arrogance and similar attitudes. We are living in a period that calls on us to recognize that our loftiest modern capacities, the capacity for freedom and pure concepts, must be permeated by the Christ impulse. Christianity has not reached its ultimate perfection. It is great just because the various evolutionary impulses of the human race must gradually be saturated by the Christ impulse. Man must learn to think pure thoughts with Christ, to achieve freedom with Christ, because he will otherwise not have that relationship to the super-sensible world that enables him to perceive correctly what it gives him. Studying ourselves as modern human beings, we realize that the super-sensible penetrates into earthly life through the gates of death in a direction directly counter to that that we take on dying. We go one way as human beings. The world goes the opposite way. With the descent of Christ, the spiritual sun enters from spiritual heights into the earth realm, in order that the human element that has made its way from the super-sensible to the sense world come together with the cosmic element that has taken the same path, in order that man find his way to the spirit of the cosmos. He can orient himself rightly in the world only if the spirit within him finds the spirit outside him. The spirit that an older humanity found living in the world beyond death can be rightly laid hold upon by people living on the earth today only if they are irradiated by the Christ, who descended to earth from that same world whence rationality and intellectuality and freedom made their way into the experience of incarnated human beings.

So we may say that anthroposophy begins in every case at the scientific level, calls art to the enlivening of its concepts, and ends in a religious deepening. It begins with what the head can grasp, takes on all the life and color of which words are capable, and ends in warmth that suffuses and reassures the heart, so that man's soul can at all times feel itself in the spirit, its true home. We must learn, on the anthroposophical path, to start with knowledge, then to lift ourselves to the level of artistry, and to end in the warmth of religious feeling.

The present rejects this way of doing things, and that is why anthroposophy has enemies. These enemies have many strange qualities. I have been talking of such serious matters today that I don't want to end on a serious note, although these matters are a good deal more serious than is generally realized. But we should often consider what a contrast exists between the seriousness of genuine anthroposophical striving and the ideas about it entertained by a good many of our fellow men. Some of them are absolutely grotesque, though others would strike us as simply droll were it not for the fact that we have to put up a defense against them. Sometimes I also find it necessary to turn my own spotlight on the outer world, with everyone free to make of it what he will. So I am going to close today's weighty discussion with a comment that is not to be taken too weightily.

A little while ago, our friend Dr. Wachsmuth brought me in Dornach a rude pamphlet not only attacking anthroposophy, but making me and those close to me its special targets. He said at the time that he wasn't leaving the book with me because it would be insulting even to assume that I would read such a particularly crude piece of invention. I didn't see the book again. Dr. Wachsmuth took it away with him, and I gave it no further thought.

Yesterday I traveled through Freiburg, accompanied by Frau Dr. Steiner and Herr Leinhas. We stopped off for refreshments and were sitting at a restaurant table. Two men were seated at the adjoining one. One of them had a rather bulging briefcase and other such accoutrements. We took no special notice of these people, and they left shortly before we did. After their departure the waiter brought me a book, saying that one of the gentlemen had asked him to give it to me. Herr Leinhas asked who the men were, and was told that one of them was Werner von der Schulenburg. On the book's flyleaf stood the words, “With the author's compliments.”

You see, my dear friends, what can happen. Perhaps this will give you some idea what a conception of tact—not to mention other qualities—exists nowadays among those who parade their enmity.

I have found it quite impossible lately to pay much attention to my enemies. Anyone who has been following my recent activities will have seen how occupied I have been presenting new truths to add to the old. This takes time, which one cannot afford to let anyone interrupt and waste, no matter how savage the attacks become.

I have described to you today how much is involved in arriving at anthroposophical truths. If the Society becomes fully conscious of this, it will find some of the strength it needs for its current reorganization. That, my dear friends, is a vital need. Please do not take it amiss that I have harped on this theme so insistently today.

In view of the deliberations that have been going on here with reorganization of the Anthroposophical Society as their object, I would like to shape today's lecture in a way that may help my hearers form independent judgments in these decisive days. To this end I shall be speaking somewhat more briefly and aphoristically than I usually do when discussing aspects of anthroposophy, and shall confine myself to commenting on the third phase of our anthroposophical work. This evening I will speak for the same reason on the subject of the three phases of the Anthroposophical Movement.

We often hear references being made these days to the great change that came over Western spiritual life when Copernicus substituted his new picture of the heavens for the one previously held. If one were to try to state just what the nature of this change was, it might be put as follows. In earlier times man thought of the earth realm as the object of his study and the chief concern of learning, with little or no attention being paid to the heavenly bodies circling overhead.

In recent times the heavenly bodies have come to assume a great deal more importance than they used to be accorded. Indeed, the earth came to be thought of as a mere grain of dust in the universe, and man felt himself to be living on a tiny speck of an earth quite insignificant by contrast with the rest of the cosmos and its countless thousand worlds. But if you will permit me to give just a sketch of this matter for the sake of characterizing the third phase of our Anthroposophical Movement, it must be pointed out that by reducing the earth to a mere grain of dust on the one hand, man also lost the possibility on the other of arriving at valid judgments about the rest of the universe other than those based on such physical and more recent chemical concepts as may apply. Research that goes beyond this and devotes itself to a study of soul and spiritual aspects of the universe is ignored. This is, of course, quite in keeping with the whole stance of modern learning. Man loses the possibility of seeing what he calls his soul and spirit as in any way connected with what rays down to us from the starry world. You can judge from certain passages in my book, An Outline Of Occult Science, how intent anthroposophy is on creating a renewed understanding of the fact that the whole universe is suffused with soul and spirit, that human thoughts are connected with cosmic thoughts, human souls with cosmic souls, human spirits with cosmic spirits, with the creative spirituality of the universe. Anthroposophy aims at re-creating the possibility of knowing the cosmos as spirit.

In this quest anthroposophy encounters a serious obstacle on its path, an obstacle that I am going to describe without reservation.

People come forward, quite rightly proclaiming anthroposophy with great enthusiasm. But they emphasize that what they are proclaiming is a doctrine based not on their own experience but on that of a spiritual investigator. This makes for instant conflict with the way of thinking prevailing in present day civilization, which condemns anyone who advances views based on authority. Such condemnation would disappear if people only realized that the findings of spiritual research recognized by anthroposophy can be arrived at with the use of various methods suited to various ways of investigation, but that once they are obtained, these results can readily be grasped by any truly unprejudiced mentality. But findings acceptable to all truly unprejudiced mentalities can be made and still not lead to fruitful results unless those presenting anthroposophical material do so with attitudes required for anthroposophical presentations that are not always prevailing.

Let me be explicit. Let me refer to my book, The Philosophy of Freedom, published about thirty years ago, and recall my description in its pages of a special kind of thinking that is different from that generally recognized as thinking today. When thinking is mentioned—and this holds especially true in the case of those whose opinions carry greatest weight—the concept of it is one that pictures the thinking human spirit as rather passive. This human spirit devotes itself to outer observation, studying phenomena or experimenting, and then using thought to relate these observations. Thus it comes to set up laws of nature, concerning the validity and metaphysical or merely physical significance of which disputes may arise. But it makes a difference whether a person just entertains these thoughts that have come to him from observing nature, or proceeds instead to try to reach some clarity as to his own human relationship to these thoughts that he has formed at the hand of nature, thoughts that, indeed, he has only recently developed the ability to form about it. For if we go back to earlier times, say to the thirteenth or twelfth or eleventh century, we find that man's thoughts about nature were the product of a different attitude of soul. People of today conceive of thinking as just a passive noting of phenomena and of the consistency—or lack of it—with which they occur. One simply allows thoughts to emerge from the phenomena and passively occupy one's soul. In contrast to this, my Philosophy of Freedom stresses the active element in thinking, emphasizing how the will enters into it and how one can become aware of one's own inner activity in the exercise of what I have called pure thinking. In this connection I showed that all truly moral impulses have their origin in this pure thinking. I tried to point out how the will strikes into the otherwise passive realm of thought, stirring it awake and making the thinker inwardly active.

Now what kind of reader approach did the Philosophy of Freedom count on? It had to assume a special way of reading. It expected the reader as he read to undergo the sort of inner experience that, in an external sense, is really just like waking up out of sleep in the morning. The feeling one should have about it is such as to make one say, “My relation to the world in passive thoughts was, on a higher level, that of a person who lies asleep. Now I am waking up.” It is like knowing at the moment of awakening that one has been lying passively in bed, letting nature have her way with one's body. But then one begins to be inwardly active. One relates one's senses actively to what is going on in the color-filled, sounding world about one. One links one's own bodily activity to one's intentions. The reader of The Philosophy of Freedom should experience something like this waking moment of transition from passivity to activity, though of course on a higher level. He should be able to say, “Yes, I have certainly thought thoughts before. But my thinking took the form of just letting thoughts flow and carry me along. Now, little by little, I am beginning to be inwardly active in them. I am reminded of waking up in the morning and relating my sense activity to sounds and colors, and my bodily motions to my will.” Experiencing this awakening as I have described it in my book, The Riddle of Man, where I comment on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, is to develop a soul attitude completely different from that prevalent today. But the attitude of soul thus arrived at leads not merely to knowledge that must be accepted on someone else's authority but to asking oneself what the thoughts were that one used to have and what this activity is that one now launches to strike into one's formerly passive thoughts. What, one asks, is this element that has the same rousing effect on one's erstwhile thinking that one's life of soul and spirit have on one's body on awakening? (I am referring here just to the external fact of awaking.) One begins to experience thinking in a way one could not have done without coming to know it as a living, active function.

So long as one is only considering passive thoughts, thinking remains just a development going on in the body while the physical senses are occupying themselves with external objects. But when a person suffuses this passive thinking with inner activity, he lights upon another similar comparison for the thinking he formerly engaged in, and can begin to see what its passivity resembled. He comes to the realization that this passive thinking of his was exactly the same thing in the soul realm that a corpse represents in the physical. When one looks at a corpse here in the physical world, one has to recognize that it was not created as the thing one sees, that none of nature's ordinary laws can be made to account for the present material composition of this body. Such a configuration of material elements could be brought about only as a result of a living human being having dwelt in what is now a corpse. It has become mere remains, abandoned by a formerly indwelling person; it can be accounted for only by assuming the prior existence of a living human being.

An observer confronting his own passive thinking resembles someone who has never seen anything but corpses, who has never beheld a living person. Such a man would have to look upon all corpses as miraculous creations, since nothing in nature could possibly have produced them. When one suffuses one's thinking with active soul life, one realizes for the first time that thought is just a left-over and recognizes it as the remains of something that has died. Ordinary thinking is dead, a mere corpse of the soul, and one has to become aware of it as such through suffusing it with one's own soul life and getting to know this corpse of abstract thinking in its new aliveness. To understand ordinary thinking, one has to see that it is dead, a psychic corpse whose erstwhile life is to be sought in the soul's pre-earthly existence. During that phase of experience the soul lived in a bodiless state in the life-element of its thinking, and the thinking left to it in its earthly life must be regarded as the soul corpse of the living soul of pre-earthly existence.

This becomes the illuminating inner experience that one can have on projecting will into one's thinking. One has to look at thinking this way when, in accordance with mankind's present stage of evolution, one searches for the source of ethical and moral impulses in pure thinking. Then one has the experience of being lifted by pure thinking itself out of one's body and into a realm not of the earth. Then one realizes that what one possesses in this living thinking has no connection whatsoever with the physical world, but is nonetheless real. It has to do with a world that physical eyes cannot see, a world one inhabited before one descended into a body: the spiritual world. One also realizes that even the laws governing our planetary system are of a kind unrelated to the world we enter with enlivened thinking. I am deliberately putting it in an old-fashioned way and saying that one would have to go to the ends of the planetary system to reach the world where what one grasps in living thinking has its true significance. One would have to go beyond Saturn to find the world where living thoughts apply, but where we also discover the cosmic source of creativity on earth.

This is the first step we take to go out again into the universe in an age that otherwise regards itself as living on a mere speck of dust in the cosmos. It is the first advance toward a possibility of seeing what is really out there, seeing it with living thinking. One transcends the bounds of the planetary system.

If you consider the human will further as I have done in my Philosophy of Freedom, though in that book I limited the discussion entirely to the world of the senses, keeping more advanced aspects for later works because matters like these have to be gradually developed, one finds that just as one is carried beyond Saturn into the universe when the will strikes into formerly passive thinking, so one can advance on the opposite side by entering deeply into the will to the extent of becoming wholly quiescent, by becoming a pole of stillness in the motion one otherwise engenders in the world of will. Our bodies are in motion when we will. Even when that will is nothing more than a wish, bodily matter comes into movement. Willing is motion for ordinary consciousness. When a person wills, he becomes a part of the world's movement.

Now if one does the exercises described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, and thereby succeeds in opposing one's own deliberate inner quiet to this motion in which one is caught up in every act of willing, if—to put it in a picture that can be applied to all will activity—one succeeds in keeping the soul still while the body moves through space, succeeds in being active in the world while the soul remains quiet, carries on activity and at the same time quietly observes it, then thinking suffuses the will just as the will previously suffused thinking.

When this happens, one comes out on the opposite side of the world. One gets to know the will as something that can also free itself from the physical body, that can even transport one out of the realm subject to ordinary earth laws. This brings one knowledge of an especially significant fact that throws light on man's connection with the universe. One learns to say, “You harbor in your will sphere a great variety of drives, instincts and passions. But none of them belong to the world about which you learn in your experiments, restricted as they are to the earthly sense world. Nor are they to be found in corpses. They belong to a different world that merely extends into this one, a world that keeps its activity quite separate from everything that has to do with the sense world.”

I am only giving you a sketch of these matters today because I want to characterize the third phase of anthroposophy. One comes to enter the universe from its opposite side, the side given its external character by the physical moon. The moon repels rather than absorbs sunlight; it leaves sunlight just as it was by reflecting it back from its surface, and it rays back other cosmic forces in a similar way. It excludes them, for it belongs to a different world than that that gives us the capacity to see. Light enables us to see, but the moon rays back the light, refusing to absorb it. Thinking that lays hold on itself in inner activity carries us on the one side as far as Saturn; laying hold on our will leads us on the other side into the moon's activity. We learn to relate man to the cosmos. We are led out of and beyond a grain-of-dust earth. Learning elevates itself again to a concern with the cosmos, and we re-discover elements in the universe that live in us too as soul-spiritual beings. When, on the one hand, we have achieved a soul condition in which our thinking is rendered active by its suffusion with will, and, on the other hand, achieve the suffusion of our will with thinking, then we reach the boundaries of the planetary system, going out into the Saturn realm on the one side while we go out into the universe on the other side and enter the moon sphere. When our consciousness feels as much at home in the universe as it does on earth, and then experiences what goes on in the universe as familiarly as our ordinary consciousness experiences things of earth, when we live thus consciously in the universe and achieve self-awareness there, we begin to remember earlier earth lives. Our successive incarnations become a fact experienced in the cosmic memory to which we have now gained access.

It need not surprise us that we cannot remember earlier lives on earth while we are incarnated. For what we experience in the intervals between them is not earthly experience, and the effect of one life on the next takes place only as a result of man's lifting himself out of the realm of earth. How could a person recall his earlier incarnations unless he first raised his consciousness to a heavenly level?

I wanted just to sketch these things today, for they have often been discussed by me here before. What I had in mind was to indicate the regions in which, in recent years, anthroposophy has been carrying on its research. Those interested in weighing what has been going on surely recall how consistently my more recent lectures have concerned themselves with just these realms. Their purpose was gradually to clarify the process whereby one develops from an ordinary consciousness to a higher one. Though I have always said that ordinary thinking can, if it is unprejudiced, grasp the findings of anthroposophical research, I have also emphasized that everybody can attain today to a state of consciousness whereby he is able to develop a new kind of thinking and willing, which give him entry to the world whereof anthroposophy speaks. The essential thing would be to change the habit of reading books like my Philosophy of Freedom with the mental attitude one has toward other philosophical treatises. The way it should be read is with attention to the fact that it brings one to a wholly different way of thinking and willing and looking at things. If this were done, one would realize that such an approach lifts one's consciousness out of the earth into another world, and that one derives from it the kind of inner assurance that makes it possible to speak with conviction about the results of spiritual research. Those who read The Philosophy of Freedom as it should be read, speak with inner conviction and assurance about the findings of researchers who have gone beyond the state one has oneself reached as a beginner. But the right way of reading The Philosophy of Freedom makes everyone who adopts it the kind of beginner I am describing. Beginners like these can report the more detailed findings of advanced research in exactly the same way in which a person at home in chemistry would talk of research in that field. Although he may not actually have seen it done, it is familiar to him from what he has learned and heard and knows as part of reality. The vital thing in discussing anthroposophy is always to develop a certain soul attitude, not just to project a picture of the world different from the generally accepted one.

The trouble is that The Philosophy of Freedom has not been read in the different way I have been describing. That is the point, and a point that must be sharply stressed if the development of the Anthroposophical Society is not to fall far behind that of anthroposophy itself. If it does fall behind, anthroposophy's conveyance through the Society will result in its being completely misunderstood, and its only fruit will be endless conflict!

Now I want to try to improve the present state of things by speaking briefly about the three phases of the Anthroposophical Society. A start was made with the presentation of anthroposophy about two decades ago. I say two decades, but it was definitely already there in seed form in such writings as my Philosophy of Freedom and works on Goethe's world conception. But the presentation of anthroposophy as such began two decades ago. You will see from what I am about to say that it did begin to be presented as anthroposophy at that time.

When, in the opening years of the Twentieth Century, I gave my first Berlin lectures (those printed under the title, Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age), I was invited by the Theosophical Society to participate in its work. I myself did not seek out the Theosophical Society. People who belonged to it thought that what I was saying in my lectures, purely in pursuit of my own path of knowledge, was something they too would like to hear. I saw that the theosophists wanted to listen to what was being presented, and my attitude about it was that I would always address any audience interested in hearing me. Though my previous comments on the Theosophical Society had not always been exactly friendly and continued in the same vein afterwards, I saw no reason to refuse its invitation to lay before it material that had been given me for presentation by the spiritual world. That I presented it as anthroposophy is clear from the fact that at the very moment when the German section of the Theosophical Society was being founded, I was independently holding a lecture cycle [From Zarathustra to Nietzsche. History of Human Evolution Based on the World Conception of the Orient up to the Present, or Anthroposophy, 1902–3. No manuscript of these lectures is available.] not only about anthroposophy but with the name anthroposophy included in the title. The founding of the German section of the Theosophical Society and my lecture cycle on anthroposophy took place simultaneously. The aim, right from the beginning, was to present pure anthroposophy.

That was the start of the first phase of the Anthroposophical Movement. It was first exemplified in those members of the German section who were ready to absorb anthroposophy, and further groups of theosophists joined them.

During this first phase, the Anthroposophical Society led an embryonic existence within the Theosophical Society. It grew, as I say, within the Theosophical Society, but developed nevertheless as the Anthroposophical Society. In this first phase it had a special mission, that of counterposing the spirituality of Western civilization, centered in the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Theosophical Society's course, which was based on a traditional acceptance of ancient Oriental wisdom.

This first phase of the Anthroposophical Movement lasted until 1908 or 1909. Anyone who goes back over the history of the Movement can easily see for himself how definitely all the findings made on the score of prenatal existence, reincarnation and the like—findings made on the basis of direct experience in the present, not of ancient traditions handed down through the ages—were oriented around that evolutionary development in man's life on earth that centered in the Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ impulse. The Gospels were worked through, along with a great deal else. By the time it became possible for the Anthroposophical Movement to make the transition over into artistic forms of revelation, as was done with the presentation of my mystery plays, the content of anthroposophy had been worked out and related to its central core, the Mystery of Golgotha.

Then came the time when the Theosophical Society was sidetracked into a strange development. Since it had no understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, it committed the absurdity, among others, of proclaiming to the world that a certain young man of the present was the reincarnated Christ. Certainly no serious person could have tolerated any such nonsense; it appeared ridiculous in Western eyes. But anthroposophy had been developed as part of Western civilization, with the result that the Mystery of Golgotha appeared in a wholly new light in anthroposophical teaching. This led to the differences with the Theosophical Society that culminated in the virtual expulsion of all the anthroposophists. They didn't mind that because it didn't change anthroposophy in any way. I myself had never presented anything but anthroposophy to those interested in hearing about it, and that includes the period during which anthroposophy was outwardly contained by the Theosophical Society.

Then the second phase of the Anthroposophical Movement began. This phase was built on a foundation that already included the most important teachings about destiny, repeated earth-lives, and the Mystery of Golgotha in a spiritual illumination fully keyed to present day civilization. It included interpretations of the Gospels that reconciled tradition with what modern man can grasp with the help of the Christ who lives and is active in the present.

The second phase, which lasted to 1916 or 1917, was spent in a great survey of the accepted science and practical concerns of contemporary civilization. We had to show how anthroposophy can be related to and harmonized with modern science and art and practical life at their deeper levels. You need only consider such examples as my lecture cycles of that period, one held in Christiania in 1910 on the European folk souls, the other at Prague in 1911 on the subject of occult physiology, and you will see that anthroposophy's second phase was devoted to working out its relationship to the sciences and practical concerns of the day. The cycles mentioned are just two examples; the overall aim was to find the way to relate to modern science and practice.

During this second phase of the Society's life, everything centered around the goal of finding a number of people whose inner attitude was such that they were able to listen to what anthroposophy was saying. More and more such people were found. All that was necessary was for people to come together in a state of soul genuinely open to anthroposophy. That laid the foundation for an anthroposophical community of sorts. The task became one of simply meeting the interest of these people who, in the course of modern man's inner evolution, had reached the point where they could bring some understanding to anthroposophy. They had to be given what they needed for their soul development. It was just a matter of presenting anthroposophy, and it was not a matter of any great concern whether the people who found their way to anthroposophy during the Society's first two phases foregathered in sect-like little groups or came to public lectures and the like. What was important was to base absolutely everything on a foundation of honestly researched knowledge, and then to go ahead and present it. It was quite possible to do this satisfactorily in the kind of Anthroposophical Society that had been developing.

Another aspect of the second phase was the further development of the artistic element. About halfway through it, the plan to build the Goetheanum took shape. A trend that began with the Mystery Plays was thus carried into the realms of architecture, sculpture and painting. Then eurythmy, the elements of which I have often characterized in my introductory talks at performances, was brought into the picture. All this came into existence from sources to which access is gained on the path sketched in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, sketched in sufficient detail, however, to be understood and followed by anyone really desirous of taking that path.

This second phase of the Society's life was made especially difficult by the outbreak of the frightful war that then overran Europe and modern civilization. It was especially hard to bring the tiny ship of anthroposophy through the storms of this period, when mistrust and hatred were flooding the entire civilized world. The fact that the Goetheanum was located in a neutral country in a time when borders were closed often made it hard to reach. But the reasons for believing in the sincerity of anthroposophical efforts were more firmly founded on fact, even during the war, than any reasons for mistrusting it afterwards. It can truly be said that the war period brought no real disruption of the work; it continued on. As I have already mentioned, a large number of individuals from many different European countries confronting one another in hate and enmity on the battlefields worked together in a peaceful and anthroposophical spirit on the Goetheanum, which we have now lost in the terrible disaster of the fire.

Then came the third phase of the Movement, the phase in which a number of individuals started all kinds of activities. As I have stressed here as well as elsewhere, these undertakings were good things in themselves. But they had to be started with an iron will and appropriately followed through. The Threefold Movement, later called the Union for Free Spiritual Life, the Union for Higher Education, and so on, had to be undertaken with the clear intention of putting one's whole being irrevocably behind them. It was no longer possible, in the third phase, to rest content with the simple presentation of anthroposophy and merely to foregather with people whose inner search had led them to it. Instead, a number of individuals wanted to undertake this or that project, and they did so. This created all kinds of groupings in addition to the original purely anthroposophical community.

One of them was the scientific movement. It was built on the foundation of relationships of anthroposophy to science that had been established during the second phase. Scientists made their appearance in our midst. They had the task of giving modern science what anthroposophy had to offer. But there should have been a continuation of what I had begun in the way of building relationships to contemporary science. Perhaps I may remind you of lectures I gave during the second phase of the Movement. I was always calling attention, for example, to the way modern physicists come to their particular mode of thinking. I did not reject their thinking; I accepted it and took it for my own point of departure, as when I said that if we start where the physicists leave off, we will get from physics into anthroposophy. I did the same thing in the case of other aspects of learning. This attitude, this way of relating, should have continued to prevail. If that had happened, the result would have been a different development of scientific activity than the one we have been witnessing during this third phase. Most importantly, we would have been saved from what I described at the earlier meeting as fruitless argumentation and polemics. Then we would presently be faced with a positive task, and could say that anthroposophy does indeed have a contribution to make to science, that it can help science go forward along a certain path, and in what specific way that can be accomplished. The outcome would have been a different attitude toward science than that evidenced in a recent issue of Die Drei, indeed in several issues that I looked over in connection with the cycle of lectures on science given by me last Christmastide in Dornach. I was horrified at the way science and anthroposophy were treated there; it was harmful to both. Anthroposophy is put in an unfavorable light when anthroposophists engage in such unfruitful polemics. I say this not for the sake of criticizing but to point out what the task of the scientists in the Society is.

Something of the same kind ought to be happening in other respects as well. Let us take a case in point; I called attention to it on the occasion of my last lecture here.

In the third phase of the Movement, we saw the Union for Higher Education come into being. It had an excellent program. But somebody should have stayed with it and put all of himself behind it, made himself fully responsible for it. My only responsibility was for anthroposophy itself. So when someone else starts an independent enterprise founded on anthroposophy, that project becomes his responsibility. In the case I am discussing, nobody stayed with that responsibility, though I had called attention to the necessity of doing so at the time the program was being drawn up. I said that programs of this kind should be started only if an iron determination exists to carry them through; otherwise, they ought never to be launched. In this case it was the group guiding the Society that failed to stay behind it.

What was the outcome? The outcome was that a number of young people from the student movement, motivated by an intense longing for true anthroposophy but unable to find what they were looking for in the Society, sought out the living source of anthroposophy. They said expressly that they wanted to know the artistic aspects of anthroposophy as well as the others. They approached Frau Dr. Steiner with the intention of being helped by recitation and declamation to experience what I might call the anthroposophical swing of things.

Another development was taking place alongside this one, my dear friends. In the third phase of the Movement, the spiritual worlds were being described in the way I described them at the beginning of my lecture today when I gave a short sketch of a certain matter from the standpoint of purely spiritual contemplation, from a level where it is possible to show how one develops a different consciousness and thereby gains access to the spiritual world. The first and second phases were concerned with relating the Movement to the Mystery of Golgotha, to science, to the practical conduct of life. The third phase added the direct portrayal of spiritual realms. Anyone who has kept up with the efforts that were made during these three phases in Dornach and here too, for example, anyone with a real feeling for the advance represented by the third phase over the first and second phases, anyone aware to what extent it has been possible in recent years to spread anthroposophy beyond the boundaries of Central Europe, will notice that we are concerned with bringing into being a really new third phase in direct continuation and further development of the first two phases. Had we not entered the third phase, it would not really have been possible to develop the Waldorf School pedagogy, which is based on taking man's eternal as well as temporal nature into account.

Now please compare the discussions of yesterday and the week before with what I have just been saying in the interests of frank speaking and without the least intention of criticizing anyone, and ask yourselves what changes these three phases of our work have effected in the Society. Would not these same discussions, identical as to content, have been just as conceivable sixteen or eighteen years ago as they are today, when we have two decades of anthroposophical work behind us? Does it not seem as though we were back at the founding of the Society?

I repeat that I have no desire to criticize anybody. But the Anthroposophical Society can amount to something only if it is made the nurturing ground of everything that anthroposophy is working to achieve, and only if our scientists, to take an example, always keep in mind that anthroposophy may not be neglected in favor of science, but rather made the crowning peak of science's most recent developments. Our scientists should take care not to expose anthroposophy to scientific attack with their fruitless polemics.

Teachers have a similar task, and, to a special degree, people engaged in practical life. For their functions are of the kind that draws the heaviest fire against anthroposophy, which, despite its special potential for practicality, is most viciously attacked as being impractical.

So the Society is presently faced with the necessity of being more than a mere onlooker at really anthroposophical work going on elsewhere, more than just the founder of other enterprises that it fails to provide with truly anthroposophical zeal and enthusiasm. It needs to focus consciously on anthroposophical work. This is a completely positive statement of its mission, which needs only be worked out in detail. If this positive task is not undertaken, the Anthroposophical Society can only do anthroposophy more and more harm in the world's regard. How many enemies has the Threefold Movement not created for the Anthroposophical Movement with its failure to understand how to relate itself to anthroposophy! Instead, it made compromise after compromise, until people in certain quarters began to despise anthroposophy. We have seen similar things happen elsewhere. As I said in my first lecture here, we must realize that anthroposophy is the parent of this movement. That fact should be recognized. If it had been, a right relationship to the Movement for Religious Renewal, which I helped launch, would have resulted. Instead, everything in that area has also gone amiss. I am therefore concerned, on this grave occasion, to find words that can serve as guides to positive work, to get us beyond fruitless talk of the sort that takes us back two decades and makes it seem as though no anthroposophical work had been accomplished.

Please do not take offense at my speaking to you as I have today, my dear friends. I had to do it. As I said in Dornach on January 6th last, the Anthroposophical Society is good; it is capable of listening receptively to even the sharpest parts of my characterization. But the guiding elements in the Society must become aware that if the Society is to earn its name in future, they must make themselves responsible for keeping it the conscious carrier of the work. The conflicts that have broken out will end at the moment when the need for such a consciousness is clearly and adequately recognized in a spirit of goodwill. But there has to be goodwill for that need to be brought out into the open and any fruitless criticism dropped. Furthermore, there is no use giving oneself up to comfortable illusions, making compromises in adjustments between one movement and another, only to end up again in the same old jog-trot. It is time to be absolutely serious about anthroposophical work, and all the single movements must work together to achieve this goal. We cannot rest content to have a separate Waldorf School movement, a separate Movement for Religious Renewal, a separate Movement for Free Spiritual Life. Each will flourish only if all feel that they belong to the Anthroposophical Movement.

I am sure that everyone truly concerned for the Movement is saying the same thing in his heart. That is the reason I allowed myself to express it as sharply as I did today. Most of you were already aware of the need for a clear statement that could lead to the establishment of the consciousness I have described as so essential.

The Movement has now gone through three phases, during the last of which anthroposophy has been neglected in favor of various offspring movements. It must be re-discovered as the living spiritual movement demanded by modern civilized life and, most especially, by modern hearts. Please take my words as meant to serve that purpose. If they have sounded sharp, please consider them the more sincerely offered. They were intended not as an invitation to any further caustic deliberations but as a challenge to join in a Movement guided by a true heart for anthroposophy.