The Rudolf Steiner Archive

For years now, I have been privileged to speak here in this place about questions of spiritual science. It seems right to me to continue the lectures, which have always begun at this time, this winter as well. For how could there not be a need, especially in our fateful times, to delve into matters of spiritual life! Above all, however, it seemed necessary to me to take the immediate starting point of what is now so close to all our hearts in the two introductory lectures, which are to be held today and over eight days. For it seems impossible to me to speak about anything in our time without bearing in mind that the words we speak today must be able to stand up to those who, in the West and the East, are giving their all for what the times demand. Who could say otherwise than that words that are to be worthy of speaking today may be addressed in spirit to those who bleed to death for our cause? And how could we not start from the immediate impressions of the time, since we have experienced something great and powerful, that in a few days the world of souls, the world of hearts, can show a new face! An infinite amount of selflessness, of devotion, of willingness to sacrifice – we saw it flourish in the first days of August, and we are all under the impression of the greatness of the time.

But if I want to start with the genius who is so intimately connected with all that he has given to his people and to humanity, who is so intimately connected with the whole development of Central Europe; if I want to start with Goethe, it is mainly because because, however strange it may sound, I believe that in all the years I have not spoken a word from this place that could not stand up to Goethe's judgment – even if what spiritual science has to say cannot always be literally substantiated with what we know from Goethe. His spirit reigns over us. And what can be justified before the spirit of Goethe is what I mean as spiritual science in our present time.

It is not only what comes out of our lungs, what comes out of our hearts, that speaks to us today; it is also close to our hearts to hear how the facts speak a powerful language. Many today have to sacrifice their lives. Those we hold dear are returning wounded from the West and the East. In these days, the facts speak of the spiritual world. And I know that they speak in the hearts of those who have to leave their physical lives behind on the battlefields. There, what connects us to the lasting, to the eternal, here on this earth, becomes an immediate spiritual reality, with which, above all, those who must physically leave this reality know they are connected. Folklore, the national soul, these become very real concepts; today you can hear it from those who come back or who send reports home from the battlefields. Those of the honored audience who have heard the lectures of recent years here will know that I rarely touch on personal matters. But today the starting point of the personal will be allowed, since basically we are all personally connected in our innermost soul and heart with what is happening and with what shines forth as fruits in our hopes from what is taking place.

In a sense, I experienced what has become an event today in Austria years ago. And when today's events are discussed – after all, all eyes are turning to Austria, from which, as it were, what appears to us to be great and painful in these fateful days has emerged – I may, since personal matters are connected with the general human aspect of these days, start from this – I would say – Austrian experience.

In the 1970s and 1980s of the last century, I was part of a group of people in Austria who saw an ideal shining before them, which, to a certain extent, has been fulfilled in Central Europe in recent days. Even though all those to whom I belonged in Austria at that time may have had a very different idea of the connection between the Austrian and German peoples, the union of the Austrian peoples with the German peoples still lived in numerous hearts at that time as an ideal. And when I, who as a child had absorbed with the sounds of the German language everything that was present in the Austrian Germans in the 1860s in the way of ill will towards Prussia, especially after 1866, and everything connected with it – when I, in the 1870s and I attended the University of Vienna in the 1870s and 1880s, the words of an Austrian German professor first reached my ears. At that time, I was at the center of Austria's intellectual endeavors, and these words gave me and others, as it were, the slogan for the unity of Central Europe's intellectual life. And I may read to you the words that were spoken at the time by a German in Austria to his students:

"The year 1870 brought the development of the German people to a close.

The hope that the remaining thirty years of our century will drive the seeds of intellectual life in Germany to rapid development, even if poetry will initially have to take a back seat, must prompt us to come to terms with the recent past in order to face the immediate present without a backlog of files, so to speak.

We in Austria find ourselves in a peculiar position at this significant turning point.

The free movement of our national life has removed the barrier that separated us from Germany until recently; the elementary school law and the new educational institutions have given us the means to work our way up to a common cultural life with the other Germans. Now, just now, the case has arisen,» – please note: this was written in the immediate aftermath of 1870!

"that we should not participate in a great action of our people. The North has taken the lead in Germany and formed a state from which we are excluded. This could not create a dividing wall in German intellectual life. The roots of this are not political, but cultural and historical. We want to keep an eye on this unbreakable unity of German intellectual life, in which not only western Austria, but even the Germans of Hungary and Transylvania play a decisive role. May mutual love prevail in this intellectual realm on both sides. We in Austria want to go hand in hand with intellectual life in the German Reich and acknowledge and strive to follow where we are ahead; in the German Reich, however, we want our difficult cultural task to be appreciated and honored, and not to be held accountable for the past, which is our destiny, not our fault."

The man who spoke these words, Karl Julius Schröer – no longer among the living – often spoke them to his Austrian students. What inspired him in his innermost being? He himself was a German born in Hungary. What connected him to the entire German intellectual life? It is expressed in one word, which held it together - in the word: Goethe. For this man was completely filled with Goethe's spirit. And Goethe's spirit, it worked like the living bond, but also like the fire that went over from the Germans of Germany to the Germans of Austria, the Germans of Hungary, to all the Germans of Europe.

Now, when speaking of Goethe, one can easily object: To how many souls, to how many hearts within the German people does Goethe speak a living language today? Will there not be many who bleed to death outside for German nature and who do not know much about Goethe?

That is not the point when one speaks of the guiding geniuses of a nation and of humanity. For more than in any other area, the saying “You shall know them by their fruits!” seems true to me here. Central European cultural life, German culture, must be recognized by its fruits – and by its ripest fruit, by Goethe. And Goethe has had such an influence that many Austrians feel German character as their own. The most German of Austrian poets, Robert Hamerling, spoke a word that can be used, so to speak, as a kind of motto for those I have just spoken of, as a meaningful motto; because it was spoken from the soul of many, many during the time of which I have spoken. “Austria is my fatherland,” says Robert Hamerling, ‘but Germany is my motherland!’ And all such words, but above all such sentiments, were spoken under the influence of Goethe, who was active in the German national substance. So here too I may take the personal as a starting point for the universal human.

Goethe became a kind of guiding genius for me. More and more he appeared to me as the genius of Central Europe, who represents not only what one can get to know in Goethe's works, what one can get to know in the abundant messages that we have precisely from Goethe's life; indeed, Goethe did not even appear to me exhaustively in what he himself has presented to us as a living entity, like that of his “Faust”. Rather, Goethe always seemed to me as if, in everything we can know of him from his communications, from his works, from what is already living and working in the culture of Central Europe, indeed in the whole culture of humanity, as if all of this, there is something more comprehensive, something more universal, something that emerges from a magic mountain in the intimate moments of life when we truly engage with Goethe. Like the old Barbarossa himself in a renewed form with the genius of Central Europe – so in Goethe we encounter a being intimately connected with what is to be taken from the German spirit and incorporated into human culture. And the words at the end of Faust seem to go deeper than we can understand today:

All that is transitory
Is but a parable;
The inadequate,
Here it becomes reality;
The indescribable,
Here it is done.

Faust, after a life in which the perpetual striving of Central Europe is so well expressed, ends with his soul merging into the spiritual world. Goethe's way of thinking seemed to me to be a reference to the fact that from Faustian striving, with which man connects, the connection of man with the spiritual world must emerge. And it can appear to one in the following way. One can devote oneself to Goethe, to all the magnificent and great things he has said; one can absorb the tremendous world wisdom of Faust with a devoted heart. But one can also delve more intimately into the way Goethe strove, into the way the secrets of humanity and the world worked, lived and stirred in his soul. One can resolve to strive with him. Then, I believe, the soul will be transported, pointed to the worlds that the spiritual science I am referring to here represents. In my last book, “The Riddles of Philosophy”, the second edition of my “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century”, I tried to show how the crowning of Western philosophy can be won from Goethe's spirit. Today I can only briefly touch upon the subject, which I have so often discussed here from this same platform. Let us delve into Goethe's spirit. We find him — and if we delve deeply enough into his way of thinking, it is not one-sided — we find him above all striving to descend deeply into those spheres of nature where the sources flow, where nature and human nature are one. Goethe's mind is such that natural science becomes directly religious life, religious being. Goethe did not delve into nature with understanding and reason alone; rather, his whole heart, his whole soul plunged deeply into the secrets of nature, so that what was a natural secret to him was at the same time an earthly friendship. What the West has always striven for – to rediscover the connection between the human soul and nature, as it existed in Greece and as modern humanity has lost – can be gained through Goethe's way of thinking. All of Goethe's powers strive towards this one goal. His comprehensive imagination guides understanding and reason along the paths by which the human soul penetrates to the sources of existence, where not only external, mechanical knowledge of nature can be found, but also such universal laws as we encounter as the thoughts of the Godhead itself. With his whole soul, Goethe plunges into the depths of being, where science simultaneously becomes religion, into those depths of which Schiller says:

Take the Godhead in your will,
And she descends from her throne in the world.

Thus it is that Goethe was not only a poet, not only an artist, that he became a researcher, a scientist, because he wanted to strive for what the human soul strives for as a whole. And so the most comprehensive and mature nature ever portrayed by a human being appears to us: the Faustian nature, to arise from Goethe's soul, that Faustian nature that stands before external reality with words that have almost become trivial today, but in the face of which one must take the standpoint from which Goethe experienced them. Thus Goethe was able to create the figure in Faust who stands before external reality with the words:

Alas, now have I,
Law and Medicine,
And, alas! also Theology,
Studied thoroughly, with ardent endeavor.
There stand I now, poor fool that I,
And all my wisdom is as before!

But what do we experience in this Faust? — We experience that the soul, which has fallen into doubt about the external world, builds up from its inner being the elements that lead it into universal existence — scientifically, artistically, universally. And then we recognize that it is in this Faustian nature that the spirit of Central Europe lives, above all the spirit of the German people, and we recognize this spirit of the German people particularly when we hear Faust speak the words:

Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything
Why I asked. You did not turn your face to me in vain
in the fire.
You gave me the glorious nature of the kingdom,
the strength to feel and enjoy it. Not
only allowing cold, astonished visitors,

and then the powerful words that penetrate deep into the soul:

Allow me to look into her deep chest
As if into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches And crushing neighboring trunks, And the hill muffled hollow thunders, Then you lead me to the safe cave, show Then myself, and my own chest, Secret deep wonders open up.

One cannot feel these words, cannot penetrate them, without – I would like to say – becoming one with what the German folk soul is, this folk soul that wants to sacrifice itself with its thoughts and feelings, with its fantasy and imagination, on the altar of spiritual life, in order to see the fire rise on this altar, leading up to the spiritual worlds. And when we follow the conclusion of Faust, we cannot but remember that Goethe wanted to tell us through him: Only the path for those who have rejuvenated themselves leads to this ascent into the spiritual worlds, where it can truly become clear to him: “All that is transient is only a parable.” For Faust is presented to us with a double life. We first see him as he is old, and then as he has enjoyed the rejuvenating potion and ascends into the spiritual worlds. In times such as these, one is tempted to see the words as having a very special depth. The German people have often been compared to Hamlet. The words of Hamlet, “To be or not to be,” have often been used to characterize the nature of the German people. Oh, one hears it in the words and in the great confidence that we hear today in everything, this “To be or not to be.” But how? Not in the sense of Hamlet, but in the sense of Faust! In the sense of the certainty that what is as firmly established as the national soul, out of which Faust grew, belongs to that for which “all that is transitory is but a parable”, that is preserved for eternity. And so Faust truly appears to us not as a skeptic, but as a symbol. We follow the German people from the earliest times, of which Tacitus tells us in such a grandiose way, and find it in a Faustian way always rejuvenating – but always knowing the one thing: can we already be “German” now? We cannot be that yet; we will become that in eternal striving! And again we hear the words of Faust:

Who always strives and strives,
We can redeem him;

as well as the others:

Only he deserves freedom and life
who must conquer them daily.

And the German cannot say of himself, “I am a German,” as the Englishman says of himself, “I am an Englishman,” as the Frenchman says, “I am a Frenchman,” as the Italian says, “I am an Italian.” For the members of these nations know what they are when they say that. The German knows that what he has in mind as a “German” is an ideal that is connected to the deepest sources of the spiritual, that one becomes and always will be a German - and never zst. And so the German striving itself always goes up into spiritual worlds - like Faust's striving ultimately rises in his soul from step to step into worlds that Goethe so wonderfully portrayed. Even if in many German hearts little is consciously left of Goethe's portrayal, the power that lived in Goethe lives today in Central Europe. And it is certainly no exaggeration to say that Goethe's genius is fighting in the souls, in the hearts, in the veins of those who stand in the West and in the East. For the humanities scholar, the old Greek myth that the most valuable geniuses of a nation are among the spiritual comrades-in-arms when the fate of that nation is decided becomes reality. For anyone who truly knows Goethe, it is clear that everything that Western culture has produced, everything we can call Western culture, has become a person in Goethe, has become a universal personality, has been reborn in Goethe, so that from now on, anyone who embraces culture must be touched by Goethe's genius. This gives us faith that Goethe's genius reigns over us, especially in our time.

That is how it was for Austrian Germans who heard the word “Goethe” in the midst of the period of those struggles, when the Austrian peoples were not yet allowed to fight alongside their German brothers. That was what also contained the pull that I myself felt towards Germany. And just as a personal note, I would like to mention the deepest satisfaction I was able to feel when I was able to work for six and a half years on the great Weimar Edition, which was to bring Goethe's entire spiritual heritage to mankind. And since that time, it has been my unalterable urge to make progress in grasping Goethe's genius. And here I may refer to a personality whom I have already mentioned from this place, a personality who, in the last third or in the second half of the nineteenth century, fully represented Goethe's spirit in German intellectual life: Herman Grimm. Herman Grimm's lectures on Goethe, which he gave at the University of Berlin in the 1870s, were an event in German intellectual life. I do not want to say that I can support every word in these lectures by Herman Grimm; but more significant than his words was the consciousness that lived in Herman Grimm.

In his very first lecture, he spoke about Goethe's relationship to the intellectual life of Germany in the following way: |

"Goethe has influenced the intellectual life of Germany as a mighty natural phenomenon would have influenced the physical. Our coal seams tell of times of tropical warmth when palm trees grew here. Our caves, which are opening up, tell of ice ages when reindeer were native to our country. In enormous periods of time, major upheavals took place on German soil, which in its present state gives the appearance of being eternally unchanging. It is therefore fair to say that Goethe's influence on the intellectual atmosphere of Germany was comparable to the effect of a telluric event that increased our average climatic warmth by so and so many degrees. If something like that happened, a different vegetation, a different way of farming and thus a new basis for our entire existence would occur.

Thus it was natural for Herman Grimm to think in Goethe's spirit. One might say that every word of Herman Grimm can show us how, in Herman Grimm, we can see, as it were, the spiritual representative of Goethe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Goethe's genius itself worked through Herman Grimm. And Herman Grimm was convinced – and this is where Goethe's spirit was truly reflected in him – that hundreds of years would be needed to fully understand and appreciate Goethe's spirit. Therefore, Herman Grimm himself knew that what he had to say about Goethe would have to be revised once this spirit of Goethe's was properly understood. Thus Herman Grimm's description of Goethe also appears to us as an external description. It is a peculiar experience to delve into Herman Grimm's descriptions of Goethe's mind and of Goethe's creations. Germany's social, political and intellectual life is spread out before Herman Grimm, and within it he sees Goethe, how mightily he strides and how, through his genius, he intervenes deeply in Germany's circumstances in the scientific, political and artistic realms. But we see him only from the outside. Herman Grimm was aware of this himself, and he has the feeling that times must come when one must first connect inwardly with Goethe's way, and that there is still an infinity to come from Goethe.

In these fateful days, we may recall Herman Grimm's thoughts when speaking of Goethe's mind. In the introduction to my lecture, I referred to Karl Julius Schröer. One of the words this man spoke will remain unforgettable to me, for when Schröer spoke about Goethe in Vienna, it fell like a spark into my soul. He began a lecture in which he explored what the peculiarity of the German mind is, how German art, German imagination – Goethean art, Goethean imagination – is founded on the deepest truth of being; and one might say: illuminating a wide field in a flash, the Goetheanist Karl Julius Schröer said: the German has an aesthetic conscience! Many questions become matters of conscience for the German out of his Faustian nature. And so even the greatest events he faces – those events of which Goethe says that they are connected with the “great gigantic fate that lifts man up when it crushes man” – become, above all, questions before his conscience. Herman Grimm strove to take this conscience into his soul. That is why he said many things that one would like to repeat in these days, when, in the face of voices from all over the world, in the face of all that is being called to us from everywhere, we want to ask nothing more than conscience: whether we can stand up to it?

What does Goethe's German conscience say to Herman Grimm?

I believe that the words he speaks are significant, words that could become particularly significant in our time:

“The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people is today the church that unites us all. We are seeking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious aspirations of the masses have only this one goal. The division of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction applies to the ethical worldview.”

This could be said in 1895, out of Goethe's spirit, which, like no other, had the quality of lovingly immersing itself in all things human, including all things national.

“We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland,” and here are significant words:

"But we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war. It is no lie to say that keeping the peace is our most sacred wish. ‘Peace on earth and goodwill towards men’ permeates us.

Anyone who is familiar with the essence of Central Europe knows that these are true words, words that can stand up to what has just been called the “German conscience”! And as a lead-in to what Goethe, the living Goethe, can still become for us, here are the following words of Herman Grimm:

“... As a totality, human beings recognize themselves as subject to an invisible court enthroned in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their inner disputes. It is here that they anxiously seek their right.”

How universally, how lovingly, and with what attention to the universally human does Herman Grimm, speaking from the spirit of Goethe, say in 1895:

“How hard the present-day French are trying to make out that the war they have in mind against Germany is a moral imperative, demanding recognition from other nations, yes, even from the Germans themselves.”

Do we not hear in these words the assurance that lived in Central Europe that it could never have brought about the war for its own sake? But do we not also hear the awareness of facing an ironclad necessity? “We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war.” We know that this is true! And that is why we know that the cause and the ‘fault’ for today's events cannot be found in the people in whom these attitudes lived. But the Goetheans were not blind. They knew that war would come after all. “How today's French are trying to present the war against Germany, which they are planning, as a moral demand, the recognition of which they demand from other nations, even from the Germans themselves!”

Even in Goethe's time, people spoke of Goethe's objective sense, of his loving way of immersing himself in people, but also in things, of connecting with everything with his own soul. An important psychologist of his time, Heinroth, used the word of Goethe's objective way of thinking and looking at things. This concreteness leads precisely to the world view that can be called the “Goethean world view” and which no one can ignore if they want to absorb the culture of modern times. Basically, we have not been far removed from recognizing such things. Has Goethe's way of thinking remained so unknown? I would like to point to words that have been spoken and that can show us how Goethe's way of thinking has not actually remained so unknown – words such as the following:

There are also some remarkable words with regard to the French and English:

“The highly favored selection among Descartes' and Newton's compatriots knew the spirit of science unquestioningly; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, primarily by thousands of German researchers...”

”... Imagination, feeling, will, made their claim to be heard beside or above reason, and under their transforming pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful. The irrational was recognized as a source of illumination; wisdom was drawn from the child and the flower; science, philosophy, and poetry drew near each other. In England, this revival of the imagination gave birth to noble poetry, but left science and philosophy almost untouched.

One of the keys to understanding the period is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical, and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched and merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that produces the new, they worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

“In Faust at the end of his eventful life, we see the present-day Germany foreshadowed, the Germany of restless, bold volition and action, and we can all the better understand why the great cosmopolitan, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable position as the highest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.”

These are words that show you have some sense of Goethe's way of thinking. These words were spoken in 1912, and where? Are they being spoken somewhere in Germany for the sake of prestige? No! They were spoken in Manchester, by Herford, the Englishman, who is referring to German intellectual life. And they were spoken, as we are told in the preface to the book in which they appeared – a book well worth reading in these fateful days for us! – in order to teach the newspaper people something that might lead to a better understanding of what German genius is. I leave it to everyone to judge, in the light of recent events, how much these newspaper people have learned from it. But there is something else in these lectures. There is a meaningful sentence where Goethe was discussed and the lecture continues immediately:

“No German words are more deeply imbued with the juice of national ethics than those that describe these things: true, thorough, faithful.”

So spoken in Manchester in 1912. We may claim to understand something of what it means to be “true and loyal”; and we may say—especially in view of the place where these words appear—that we have learned something from Goethe! A preface has been printed at the beginning of the book, from which I would also like to share a few words with you. Lord Haldane—you may know the name from the discussions of the last few days—says:

"The source of the stream of (Germany's) intellectual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a high degree practical and materialistic.

Why does Lord Haldane write these words? He also expresses his opinion on this, for he says:

"Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the burden of arming ourselves against attacks that in reality none of us has in mind.

Well then! I need add nothing to the light that is thrown on our fateful days from this side. But they give us, so to speak, from the internationality of the German essence, the right to hold to Goethe, to find consolation and hope in Goethe, and also support in Goethe in these fateful days. Above all, and I could refer to many, many things today, we find a saying of Goethe's. Oh, I have often thought of this saying of Goethe's in the last few days and weeks! That shots were fired at the cathedral of Reims – so it was spread throughout the world. I do not believe that I am second to anyone in my admiration for the unique and wonderful cathedral of Reims. I saw it in 1906; I admired it. But I have also seen how this cathedral has become fragile, and it cut me to the heart when I had to say to myself: Not thirty years from now, and it will no longer be able to stand as it does now. But we heard that this cathedral was said to have been shot at – I do not want to investigate the fact – and there was much talk about it. Then I had to remember a Goethean idea, a Goethean feeling. It was from Goethe's spirit that the word was spoken, which can make such a deep impression: What would the countless stars be, what would all heavens be, if they did not ultimately shine into a human eye, if they were not reflected in a human soul and grasped by a human heart? Anyone who understands Goethe's way of thinking knows that there is a higher work of art than all cathedrals, that there is a higher work of art than all the works of art created by human beings, however much he admires them; he knows that there is the divine work of art created by man! And then, however paradoxical it may sound, the following may be said to a people who have been educated in error: if war is a necessity and must be, and shots are fired at the greatest work of art, which is greater than all cathedrals, then one feels — in the Goethean sense — that it is hypocrisy to lament the fact that bullets can also fall on cathedrals!

Once again, because it is connected with current events, let me turn my attention to the country that is being talked about so much today: Austria. But first, I would like to raise a question, because in many respects it depends on the right questions being asked whether the right answers are obtained.

Much is said about the “guilt” for the present war; much is said about the fact that the present war was ignited here or there. But I think one question can be decisive, and it must be important – the question: Who could have prevented this war? That it was bound to happen one day is another question. I am now speaking only of its immediate beginning in our time, and there is no other answer to this question than that: the Russian government alone could have prevented it! That is certain. From everything that is very easy to know, people today can give themselves this answer.

But now back to the “local” starting point. That group of people, of whom I said earlier that the idea of the Germans of Austria joining those of the German Reich shone before them, repeatedly heard a word from Bismarck during the years when what has now become an event was being prepared. It was a word spoken with superior humor, but – I would like to say – one that includes fate. “Autumn crocus” was the term Bismarck used to describe a number of people who did not want to go along with the mission that the Berlin Congress in 1878 had given to the Austrian state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Why the name Herbstzeitlose? At that time in Austria we had a parliament whose leader was a great and important man. His name was Herbst. Like many others, he saw the English parliamentary system as the highest ideal of political effectiveness. From this parliamentary system, one could derive a great deal. Among other things, the Herbstians derived something that they represented with great virtuosity: that one should not claim Bosnia and Herzegovina for oneself. Bismarck called these people “Herbstzeitlose” (autumn crocus) in reference to their leader, because he saw the task of the time connected with what Austria had to carry out in Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time.

How did that come about?

Russia had at that time continued its efforts to expand its sphere of influence over the Balkan countries. France and England were the main opponents of this endeavor. Today, we must remember who it was that had instructed Austria in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Congress of Berlin, because only the context of the facts can instill a proper feeling in our hearts. England and its representative at the Congress of Berlin, Lord Salisbury! At that time, England regarded it as a necessity of modern times for Austria to extend its sphere of influence over Bosnia and Herzegovina. And those who were not autumn crocuses, but who at that time claimed to speak the language of modern times – the language of the people of the times, not of autumn crocuses – could not go along with the autumn people in Austria, but had to submit to the modern demand: to extend Austria's sphere of influence to Bosnia and Herzegovina. What happened later is a consequence of what happened then, and it has settled into those people who, one might say, wanted to combine the Austrian spirit with the modern spirit at that time.

Now, there is also a beautiful saying of Goethe's that he spoke when he once commented on one of the oldest rocks on earth, granite. He said that nature, with all its consistency, attracted him again and again because it led him away from the inconsistency of people and their actions. — This dominates Goethe's entire way of thinking: inner consistency. And when this inner consistency in Goethe's style is observed, it gives the soul security and true, genuine goals. One must gradually work one's way up to this consistency if it is to become the consistency in people's actions.

If we now apply Goethe's way of thinking to those who formed their German ideal in Austria, what should they think of the consistency or inconsistency of people when they have to learn that Austria, in its vital question – continuation of what was intended by English policy at the Berlin Congress of 1878 – encounters resistance from the southern Slav elements, thereby provoking Russia – and finds England on Russia's side? What should have happened to please English policy? What it wanted in 1878 – or something else? In history, facts are intimately connected; they continue consistently. And right must be, who is able to base his actions on this consistency! Might the Austrian German now turn to the authors of his mission regarding the southern Slavs, and, taking up Bismarck's word, expand the term “Herbstzeitlose” somewhat? This, too, seems to be Goethe's spirit in our days: the consistency of the events to which we are bound in our own days.

When we turn again to Goethe and to what he was in the depths of his soul, we find that he sought this inner connection between the human soul and the sources of all being relentlessly and portrayed it so vividly and so captivatingly in his “Faust” » so vividly and so thrillingly because he knew that a heavenly, a spiritual and divine element shines in the human soul, and that this heavenly, this spiritual and divine element is greater than what human beings can grasp with their intellect, with their weak reason. That is precisely the Faust problem: to sense God in the soul, the creating, the working, the speaking God in history. — What characterizes Goethe's spirit does not always have to be associated with Goethe's name; but “by their fruits ye shall know them”. I said that it can be applied to the culture of the German people, and the most mature, the most glorious, the most enduring fruit of this culture is Goethe's spirit. But what we see at the root of this culture, what we feel at the root of this culture, we see everywhere that we encounter Germanness, Germanity in its immediacy.

Again, we ask this Germanness, which is also Goethean, in the face of something else that comes up again and again: “Belgium's neutrality was violated by Germany,” we hear over and over again. It is not my job here to discuss military necessities; because anyone who knows the circumstances knows what military necessities are at this moment. But there is another aspect to be considered. Across the Channel we hear: Yes, because you violated Belgium's neutrality, we were morally obliged to start the war with you!

Firstly, I do not want to be one of those people who, when certain facts occur, are often said to have been wise after the event and say that they had known this for a long time. But one may say that those who were concerned with public affairs in this case well knew that this war would come one day, and that England would then be found among Germany's enemies. However things might have come about, they were such that they had to come about. For this reason, one cannot give much credit to England's current moral indignation – although I do not want to talk about the violation of Belgium's neutrality. But I will speak about the moral outrage from Goethe's way of thinking.

Goethe pointed out that when the human soul finds itself at the sources of the eternal, it then also sees the eternal necessities shining within itself. And Schiller, as so often, coined a phrase from Goethe's mindset: “World history is the world court.” Let us assume that an injustice has been done in violating Belgium's neutrality. Who would be the judge? The one who thinks in Goethe's, in Schiller's way of thinking answers: “Now world history!” German history will have to submit to its judgment. But Schiller, in the spirit of Goethe, would never have said: “English politics is the world court!” – Herman Grimm spoke of how close Bismarck was to Goethe. Therefore, in connection with the above, a word of Bismarck may be recalled; for it may be said to be related to what has been said about “world history” and “world judgment”.

It was in 1866 when Bismarck was advised from a high position to punish Austria because it was the only guilty party in the rivalry with Germany. And Bismarck is said to have spoken the words: “We do not have a judicial office to rule, but to pursue German politics; Austria's rivalry against us is no more punishable than ours against Austria.”

I wanted to say this in advance because I believe that it can serve as a basis when the call for England's moral outrage over Germany's violation of Belgium's neutrality is heard. In the spirit of Goethe, we would say to such voices: You do not have a judicial office to rule, but you pursue your policy! And whatever the case may be, it was out of politics and political necessities that what had to be done was done by Germany in Belgium. But if you want to defend Belgium's neutrality, you do it not out of morality but for political reasons. And just as Germany had to deal with Belgium's neutrality at its discretion for political reasons, so you had to deal with that neutrality in your own way for political reasons!

When one hears such talk, one is reminded of the English judgment I have already quoted: “No words in the German language are more saturated with the juice of national ethics than those which denote these things: true, thorough, faithful.” It is true that in war it is states that pursue their policies, not morals. It is only right that in 1914 we should face the consequences of what was undertaken in 1878. Whether it is right to take action against someone for continuing in 1914 what was committed to him in 1878 is a matter for those who speak of the “morality” of their policy.

I did not want to go into what touches on current politics, because, especially in our fateful days, we must remain true to what Bismarck said: that those who have to stay at home should, in a way, remain silent when events speak for themselves out in the field. I also did not want to talk about this or that about Goethe. But I did want to say that, starting from Goethe, something can sound in our hearts and souls when, in the face of such fateful events in the physical world as today's, we feel the necessity to hold as true: that all that is transitory is only a parable, that the inadequate can only be achieved in the spiritual, that the indescribable is done there alone. I know that, especially in these days, for those who are out there in the field, the prospect of the spiritual world was what they needed, what they longed for. And I have heard the assurances that came from those on whom it depends today – the assurances that war speaks a clear language, but a language about the spiritual life, about the reality of the spiritual life. These days one can study the feelings, those feelings: “Wherever I may let my blood flow, wherever I may draw my last breath, I know: my soul is safe in the spiritual life, and reality is what remains behind!” And not only for those who are outside in the East and in the West, but also for those whose fate has determined otherwise, “spiritual grasp of the world” is a great word. Should one not be ashamed, not to be out there in the field, when one feels the difference within oneself: “You are certain that your blood will not flow; only the others are exposed to a difficult and harsh fate?” Should one not be ashamed to belong to the former, when one should not know that the spirit and spiritual bonds are common to all, that those who bleed to death are with us? Even if it cannot be explicitly expressed by everyone who is out in the field, how it lives in him, which has borne its most mature fruits in Germanness — it lives in him at least in his subconscious. And it is true — let it be said again: fellow fighters are not only those who are out on the battlefields, but also the geniuses who have emerged from the people as ripe fruits. And Goethe is one such ripe fruit that the culture of modern times cannot ignore; but certain people still find it difficult not to ignore this culture. And finally, allow me to point out these difficulties that exist and also what is connected with these difficulties in our fateful days.

We turn our gaze to the East, and there too we may say: By their fruits ye shall know them. Let us single out one of the most important Russian intellectuals, who grappled particularly with the intellectual life of the nineteenth century: Alexander Herzen. How is he connected with the intellectual struggle of the time? Let us consider the soul of Herzen, the Russian intellectual. We raise a question: Was he touched by Goethe's spirit? He who is touched by it believes in eternal things, in the future of humanity and human value, in the groundedness of the human in the divine; and when he is victorious, he still believes, with Goethe's Faust, in the rejuvenation of the human being – and from all doubt and from all distress about the misery of existence, hope still flows to him, Faustian hope. Herzen familiarized himself with the intellectual life of Western Europe. John Stuart Mill seemed to him to be one of the most enlightened minds of Western culture. Let us hear what he says about Mill:

"He was not exaggerating when he spoke of the narrowing of the mind, of the energy, of the polished nature, of the constant flattening of life, of the constant exclusion of general human interests from life, of the reduction of the same to the interests of the commercial office and of bourgeois prosperity. Mill speaks openly about the fact that in this way England will become China – and we add: and not only England.

And further, Herzen says:

“Perhaps a crisis will save us from this Chinese wasting away. But where it will come from and how — I don't know, and Mill doesn't know either.”

And now Herzen exclaims:

“Where is that mighty thought, that passionate faith, that ardent hope, which makes the body stronger and the soul more and more ecstatic, which feels neither pain nor privation and walks firmly to the stake?” Look around you! What can uplift the people?"

The Russian intellectual addresses such questions to European culture. What conclusion can be drawn? Well, the answer that the present time gives is the one that those who believed in Goethe have given themselves in their souls. That is why they are so connected with the great events of the time with this soul, with the soul of the heart. And even if those who are Goetheans could never have raised the question, “Where is that mighty thought, that passionate faith, that ardent hope that hardens the body and drives the soul into that ‘convulsive rapture’ that feels neither pain nor privation and walks firmly to the stake?” Even if they could not have asked in this way, they felt that what comes from the sources from which Goethe drew, in a certain sense goes to its death for the culture of modern times! And the answer resounds to us from our fateful events: “Look around you! What can uplift the nations?”

Mereschkowski, another contemporary Russian intellectual, says the following in the book in which he also speaks about Herzen:

"Herzen's last vision of death is Russia as the ‘land of free life’ and the Russian peasant community as the savior of the world. He took his old love for a new faith, but realized, it seems, in the last hour, that this last faith was also an illusion. However, even if faith deceived him, love did not deceive him; there was a certain correct outlook in his love for Russia: not the peasant community, but the Christian community will perhaps become the faith that the young barbarians are to bring to ancient Rome.

Meanwhile, however, he dies – without any faith at all!"

Thus he says from the heart:

“Farewell, corrupt Rome! Farewell, my homeland.” Why this homelessness, when we look eastward, among the best intellectuals? One might say: one can recognize what is still missing in the East from a nakedness that Mereschkowski displays in his last book, “The Advance of the Mob.” On page 25 of this book, he says:

"When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed and shriveled to a dwarf by an evil spell; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German citizen and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, “Herr von Goethe, Geheimer Rat des Herzogs von Weimar und anständiger Sohn des anständigen Frankfurter Krämers.”

We see the nakedness; we see the intellectual who could not get close to Goethe, who wonders: “How did Goethe speak about the French Revolution?” and gives himself the answer: “From a Hellenic demigod He becomes a German citizen and – the shadow of the Olympian be gracious to me – a German philistine, “Herr von Goethe, Privy Councillor to the Duke of Weimar and decent son of the decent Frankfurt shopkeeper.” But this Goethe became the one who conjured up in his “Faust” the greatest revolution that humanity has experienced, the revolution of the human soul on its way to the divine. And the right appreciation of this magical creation is what modern culture must understand if it wants to ignite not unbelief, the “Farewell, my homeland”, but confidence and faith in the divine life in people. What do the intellectuals of the East see in Western culture? Well, in the way described, they bypass the thing by which the West has reached its prime! But just as ancient Greek and ancient Roman culture live in our veins, just as the Christianity of the early centuries has penetrated into our veins, so too will the people of the East one day carry in their veins the cultural heritage that has reached the sun through Goethe's spirit. Man resists most what he must ultimately succumb to, for he hates what must of necessity come upon him. The future of humanity is not determined by what the Russian soul has attained from Byzantinism or what it has received of external culture from the West, but by what of Greek and Roman culture and early Christianity has become the lifeblood of the highest nations of Central Europe. But nothing can be skipped! In Goethe, what is alive in the culture of Central Europe in the way of Greek, Roman and early Christian elements has been resurrected. And in what comes from the East, we still see the childlike resistance, the lack of understanding of what must be taken up by the soul. And we begin to understand – and this is also Goethe's way of thinking – and then to look to the future with knowing confidence and knowing trust when we are asked: Why are we at war with the East? – Mereschkowski also gives us an answer to this when he talks about Chekhov:

But what a source of rejuvenation, what a source of hope even in difficult times Goethe is, that becomes very clear when one knows: the West necessarily had to go through an epoch of materialism. Those who are only able to see materialism can despair; but in the midst of materialism, such spirituality arises that can be summarized in Goethe's spirit! Truly, the German has proved it: he takes in with love, with devotion, the Russian spirit. But he must also show understanding for what the Russian spirit is not yet. Strange words—which Gorky says are cruel but true—are those spoken by a Russian intellectual who is not touched by Goethe's spirit. Gorky says:

"Yes, what is he to you, this man? Do you understand? He takes you by the scruff of the neck, crushes you under his nail like a flea! Then you may feel sorry for him! Yes! Then you may reveal all your foolishness to him. He will stretch you on seven racks for your pity, he will wrap your guts around his hand and tear all your veins out of your body, one inch per hour. Oh you... Pity! Pray to God that you may be beaten without any pity, and that's it! ... Pity! Ugh!

Cruel, but true, says Gorky. So speaks he who has yet to wait for what Goethe's spirit has to say.

This spirit of Goethe contains something that is eternal in the face of the ephemeral, the parable of life, something indescribable in every age because it is ever-growing, ever-generating new hopes. And if one speaks in these days of that which reigns as a good genius over Central Europe, which justifies the trust that is so firmly rooted in the souls of Central European humanity, then one may speak of it in Central Europe in such a way that it has become part of the universal blood of humanity in Goethe. And when we look at what lives in the struggling Central Europeans, what lives with them in soul and spirit, what also lives there in their blood, then we may say: it is the spirit of Goethe's spirit, and it will endure as long as Goethe's spirit endures! In these fateful days, we can also find hope and consolation in the words coined by Schlesermacher, which are also rooted in Goethe's spirit. For it is a truth: Schleiermacher coined it out of a Goethean spirit because he knew that Goethe's way of thinking is connected with knowledge and contemplation of the spiritual world, and that what lives in the German people is itself an eternal spiritual reality. Thus one can say, full of consolation and hope in the spirit of Schleiermacher: “There blows like a breath of the Central European spirit, of the Goethe spirit, upon the ranks of those upon whom the spirits look today, because the destiny of mankind is grounded in them.” Thus it whispers in our fateful days, that we may speak it with increased strength and with increased confidence, because we know: the fateful words of Schleiermacher, which are also Goethe's words, live in the hearts of many who are suffering outside, because they are shaped in his spirit:

“Germany still exists, and its invisible strength is undiminished” – and we add: resilient!

How we look in our fateful time at those who stand outside in the east and west and with their blood, with their soul, stand up for what our time demands, we saw it eight days ago in the lecture. In this lecture too, I do not intend to violate the word that Bismarck has spoken in relation to those who have remained at home. At a time when great destinies are still being decided for humanity in other ways and in other fields than through the word, the word must not interfere in an improper manner with the decisions that must be brought about in a different way. Only that which speaks externally and to our hearts, wherever we look, triggers trust, hope and confidence; it triggers devotion and selflessness in such a wonderful way.

Now, in our time, where the basic tone of speaking is more materialistically colored than it can be here, there is much talk of heredity, of inherited traits. Today, in view of the great things happening outside, it is easier to translate into the spiritual what is spoken of today in a more materialistic sense as inheritance. What lives outside in the deeds of those who bleed for their people? And what should live in the hearts of those who want to be genuinely connected to the great fateful, destiny-bearing time?

Perhaps one will not encounter misunderstanding today if one still uses the word “inheritance” in a higher sense: if one points to the real powers that emanate from the great ancestors and continue to work, that blow through the ranks like a magic breath; if one points out that the same thing lives in the deeds of the warriors as lived in the great geniuses of the Central European people. And perhaps one will not encounter misunderstanding if one dares to say that by this life one means something real, that it is really not just as expressed in the Greek fairy tale: that the power of the great ancestors lives in the present as if blessing the present, but that this reality permeates and pulses through blood and souls. And since we, as human beings with full consciousness and knowledge, should actually live in what is also spiritually around us, perhaps two personalities may be singled out today from the ranks of the great Central Europeans who, so to speak, are still close to the present, two geniuses, one of whom has most certainly become part of the heart and soul of the Central European population, while the other, so to speak, can stand before us, expressing in his spirit the greatest and highest of this Central European population. Even if it may be said again today that there are perhaps many who play a heroic role in this time and yet know little of Schiller, and even less of Fichte, we can still be inspired by the fact that the same power that flows outwardly in Heldenbhute is the same power that flowed in Schiller, in Schiller's creations, and in Fichte's great encouragement of his people. Truly, not to evoke sentimental feelings in your hearts, but because I believe that there is indeed something characteristic in the fact that the German people so eagerly want to be intimately connected with the most important moments of their greats, I would like to point out the last moments of the earthly life of the two great geniuses who are to be discussed today.

Schiller –- he passed through the gates of death in such a way that the last-mentioned great German, Herman Grimm, could speak of Schiller's death: “Goethe passed away, Goethe fell asleep; Schiller died.” The younger Voß literally leads us into Schiller's death chamber. We see how Schiller lived with the greatest expenditure of the powers of mind and soul; we know that he was able to sustain himself up to the age that he unfortunately only reached, in that mind and soul achieved a tremendous victory over the body. Thus we see that in the last days, when the body was already in some respects given over to death, this soul is still heroically connected with all the great things it has thought, conceived and created throughout its life, and we follow at the hand of the younger Voß into the room where Schiller died; we see the last moments of the great genius. We see how his spirit, in his weak body, still tends towards his great ideals; we see how he then has his youngest child brought into the death chamber, how he looks at this child with the same eyes with which he had looked at the world, has looked at the world, looks at this child, looks deeply into his eyes, then hands him over to his attendants and then apparently – we sense this – takes a look into the deepest part of his soul, of which we can say: Certainly, the younger Voß is right when he says that Schiller may have thought that he could have been much more to his youngest child in life. But this act may appear to us symbolically, to the effect that we feel: if Schiller had looked into the eyes of all of us and then turned away into his own inner being, thinking that he also had much, much to say to us, then we feel as his heirs in a completely different sense than just the heirs of his works and of what he himself said; then we feel we feel connected to his innermost impulses, so connected that we know: we must, if we want to be like him, if we want to be worthy of him, if we want to place ourselves before life and the world from the same deepest impulses, want to be a spirit like his spirit!

And Fichte – in difficult times, he tried to shape and clothe in words what he had gained from the deepest reasons of his philosophical nature, which he spoke to his Germans in the time of German humiliation and German misery, in order to lift them up and breathe greatness into them for the further life of the people. And he was completely united with all that then led to the liberation struggles of his people. And it is a wonderful thing to look back now at the last moments of Fichte. He had often considered whether he should not go out to the battlefields himself; but he had then found that he could wield another sword better for the good of his people: the sword of the word – and he did so in a valiant manner. But his wife – she was a loyal carer for those who had fought in the battles – brought the military hospital fever home to him, and he was seized by it. During his last moments, his son brought him the news of the Germans crossing the Rhine and the state of the liberation struggle at that time. And now we see how one of the greatest philosophers, who has shaped the most powerful but also the most crystal-clear thoughts, lives out his feverish fantasies – but these feverish fantasies are characteristic. In the last moments of his life, he saw himself in spirit in the midst of the fighting. And what he believed he could give to the world and the German people from the deepest root of life's impulses, what he could have done for Germany's redemption, that resounded from the soul of the great German philosopher in his feverish fantasies; a moment that can deeply move us. The medicine was given to him. He rejected it with the words: “Leave that alone, I need no medicine; I feel that I have recovered!”

They stand there like warriors themselves, the two great minds, fighters for the best that the world has produced, and at the same time we see the two, Schiller and Fichte, united with everything that the time, the immediate present, demands.

And now we turn to the two greats; let us try to recognize in them what – to use this Fichtean saying – sprouts in the deepest root of German life. Let us turn to Fichte to help us, so to speak, to see for ourselves what we have to say for ourselves – even if not at first for others in these much troubled times – when judgments about European culture come at us from so many sides, coming from sources that certainly do not emphasize German nature and German spirit. We can see this from Fichte, the people who are now so often to be called barbarians.

Fichte posed three questions when he wanted to speak to his people about what could uplift this people; and we must be clear that when Fichte gave his so inspiring “Speeches to the German Nation” at that time, it happened in a different time than today, in a time with a different character. Fichte posed three questions that today - at most with a single intermediate sentence - can no longer be posed in the same way. But it is precisely from these three questions of Fichte that we can learn an enormous amount for the present day. The first question is:

“Whether it be true or not that there is a German nation, and that the continued existence of this nation in its original and independent character is now endangered?”

If we disregard the second part of this question, we have to say that it is impossible to ask this question today in this way, because Fichte's descendants have proven that there is a German nation. Similarly, his second question can no longer be asked today:

“Whether it is or is not worth the effort to preserve it?”

And the third question is:

“Is there any sure and effective means for this preservation, and what is this means?”

Well, here I have spoken year after year about the spiritual life of people. And truly, especially with regard to what has been said about this spiritual life of man, I was convinced that it is the further development of what was already before Fichte, before Schiller and other souls. Fichte tried to find the means to lead the Germans out of oppression and misery, the means for a German to become aware of himself, to work from the deepest root of life. Fichte wanted a complete transformation of education; and from the way in which the German people express themselves in their “language”, he wanted to recognize the way in which they relate to other cultural worlds. Today, there is no possibility of engaging with the way in which Fichte developed these questions; what matters is that the force that can inspire and invigorate us in Central Europe today is the same as it was for him. Today we shall seek to discover the nature of the German people neither in language, as Fichte did, nor in the spirit of the age, although we certainly want to honor the full significance of language; nor do we want to speak today of Fichte's educational system, which, after all, could not be carried out at the time. But we may point out that out of the impulses of life, out of which Fichte spoke his “Addresses to the German Nation” at that time for the self-preservation of his people, there resounds the spirit which, further developed, gives true spiritual science. We can gather this from many a thing that is perhaps not always sufficiently taken into account when these wonderful addresses of Fichte's to the German nation are read today. Let us speak today — and it has often been spoken of from this place — that there is not only materialistic science, materialistic knowledge, which looks at man as he develops between birth and death; that there is not only that knowledge which passively surrenders to external appearances and forms its judgment according to what is gained from the external world in the sense of this knowledge. Rather, we are talking about a courageous, active knowledge that dares to grasp the “innermost roots of human life,” as Fichte put it, in order to grasp man where his being reaches beyond birth and death, where, according to Lessing's great idea, he grasps what passes from life to life in physical reality. There is a knowledge that, through a brave and courageous grasp of the soul's inner powers, rises to that which, even after death, looks down on man's physical activity and on his corpse itself; there is a science that truly grasps the soul, the science that leads to the divine just as much as outer science leads to the natural. For if we grasp the outer man, the material man, with the help of outer science, natural science, we find that man emerges from all the forces of nature, as it were as nature's flower; but if we grasp man with the help of spiritual science, we perceive how the soul, with its deepest roots, is connected with the Divine, with that which lives and weaves in the spiritual. Even if we can no longer take Fichte's standpoint with regard to his individual statements, we can take what lives as an attitude, as a tendency in his thinking. Thus we find it ourselves, how the basic nuance, the fundamental tone of spiritual-scientific knowledge lies in the discourses through which he wanted to awaken enthusiasm in his people when he utters the words:

“Time and eternity and infinity beholds it (the philosophy he means) in its origin from the appearance and becoming visible of that One, which in itself is absolutely invisible, and only in this its invisibility is grasped, correctly grasped.”

“All persistent existence appearing as non-spiritual life is only an empty shadow, cast out of sight, and mediated many times over by Nothing. In contrast to this and through the recognition of this many-mediated Nothing, seeing itself is to rise to the recognition of its own Nothing and to the acknowledgment of the Invisible as the only True.”

It has been pointed out here several times how the soul can grasp itself in that innermost being in which it becomes aware of what goes beyond death. Then it may speak – not from a passive, but from an active science – of how, after death, man looks down from this eternal core of his being to his body in a higher consciousness. There is something strange in Fichte that lives in him like a presentiment. We can hardly imagine that someone who does not already have the presentiment of such spiritual knowledge, which can arise from his own presentiments, would use a simile as Fichte does. He speaks of a new education of his people; of how people should learn to find their way into something that people have not experienced before and that is difficult for them to find their way into because it is difficult compared to the familiar, which one must discard. And Fichte now describes what it is like for this people when it is to rejuvenate and will look back on its old being, from which it is to slip out, as it were, according to its ideal; and he speaks in such a way that the parable he uses seems to have been taken from the modern spiritual science of the immediate present. In that he wants to inspire the people, he says:

"Time appears to me like an empty shadow, which stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases just drove it out, and laments, and cannot tear its gaze away from the once so beloved shell, and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plagues. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the deceased has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of life; the friendly voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within her in all directions, to develop the more glorious form to which she is to awaken; but she has no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or if she had, she is absorbed in pain over her loss, with which she believes she has lost herself at the same time."

Truly, one feels that this comparison is taken from what modern spiritual science has to say about the experience of the soul! And then we stand, one might say, much more “faithfully” before Fichte than he could stand before himself, so that we say: Yes, something of that in which we want to hold fast as a spiritual knowledge of the true nature of man stirs in this personality.

And how did he who, in his spiritual life, at least for a time, lived in close union with Fichte, how did Schiller, like Fichte, seek, each in his own way, to reach the innermost source of the soul's life impulses!

Oh, today, despite the fact that Schiller has become so dear to our people, it has not yet been fully recognized what fruits the forces have borne in the people of Schiller and Fichte. And one would like to say: we have to catch up with our knowledge of what is already being gloriously demonstrated on the battlefields in the West and the East; for these are the same forces that have been spiritually elevated in Schiller. Schiller was incessantly seeking — to use his own expression — in human nature, in contrast to what the everyday person is, what the person is who lives with the things of the outer world, who takes these things of the outer world in and processes them; incessantly he sought, in contrast to this person, what he calls the 'higher person', which lives in everyone. And what Schiller expresses in his Letters upon Aesthetic Education concerning the search for this higher man is one of the greatest cultural achievements. In the last lecture I ventured to point out that one professes and reckons with Germanness in a different way than the members of other nations relate to their nationality: one is German, but one seeks an ideal that can still be elevated; one seeks something higher than what lives in ordinary human beings. And so, in his Aesthetic Letters, Schiller seeks to express how, on the one hand, man does not come to the fullest comprehension of his innermost stirrings of life – which is his higher self – if he lives only for the external world, only for the externally real. He who lives only according to external impulses is, as Schiller says, like a slave who lives under the impulses of external sensual necessity. But for Schiller, he who is inclined only toward abstract thinking, who submits only to the necessity of reason, is also not a complete human being. On the one hand, Schiller sees the necessity of reason; on the other, sensual necessity. But he seeks the human being in the everyday person who can live out his life in such a way that he is able to look at the ennobled nature in such a way that the sensual life meets him with the expression of beautiful spirituality, but to whom reason also reaches. Only he who is able to confront the spiritual with the same liveliness, with the sense of the beautiful, as the other confronts sensuality, is a complete human being. And from the middle mood that arises from this, Schiller believes he can deduce the manner by which a higher human being can be conjured out of the everyday human being. But that man must do this, Schiller finds as the highest ideal of man, and with that he is again one of the great inspirers of true spiritual-scientific knowledge, which seeks with all its powers what lives as a higher man in man, and which cannot help it if it wants to seek this in the truly modern spirit, as to tie in with the impulses, as they can flow, for example, from Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. Precisely what I took the liberty of saying in the lecture I gave eight days ago: how, as a German, one always seeks, not the “German” one-sidedly, but the human being who goes beyond all nationality, who regards all nationality as something that belongs to the outer man, — that so beautifully in what Schiller strove for, what he sought to express in his letters on the aesthetic education of man and what is basically expressed in all the works of art that Schiller presented to his people and that have become so dear to the people's hearts and souls.

And Fichte – does he shape a one-sided concept, a one-sided idea of Germanness? No! we can say; he coins a universal concept of Germanness, a concept of which it can truly be said: The German always wants to become; and he believes that one can only be a German in the fullest sense of the word if one is a human being in the fullest sense of the word. Hence the beautiful word in Fichte's “Address to the German Nation,” this wonderful, heartening word:

“The principle according to which it” — whatever Fichtean philosophy is — “has to conclude this is presented to it; whoever believes in the spirituality and freedom of this spirituality and wants the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom, wherever he was born and in whatever language he speaks, is of our race, belongs to us, and will join us.”

Those who think this way belong to us and will join us. This is Schiller's way, this is Fichte's way: to become German by seeking the higher man in man in the most comprehensive and universal sense of the word, who seeks the way to what is foreign to the outer man, who is human and great because he is able to love everything great and to be loved in other people of other nationalities as well. And this Schiller seeks as a whole German, in that he was allowed to speak the words, which only came out long after his death, not only in the face of the German people, but of all civilized humanity:

"He who forms and rules the spirit must ultimately gain the upper hand; for at the goal of time, if the world has a plan, if human life has any meaning at all, custom and reason must ultimately triumph, brute force must succumb to form – and the slowest people will catch up with all the fast, fleeting ones.

To him – the German – is destined the highest honor, and just as he is situated in the center of Europe's peoples, so he is the core of humanity, those are the flower and the leaf.

He is chosen by the world spirit to work during the struggle of time on the eternal construction of human education, to preserve what time brings.

Therefore, he has appropriated what was previously foreign and preserved it within himself.

He has preserved everything that was valuable in other times and peoples, that arose with time and disappeared, it is not lost to him, the treasures of centuries.

Not to shine in the moment and play its role, but to win the great process of time. Every nation has its day in history, but the day of the Germans is the harvest of all time.

Thus they spoke. And in their spirit – in the sense that as Germans we will always strive and never remain with what we have already achieved – we, their students and successors, can become like them. Swearing by these words of our ancestors to the letter cannot be our way. But this can be our way: to try to understand our time, to continue to work and to create out of the same innermost impulses of life that created them. And in so doing, we have turned our gaze to these great ancestors. We now ask ourselves – even if perhaps in the course of the nineteenth century and up to our time many things have become different from what these great geniuses directly imagined in their consciousness: have these impulses they have given produced something that corresponds to them? Is there something in Central Europe that reveals the spirit of Schiller's spirit, the soul of Fichte's soul?

Now, it is undoubtedly not easy to speak in the immediate presence of what one's own people have achieved, what lives in them. And you will understand that in a way one may shrink from even remotely coming to what seems like a self-characterization – even if only a self-characterization of the people – in our fateful times. Therefore, I will choose a different path, so that it cannot be said that this people, who have been called “barbarians,” indulge in self-praise and self-love. I would like to choose a path through which we can hear, as in an echo, what has become of the people of Schiller and Fichte. Let us choose words that have been spoken – in English – by the great American Emerson, words that are not our words. Emerson, the great American, spoke about the nature of the German people in the post-Schiller, post-Fichte period in the following words – as I said, not even in German – by saying what he had to say about Goethe:

"One particular phenomenon that Goethe shares with his entire nation makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public,

– as I said: a quality that Goethe has in common with his entire nation! – “that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of his conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant ideas going anywhere. In all these countries, however, talented men write within the limits of their gifts. If what they produce stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is sufficiently respected. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness; but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: Where is this going? The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself on them.

There is intellectual activity: well then, what is it in favor of? What is the man's opinion? — Where does it come from? — Where does he get all these thoughts?

This, says Emerson, is what the German public demands of anyone who wants to speak to them and be something for them. We can hear another of Emerson's words as an echo of what emerged from the impulses of Schiller and Fichte:

“The English see only the particular and do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.... The Germans think for Europe.”

— The English-speaking man in America says this! —

”... The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

And what has become of these reasons that Emerson cites for himself here? He also provides the answer to that. Again, these are his words that I want to read:

"For this reason, the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are so highly esteemed for their acumen and learning, look upon their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too closely connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves about it, Goethe speaks,»

— Emerson is speaking here in reference to the German nation, even though he is talking about Goethe —

"the head and the content of the German nation, not because he has talent; but truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says may be, he has something in view that is even better... He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from the truth."

Thus the English-speaking American on what has become of the impulses of those whom the Central European regards as his great geniuses.

Now, one sentence from Emerson's writings may be particularly engraved on our consciousness in our present time, the sentence where Emerson says: “The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.” It is self-evident that when we speak of spiritual knowledge, we are aware that when we speak of “man”, we can never speak of this man being identified with his nationality. Spiritual matters are matters of the whole of humanity; there are no differences between nations and races. So it is not individuals that are at issue; rather, if we, as we now want to do, turn our attention to what the German nation has of Schiller and Fichte, this is something that is above the national, that is anational, that is divine and eternal. And were we always of this opinion? We may ask. Did what was said in cooler days seem less significant to us than what is being said today?

Now, there is a strange anomaly here. And even if you do not want to go into the detailed book – or books – by Miss Wylie, which Lord Haldane has prefaced and which has also been published in German, you can still delve into Miss Wylie's arguments if you pick up the two special issues of the “Süddeutsche Monatshefte”, those brown issues that are available at every train station. I will just pick out one thing that an Englishwoman said about the nation of Schiller and Fichte shortly before the outbreak of the present war; and her words may be quoted because she lived in Germany for eight years and got to know the nation that Emerson says is not known in English-speaking countries. Miss Wylie not only got to know German intellectual life directly, but she also got to know how German intellectual life manifests itself in hospitals, schools, universities and industry. She says:

"We read much about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. The existing one is the mature work of generations, what has always been there. Blinded by the sudden splendor of Germany's prosperity, we are inclined to forget that, except for prosperity, it has rarely occupied a place other than one of the very top among nations. In religion and philosophy, Germany shone at a time when everything around it was dark; in literature, it gave an epoch-making impetus; in music, it has always dominated.

— That is the echo! We are not saying it ourselves.

"German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnoughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnought, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in turnover, but the human qualities that prompted it.

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence. And it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany has already reached its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago... Its opponents are sitting on every border and across the water, commercially and politically, and are eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little to pounce on it and crush it. Germany knows this full well.

So says the Englishwoman. Yes – she knows it! But others have known it too. Last time I mentioned a book, “Germany in the Nineteenth Century,” by Herford, which was based on lectures given at the University of Manchester and was intended to educate those who know nothing - namely, as the book itself says, “the press people” - about what German character is. Today I may quote, even if only a few words, from this book, which was said as a kind of admonition about the German character in Manchester in 1912 – so also recently – because it refers to the real conditions of the very immediate present. This is how it was said in Manchester:

"On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Empire has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is fitting for the light of the past to shine on the present confusion, and in that higher light, things that appear hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find – spoken in Manchester, in English! “that our ancestors looked on France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason. ...

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe.

– and this was said in Manchester! –

"and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866 to 1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the hitherto unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed an inducement to war which in earlier centuries had so often on the wrong track; they enabled the German people to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish a new European system on a secure basis, which has maintained peace for forty years.

— So spoken in English in Manchester in 1912! —

“This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, could not have achieved, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a great war became the most dangerous of all ventures.”

So it has been recognized to some extent that there is some truth in what I had the liberty of saying in my lecture eight days ago, quoting Herman Grimm: that the German will indeed sacrifice himself for his fatherland at any time when the time demands it, but that he would not long for or bring about the moment when this can happen through war. And in view of the fact that we also hear this as an echo from outside, we may also turn our gaze to what our immediate present is. Therefore, I ask you now – I would like to say: to direct our feelings to the way we have to look at what we are in these fateful times – to remember what happened in the days at the end of July and the beginning of August, which is well known. I would like to try to characterize in a unique way how the events may present themselves; with words in which an unbiased observer of Central Europe – or may the others also say: a “biased” observer – could have expressed how this Central Europe feels about the great war. Let us remind ourselves of this. I will try to do so with the following words.

We recall the newspaper comments that came to us from Russia as early as the spring of this year. It could be seen from them how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German policy. These attacks increased during the following period to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. Germany could not lend a hand here; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? One might have believed earlier that it could be, because one said to oneself: we have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. When one speaks with Russian friends about such disagreements, one cannot exactly contradict them. However, the events showed that even a complete subordination of our policy to Russia's – for a certain period of time – did not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our efforts.

I believe these words could show what a person of the present day could say to characterize spring and summer. But I did not put these words together; I did not write them at all. I only changed them a little. These words were spoken by Bismarck on February 6, 1888 in the German Reichstag, when he had to defend a defense bill and wanted to explain that this defense bill was not in the interest of an aggressive war, but in the interest of peace. And now I will read his words to you:

”... how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, and I personally was suspected of my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year, until 1879, to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend a hand to this; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, telling myself: we have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even if our policy were fully implemented (for a certain time), we would not be protected from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

This characterizes the forces that have been present not for a year, but since that time, and which were well known to anyone who knew what smolders and glows in Europe. Those who look at the historical context in this way will be able to see from the mere fact that what can be felt today coincides with what Bismarck said at the time that it would have been impossible to avoid the conflict with Russia even if “German policy had fully taken Russian interests into account”. I think that this kind of historical perspective says a great deal. And what was the mood at the time when these words were spoken? Was it only Herman Grimm who spoke of the fact that Germany, that the German as such wants peace, that he also wants to put his armaments in the service of peace? In the same speech, Bismarck said something else that should also be borne in mind: he had done so much for Russia at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 that he should have been awarded the highest Russian order with diamonds for it – if he had not already had it. Nevertheless, he had to speak these words, which he spoke at the time. And we also hear him speak about the mood in which they flowed:

"One does not attack with the powerful machine that we are training the German army to be.” If I were to stand before you today and tell you – if the circumstances were different from what I am convinced they are –: “We are under considerable threat from France and Russia; it is foreseeable that we will be attacked; I believe this as a diplomat, according to military intelligence; it is more useful for us to use the advance of the attack as a defense that we are now about to launch; it is more advantageous for us to wage a war of aggression, and so I ask the Reichstag for a loan of one billion or half a billion to wage war against our two neighbors today – yes, gentlemen, I don't know if you would trust me to grant it. I hope not.

All this tends to confirm the conviction that Germany only wanted a war if it arose out of European necessities, and that she was far, far from wanting a war for the sake of war. But then one may decide whether these voices – including this voice about the immediate external events – correspond to what German intellectual life is. – I cannot help but say a few words about another impression that German intellectual life made at a certain point.

This summer we heard how one man truly could not find harsh enough words – and I say harsh – to berate German “barbarism”. This same man once cited three spirits who had most, or at least a great deal, influenced his worldview: the mystic Ruysbrock, the American Emerson, and the German mystical poet Novalis. The man who speaks of the German mystic poet Novalis among those who have led him to his spiritual vision poses a remarkable question: What, after all, is everything that is in Shakespeare's dramas, what is negotiated between the individual persons and what plays from person to person, what is that compared to what lives in many other poems? For suppose, he says, a spirit came to us from another planet, who lived under quite different conditions from the souls on earth: would he be in the least interested in what the persons in Shakespeare's plays experienced? Would we not have to offer him something quite different, something that is not expressed in everyday life, something that comes from the human soul, if he were only to pay attention to us? And then he remembers how a German mystical poet, Novalis, has brought him something that speaks of what he would rather remain silent about, but of which he believes that the soul of another who comes down from another world would see something worth sharing in it. And so the person in question speaks of Novalis, the German mystical poet, who has something in his soul that, as coming from the innermost part of the human being, could even be shown to a spirit alien to the earth if it asked:

Thus says a man who has been impressed by Novalis and wishes to express his views about Novalis. This is the same man who has now spoken in a very peculiar way – you will know it well – about Germanness and the German character: Maurice Maeterlinck. When we hear that something like this has been said by Maeterlinck, can we not say that he has actually changed his nature quite “essentially”? Could one not even say that his present words sound in such a way that one could say of them: In truth, it is difficult to question his soul and to hear its weak child's voice amidst the useless cries that surround it? One would truly like to count him among these useless screamers, against whom weak children's voices cannot prevail. But I also took these words from Maurice Maeterlinck; for they are his own words, which he also speaks on the occasion cited: “In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to hear its weak child's voice amidst the useless screamers that surround it.”

We have tried to fathom a little of what Schiller and Fichte wanted from their people. And we have tried to recognize, even if only in an echo, the extent to which these impulses have been realized. Today, there is much talk of all kinds of feelings that Germans are supposed to have towards other nations with whom they are at war; for example, there is talk of feelings of hatred that Germans are supposed to have towards Russians, towards the English, and also towards the French. Truly, after what I have said today and last time, what I am about to say now will not be interpreted by me as an un-German sentiment, but as one that must flow from the true foundations of spiritual science. For I believe that if we look at the innermost roots of the German's life, then these feelings of hatred and contempt for other nations are all untrue! Even if many a word may be spoken in the present day that we ourselves might perhaps find “un-German” within the German, the truth is what could be said about Schiller and Fichte: He who seeks the “human being,” the higher human being in the human being, as Fichte himself says, belongs to us! And the German relentlessly seeks to go beyond the narrow fetters of his nationality. Therefore, I do not believe that it can go beyond everyday life if feelings other than feelings of devotion are also spoken of as the most valuable in other peoples today. And are we not allowed to adduce evidence for this too?

Oh, we may believe that what has emerged as the highest fruit of German intellectual life really does live in the most primitive German nature. Does the German really hate the English? I would like to say: no. I would even coin the paradoxical word: the German has proved that he loves even the English more than they love themselves. Let us take seriously the saying: by their fruits ye shall know them. How has the German cultivated Shakespeare? Compare the importance Shakespeare has acquired in the German intellectual life with what he has become in England. We can then say: we see the new awakening of Shakespeare in the German intellectual life. The Germans have cultivated Shakespeare more than the English have, however this is taking things to an extreme. But as it was said that the marshal's baton is in the knapsack of every soldier, so this sentiment is in the soul of the humblest German, even if it must be sought for a little, since the German is now threatened from all sides. But we can also go to more recent times. We have spoken of Goethe. Goethe also belongs to those who, with the most loving disposition, have immersed themselves in what is universally human, in all nationalities and at all times. We see him immersing himself in that which was so dear to him, in ancient Greece; we see this immersion symbolically depicted in the second part of Faust, in the union of Faust with Helen, as a symbol for the union of the two national elements. And Goethe lets something emerge from this union: Euphorion, who, after all that we have already been able to say about Faust, can appear to us as something that is connected with Goethe's ideal of humanity. Euphorion is a strange figure. Let us remember words of Euphorion that can resonate deeply, deeply in our souls, especially today. Euphorion says:

No, I have not appeared as a child:
The youth comes to you in arms!
Join the strong, the free, the bold,
He has already done so in spirit.
Now away!
Now there
The path to glory opens up.

Then further:

And do you hear the thunder on the sea?
There, valley after valley thunders again,
Hordes upon hordes in dust and waves,
Thrust upon thrust to pain and agony!
And death
Is the law;
That is understood.

And then:

Should I watch from afar?
No! I share the sorrow and the need!

Who was Goethe thinking of when he wanted to paint this essence of humanity in front of his soul? Byron, the great English poet, was his model for what he presented in his “Euphorion”!

Sometimes it seems as if the Germans are also tempted to emphasize their distinctiveness in the face of foreigners. Then one must only know how in this emphasis there is always something that wants to defend itself against something. There are words that Friedrich Schlegel once spoke when Paris made a great impression on him: “Paris would actually be a wonderful city, only there are too many Frenchmen in it.” Of course, such words have also been spoken. But there is more to it than that. In particular, there is something that symptomatically indicates how the German wants to stand at least in the midst of cultural life. There is more to it than that, as Schiller looked to a great figure in world history. Others have also looked to this figure in world history: Shakespeare, Voltaire – an Englishman, a Frenchman. I am talking about the “Maid of Orleans”. If we really think about it, we cannot help but say: Shakespeare approached the Maid of Orleans in a narrow-minded national way; Voltaire treated her with cool, dismissive skepticism. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Schiller could only express himself about her by saying: “The world loves to blacken what is radiant and drag the sublime into the dust.” And so he sought to portray her, who for him had become a messenger of heaven, a messenger of the spiritual world. Schiller has often been criticized for creating the figure of the Maid of Orleans. Today, when considering the way in which the German places himself in the cultural life, one should remember how Schiller tried to live himself into everything that came to him from the French as a gift from heaven, in order to embody it, but which, in the judgment of the German spirit, is connected with struggle and conflict and victory. It is hard to believe, if you do not think like a German, that courage and a fighting spirit and a willingness to engage in a dispute can unite in the soul – and that humanity can still be preserved in the heart. That is precisely what Schiller wanted to express. Whereas people who do not think like a German say it is not possible, we have to say that, fundamentally, it is possible for every German, if we look at German nature at the roots of its vital impulses. The German, unlike many others, approaches battle and war, and it is in him – sometimes darker or clearer – that he has to treat the one with whom he is fighting only like an enemy in a duel. He does not hate him; he faces him and is happiest when he can touch him in the highest humanity. I would like to say: Schiller sought to infuse such a truly German quality into the Maid of Orleans. Those who know what the Maid of Orleans was will find it natural that Schiller was so moved by her, even at a time when the Germans had no reason to glorify the French spirit. But Schiller also — and that is why he has become the greatest source of inspiration for German intellectual life again — included the weaving of the forces of the unseen in his drama. And so they weave in as in the Invisible Man, in Talbot, who appears as a black knight. It has been widely criticized; but Schiller could not help but let the eternal spiritual powers also play a role in his drama. Therefore, he truly represents the quality that is quintessentially German: to make no distinction from nation to nation where the greatest, the highest in human life is at stake. That is why I said: I do not believe it when people today talk about feelings of hatred and antipathy of the Germans towards other nations, that these feelings go to the very roots of the German life. Therefore, one need not be blind and dull to what is coming to light; but one can distinguish between what comes from outside and presses upon man, and what man, with his higher nature, seeks to overcome. And Schiller is not so far removed from outer, practical life that we would have to say that he was blind to what is external to the various nations. He wrote a poem “The Beginning of the New Century”; in it we read the significant lines, which are also very close to our present life today:

Two powerful nations wrestle
For the world's sole possession;
To devour all countries' freedom,
They brandish the trident and lightning.

Gold must every landscape weigh for them
And, like Brennus in the rude times,
The Frank lays his brazen sword
In the scales of justice.

The British extend their merchant fleet
Greedily like a polyp arm,
And the empire of the free Amphitrite
He wants to close, like his own house.

These are also words of Schiller, which sounded, despite the fact that Schiller was one of those who, in a truly German way, wanted to cultivate the principle of not seeking the human in the national, or rather – one can also put it this way: to seek the human in every national. Therefore, it may be said that something for which Schiller and Fichte longed for their people may well emerge from our fateful days as the most beautiful fruit: the German has often said that he knows how to live together with other nationalities. And when we look today at a country that borders directly on Germany, and that has not only in an external sense, but also in the innermost depths of human behavior, managed to remain neutral, when we look at Switzerland, at the Switzerland in which Fichte found in Pestalozzi the roots for his German national education, we can say: We see in this model country of nationalities that it is possible for Germans to live together with other nations. Anyone who is able to follow Swiss life knows that it is of the utmost importance to the inhabitants of this country, where three nations live together in an exemplary manner, that they can maintain in spirit what is truly in their own interest for their national territory, the spirit of neutrality. But the spirit of neutrality should be respected and it should be remembered that the Swiss know full well from their own sound judgment what the historical mission of the German spirit is. And one should understand that it can justifiably offend this sensitivity if one floods an area that is of particular importance for the immediate present because it stands on the side of the most honest neutrality with what is today called “educational literature”. I believe that someone who speaks about the mission of the German language as I have done can also draw attention to this.

So we may now say: We can hear the effects of the impulses of Schiller and Fichte like an echo. Let us once more, in conclusion, place before our soul's eye the words that Emerson spoke of Goethe: “He is wise to the highest degree, though often his wisdom may be obscured by his talent. How excellent is what he says, he has something in mind that is even better... He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from dealing with the truth.” But from this ‘dealings with the truth’ also springs this trust, this confidence and hope, as well as the selflessness and sense of sacrifice that we see all around us and that are put at the service of our great time to make true what Emerson speaks of again:

"The world is young, great men of the past call to us in a friendly voice. We must 'write sacred scriptures to reunite heaven and the earthly world. The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make everything we are aware of a truth, to inspire faith, determination and trust in the sophistication of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to inspire faith, determination and trust, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to inspire faith, determination and trust, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in and trust, and to honor each truth by not only recognizing it, but making it a guiding principle of our actions, from the beginning to the end, in the midst of our journey and for endless times to come.

In the contemplation of German life, which, out of an attitude such as that of Fichte and Schiller, strives towards true spiritual insight, personalities such as Emerson emerge. And then we understand how — as if from the elementary — that which is intimately connected with this search for the higher human being in the everyday human being is also expressed in Bismarck's speech of 1888. What is intimately connected? I already said at the beginning of the lecture when I pointed out how, in the end, the best German geniuses point the way to spiritual science: As the outer man rests in outer nature, so that which can be found as the higher man in man, that which passes from life to life, that which passes from one nationality to another in the course of earthly lives, rests in the divine All-existence. And when man grasps the roots of his innermost being, he feels connected with the God whose nature permeates and pulses through the world. And Schiller and Fichte speak of this God, of whom Bismarck also speaks, in his elementary way, in the already mentioned speech, calling out to the Germans the words:

"We can easily be bribed by love and goodwill — perhaps too easily — but certainly not by threats! We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God that makes us love and cultivate peace. But anyone who breaks it will see that the militant patriotism that called the entire population of the then weak, small and exhausted Prussia under the banners in 1813 is today common property of the whole German nation, and that whoever attacks the German nation in any way will find it united and armed, with every soldier with the firm belief in his heart: God will be with us!

The German has always tried to seek this God of his in the spiritual realm. As I indicated last time, the German has tried to create in Goethe that Faust figure which cannot be said to be “German” or “French”, “English”, “Russian” or “American”; but which can be said to be human and which can only arise from the German spirit. I also pointed out how one always becomes as a German. But Goethe places the figure of Mephistopheles, the embodiment of evil and, above all, of untruth, right next to his Faust. Thus the German may look in his consciousness at the juxtaposition of Faust and Mepistopheles – and, recognizing his mission in the world, as Emerson expresses it, he may emphasize: Wherever we Germans may spread our influence, we carry with us the consciousness expressed in the words of Faust: “On free soil with free people stand!” These are words that are spoken out of the spirit that in reality respects and understands the true value of every nationality and hates none. Thus the German can look with calmness at one of the last great ancestors, at Bismarck himself, and at the words: “We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.” And he can, listening to this great statesman, hear, as if from the spiritual realm, certain words that are nevertheless—one only has to know Bismarck—genuinely Bismarckian: “There is no doubt that the threats and insults, the challenges that have been directed at us, have also aroused a very considerable and justified bitterness in us, and that is very difficult for a German, because he is inherently less susceptible to national hatred than any other nation; but we are trying to appease them, and we want peace with our neighbors as much as ever.” Therefore, anyone who knows the German must search deeper if he wants to find something in him to despise, something to hate. Goethe searched, but he did not create a human being; instead of Faust, he created Mephistopheles! Wherever people live, we will seek out their humanity, regardless of nationality. But we must not be blind to what lives in people. by the spirit of untruth. Especially in our time, when so much that is harsh and untrue sounds to our ears, we may still say: it is as if we were hearing Bismarck's words. He always strove not to disdain his opponents, but to do them justice, for example when, living at war with the French, he pointed out the old French, the fine French nature, with which he so liked to negotiate. This was also the case with the speech already mentioned, where he said: “Bravery is the same in all civilized nations; the Russian and the French fight as bravely as the German.” Indeed, the German does not look to the others for what he might have to hate, reject or dislike. He is spiritually inclined, he looks for the spiritual, just as Goethe in his Faust looked for the spiritual in the lie in Mephistopheles. And so, in conclusion, we can say, as if we were hearing Bismarck himself, whispering to us from the realms of the spirit: When we hear untruths being spoken in the West, Northwest and East, we should not allow ourselves to be led to hate and contempt for personalities and nationalities; for just as it is true that the German, when he reaches into his higher self, finds the universal humanity that can be found everywhere on earth where the human face appears, so it is also true that the German must first find the object of his hatred through spiritual contemplation. It is true that just as the German feels united with his God in his innermost, most sacred self, so too can he only go to the deeper roots of his hatred in those places where he is allowed to hate, to the spiritual level. It is true, in a certain sense deeply true: the German fears God, but nothing else in the world. But in the face of all that comes to us, I would say, from all directions, the word may also be coined that will prove to be true once we look more clearly than today at the roots of the German character:

The German, basically, hates no nationality, no human being, insofar as they live on the physical plane. The German hates only – if it is to be spoken of – the spirit of lies and dishonesty; for he loves and wants to love the spirit of truthfulness wherever it can be found!

In the first two lectures with which I began this winter lecture series, I tried to use the impulses that the great events of the time in which we live can give us to tie in with the essence of German spiritual culture as it presents itself in its great personalities. What I tried to elucidate through these reflections was that it is in the nature of this spiritual culture to become more and more imbued with the consciousness of the reality of the spiritual, of eternal existence. To a certain extent, I will try to give a special chapter from what spiritual scientific reflection has brought about in our time, in order to gain a basis for what should form the content of tomorrow's lecture: a reflection on the nature of the European folk souls. In doing so, I would like to suggest, at least with a few traits taken from spiritual science, what the latter has to say, from its point of view, to help us understand what is happening around us.

The contemplation that is to be undertaken today about the human soul in life and death is, after all, always close to man as one of the greatest riddles of life – in our time, especially so – where we see the question of life and death way, where so many are intensely affected by this question through the reality of existence, where we see that — as it were through the facts — the noblest sons of the people are confronted with this question in every hour of their existence. In the lectures I have been privileged to give here over the years, I have often pointed out that we are living in a time when questions such as the nature of the human soul, the fate of the human soul and of man in general, and similar questions enter into a scientific approach, into an approach that is demanded by the development of that other scientific field that has been so greatly perfected in the last two to four centuries: the field of natural science. To place what can be known about the soul-spiritual in a truly scientific way alongside what has been scientifically conquered for humanity, that has often been described here as the task of spiritual science; and it has also been said that it should come as no surprise if this spiritual-scientific approach is still rejected by the vast majority of people today. This fate is shared by spiritual science with everything that wants to enter human spiritual and cultural development as something new, and it also shares it with natural science itself, which in its time appeared in exactly the same way, met with opposition after opposition, and which first had to prove - but could only prove it after centuries - what it is called upon to achieve for human development. Spiritual observation must relate to what we call knowledge and science in a completely different way to that of natural science. In order for spiritual contemplation to be called scientific in the true and best sense, it must proceed differently, it must approach the human being in a different way than what constitutes the essence of the scientific approach. In the scientific approach, we first turn our gaze outwards to the facts of nature and life, and from the abundance of the manifold that comes to us, we recognize the laws of life. What reaches us through the senses becomes an inner spiritual experience in us, it becomes thought, concept, idea. But who does not feel that with this ascent from the full contemplation of external diversity to the clarity — but also to the abstractness — of ideas and natural laws, the human soul with its inner experiences actually moves away from what one could call reality? We have the fullness of nature before us; we appropriate it in science, but we feel how, in principle, we present concepts and ideas that contain the laws of nature for us, and we feel how thin, one could say reality-less, we are in the face of external reality. And so we ascend from the abundance of external reality, which is spread out before our senses, to the — I would say — ethereally thin soul experience that we have when we have taken possession of the laws of nature in our world of ideas. In a sense, we distance ourselves from nature and its abundance; but we strive for this distance because we know that we can only recognize nature and its laws by distancing ourselves from it. This is the highest thing we strive for in science: the inner soul experience in ideas and thoughts.

Spiritual research must take exactly the opposite path if it is to be scientific. The ultimate consequence of the inner experience of science in relation to external nature is preparation — merely preparation — for the knowledge of the spiritual, of the soul; and it would be a complete mistake to believe that spiritual science could proceed in the same way as natural science. What natural science ultimately strives for is the preparation for spiritual science: living in inner soul experience, immersing oneself in that which strengthens the soul inwardly and which it cannot obtain from external nature. In short, knowledge and science can only be a preparation for what one ultimately comes to: to beholding, to perceiving the spiritual world. One could say: in natural science, one strives for knowledge and science; in spiritual science, one prepares oneself through knowledge and science for what is to approach the soul, and everything that one can have in the way of knowledge and science remains, basically, in spiritual science an inner matter for the soul. But what the soul and spirit live through does not lead to something merely subjective, something that concerns only the individual soul of the person, but it leads to what is real, just as external nature is only real.

I have often pointed out the way in which this preparation for beholding, for the real inner experience of spiritual reality, is designed. I will do so again today from a certain point of view.

Only through this preparation can one lead the soul further and further, so that in the end what is spiritual reality spreads out around it. We leave nature; it is there. We go forward to the spirit. We must seek spiritual reality. We cannot start from it, it is not there at first; we can only prepare ourselves for its contemplation. But when we prepare ourselves inwardly for its contemplation, then it comes to us like a grace, spreading out of the spiritual twilight. We must acquire the ability to contemplate it.

The first thing needed to experience the human soul in its reality, so to speak, is an inner experience — not paying attention, not just thinking, but an inner experience of that which we otherwise have only as a reflection of external reality – the world of thoughts, the world of feelings – that which we otherwise feel within us when we confront the external world, and which we regard as a reflection of nature, as an image in which nature is embedded. We have to experience this intensely and powerfully by turning our gaze away completely from external reality, by making ourselves blind and deaf to external sensory reality; we have to experience it so that we allow it to be intensely present as the only inner reality in the soul. The natural scientist seeks to extract a law of nature as a thought from the outer reality of the senses. The spiritual scientist gives himself up to a thought, or to a thought imbued with feeling, in inner experience; he lets, as it were, neither the eye nor the ear send out into the outer reality, and lets the inner interweaving and interworking of the soul and turns his most intense attention to this inner experience; he forgets himself and the world and lives only in what he, as it were, lets rise in his empty but alert consciousness from the depths of his soul. And then the strange thing happens: the thought to which we devote ourselves with infinitely increased attention over a long period of time, this thought, the stronger it becomes through our inner strength, the weaker it becomes precisely in relation to what it contains; it becomes more and more transparent and transparent, more and more ethereal and ethereal. One could say: the more the spiritual researcher endeavors to be present in the thought, which is called inner thought concentration, the more the content of the thought fades away. The more we endeavor to make the thought firm and, as it were, visible by devoting ourselves to it, the more this devotion leads to the thought fading away more and more, as if dissolving in a fog, and then disappearing completely from consciousness. One could also say, expressing a principle of this inner experience: the more the thought is experienced in its sharpness in the soul, the more it gains in energy through our own activity, the more it dies in the soul. To put it in an epigrammatic way, we can say: in order for the thought to reach the goal of spiritual research, it must die in the soul; and in dying, it undergoes an inner destiny, the destiny that also has the seed that is sunk into the earth to rot. But from its rotting, the strength for a new plant arises. When thought dies in us in the concentration of thought, it awakens to a completely different life; and one does not discover this different life until thought has died in inner sharp concentration. One must stop thinking in order to let the soul plant, that which arises from thought, germinate within oneself.

And what then arises from the thought?

It is difficult to express in human language what arises from the thought, because human language is created for the external sense experiences and not for the internal soul experiences. Therefore, in a certain respect, one can only hint at the inner experiences that come into question. As the thought, made energetic, dies away, the soul inwardly feels a burgeoning power, a power of which it becomes aware and of which it knows at the moment it becomes aware : This is spiritual-soul power; this is something that is not tied to your body; something that you carry within you without the mediation of your nervous system and your brain. But in grasping not the thought but the power of thought, there arises, as if by an inner necessity, the question that presents itself like a flash of lightning: “Where has the thought gone? After all, it was basically you yourself, in that you gave yourself over to it in sharp concentration of thought. You lived in the thought, and when it dissolved and died, it carried you away with it. Where has it gone? And where have you arrived now?” — Here one must choose a comparison. Just as we carry the thoughts we have of external nature within us, just as we know we have the thoughts, so we immediately perceive a state in ourselves through which we say: the thought as you had it has died in your concentration of thought; but through this it has awakened to another life – and has taken you with it. You are now thought of in the spiritual world!

This is a harrowing, great, tremendously significant experience in the life of the spiritual researcher. For only in this way can one ascend into the spiritual world, by feeling itself grasped by it – as thought, if it were alive, would feel itself grasped by us. And basically, there is no other way to experience immortality than to appeal through our inner soul development to the invisible spiritual beings that always rule over us – just as the beings of nature visibly rule over us – and by appealing to our relationship with these spiritual beings, who begin to take the thought for themselves and think it for us the moment the thought fades. Now we begin to know: within the spiritual world there are beings whose existence goes beyond mere nature; as we human beings think with our thoughts, so our spiritual beings think, so these higher geniuses think the content of our soul. They hold us, they carry us; and through the fact that we are in them, our immortal being, which goes beyond our physical existence, is conditioned. We tell ourselves through spiritual science: If we cannot hold ourselves in death, if we lose what we have been able to create for ourselves in our existence between birth and death as inner experience through outer nature, then we pass through the gate of death and then see from the results of spiritual science that what is independent of us in the body is basically thought from higher beings.

It is not the case that what we call the spiritual world expands around us in a similar way to the external nature – which many expect. External nature stands before us; we stand before it and we look at it. When we ascend into the spiritual world, it is different. There the spiritual world penetrates into our own experience, which we have only transformed; there we do not think about the spiritual world, there we must inwardly experience how we are thought. We are in the same situation vis-à-vis the spiritual world as our thoughts about external reality are vis-à-vis our soul. This is basically the most surprising thing about the external reality. It is the experience of spiritual reality that is reversed compared to that of sensual reality, that we say to ourselves: in the face of spiritual reality, when we really experience it, we feel the way nature should feel in the face of sensual reality; we do not think about the spiritual beings; we experience that when we have risen to them, we are thought of and held by them. If you want to express it pedantically and scientifically, we become the object of the spiritual world. Just as we are the subject in relation to the outer reality of nature, so we become the object in relation to the spiritual world. And just as the outer reality of nature stands before us as an object, so we rise to an experience of spiritual reality in which we ourselves are the object; for the spiritual reality comes to us as a subject — or as a multitude of subjects.

This inner experience is very often, but always only by those who do not know it and who have no will to enter into it, presented as something subjective, as a purely personal matter. In a sense, the objection that is raised with this is quite correct. For what one can get to know in the first stage of spiritual research has a subjective character; this carries a personal nuance in all the struggles and inner conquests that one has to undergo in the process. And one can justifiably raise the objection that The researcher has the task of defining the limits of human knowledge, and he should be aware that what goes beyond the general limits imposed by external nature can basically only be subjective knowledge. The objection is justified, and none will recognize it as much as the spiritual researcher; but it is only valid up to a certain stage, and for the reason that in reality everything that one can go through subjectively, personally, is only preparation. In the moment when the preparation is sufficient, the objective spiritual reality comes to us as if by a grace that comes upon us as strength. What is experienced as preparation can basically be quite different for the most diverse people; but where they arrive in the end is the same for everyone. The objection is also often made that the spiritual researchers usually communicate what they communicate in a subjectively colored way; one says this about the facts of the spiritual world, the other that. That is quite right, but only right because many do not know how to communicate what presents itself through the grace mentioned, but because it is still their personal, subjective knowledge that they communicate, because they have not brought it to the point where the spiritual researcher arrives at a spiritual world that stands before him as objectively as the images of nature appear objectively before the human soul. The objections raised against spiritual scientific research — I have often said this here — are best understood by the spiritual researcher himself.

When the spiritual world is reached by the spiritual researcher after sufficient preparation, then this spiritual researcher knows himself as experiencing an invisible, supersensible world. Knowledge has ceased to have meaning for him. This knowledge has been completely transformed into direct experience, into the most immediate inner perception. And now the spiritual researcher experiences what becomes immediate truth for him. He knows: Now you live in the world in which you are always during the course of twenty-four hours; you now live in the spiritual realm, in the soul's existence, in which you are otherwise always unconsciously during sleep. Through spiritual research one gets to know the state of sleep, learns to recognize that in it the human soul is really outside its body, that it has the body before it, as one otherwise only has the objects of the external world before it. How does one learn to recognize this? By the fact that one is now really in a state in which one is otherwise during sleep, only in a completely opposite way. In sleep, consciousness is depressed and darkness spreads around us. But now, as a spiritual researcher, one can look at this state because one experiences it – but not unconsciously, as in sleep, but consciously. One knows: One is, by having come out of the body – for one consciously comes out of the body – inwardly united with the spiritual world; one has become one with the spiritual world. And now the question is answered: Why is it then usually the case that the soul is unconscious during sleep? Why is it outside of its body in this dull, dark state? This question is answered for the spiritual researcher by the fact that he can now recognize what has been removed through his preparation in his inner soul being, and what is there for the soul when it is asleep. For the spiritual researcher arrives at a battleground, at an inner battleground, through his preparation, and it is difficult to find words to express what comes to man with tremendous intensity, with an inner tragedy, when he wants to bring the thought to extinction and to rebirth in another sphere. What takes hold of the human soul and can lead to the human soul being torn apart is that, if you do not properly control yourself, an inner opposition, an inner rebellion arises against what you do inwardly. For at the moment when the thought extinguishes itself inwardly, one feels: the more one lives out of one's own consciousness into the consciousness of the invisible spiritual beings that rule in the invisible, the more inner forces are awakened that lead the most fierce opposition against this rising out of one consciousness into another. One senses something coming that does not want to be done. And that inner discord, that rebellion against one's own act becomes the tragic inner struggle that every true spiritual research has to fight intensely. All words are too weak to really express what has to be lived through. For when one is so inwardly absorbed, one feels as it were removed from oneself, when one is lifted up into another sphere, then that opposition asserts itself, which says: “You do not want to lose yourself, but you do everything to lose yourself. It is indeed death that you are preparing for yourself; you do not live with your being in you, you become the thought of another. You die within yourself!” And everything that can be mustered with an enormous will, in protest against inner action, asserts itself as an opposition to this absorption.

The next step is to gain control over this inner opposition, over what arises from the depths of the soul. One must first find it, which offers the possibility of getting out of this state. Once one has found it, the second step is to add to the concentration of thought, which, as it were, is subject to the second greatest spiritual law of the development of the human soul.

One asks oneself: What is it in you that rebels? What is it that rears up like a terrible rebel? And just as one builds on the thought by having it and making it disappear and resurrect in another sphere, so too must one now build on what one already has. And that which one has, which one must build on, is what one can call human destiny. This human destiny approaches us in such a way that we experience its inner blows – whether good or bad – as coming from outside. How far removed are we in human experience from taking what fate is as something other than what “happens” to us, what “coincidence” is in the best sense of the word? But one can begin to take it differently. And by beginning to take fate differently, one becomes a spiritual researcher. One can start by asking oneself: What are you actually in relation to your fate? You can look back into your past, which you can survey in your youth or in the years you have lived through so far, and survey your destiny; you can look at the individual events of this destiny, as far as you can grasp them, in retrospective investigation, and you can ask yourself the question: What would you actually be if this destiny with all its “coincidences” had not befallen you? And if you look into this question, which must now be a very personal one, very deeply, you realize: however the blows of fate may lie, whether they have turned out well or badly, what we are now, we are through all the good and bad blows of fate; we are basically nothing other than the result of our fate. One wonders: what are you, then, other than the result of this fate? If this or that had not affected you, it would not have shaken and stirred your soul, and so you would not be what you are now. And when you then survey your entire destiny in this way, you find that you, with your present self and all your experiences, are basically connected with destiny in the same way that the sum in an addition is connected with the individual addends and addents. Just as the sum in an addition is nothing other than what flows together through the individual addends, so we are basically nothing other than the sum of all the good and bad blows of fate we have suffered, and we grow together with our destiny by contemplating it. The first feeling we can then give ourselves over to is: You are one with your destiny. And whereas we used to separate ourselves from our destiny, whereas we used to stand apart as a special ego, now the special ego flows into the stream of these events of destiny. But it flows into it in such a way that it does not just stand there like a result in the stream of the present; but by gradually experiencing this flowing together, our destiny takes our ego – that which we are – with it, so to speak. We look back on the course of our destiny and, as we look at our destiny, we find our own activity in it; we grow into the becoming of our destiny. We not only feel at one with our destiny, but we gradually grow into our destiny to such an extent that we unite with destiny and its deed. And now it is again one of the most significant, great inner experiences that, looking back on a stroke of fate, we do not say to ourselves: it hit us, it happened to us by chance, but that we say to ourselves: we were already involved in this fate; through it we have made ourselves into what we are today.

Such a contemplation cannot be carried out only in thoughts, in ideas and images. Every step of such contemplation is filled with inner emotional, vital soul reality. The growing together with destiny is experienced; the I expands through destiny. And what expands – one learns to recognize it as something quite different from thought. As the other soul element, one learns to recognize it as present in us, as the will that is carried by feeling. We feel the thought as it concentrates, dies away and, as a force, rises up in a foreign spiritual world, from which we are, as it were, thought; our will, our will carried by feeling, grows back into the vastness of time, grows out of itself, so that it coincides with our destiny and becomes ever stronger. By feeling ourselves as one with our destiny, we do not experience dying in thought, but an ever-living and becoming-alive of the will. While the will is initially concentrated in the single point of our present, and we let it flow into our deeds and words, it expands, as from a small point of germination, in the stream of time to that which shines backwards, which, as it were, has created us ourselves. Our will – that is the second law that comes into play here – by giving itself to fate, by losing itself to fate, becomes stronger and stronger, more and more powerful. It moves from the state in which we usually have it to a completely different state.

The thought dies in order to be reborn in a new existence. With the will, we stand in such a way that at a certain moment it is dead to our destiny; it is dead to the vicissitudes of fate. If we guide the will in inner meditation about our destiny, it becomes stronger and stronger – by sacrificing itself and, as it were, becoming more and more devoted to our destiny, by recognizing that we ourselves live in our destiny. The thought passes from its strength to its dying away and to its revival in another sphere; the will passes from its momentary effect to an enormous breadth, in that it becomes the bearer of our entire destiny. And here is where experience really expands into a realm that is not accessible to outer experience. Outer experience is only accessible to the extent of experiences where consciousness has awakened, where outer memory begins: in the third or fourth year of a person's life. But when we really live through ourselves with our will, so that we no longer regard our destiny as something alien, as something that is “outside,” then we no longer remain — and with time this inner experience develops — with the consciousness of the soul in our present life. Then we look back into the far, far distance, look back to the states of our soul that preceded our birth or conception, look back to times when our soul itself lived in the spiritual world before entering into physical earthly existence, look back to a state of the soul when it prepared forces to take hold of our body. Thus, by preparing the will to undergo the opposite of what is experienced in the concentration of thought, we grasp our own life beyond birth and death. If we want to grasp the thought, we must detach ourselves from external reality, we must become blind and deaf to the external sensory reality, we must withdraw completely into ourselves; then the thought is transformed so that we ourselves are thought by higher consciousnesses. With the will, we must do the opposite: we must spread into what is otherwise only outside of us. With our thoughts we go within ourselves; with our will we go out of ourselves, go into our destiny and through the passage through our destiny we find the way into the spiritual worlds, where we, according to the reality of our soul, stand in the most comprehensive reality, in that reality which has already taken hold of us before we descended to physical existence. What I am expounding here, seemingly theoretically, is only a description of the inner experiences that the spiritual researcher has to undergo in order to ascend to the knowledge of the spiritual world, to come to the vision of the spiritual world. In relation to external nature, nature precedes and knowledge follows; in relation to spiritual nature, knowledge — that is, something that proceeds like knowledge — precedes as preparation; the vision follows. And now we recognize ourselves in what basically always lives in us, but which humanity will also have to look at scientifically if the development of culture is to continue spiritually; but in order for this to enter consciousness through the progressive forces of development, the scientific grasping of these processes must precede. Of course — one should not even have to mention this — we do not “make” the soul experience by grasping it in this spiritual-scientific way; but we perceive that which is always within us. But just as in the knowledge of nature, experience and knowledge develop out of observation, so in spiritual science, if human evolution is to progress, then the knowledge of spiritual processes must develop into an understanding of the spiritual world. And what one recognizes is that which is independent of the outer physical body, which, as it were, attracts it by descending from the spiritual world into the physical.

But even in our ordinary everyday life, we live out of our physical body, in that – for reasons that have been discussed here many times – we alternately enter into a state of sleep within the course of twenty-four hours. And when we consider the state of sleep, we can ask the question: Why does that which otherwise enters into spiritual consciousness become dulled during sleep? Why is there darkness around us then? And then, through spiritual science, we recognize precisely at the moment when the soul, through real preparation in concentration of thought and meditation, takes hold of itself powerfully, how this power enters the body, and we also recognize, because we then grasp the inner, immortal power, what obscures it in ordinary sleep, what makes it impossible to see spiritual reality in sleep when one is out of the body. When one examines this, when one beholds the spiritual reality, which is otherwise darkened, one notices: There is an excess of desire in the soul, an overgrowth of cravings, an emotional penetration of the most intense life of desire, a much stronger life of desire than is present when the soul submerges back into the body and wakes up. And what does the sleeping soul desire? This can be seen through spiritual scientific research: in sleep the soul desires to re-enter the physical body, into that which it has left, in an intense way. And because the desire to re-enter the body is overwhelmingly strong in the soul, this desire, like a fog that covers the clarity, extinguishes for the soul what it would otherwise perceive as belonging to the spiritual world: the consciousness of higher beings and their experiences, their — the soul's — inclusion in higher beings — and their inclusion in these before birth and death. But because the soul needs the forces that can come to it only from the spiritual world, just as the body needs the forces that can come from the world of atoms, it must immerge again and again into the spiritual world. But because it always desires to immerge into the body, its consciousness for the spiritual processes remains extinguished, even when it is free of the body in sleep. What a person experiences in his body, he will never be able to experience directly without this body. What he experiences in this body is that the little power he has in his soul to see the spiritual directly is overgrown in ordinary life by the desire for the body, and that this power in the body, where the soul has this power, becomes stronger and stronger. In the body, the soul learns to develop consciousness and self-awareness. That is the essence of this bodily life. The soul undergoes this life in the body, not as in a dungeon, not as a form of imprisonment, but as something necessary for its overall experience. For the soul can only become what it is meant to be through experience, and this experience changes from a dull to a brightly conscious one. But the conscious powers are first stimulated in the body. When the soul has, as it were, received its satisfaction, it devotes itself to being overshadowed by consciousness. This consciousness passes over into the soul as a power. And then — this is made especially clear by spiritual science — when the soul experiences 'becoming conscious' in the body, it retains the after-experience of this consciousness. Something comes into force that is higher than ordinary memory, but still similar to ordinary memory. In our lives, we remember through our ordinary memory what experiences we have gone through; we can call this up again in the soul. What the soul experiences in the body – this brightening of consciousness, this permeation with consciousness, this remembrance of self-awareness – occurs in the spiritual researcher when he undergoes what I have spoken of, so that he has the experience in his soul as in a memory. We must hold on to this.

The spiritual researcher lives in a higher spiritual world; he becomes, as it were, a thought of higher beings. But by permeating himself with what spiritual research can give, what would otherwise become rebellion becomes such an inner experience that he now, by living in the spiritual world, remains afflicted with a memory of his bodily life. Now he knows: this physical life does belong to you after all. And now this rebellion is stripped away by the memory that one has gained through the expansion of one's destiny. One knows: now one is not exposed to spiritual death in the spiritual world. For however much one may merge into the consciousness of higher entities, one lives oneself up in such a way that although the thoughts are grasped by the higher entities, we remain in the power of inner experience; we preserve ourselves, we retain ourselves when we live ourselves up into the higher consciousnesses, how the thoughts are preserved in the consciousness of the higher entities. What we keep in our memory as a memory is not reality until we bring it up from our memory. How it is down there in the dull subconscious is of no interest to man at first; there it has no reality. That is why I called it what the spiritual researcher then has, something like a higher memory, which is similar to memory after all. It is as if we live ourselves up into the consciousness of higher beings, as if all our thoughts retained independent reality, and the stream of our experiences is not just like a stream for our memory, which is there for us to draw up into our memory, but as if the experiences in their own spiritual reality are floating in it. Thus, through the experience that has been hinted at, through the memories, we live our way up into a higher world, but these memories are ourselves, grasping us in our own remembering. It is hardly different from a parable, but it expresses the fact when one says: by developing itself further through meditation, through concentration of thought and through outpouring of the will over fate, the human soul becomes something for those entities which it takes up in its consciousness and which it holds in the regions in which it lives after death and before birth. But just as thoughts only have an existence that is borrowed from us, so we live our way up into the “thought-being” of the higher consciousnesses, and in that they look back on us, they look back on us as on entities that have remained independent. By taking hold of ourselves in our destiny, we maintain ourselves in the consciousness of higher entities.

All that I express in this way is only the knowledge of the facts, which is always there for the soul. For what the spiritual researcher experiences is nothing other than the knowledge of what the soul experiences when it goes beyond the external reality through the gate of death. But as external natural events take place without our initially knowing about them, so too does death pass us by and makes the soul what it must make it. But in the course of human development, man must learn to know what death makes of the soul; through spiritual science he must acquire knowledge about what is called: the approach to the riddle of death. That is why what the spiritual researcher comes to in his inner soul development has been called, with a certain justification, “arriving at the gate of death”. From the observation made about sleep, it can be seen that the human soul, in its purely spiritual existence, is “dulled” by the desire for the body. When it passes through the gate of death and detaches itself from the body, it does not remain dulled by this desire. Rather, by withdrawing from the body, it is cured of the desire for the body; the desire pushes itself out of the soul, and the soul experiences being together with the spiritual world. The soul learns to experience itself in the spiritual world. But it would be dependent if it had not passed through death. The soul must pass through death because it is the greatest fact, the greatest experience for it. As we must enter the body through birth, so we must leave the body, pass through death, must die, in order to grasp ourselves as a self in the spiritual world through the experience of death and dying. We become a memory of higher consciousness by shedding the consciousness of the present that we have in the body; and after death, what our self gives us is presented to us in a different way than it is presented to us in the form of our self between birth and death. Between birth and death, we are so immersed in life that we lose our sense of self when consciousness is dulled, that we obscure what we experience in our sleep. Simultaneity exists between us and our body, but also between us and our self-awareness. After death, this changes. What in ordinary life between birth and death is, as it were, the ordinary spatial relationship to our spatial body, becomes after death a relationship to our being in time. After death, we look back on what we have gone through in our corporeal existence, and in this looking back, in this connection with our corporeal existence, we feel our self-awareness, we feel ourselves as selves. In time, the relationship to our self becomes. By looking at our spiritual surroundings, we merge into the higher beings in which we live. We retain our independence, our full self-consciousness after death, by immersing ourselves with our memories in the past life of the body — just as we immerse ourselves each day in the existence of space in order to arrive at our self-consciousness.

Thus the human soul passes through the full experience, which includes death, to which death belongs as something necessary; for to self-awareness in the spiritual world belongs the experience of death in the sense world. With this, we can at the same time suggest – but only suggest; in the following lectures this winter, this will be explained in more detail – how this experience of death presents itself. Of course, when a person passes through the gate of death, he will remain unconscious of what he is experiencing. But as he becomes more and more familiar with the spiritual world, he strengthens himself with the forces that can flow to him from the spiritual world, and purifies himself from the forces that, between birth and death, as the desire for the body; and in this inner purification from dullness, the retrospect into one's own self arises, and with it, the insight into the spiritual world arises. The experience after death occurs, so to speak, in such a way that the memory of the experience of death gradually arises in the human soul only as the human being penetrates into the spiritual world after death. But then, when looking back on earthly life each time, it is the case for the human being that his self-awareness blossoms just as it blossoms within the sensory world when he normally awakens.

What has been explained here cannot, of course, be proven externally. Therefore, it is very easy for those who do not want to engage in the true proof of the spiritual world to make objections. Anyone who demands that the spiritual world should be proved in the same way as the facts of external natural science and its laws, and who then, when that is not possible, is of the opinion that all talk about a spiritual world is only subjective talk, must be told: The spiritual world cannot speak to the general public in such a way that anyone can conduct the experiment, the observation. But that is why spiritual science does not remain mere subjective talk, but something that has value and significance for the general public; because there are methods, the workings of the soul, that lead every person to penetrate into the spiritual world when they go through them. Therefore, if someone says, “Your spiritual world is not clear to me; prove it to me according to the methods of external natural science,” the reply must be: You must obtain the proof for yourself by applying to your soul what is applicable to every human soul as the methods indicated by spiritual science!

What I have today only been able to discuss in general terms, about the thought, its dying away and its revival in another sphere, about the spreading of the will over fate, and how it must work there in detail, I have presented in more detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, which has now been extensively revised and is available in a new and I have also tried to present it in a different way in the book 'The Riddles of Philosophy', which has now been published as a second edition of my 'World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century' with a 'sketchy outlook on an anthroposophy' as a result of the entire spiritual-philosophical development of the West.

Let it be emphasized once more: spiritual science does not give something that would not be there without it — just as natural science does not give something that would not be there without it. But the fact that man knows something presupposes that the facts of knowledge are there first. But when the facts are absorbed into consciousness, spiritual science will give the human soul what equips the soul with strength and power, as it will need it in the future. The soul has certainly had an awareness of its connection with the spiritual world in the past as well. But humanity continues to develop and evolve. And the results of spiritual scientific research will increasingly be part of what the soul will need for its inner strength, what will bring it to an awareness of itself, will be a real knowledge of the spiritual world, the world of the soul, which can only be imparted through research, just as knowledge of nature can only be imparted through research. Through this spiritual scientific research, the human soul is given what memory expands beyond the horizon, beyond which it can otherwise only roam. Today, this can only be hinted at. As the will expands to embrace destiny and the human being becomes one with destiny, and as the will in man grows to such strength that he grasps what blows of fate are in good and evil, and knows: I myself have formed all this —, memory grows back over earlier experiences, and also grows into those times that represent earlier human lives on earth. Only a hint can be given of what is to be explained in later lectures: intimately connected with the expansion of will over fate is the realization that man not only accomplishes one earth-life, but that this one life is the result of previous earth-lives, that this preparation of the will of fate has taken place in previous earth-lives. And so it presents itself in our consciousness that what we now grasp with our will is the cause for later earthly lives, and has an effect on later earthly lives.

Especially in the spiritual culture of Central Europe, the stages by which outstanding leader spirits have grasped this connection between the human soul's experiences and the spiritual world have always emerged in their souls. And if it has been said today that the human soul can, through the concentration of thought, cause this thought to die away and to revive in a higher world, then reference can be made to a spirit to which I have already drawn attention in earlier lectures: to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He did not yet have spiritual science. But he was so immersed in German, Central European spiritual life that he saw the certainty of the human soul's place in eternity from the way he found himself placed in this spiritual life, as if from an elementary, impulsive consciousness. In many places in his works, Fichte has expressed what emerged to him, what he felt about the human soul's standing within the world of a higher consciousness; but perhaps there is no place where he expresses this connection of the human soul with eternity more intensely than in his appeal to the public, in which he defended himself against the false accusation of atheism. There he says – addressing external nature as “thou” and the I that comes to grasp itself as “I” – the following words:

These convictions are not merely theoretical realizations; these convictions are experienced. And that is what I wanted to bring to the feeling and emotion in the last of my lectures here, that precisely Central European, German intellectual life is the one that contains the best, the most beautiful, the most energetic seeds for this experience. Hence it is that out of this spiritual life itself there may flow the consciousness of its significance in the world, and that now, when in the outer life of Central Europe this spiritual life too is confronted with the question of being or non-being, this spiritual life can know from its own direct knowledge what its calling is and how it must live, and how it must not perish because it is necessary to form the bond between the human soul and the eternals. Then, especially from this spiritual life, flows that consciousness which sees, as it were, in an intense form when one now turns one's gaze to all – we may already say – heroic natures who stand between life and death in the stream of today's events. We look at the great riddle, at the great question of fate that is posed to us today by the epoch — also in this form in which it is posed to us by today's events: the question of life and death. And when we look from the point of view of spiritual science at what lives in the human body, lives in the knowledge that it is sheltered in the consciousness of higher beings, that it can believe itself to be preserved as a living, independent memory then, when this body is destroyed, — that which lives there, that is what must appear before our soul today, when we see so many bodies fall in sacrifice, in the great sacrifice of the time.

We ask ourselves: When viewed from the perspective of spiritual science, do the events of the soul really impose themselves on the soul of the one from whom death is demanded by the events of the time, mostly at a young age? We look up to the one from whom death is demanded in the sacrificial service of time, we look at what we grasp spiritually as a soul-like measure of strength, and we know: The thread of life is torn from that which lives in the body in the bloom of youth, at a time when the soul and spiritual powers could still experience for a long time. But truly, when we have recognized these spiritual powers through spiritual science, then we know that they remain alive, that they pass over into a spiritual world, into a new context, when they detach themselves from the old one. And when we then think how we ourselves become memories and thoughts in higher consciousnesses, then this death of the times, which appears so tragic to us today, will appear to us in a higher light. So that we see the forces that we see taken from the body penetrating into higher consciousnesses – and see these higher consciousnesses looking down on physical life on earth. With their strengthened powers, they have absorbed everything that man has sacrificed to them. And because it is the higher consciousnesses that offer us spiritual nourishment, the powers for the fertilization of the soul, the powers of preservation and life, just as physical powers offer us physical nourishment, we can look up to those who today, through the events of the times, go into the spiritual world with a sacrificial death, as something that in the future will look down strengthening and invigoratingly on what is taking place on the physical plane of the earth. It acquires a real, a true meaning when it is said: the sacrifice on the battlefield acquires a meaning through the whole development of humanity. And what is meant by this becomes understandable when we know: just as we, as physical human beings, face nature and it gives us its nourishment, so we give ourselves to the spirits and gods for nourishment; but they themselves give us what we need for nourishment and for strengthening the soul. And when young forces, who die on the battlefield or languish from the consequences of their wounds, leave the body, then these young forces are refreshment forces for the human evolution of the future.

It becomes very real when the one who sacrifices himself on the battlefield is imbued with the consciousness that he does not merely die, but lives in his death and will live differently than if he had died a different death, will live for the salvation and for the vigorous future of humanity. We look at the meaning of these sacrificial deaths by recognizing how the seeds are sown for the prosperity of humanity in the future, and by knowing how consciousness can permeate the warrior, that he experiences his death today, that he experiences his wounded fate today, but that he retains the strength through which he will remain united with that for which he dies throughout the future. Torn out of all sentimentality and placed in the simple reality,

reality, is placed in what otherwise could so easily only be taken symbolically or figuratively. Such a spiritual contemplation, as we have undertaken today, about the life of the human soul in the outer existence and also in the supersensible existence, I believe, in the right sense, creates right impulses in that which we experience today as the “fate of the times”. And if, in the context of a significant spiritual experience, a poet — Robert Prutz — has spoken beautifully of the ideal deeds of his people, then we may, from the point of view of spiritual science, give these words an even deeper meaning in view of current events. Regarding what the human soul experiences in life and in death, we may ask: What is the meaning of the death and suffering that are now demanded of us by the times? And today, deepening the meaning of Robert Prutz's words, we can say to anyone who will sympathize with and experience what is demanded of us today: what Robert Prutz said in the face of an event less significant in world history:

It is for the coming generation,
It is for the future dawn,
It is for freedom and for the right,
It is for life and for death!

The theme of this lecture has been taken from the impulses arising in the times through which we are passing. Now that so many nations are fighting, we seem to be called upon to turn our inner vision upon such living forces and realities as are found among the nations. And in so far as it is possible to mention these forces and realities, these “folk-souls,” they shall be the subject of our talk to-night.

It is already hard enough nowadays to speak (as we intend to do) of the individual soul in a spiritual-scientific manner. It is no easy task in the face of the widespread materialism of our day to uphold the true inner and genuine existence of the individual soul; for this is nowadays doubted and denied on every hand. Materialistic thought, because of its determination to remain on the firm ground of natural science, often deems it its duty to reject the psycho-physical in its true meaning. And remote as is the conception of the life of the individual from this way of thinking, that which can be designated as “folk-soul” is still further removed from its grasp. For, says the naturalistic school, can the soul of a people be anything more than the manifestation of all its confluent individual souls, anything more than which binds together a given community of men and women while having no real existence except in separate human individuals? In the first lecture which I delivered this winter¹ I pointed out that the great events of our times, the sacrifice of so many lives obliged us to turn our eyes to the “folk-souls” as to something real. Whether he is fully conscious of it or not, the man who sacrifices himself in obedience to the destiny of the day, does believe the sacrifice which he makes to the folk-soul to be made to something real, something true, something that lives and has an inner being of its own. Even our modern philosophers, who are so averse to the spiritual attitude, cannot, when they come to enquire more deeply into the relations of history and human life in communities; dispense with the idea of a group soul, cannot, that is to say, do without the idea of a “folk-soul.” Thus Wundt, the Leipzig philosopher, who is so highly esteemed, and who certainly cannot be accused of any inclination towards the spiritual-scientific view of things, cannot avoid seeing in the group spirit something real, something to which he attributes an organism and even a personality.

Facts like these make one realise that the man who concerns himself with philosophical matters must at least draw near to what Spiritual Science has to give, and that it is simply for lack of familiarity with Spiritual Science that people hold the spiritual life and spiritual reality to be mere appendages of external reality. Wundt sees in the language, customs and religious views, as lived by a whole people, a certain organism; he even says that this life expresses a certain personality. But ordinary philosophy has not yet achieved a genuinely spiritual-scientific approach to the problem. To do this it would have to start from the fundamental principles to which attention was drawn in yesterday’s lecture. {i.e., The Human Soul in Life and Death, Berlin, 26th November, 1914, already available on your website; in the first paragraph of the lecture on 26th (note 1) is also reference to this lecture.}

It was pointed out that there exists a method of developing the human soul by the quickening of its inner powers and by the conquest of its inner conflicts. In this way the human soul is prepared for the vision of the spiritual world and is raised to the experience which can he expressed by saying that in the spiritual world one feels oneself to be living as a thought in the mind of a higher being. Just as our own thoughts live in us, so through soul development can we feel ourselves to be living as the thought of spiritual beings of a higher order. And it was also pointed out that that which is comprised by the psycho-spiritual element in man, that which throughout ordinary sleep lives outside the human body, is clarified and illumined by this soul development. Man can then know himself to be in that state wherein he generally lives in unconsciousness from the moment he goes to sleep till the moment when he wakes; he knows himself to be living in his own spiritual mode of being, and therefore in his own higher existence, just as he ordinarily knows himself to be living in his physical mode of being in external nature. But we also showed why in his heavy sleep life, the soul of man cannot be illumined with the consciousness of his spiritual mode of being. From the moment he drops asleep to when he awakes, man is filled with the desire to sink back into his physical body. And this desire has the effect of clouding over and obscuring that which the soul would experience if, freed from the body in sleep, it were at rest in the heart of the spiritual world. For Spiritual Science has grasped the fact that the soul is an independent entity which knows itself to be free of the body, that this soul cannot know anything of the condition in which it enters the state of sleep every day, cannot know why in this state its consciousness is obscure and dim. But in learning to know the peculiar character of the body-free human soul the Spiritual Investigator also learns to know what it is to sink back into the body at the moment of awaking. And at this point we must state a very important tenet of Spiritual Science, a very important result of Spiritual Investigation.

The Spiritual Investigator experiences consciously this act of sinking down into the physical body. He contrives to experience consciously what in sleep is unconscious, and, in the same way, he experiences the manner in which the soul, sunk again into the body, lives in this body. And he knows that while the soul’s consciousness is clouded in the state of sleep, yet when it sinks down into the body and lives in the body, it is then more “awake” than it could be through its own powers. Just as in sleep, owing to the desire of which we spoke, the soul is duller and less clearly conscious than it could be by its own powers, so during the day is it more awake, brighter, more illumined than it could be through its own strength. By sinking down into the body, the soul can participate in that which it experiences in the body. But through this process of sinking down, the soul’s life becomes a more awakened one than it would be with the help of only such forces as it could itself bring to the task.

And thus is shown to the Spiritual Investigator the truth of the saying that whatever appears in the external world as purely “physical” is in reality permeated with the spiritual, that fundamentally the spiritual inhabits everything physical. As man enters the inner light of his soul, so does he sink down into his body and know that he is not only body, but soul and spirit throughout. And the psychic element which he apprehends as he sinks down into his body, is something that leads not only a personal, but a supra-personal spiritual life, something that eludes us in the state we traverse between falling asleep and awaking, but which we actually live through when we sink down into the body. In our body we come in contact, amongst many other spiritual entities, with what may be called the “folk soul.” This “folk-soul” animates our body through and through. With our body we are not given only corporeal materiality. No, with the body which we use as our instrument between birth and death, we are also given that which animates our body and which is not one and the same thing as our own “personal soul.” That which unites itself with our personal soul when we sink down into the body is the “folk-spirit,” the “folk-soul.” When we fall asleep we abandon, in a sense, the habitation of the folk-soul to which we belong. The Spiritual Investigator is not afraid of the charge of Dualism (which would contradict Monism) which is brought against him when he points out that man is dual, that every time he goes to sleep he falls apart from unity into duality. He fears this charge of dualism as little as does the chemist when he says of water that it consists of hydrogen and oxygen. In men, regarded as external physical forms, there exists not only the individual soul that goes from one life to another, re-embodying itself in successive lives on earth; no, in the physical forms we see walking about there lives yet another psychic element—the folk-souls, actual and conscious through and through. But consciousness permeates the folk-soul in a different manner from what it does in the case of the individual human soul; and in order to show how different in kind is this folk-soul, we wish to draw attention to the following considerations.

Faced with external reality man’s response is determined by his whole character, by the particular colouring of his soul life, and is expressed in one of two ways. Either he will give himself up at once, in the observation of things, to the objectivity of the external world, or else, feeling but little inclination to cast his eye towards the horizon of the external world, he will live in increasing familiarity with the ebb and tide of his own soul. We meet this contrast in Goethe and Schiller. Goethe’s thought, which has rightly been named “concrete,” lights upon things and spreads itself over them. It lives in suchwise that Goethe shares the life of things and at the same time breathes in their spirit like a draught of spiritual air. Schiller’s gaze did not rest so much on the things around him, but was turned inwards on to his own soul with its secret pulsations, its own incessant rise and fall. Now, what lives in history as folk-soul is so constituted that the external world is not presented to it as it is to the individual human soul. As the objects around us in nature are present to us, so are we ourselves present to the folk-soul. Our souls, which re-enter our bodies when we awake from sleep, are at the same time “objects of observation” for the folk-souls that enter into us, just as the things in nature are our objects of observation. When we sink down into the body, I will not say that we are “seen” by the folk-soul, but its strength and activity pulsate as though voluntarily through our being. The folk-soul is focussed upon us.

But a distinction now arises, for the folk-soul may be directed more towards what enters the body than towards what enters the individual soul of man. The distinction was made clear by the example of Goethe in the case of the individual human soul in relation to nature. In the same way, the will impulse of tle folk-soul may, as it were, seize upon the individual soul, may give itself up to the individual soul; or it may live more within itself, as was illustrated by the case of Schiller; it may withdraw into what it regards as its own possession and give itself up to that with the help of human corporeality. Thus we can recognise in the folk-soul a consciousness of personality for which our souls are, as it were, what nature is for us. Much more could be said about folk-souls and their special characteristics in relation to certain peculiarities of the human soul. But this much is clear. Just as individual human souls vary amongst themselves and in their relation to the world according as their gaze is fixed outwards or inwards, so will the folk-souls be related in different ways to the human souls comprised in their several peoples. And the manner in which the folk-souls are related to the individual souls of men is what determines the course of history, of what actually happens in the world. In this way are the folk-souls differentiated from one another, in this way do they live their invisible lives within what we call human history. I should like to try and tell you what Spiritual Research has to say about the nature of folk-souls—at least in connection with a few genuine and real folk-souls. Those of my listeners who have attended the lectures designed for a smaller circle of students, will know that this interpretation has not been called forth by the great events of the present time, but that I have always presented these ideas in the same way, as the outcome of Spiritual Investigation into the folk-souls. I have done this for many years, before the impulse of the present caused the minds of men to look more closely into the inner life of nations.

In considering the life of folk-souls as they have been lived in history, we could go a long way back in the evolution of humanity, as this evolution is revealed by Spiritual Research. But we shall only go back to that point in the history of mankind which is more or less fitted to throw light on the topics that interest us most to-day. We come upon the track of a special kind of folk-soul if we go back to the life of Ancient Egypt, which was related to Chaldean, Babylonian and Assyrian life and was the forerunner of the life of Greece and Rome in the evolution of mankind. Now the Spiritual Investigator speaks of actual folk-souls which fulfilled themselves in the life of Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria and Babylon just as the individual soul fulfils itself in the human body. When we say that folk-souls have an organism and a personality, we are not speaking symbolically. For just as in the individual human body a personal and self-conscious soul lives out its life, so (equally surely) does a self-conscious folk-soul, supernaturally apprehensible, live out its life in the manner we have described. Moreover, in preparing one’s soul in the manner I have frequently explained how one can sink down into the folk-soul.

The peculiar characteristic of the folk-souls that formed the foundation of life in Egypt, Chaldea, Babylon and Assyria was this: these souls led their own lives to a very full extent—an extent only distantly approached by the lives of the peoples of Asia and Africa to-day—so that they gave themselves up but little to the individual, separate souls of men. The individual soul of man, living its own bodily life identified itself with the folk-soul by a certain extinction of its own individuality. The folk-soul fulfilled itself far more completely in what men accomplished than in the individual lives of these men. And this is what gives the Egyptian and the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian culture its peculiar character.

Spiritual Science shows that the folk-souls, being invisible, are related to the spiritual element pervading all material things. Because man has of late withdrawn into his own soul, nature has come to stand at the opposite pole, and to appear to him as something inanimate, bereft throughout of soul and spirit. When the Ancient Egyptian or the Ancient Chaldean looked out upon the world, he saw with a clarity of vision that could never be equalled in later periods, that the material was everywhere the expression of the spiritual—he saw this in the progress of the stars, in the movements of the heavenly bodies, in the movements reflected in cloud and sea, and in the formation of dry land out of the watery element. just as one human being looking at another sees the movements and changes in the face before him as the expression of its possessor’s soul, so did the Egyptian or the Chaldean who was united with his folk-soul in the manner we have described, perceive what is nowadays called the “astrological” aspect of the world as the outcome of the fact that all outer, all material things do but reveal the physiognomy of what lies behind them and speak but of the spirit within. Thus heaven and earth became endowed with soul; or rather, since the folk-soul still found utterance in him, man saw in all the gestures of nature, in all her outer physiognomy a spiritual element at work.

After this, the inner progress of mankind consisted precisely in the fact that in the course of time the activity of the Egyptian and Chaldean folk-soul was replaced by that of the Greek and Roman folk-souls. The Greek and the Roman folk-souls are distinguished from the Egyptian and the Chaldean in that they are less absorbed in themselves and give themselves up lovingly to human individuality. Thus in Greek culture we see the first glimmerings of what may be called the valuation of the human individual, even if this individual sinks down into the bosom of the folk-soul; and as a result of this peculiar relation of the individual soul to the folk-soul we can point to the great things achieved by the Greek folk-soul in art, and poetry and philosophy. In order to make my views fully comprehensible I must now introduce a short survey of what can be said about the individual human soul.

Spiritual Science is hardly likely to regard this human soul with such primitive simplicity as is done by ordinary science. The Spiritual Investigator does indeed regard the human soul as a living unity that fulfils itself in the life of the Ego. But just as light passing through a prism breaks up, as it were, into different colours, from red and gold through green into blue and violet, so with equal truth can it be said that through contact with the outer world which is, as it were, the prism of the soul, man’s unified psychic life is divided into its three most important manifestations. In Spiritual Science these are designated as the “Sentient Soul,” the “Rational Soul”² and the “Consciousness Soul.”³ It is easy—a child can see how easy—for those who believe themselves to be safely entrenched in a genuinely scientific system to mock at such a “dismembering” [Gliederung] of the human soul. But just as it is impossible to acquire any knowledge of light without observing it in relation to the matter of the prism and seeing it broken up into the band of the rainbow of colours, so is it impossible to know the individual soul if we do not see its light broken up into separate rays by contact with the external world; into the ray of the Sentient Soul, the ray of the Rational Soul, and the ray of the Consciousness Soul. If we consider the Sentient Soul then we shall realise that the soul develops as Sentient Soul when it lives primarily within itself, when its own psychic forces, even when they reside in the body, strive, as it were, to break loose from the external world. Just as the light that has been decomposed by the prism is at its strongest in the yellow-red part of the spectrum, so does the soul live most intensely in the Sentient Soul. The Consciousness Soul, on the other hand, resembles that part of the light that is weakest, that is most like darkness—the blue-violet portion of the spectral band. The Consciousness Soul fulfils itself primarily in experiences where there is an effort to break loose from the inner life of the soul, where the body and the forces of the body play the outstanding part. The Sentient Soul, which embodies the actual life of the psyche, with its impulses, its instincts, and its passions, is thus quite untouched by the Consciousness Soul, whose sovereignty holds only within its subjection to the body. But between these two there lives the Rational or Mind Soul, which stands to the total life of the psyche in much the same relation as does the green in the spectrum to the red-yellow portion on one side of it and to the blue-violet on the other. Just as the physicist cannot know the nature of light without learning how it can be analysed into its separate colours, so the Spiritual Investigator cannot come to any knowledge of the human soul without first analysing it into the separate prismatic rays of the Sentient, the Rational and the Consciousness Souls.

This breaking-up of the psychic life into the separate rays does not occur everywhere in the same way. It must be remembered that man does not pass from one life to another in the same way all the world over. As we have often said, the souls that have appeared in our days have in their earlier lives known, say, the period of Egypt, Chaldea and Babylon, the period of Greece and Rome, and have thus had occasion to live through the various early civilisations. But even within the historical sequence, the human soul does not everywhere fulfil itself in the same way. On the contrary, how a soul fulfils itself depends upon how (when it sinks down into the body) it responds to the claims made upon it by the folk-soul. Such a folk-soul as was present, for instance, in Ancient Egypt or Chaldea is particularly favourable to the development of the Sentient Soul in man, and in point of fact we find the most powerful assertion of the Sentient Soul in the individual lives of the Ancient Egyptian and of the Ancient Chaldean and Babylonian period. These folk-souls preserved themselves and prepared the body of the individual in such a way that they permeated this body with their own mode of being. Owing, therefore, to the racial constitution of their bodies, these peoples could fulfil their souls in accordance with the particular colouring of the Sentient Soul. We see that the most powerful and intensive fulfilment of human individuality occurred in the Sentient Soul under the influence of the Egypto-Chaldean folk-soul.

If, now, we follow the path of historical development that leads to the Greek and then to the Roman civilisation (resembling each other in a way, though Roman law as something that is not dependent upon separate isolated individuals, but is brought about by the folk-soul living itself into the bodies of Greek and Roman citizens. We have thus in historical time three successive spheres of development, sharply divided from one another by the folk-souls whose province they are. First, the work of the Egypto-Chaldean folk-soul which gave the souls of men (which at this time were once again appearing clothed in bodies) special opportunities for developing their Sentient Souls. Then in the life of Greece and Rome, the folk-souls were so fashioned that men were able to fulfil their Rational or Mind Soul. And to-day we live in a period (Spiritual Investigation places its beginnings between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) in which human development has the opportunity of fulfilling itself primarily in the Consciousness Soul. This fulfilment is particularly favoured by the folk-souls of the present day. Our own time must naturally be of special interest to us, and in general it would seem that our particular period had as its task the education of the Consciousness Soul. In other words, the folk-souls set themselves the task of so permeating the bodies of men and women that the soul is enabled to bind to its own service the body in which it lives. Our period is therefore one which lends itself to the development of external science, of external observation. And because in this period of the education of the Consciousness Soul, the bond uniting soul to body is stronger than it has ever been before, there has arisen in our times the urge to observe that external reality with which the body is so closely connected through the senses. The urge arose to promote scientific and cultural tendencies which should aim primarily at the co-operation of body and soul. A Spiritual Investigator can see as a legitimate outcome of the times this growth and development of the Consciousness Soul—the rise of materialism, the tendency to look more and more from the body to the things and facts of the senses. But here again the prevailing colour in the life of the modern world admits, as it were, of different “shades.” The shades are represented by the lives of the various folk-souls of modern times. And it is interesting, from the point of view of Spiritual Science, to bring some at least of these folk-souls before our mind’s eye for examination.

To take, as an example, the folk-souls of Southern peoples—the Italian and the Spanish folk-soul. When the Spiritual Investigator tries to sink himself into the essence of the Italian or the Spanish folk-soul, into these very real and living modes of being, he finds himself compelled to take account of a certain law of world-evolution, hardly known to ordinary science and held by it of little account. We referred to this law yesterday from another point of view. We said: When man has passed through the gates of death, when, therefore, he has entered the supra-sensible world and lives again in higher beings, he stands (with regard to what he has experienced in the body) in the same relation to those mighty super-beings as he stood on earth towards his memories. He looks back on his bodily state, and that gives him “consciousness of self,” just as the act of sinking into the physical body at the moment of waking gives consciousness of self. Thus when we are raised into the spiritual world we find a similar relation holding in the “progression of time,” as obtained in the world of space between soul and body. Through our body we are bound to space; our souls, however, enter a relationship that is temporal. When we have become spirit, when we have passed through the gates of death, we live with our memories, and this life we share with our memories in the spiritual world is like the life shared by body and soul in the physical world. This brings us to the law of periodicity in the spiritual world. What we go through when we raise ourselves to the spiritual world is law for the worlds of the spirit. The spiritual beings do not only experience the rhythmic alternation that we know as we pass from sleep to the waking state, but they go through a number of different states of consciousness in accordance with the periodicity of the times. Only when one has learnt adequately to reflect upon this law can one hope to understand the sway exercised by the folk-souls. Let the Spiritual Investigator study, for example, the Italian folk-soul (and the same thing applies to the Spanish), he will find in it something that consciously looks back to the Ancient Egyptian and Chaldean times. Man keeps his Self-consciousness kindled in his physical existence by the process of sinking down into the body; he preserves this Self-consciousness after death by looking back at his experiences on earth; and in the same way there is a sort of interchange between the folk-soul element that rises to the surface in the Italian people and the ,,Egypto-Chaldean folk-spirit. The Italian folk-spirit looks back on the experiences it had as the Egypto-Chaldean folk-spirit; it sinks down into the Egypto-Chaldean folk-spirit as we sink down into the body on awakening when we retain our consciousness of self. The law of periodicity, rhythmically graded, determines the sequence that extends from the folk-spirit’s activities in Egypto-Chaldean life, through its fulfilment in Italian civilisation, right down to the present times. And the results reached in this way by Spiritual Science from rhe data of Spiritual Investigation can be verified down to the smallest detail if we look at the way the folk-spirit, in which every separate human soul is embedded, fulfils itself.

But time has moved on. The folk-spirit has not retained all the characteristics it acquired in the life of Ancient Egypt and Chaldea. In the course of its development the soul, as we have already had occasion to point out, withdraws into itself. Nature therefore no longer appears to it as she did in the Egypto-Chaldean times, animated throughout with spirit. What the human soul experienced under the influence of the folk-soul in the civilisations of Ancient Egypt and Chaldea is experienced by the Italian folk-soul, only more inwardly in a renewed form of the same folk-spirit. And how can we realise this more clearly than by looking at one of the greatest creations of the Italian spirit ? May we not surmise that a creation such as is evinced by the Egyptian conception of the stars appears before us again in Italian culture, but in a deeper way, more interiorised, more self-contained? Spiritual Science obliges us to expect such a repetition, and the expectation is realised in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Egyptian saw the whole world as animated with spirit. Dante recreates this conception but in an intenser, more inward form. The ancient folk-spirit lives again and remembers earlier times. In the co-operation of psychic beings in the Egypto-Chaldean and in the Italian folk-souls we can see the super-personal consciousness of the folk-soul at work. The Italian folk-soul is living again a kind of rhythmical recurrence of the Ancient Egyptian folk-spirit. And this living again, even in its more interiorised form, is particularly favourable to the development of the Sentient Soul in the separate human individual living at the heart of the folk-soul. Just as in the time of Egypt and Chaldea the Sentient Soul was given special opportunities for development by the folk-soul, so in modern Italy does the soul live anew as Sentient Soul in the Italian folk-soul, but in a deeper key, coloured as it were with a different shade. Thus does the folk-soul live on, and in those individuals on to whom it is directed (as the human soul is directed on to nature) it calls forth all the forces of the Sentient Soul. We shall understand all the great artistic creations of Italy, rooted as these are in the Sentient Soul, when we have learnt how the folk-soul works in the bodies of Italian men and women. We shall be able to understand the work of Raphael and Michelangelo down to its smallest detail, in so far as it arises from the activity of the folk-soul, when we have learnt the particular shade of colouring which the individual soul will take on under the influence of the folk-soul. Italian culture, under the influence of the folk-soul is a “Culture of the Sentient Soul.”

The culture of every folk-soul has its own peculiar mission. Upon each devolves the task of expressing with special force and intensity some particular aspect of the life of the soul. This has nothing to do with the development of the individual soul. But the national quality which at certain times is realised in the individual soul reveals itself in such a way that it must bring about the intensification of a particular colour in the life of the soul.

In the same way—and I beg my hearers to listen impartially, as to a purely scientific exposition, to the analysis I am putting before them—in the same way as the Ancient Egypto-Chaldean folk-soul lived anew in the Italian folk-soul and stamped its creations as of yore with the character of the Sentient Soul, so does the ancient civilisation of Greece, coloured with that of Rome, live on in the folk-soul of France. But here the spirit of Greek civilisation is expressed in such a way that the individual soul living at the heart of the French folk-soul, is freer from the body, seeks to permeate the body less than was the case in Greece. And just as the Greek folk-soul was particularly favourable to the fulfilment of the Rational or Mind Soul, so in the recrudescence of Greek culture in the French folk-soul we find that special care is taken of the Rational Soul. The inner state of consciousness of the French folk-soul, moreover, rests upon a kind of “remembering” that looks back to the achievements of the Greek and Roman folk-soul. It is difficult but of infinite importance for the understanding of the true course of history to examine the peculiar structure of the mind and consciousness of the folk-soul. The Rational Soul is what is peculiar to the French folk-soul. In Greek civilisation the Rational Soul, though it had torn itself free from the body, could still express the outward beauty of the body, the spiritual quality of what appears to us as corporeal. But as it became intensified and interiorised in French culture, the folk-soul took on another form. The national spirit is no longer translated straight into bodily form in space, as in the Greek statue; it fulfils itself in an “etherised” body that remains a thought-body and can only be “inwardly conceived” [vorgestellt]. This is at the foundation of the whole French character, of the French folk-soul. It absorbs the individual human souls into itself in such a way that these feel compelled so to develop their inner forces that they can imagine them strongly in the outer world. Now, how does one imagine oneself powerfully into the outer world? If the folk-spirit can no longer, as it could in Ancient Greece, realise plastically the spirit that animates the body, then all we have is the mere picture of this spirit in the body, as it has been shaped in man’s conception by his phantasy. And this is why the French folk-soul can only create an inner picture of man and why it tends to set most value on what one projects of oneself into the world, on what one imagines one wants to be in the world, on what is always called “la gloire,” on what one carries in one’s own phantasy.

This is the fundamental characteristic of French culture as it arises from its own folk-soul. And this is why it devolves upon French culture to impose upon the world this conception which the folk-soul has called forth in the phantasy of the individual French mii1. The Rational or Mind or Mood Soul [Gemütseele] works in pictures which it creates for itself in separate individualities. We may therefore surmise that the degree of greatness which the individual soul can achieve under the influence of the folk-soul will be manifested on the occasions when the folk-soul reaches an exceptional degree of development in the Rational Soul [Gemütseele]. The folk-soul comes most fully to life in the creations of those individual minds (its instruments) where feeling animated with understanding enquires searchingly into the appearances presented by the world. Feeling [Gemüt] animated by understanding tends in a peculiar way to work itself free and to command freely. This shows particularly in cases where complete control can be exercised over understanding and feeling; and French civilisation reaches its peak when this particular circumstance occurs—as in Moliere and Voltaire. In Voltaire we have dry understanding permeated with feeling, in Moliere, feeling that rests on understanding. A folk-soul exhibits its characteristic features in those of its utterances which correspond to it so closely that they can also supply the material in which the individual soul will express itself in its own particular colour. French culture is, then, something in the nature of a reminiscence of the Greek, as can be further ascertained by anyone who cares to study with a certain degree of penetration the inner history and development of French culture.

If we consider the French poets as giving individual colouring to the French folk-soul, we shall always find in this folk-soul (not in the individual Frenchman) a harking back to the civilisation of Greece. It finds expression in the deeds and thoughts and poems of individual Frenchmen. It appears in their question: How did the Greeks set about to write a proper tragedy? What did Aristotle say about it? Hence the discussions on the Unities of Time and Place in the Drama. This reacted even on Lessing. Drama was to be made to correspond to the Greek ideal. Moreover, the findings of Spiritual Science in this matter can be illustrated down to their smallest detail. A Greek spoke of himself as a Greek in the conscious conviction of being the represe1itative of mankind. All other nations were “Barbarians.” He had a special justification for this opinion because he expressed in an idealised way the promptings of the spirit. His attitude lives on and comes to the surface in the harking back of the French folk-soul. But because here it is a “remembering,” and because not every remembering is justified (there emerge many memories that are no longer fully justified) this claim of the French folk-soul to be the sole representative of humanity is now out of place. The very word “Barbarian” which is on everyone’s lips points to the recrudescence of this particular feature of Greek culture in the French folk-soul.

Now, just as French soul is particularly favourable to the culture of the Rational or Mind or Mood Soul [Gemütseele], so it is to the British folk-soul that there falls in modern times the task of cultivating the Consciousness Soul or Spirit Soul as such. The education of the Consciousness Soul appears in the history of mankind’s development as something that does not admit of repetition. The Italian folk-soul repeats in an altered form the life and experience of the Egypto-Chaldean folk-spirit, the French folk-soul those of the Graeco-Roman. But the British folk-soul enters the scene of modern evolution as something new. It is the most vivid expression of modern times in so far as these mark that phase of the soul in which it thoroughly permeates itself with the life of the body. The British folk-spirit is so constituted that it favours more than anything else a mode of co-existence with the body. It is therefore favourable also to what is effected through the body and especially what enters the soul through the body. Its mission is to care for the Consciousness Soul, and connected with this is the mission of materialism, which had at a certain point in history to enter into the development of mankind. It is, indeed, the special task of the British folk-soul to give expression to materialism. The individual soul is more or less independent of this, but it remains the characteristic of the folk-soul. We shall return in a moment to the peculiar character of the British folk-soul. But first, in order to throw light on the tasks belonging to the folk-souls, we must cast a glance on the folk-soul that dominates Central Europe and which is called the German folk-soul. And it may be useful to point out that these views of mine are not being brought forward now for the first time as the outcome, so it might seem, of the warlike events of the moment. No—what I say now is only what I have always said.

The German folk-soul is not especially fitted to call forth the particular shades of character of the Sentient Soul, nor of the Rational or Gemütseele, nor again of the Consciousness Soul. It is fitted, on the contrary, to give expression to the unity of the soul which may be said to live in all its three members. I am saying this, not in praise of any particular nation, but I say it in all objectivity, without love or hate, because it is the result of Spiritual Investigation, just as the appearance of light as red or green is the result of an experiment with the spectroscope. It is an objective fact. Just as the Italian, French and British folk-souls encourage the Sentient, the Rational and the Consciousness Souls respectively, so does the German folk-soul nurture man’s Ego, the individual seed within his soul that fulfils itself in his earthly life, the element that sinks lovingly into the body, with which it unites itself at the moment of waking up, but from which it detaches itself again on falling asleep; that which seeks to care for and befriend the manifestations that come to it from the external world but seeks also to befriend and care for everything that aspires to the Spirit. This is why I could say in my first lecture: The German folk-soul is that which more than anything else gives to the individual soul the possibility of sinking down into the depths of the Ego, where the secret is to be sought of what moves men’s hearts to anguish or to bliss. Here lies the reason why this German folk-soul can so easily be misunderstood, why, as is only too natural, this misunderstanding of what the German folk-soul really is is now being manifested on every side. For the German folk-soul, unlike the British folk-soul, does not fulfil itself in the external body, does not surrender itself immediately to the mission of materialism, because such a task does not in the least correspond with its nature. But it embarks on the one hand upon the contemplation of the external world of matter, from which it does not seek to withdraw itself, and on the other, gives itself up to the contemplation of the Spirit. And this it does in order to draw upon those deep spiritual sources upon which Meister Eckhardt, Jacob Boehme, Goethe and Fichte drew, communing alone as in a sort of duologue with the spiritual world, and turned aside from outer things. Thus if individual souls of other nations have to turn aside from the folk-souls in which they are embedded in order to sink down into what we call Spirit, the German, through the very nature of his folk-soul is always capable of being raised to spiritual regions. The souls of the other peoples must learn to grow out of their folk-souls before they can commune with the spiritual world. But the folk-soul that speaks to the individual souls of the Central European people, itself sounds a spiritual note, is itself a witness to the Spirit. And because folk-souls express themselves in characteristic features, because they appear to us when they work through men and women, using these as the instruments they select in order to create something characteristic of them, this gives us an opportunity for studying the essence of what a folk-soul really is. We shall find our results confirmed in this study when, on pursuing the progress of the various folk-souls, we discover what are the characteristic symptoms in which their forces come to be expressed. And these characteristic features can certainly best be studied by considering the individual folk-souls at their highest points of achievement.

Now there can be no doubt that Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is to be regarded as a characteristic expression of the British folk-soul, and one of its mightiest manifestations, and that in the case of the German folk-soul we must look upon Goethe’s “Faust” as the outcome of the most intimate communion of a German with the German folk-spirit. How characteristic is the difference between “Hamlet” and “Faust.” I need hardly enlarge upon the greatness of Shakespeare and of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” It will be granted by everyone, and there is no one who would rank Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” higher than I would. But in considering “Hamlet” as the outcome of the British folk-spirit, I would like to ask: What impression does “Hamlet” make on us?

As we have said, it is the mission of the British folk-spirit to introduce the Consciousness Soul, which is bond to the corporeal, into the outer development of historical events. My book, Rätsel der Philosophie (The Riddles of Philosophy) has recently been published as the second edition of my Welt -und Lebensanschauungen im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert (World and Life Conceptions in the Nineteenth Century), which appeared fourteen or fifteen years ago. It is now considerably enlarged and deals with the whole of Western philosophy. At the time of the first edition, in dealing with English philosophy, I tried to find an expression, a word that would be particularly well suited to render its character and the expression that occurred to me was that English Philosophy was the philosophy of an onlooker. An onlooker—and this can be shown particularly well in the work of John Stuart Mill—is one who sinks down into the body with his soul, and seeing the world from the body, lets the world go its own way. Compare with this the philosophy of Fichte. His was no “onlooker’s philosophy” but a “life philosophy,” one that does not “look on” at life but becomes one with it. This is the stupendous difference between the British and the German folk-souls. The British folk-soul tends in all its activities to turn man into an onlooker; it particularly encourages his powers of “looking on” by educating his Consciousness Soul. And in so far as he has cultivated the Consciousness Soul, man stands outside phenomena. He looks at them as it were from the body. Now Shakespeare’s greatness consists particularly in his capacity for standing at a distance and watching life objectively. His attitude to the phenomena of life and his descriptions of them show us that he paints things as an onlooker and describes what he experiences objectively from outside. An “onlooker’s world-concept” the outcome of the folk-soul . . . The truth is that when the individual human spirit, this spirit of the Consciousness Soul, armed with this peculiar characteristic which he gets from the folk-soul, when this individual spirit approaches the inner life of man, then he will see nothing but the play of externals—the inner side will always elude him. And this inability to reach the inner life must be particularly characteristic. In the pictures he draws of life’s external happenings, Shakespeare is a giant. But when it comes to perceiving the inner life through the external physiognomy then the “onlooker’s point of view” makes itself felt. And this onlooker’s point of view (expressed from the artistic greatness of the British folk-spirit) when it is faced with the inner world, shows itself to be that of the sceptic who doubts the very existence of the Spirit. We therefore intend no deprecation of Shakespeare when we say that he presents the Spirit as a ghost, a spook. Externally the spiritual appears as something ghostly. How does the spirit of Hamlet’s father appear? Not as a spirit but as a ghost. The man who believes in ghosts is in fact a spiritual materialist. He wants to perceive the spirit as a materialist would do, who asks that it should appear in some sort of rarefied matter. The spirit of Hamlet’s father appears, therefore, in ghost-like form. This is expressed in the confusion existing with regard to the way in which the spirit appears. As the materialistic mind can only get as far as a ghost, we see its whole teaching concerning the spiritual becoming confused. For example, whereas in the earlier part of the play everyone has seen the ghost, in the scene with his mother Hamlet is the only one to see it. At one moment it is an objective phenomena, at the next merely a subjective phantom. And now this great onlooker (for Hamlet is meant to be a character who looks on at the outer doings of the world), this great onlooker turns his gaze to the world within, and we get the famous speech in which he questions the spiritual world: To be or not to be? What follows after death? First awaking, then sleep, images, dreams; and then again doubt—“the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.” All of it typical of the materialistic mind that tries to probe into the depths of the spiritual world and fails. This is why all those who, whether idealistically inclined or otherwise, cannot venture into the spirit, feel an inner kinship with Hamlet. Herman Grimm once said—and, for many, said truly—that when people probe too deeply into questions concerning their spiritual state, they stand as it were on the edge of an abyss and feel, like Hamlet, that they must throw themselves into it. Such, then, is the answer given us by one who, like Shakespeare, inspired by the folk-soul and yet transcending it, sets forth its spiritual essence. This answer shows us the bridge between Hamlet and the spiritual world to be broken and the gulf between filled only with uncertainty heaped upon uncertainty. Thus, even in this great artistic creation which of its kind remains unsurpassed and unsurpassable, the British folk-soul still reveals its own mission which is to contemplate the outer world and to be brought to a standstill before the abyss of the supernatural.

And now, to show by the description of a single figure how deep is the inwardness of the German folk-soul, so favourable to the life of the Ego and the unity of the soul, let us consider its most outstanding, its most profound manifestation in Goethe’s “Faust.” Does the soul stand here on the edge of an abyss into which it is impelled to cast itself? Far from it. Faust has no doubts about the spiritual world, his vision pierces beyond the material and historical facts that have gone to make up his life, and he stands face to face with the Spirit, he sees the Spirit before him, and he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he who probes deeply into the riddle of existence cannot be lost but will surely cross the abyss and be united with the Spirit.

And now let us turn to Hamlet again. He stands irresolute before the abyss with the question “To be or not to be” on his lips, asking of the spiritual world “to sleep, to dream?” And let us compare all this hesitation and uncertainty with the scene in the poem [First Part], where Faust stands face to face with the Spirit (Faust, Scene XIV):—

“Spirit sublime, thou gav’st me, gav’st me all
I ever asked thee. Not in vain didst thou
In flaming fire reveal thy countenance”
and further on
“Then to the cave secure thou leadest me,
Then show’st me mine own self, and in my breast
The deep, mysterious miracles unfold.”

This is union with the Spirit. In such union, in such vision the question whether we sleep, or dream, has no place. There is room only for Faust’s inspired advance into the spiritual world (as we find it described in the Second Part of the drama) and for the certainty which can be reached that the human spirit when it passes through the gates of death becomes united with the spiritual world. Here there is no longer any uncertain question about being or not being; there is the certainty that the soul is already in this world a citizen of the world of the Spirit, and that when it passes through the gates of death it stands face to face with the sublime Spirit who, if we but merge ourselves in it sufficiently during this life, will give us all we ask. But this Spirit is no ghostly apparition of the spirit world, for in the scene in the Witches’ kitchen spooks are treated with humour and with befitting irony. Mephistopheles, again, does not appear to Faust as a ghost, but is so conceived that one cannot imagine him otherwise than in human form. How meaningless it would be’ if, like Hamlet’s father, he were visible only to one person, or visible at one time and not at another. And the reason for this is that in “Faust” we are standing on solid ground.

Figures like Faust arise out of the folk-spirit, they are the fruit of the folk-soul. In Goethe’s Faust we have only a type and image of what has really taken place. For while Goethe was creating Faust, the whole of the folk-soul was active; it created itself in the book and created something that was alive, not only in Goethe, but in the spirit. Goethe’s Faust is but the copy of a creation of the German folk-soul, which moves in the spirit and which, as Goethe knew full well, is only at the beginning of its activity. Faust we know to be the symbol of an unconquerable force, of a reality that looks to the future. In Faust Goethe has planted a seed, and with equal truth it may be said that there is in the German folk-soul a power, a germinating force that will ever grow and ever spread in its activity. For Faust stands before us as one who must strive, and as one for whom all striving is only a beginning.

In order to bring out the characteristic feature of the German folk-spirit, we must mention another of its peculiarities. As I said, when we consider the French folk-spirit, we see that it is reminiscent of the culture of Ancient Greece. This reminiscence is visible in every department of French culture, but it works under the threshold of consciousness, it does not enter consciousness. The French folk-spirit shapes the individual in accordance with the influence exercised by this reminiscence, but this influence is not consciously felt. If the folk-spirit influences the individual soul in such a way as to bring out its ego-hood, then—since only in the Ego can Sentient, Rational and Consciousness Souls be united—the harmony of these united members of the soul will enter consciousness; whereas the essence of “reminiscence” is that it binds the folk-spirit to earlier cultural periods. Thus Greek culture enters into the German folk-spirit in quite a different manner from that in which it enters the French folk-soul. If Greek culture is introduced at a particularly characteristic point in the history of the German folk-soul and if in so doing it is to influence the isolated individual, then everything must happen consciously and not as it does in French culture, where the process is subliminal and only appears in the form of aesthetic debate. In the case of the German spirit, which is a mirror for the deeper events of history, the process must enter the consciousness of the man who allows himself to be specially guided by the folk-soul. Thus in the Second Part of “Faust” the union of Faust and Helena which takes place on the physical plane, in consciousness, quite clearly portrays the union with Greek culture. This is not merely entering into the Rational Soul, it is entering into the Ego. Faust stands, in all his completeness as a human being, face to face with Greek culture. In full consciousness of what he is doing, and in all solemnity he celebrates his union with an earlier period. I can naturally only give a few indications of what I mean. But light is thrown on the whole course of history when we consider the folk-souls in this way—dominating the destiny of man, beating, surging in endless interplay throughout the ages.

If now we set the German and the British folk-souls once again side by side, there is much we could point to showing that the Ego is what characterises the German folk-soul, while the Consciousness Soul is the special mark of the British folk-soul. Many of the peculiar features in the development of modern civilisation can be traced to this. It has been one of my tasks to show how Goethe gave birth (from the depths of his soul) to a Theory of Evolution in which he attempted from the depths of his Ego to reconstruct the whole sequence of organisms in their evolution from the simplest to the most perfected forms. This truly scientific theory, springing as it does from Goethe’s soul, is also the outcome of what one might call a “Communing between Goethe and the German folk-soul,” just as another theory is the outcome of a conversation with the British folk-soul. Goethe’s form of the Theory of Evolution, born as it is from the culture of the Ego, remains incomprehensible to many because Goethe delves so deeply into the nature of things in order to bring forth a Theory of Evolution out of the depths of the human soul. Such a theory could not spread rapidly. And then, in the nineteenth century, the British folk-soul seizes upon the Theory of Evolution; but while Goethe had started from the depths of the Ego, the British folk-soul starts from the Consciousness Soul and gives us the external “Struggle for existence” of the Darwinian theory. What Goethe established by means of inward development, Darwinism established outwardly. And as we live in the period of materialism, cultured humanity as a whole has neglected Goethe’s Theory of Evolution which comes from the depths of the Ego-culture, in favour of the form which Darwin has brought forth from the British folk-soul. Up to a certain point we still stand committed to this rejection of Ego-culture. I mean that theory which is scoffed at by all who believe themselves to be experts in this particular subject—I mean Goethe’s Theory of Colour which only those can understand who approach it from the standpoint of the human Ego-character. But humanity has rejected this theory of colour of Goethe’s (which comes from the depths of the Ego-culture) and has accepted Newton’s more materialistic colour theory inspired by the Consciousness Soul from out the British folk-spirit. But the time will come when men will learn to recognise that there is much in Goethe which they yet have to accept. And may I be allowed to say “in parenthesis”: Some of us may have succeeded in sending back to England our orders and marks of distinction; but true worth and dignity will not be achieved until, not only orders and distinctions, but also the materialistic form of the Theory of Evolution and the materialistic form of the Theory of Colour have been sent back to the British folk-soul whence they came.

The man whose thought is so inspired by the folk-soul that it is in the nature of a communing between the folk-soul and his own Ego, lives in such a way that in the most important moments of his life he is conscious of working for a content, of giving life to and realising a content in external life. Thus Goethe gave life to a content which had come to him in a moment of intuition when he founded his Theory of Evolution. But he who, ignoring the depths of his Ego, looks out onto the world from the Consciousness Soul, such an one will see nothing but the struggle for existence in the outward march of events. Every man sees his own inner nature in the external world. You can now all of you imagine what the events of to-day will mean for those who are inspired by the German folk-spirit, and what they will mean for those who are inspired by the British folk-spirit. The latter talks of the struggle for existence. Under the inspiration of the German folk-spirit, one sees in one’s opponent “the enemy,” whom one faces up to, man to man as in a duel. From the point of view of that folk-spirit which in science has inspired the Struggle for Existence, one sees the struggle in the field of battle in the following way: Everything becomes a struggle between “competing forces.”

In my first lecture, I tried in a few words to point to that which the Russian folk-soul stands for. There is no time to-day to enter more deeply into the subject, but a very peculiar characteristic of this folk-soul must be mentioned nevertheless. The curious thing about the Russian folk-soul what occurs to one at once, is that fundamentally it is less fitted than any other to the task it is engaged upon to-day—external struggle, external war. There is a very characteristic book by Mereschkowski, whom I have had occasion to mention before, called The March of the Mob. At the end of the book the author talks of the impression made upon him by the Hagia Sophia, the great basilica in Constantinople. The description he gives of this impression strikes the note which must come from the Russian folk-soul when it understands itself. And at the close of this passage the author tells how, surrendering himself completely to the spell of the great Mosque, he was moved to pray for his people:

“The Hagia Sophia, translucent and melancholy, flooded with the amber light of the ultimate mystery raised up my prostrate and affrighted soul. I gazed up at the dome, so like the vault of heaven, and thought: There it stands, created by the hand of man—man’s approach to the Triune Deity on earth. This approach has lasted, and what is more, will come again. How should those who love the Son not come to the Father who is the world? How should those not come to the Son who love the world, which the Father also loved since He gave His Son for it? For they are giving up their lives for Him and for their friends. They have the Son because they have love. Only His name they know not. And I was impelled to pray for them all, to pray in this heathen shrine that shall yet be the one and only temple of the future, that there be granted to my people the true power of victory, the conscious faith in the God who is Three in One.”

If we can regard the German folk-spirit, expressed in its representative “Faust” as one that is in the midst of the process of becoming, then we must look upon the Russian folk-soul as one that is still waiting for what is to happen. Its prevailing attitude is that of looking into the future, of not having found what it sought in the present. But when the Russian folk-soul becomes conscious of what lives in the depths of its nature, waiting to be brought out to the light, then it will realise that its mission lies in inner development, that this mission can fundamentally best be fulfilled by making its conquests within, by bringing forth that which lies hidden in its own depths and will some day be of great value to the cultural life of humanity. We cannot simply dismiss the Russian folk-soul as “barbaric”; we must think of it as one that will reach its full stature later on but has not yet passed beyond the age of childhood. I know how incomplete is this characterisation of the Russian folk-soul, but lack of time prevents me from describing it with more than a few words. This much, however, I will say. When the Russian folk-soul expresses itself as to-day, when it fails to express that attitude of expectation (which Mereschkowski represents as the spirit of prayer lying deep within the folk-soul) then it can be nothing but a wrecker of spiritual culture and of human culture in general. In turning outwards, the Russian folk-soul seems to be doing the opposite of what it really befits it to do.

This is why we feel, when we look towards the West, that however terrible the things that are at present going on there, they are the inevitable outcome of the impulses existing in the Western folk-souls. With the Russian folk-soul, on the contrary, we feel that it is quite unsuitable for this people to turn against those of the West, whom it ought, if it understood itself aright, to accept as its teachers. It is only because, of recent years, the question at issue has been so little understood that the importance of much that came from this quarter has been overestimated.

We could carry still further our study of the characteristics of folk-souls. Thus the human soul that realises itself in the Ego stands in the most intimate relation to the three members of the soul, the Sentient, the Rational or Mind, and the Consciousness Souls. Sometimes the individual soul rebels against the influences of the three members, sometimes they rebel against the individual soul. Just as the single individual soul shows the relationship of the three soul divisions to the human Ego, so can we see to-day the expressions and relationships of the several European souls to the soul of Europe as a whole. For external events are only a projection of the war waged by the members of the soul against the Ego. The Ego penetrates into the separate members, it establishes a relation with them; and here again we could discover in the outer events a confirmation of the findings of Spiritual Science reached by inner investigation.

The Ego is attracted to the Sentient Soul because it longs to be fertilised and quickened by the experiences of the Sentient Soul. Thus we see the German folk-soul plunging from the middle of Europe into the Italian folk-soul. We can trace this process right through history. If we go back to the time of Dürer and of other artists we see how they steeped themselves in the Italian folk-soul. Later we note that Goethe did not find happiness until he had satisfied his longing for Italy. This process consists on the one hand in the interplay between the Ego and the Sentient Soul, and on the other in that between the German folk-soul and the Italian folk-spirit. If we follow the course of history further we shall see how the individual Ego has to come to an understanding with the Rational and Consciousness Souls. Consider how often, right up till modern times, the German folk-soul has adjusted itself to the French, how Leibnitz, the most German of philosophers, wrote his works in French, and how Frederick the Great, the founder of Prussia’s greatness, lived almost exclusively in an atmosphere of French culture. This shows how strong is the inclination of the German spirit to be international, to fulfil itself in all the different nationalities. And this being its fundamental characteristic, to fulfil itself everywhere, we find the German folk-spirit also coming to an understanding with the British folk-soul, since nowadays it accepts, not Goethe’s Theory of Evolution and Theory of Colour, but Darwin’s and Newton’s. This shows how deep a bond there exists between the German folk-spirit and the British. And if to-day British voices are roused in anger against everything German, the German folk-soul cannot from the depths of its being return the hate which the British folk-spirit has shown towards it. The British folk-soul hates from sheer materialism. But the German folk-soul cannot maintain this position. It will have to come to an understanding with materialism. It is doing so now with force of arms in the fight that has been forced upon it, and in the future it will do so by liberating the spiritual within an epoch of materialism. Thus do we look through the external events of the moment into what is being revealed at the centre of Europe.

It is not, I think, a useless task to probe in this way into the fundamental nature of the folk-souls. For it seems to me that if the folk-souls are so illumined, the light may also be cast upon the fateful happenings of to-day and make their meaning clear. If we go deeply into the nature of these folk-souls then we shall feel the present-day events to be the inevitable outcome of their relations to each other. And this surely is the right way of coming to an understanding. And if it is true—as surely it is—that the events that are taking place east and west of us are of so mighty a nature that they must be the heralds of a new epoch, then from these events will develop a new phase in the history of the human spirit. For only a new phase of the human spirit can be fought for with such mighty sacrifices. And if this is so, then it is also true that much that up till now has been won only with petty sacrifices will in the future have to be achieved at a greater price. For the sacrifices made by Spiritual Science which I mentioned yesterday in connection with the development of the human soul are really far greater than all the sacrifices that are expended on external observations and experiments. Let us see to it that the great sacrifices made in the cause of another science be linked up to all the heroism and to all the suffering we see around us. I told you in my lecture yesterday how the forces of the unfinished lives now being sacrificed will unite with beings of the spiritual world and pours down their influence into the world of history here below. This picture, which corresponds nevertheless to a reality, I shall try to complete. Yes. We are entering upon a time when many will have to pay for the advent and development of a new world-phase of the human spirit with their blood and their lives, in suffering and in dangers. But those who have been called upon to do this will not know their sacrifice to have really been worth while till the future, when they will look down upon a humanity which will know how to live more worthily of the new era that has set in. If it is the folk-spirit that now demands the blood of our generation, it will be the folk-spirit that in the new era thus brought in will demand a new form of life. The folk-spirit will call upon those—and it will be for the humanity of the future to hear this call—who will liberate from their bodies the youthful forces of their souls for the quickening of the new humanity. Those, however, who preserve their lives and their health will feel that the child of humanity’s spiritual life, born of suffering and death, will need those who can tend it and who can receive the inspiration of the folk-soul aright. And no one will understand the German folk-soul who does not understand the German language, and this language shall not be the language of the external material life, but the language of the spirit. May the new spirit [Zeitenwesen], then, which is being born to-day of blood, of wounds and of death, find a humanity which, through the powerful unfolding of human spiritual power, will show itself worthy to be the guardian of the new age so hardly fought for, so hardly won.

• 1. “Goethe’s Mentality in our Fateful Days, and German Culture,” delivered on 29th October, in the “Architektenhaus” in Berlin.
• 2. The “Rational Soul” is also Called “Intellectual or Mind Soul.”
• 3. The “Consciousness Soul” is also called “Spirit Soul.”

In the lectures I have given here this winter, I have tried to give some indications of the essential character of the development of the Germans and its relation to the development of other nations of Europe. Today I would like to take the liberty of giving some aphorisms about the psychological and spiritual development of the Germanic-German character, all with a view to our fateful and difficult times. Tomorrow I will then try to show what the insights of spiritual science can be for people in happy, but also in serious, painful and also sorrowful hours of life, especially with regard to our time.

The considerations that are to be given here will start from the point of view of spiritual science – a point of view that has been mentioned here several times, and which is still not very well recognized or even approved in public. But those who are close to this spiritual science feel from their insights how it can not only enrich and uplift life, but how it can provide enlightenment about intimate, important connections in life - and not only in the life of the individual person, but also in the life of nations, in human relationships, in human coexistence.

However, right at the starting point of a consideration of the life of nations, reference must be made to insights of spiritual science that have been mentioned here several times in past lecture cycles, but which must be drawn upon for an understanding of today's consideration. Attention must be drawn to spiritual-scientific findings that are among the least recognized and approved: to findings that tell us that at the starting point of every people's development, the soul life takes a very special form, that the origins of people on earth showed a very different soul life than our present. In our time, with its materialistically colored world view, this cannot yet be recognized. One imagines that the starting points of human beings on earth lie in very primitive soul states, in soul states that one currently, one might say, endeavors to think of as animal-like as possible. Spiritual science shows us something essentially different. It shows us that at the starting point of human development on earth — and reaching even into the starting points of the development of each nation — there is a clairvoyant behavior of the souls. This means that at the beginning of this human development and also of the development of nations, human souls not only live in states through which they see external material reality with their senses and form ideas, concepts and images from it with their minds , but that the souls are capable of living in other states, in states of consciousness that are not those of our ordinary daily life, but which are also not those of our chaotic dream life and even less those of unconscious sleep. In the beginning of the development of nations, people lived in states of consciousness in which the souls were able to develop imaginative clairvoyance, that is, to come into contact with the spiritual reality around us, with that reality which no eye can see, which no ear can hear, which cannot be grasped with the mind that is bound to the senses and to the brain, and whose perceptions do not penetrate from the outside into our soul like the sensory impressions, but arise in images in the soul, but in images that are not dream images, but that reflect realities of the spiritual world, those realities that lie behind the sensory world in terms of cause and effect. Thus, in the original human being, there are states of consciousness in which he knows himself to be connected with a spiritual world, in which this spiritual world arises in him in images.

However, in these earlier primitive human states, this clairvoyant insight into the spiritual worlds can only be achieved by the fact that what we call human “self-awareness” is still underdeveloped, the awareness of life in the personality. The times of ancient clairvoyance correspond to a state of soul in which the soul could not yet say “I” to itself with full understanding, as it can now, in which the soul did not yet feel itself as an individuality, as a personality, but as a part of a great spiritual world organism, like a member of the cosmos as a whole. Thus, in those ancient times, personality consciousness was clouded, dim. But in certain periods a tableau of pictures spread out before the soul, which were shades of the spiritual world thrown into the soul. And if we look at the starting points of the individual national developments, we can only understand these national developments if we are able to go back to the point in the development of a nation when the human souls within that nation still have at least some of this clairvoyant knowledge; when we go back to times when there was imaginative knowledge of the spiritual world. We get to know the individual nations, we get to know the souls of the nations, the spirits of the nations, when we consider the different ways in which nations develop from these original clairvoyant states to those that then signify higher, more advanced levels of culture. For this development from the state of primitive clairvoyance to the higher stages of culture, which are attained when man is fully conscious of his personality, this development is different for each individual people, and the nature of the people depends on how the people develop from the primitive stage of culture indicated above to a higher one.

The ancient Greeks are a characteristic example of this, and most Oriental peoples are similar to them, as are, to some extent, the peoples of the ancient Italian peninsula. Such a people as the Greeks can only be fully understood if it is clear that this people passes from the original pictorial impressions of a spiritual world to the formation of the world view given to us in their mythology, in their religious ideas. This is still little recognized today, but the beginnings are already given in external science, which lead to the view as it has just been indicated here. In his beautiful book, “The Riddle of the Sphinx”, Ludwig Laistner attempts to show how all ancient myths, all ancient conceptions of the gods, especially those of the Greeks, are, as it were, already transformations of earlier clairvoyant conceptions that have passed into fantasy. And when we look at the ancient Greek world of gods, we can understand it only if we grasp it as transformed images of the supersensible world, gained in the state of ancient clairvoyance. But this people, the Greeks, experienced the transformation of the perceptions of ancient clairvoyance into the mythical world view and even the transformation of the mythical world view into the philosophical world view in such a way that they went through this transformation as a people in a youthful manner, so to speak. In ancient Greece, the transition from the old clairvoyant through the mythical to the philosophical world view was experienced at a youthful stage of national development. At the same time, the human consciousness, which presents man as a personality, as an individuality, develops in the people of such a nation. Everything that is the emotional, the personal, the hearty element of man develops. This develops alongside in the ordinary state of consciousness, and the human being is then only able to apply the emotional, the hearty element to the everyday circumstances of life. By living in the ordinary state of consciousness in the everyday circumstances of life, he can turn to spiritual matters — in a different state of mind. Thus two worlds enter his consciousness: one in which he lives with his feelings in everyday circumstances, and one that lifts him up with his spirit into the spiritual world; and he then confronts himself as an individuality with his emotional feelings, which he has inherited from what has passed from his clairvoyance into mythical and philosophical ideas. What constitutes the philosophical conceptions then appears to him as something given to him as a revelation, to which he looks up, but with which he is not so connected that every fiber of his soul and will is also directly connected with this world view in the creation of the world view.

This is how it is with the soul development of a people like the Greeks, a people who, as it were in their youth, went through what can be called the transition of clairvoyant knowledge into a worldview, through which one recognizes the soul's belonging to those powers that are exalted above life and death.

The development was quite different for those peoples, the Germanic peoples, who stormed from the east and north to the borders of the Greek and Roman empires around the beginning of our era. Of course, we also find clairvoyant knowledge at the starting point of their development among these peoples; there were also times when the soul was inclined towards the spiritual world through the images of clairvoyant imaginations. But the soul lost these clairvoyant imaginations, as it loses them with all peoples, so also with the Germanic peoples; because all of humanity must go through a state of development that is only intended for the physical world, that can only be intended for the reception of ideas about the physical world. At a certain point in time — and this coincides fairly exactly with the onslaught on the Roman Empire — the individual Germanic peoples not only lost the ability to see into the spiritual world in the original dream-like clairvoyance, but they also gradually lost their understanding of what the soul can get from such knowledge from the old clairvoyance during the migration of the peoples, during their onslaught against the Roman Empire. And it can be said that this is connected with the fact that these peoples all went through the state of their clairvoyant knowledge during their youth, but that they could not make a transition from their original clairvoyant knowledge to their later worldviews in their later years, so to speak, in their vigorous manhood. Thus, in these peoples, the development of the world view passes directly from the childlike state to the — I would say — “more mature” state of the people. In the childlike state, when consciousness is dulled, what was clairvoyant knowledge is present; there is also the dulled full receptivity of the peoples for the myths that have developed from ancient clairvoyance. These myths have been preserved at most as traditions for external understanding. Instead, a consciousness of personality has developed in these peoples, a firm foundation on the individuality of life. They have solidified what the qualities of the mind are, what the immediate character traits are, and through which traits of mind and character the human being stands in everyday life. And because the old clairvoyant ideas do not extend into this ordinary, everyday life, the mind, the impulses of will, and even the impulses of character must develop the longing to find the strength within themselves to feel, to experience, to learn the connection with the spiritual world. Out of the, as it were, dull forces of the mind, the longing for the divine spiritual worlds develops in these peoples. And unlike the Greeks, they cannot look back to anything that shines in their souls as the product of the development of ancient clairvoyant ideas; but they develop a deep soul, a soul that is indeed deep for grasping the ordinary circumstances of everyday life, but which at the same time feels the deepest longing for the spiritual foundations of life. In the mature manhood of these Germanic peoples, at the time we have indicated, their minds strive for a religious deepening of their world view, but no longer the old ideas of earlier clairvoyance resound in their minds.

Thus, while the Germanic peoples . stormed the peoples of the south, in the early days of the Germanic world, independently of the ideas of the world view, the personal character traits, the strong, courageous qualities of the will, of the mind, developed. We find a reflection of this state of mind above all in that wonderful poem, which stands worthily alongside the greatest poems of all times, alongside the Homeric epics, alongside the Kalewala of the Finns: the “Nibelungenlied”. As the Song of the Nibelungs has come down to us, it shows us people who no longer have a clear view of what holds them together with the old clairvoyant ideas. Instead, we see in them a deep insight into the struggles and overcoming that the soul undergoes in order to find its way in life. But if we look closely at the way the Nibelungenlied is presented, we become aware of how remnants of the old clairvoyant imagination still extend into the lives of these people, but how these remnants are shaped in such a way that they are, as it were, tailored to serve the everyday life of people and, further, the historical life of people. We become aware of this, for example, when we hear how the woman who is to become the wife of Siegfried of the Horn foresaw the entire misfortune that was to befall the man who was to become her husband by seeing in a dream a white falcon on which two eagles swoop down and kill it with their claws. And then again, when Siegfried has become her husband and Hagen is about to murder Siegfried, she sees two mighty mountains collapse over her husband Siegfried. — What remains of the old clairvoyant visions is no longer sufficient to lead man beyond the ordinary powers of imagination; but it is so integrated into his life that man can learn from it what is in store for him, on a large or small scale. These ancient images also make themselves felt in another way, for example, when we take what connects to the older traditions via the Nibelungenlied: when we see how Siegfried kills the dragon, bathes in the dragon's blood and thereby acquires a callosity that makes him invulnerable — except for the spot between his shoulders where a linden leaf has fallen, and which is then the spot where Hagen later murders him. Thus we have the penetration of the old connection with the spiritual world into the life of the Germanic peoples; but this penetration serves the way in which man places himself in the life of the physical world.

Thus we see how these Germanic peoples are initially called upon, I would say, to develop the qualities of the mind and character, and also the qualities of a strong individuality, while making sacrifices in the process, under the self-experienced connection with the spiritual world, as well as to develop those qualities that bind soul to soul, soul to soul, in the physical life. The impulses of gratitude, loyalty and everything that radiates from the mind of man, we see so excellently described for the soul of the ancient Germanic people in the Song of the Nibelungs, that those who helped to write the Song of the Nibelungs were involved in the composition of the Nibelungenlied had a dark awareness of how man is taken out of his connections with the spiritual world and, with all the qualities of his soul, is firmly placed in the physical world.

In this way we have outlined a fundamental characteristic of the Germanic soul, a soul that everywhere shows a peculiar kind of personal depth, a characterological depth, and at the same time that deep, deep longing for the spiritual worlds, which wants satisfaction, but initially feels this satisfaction like a tragically sorrowful yearning and hope, because the old ideas born of clairvoyance have lost their strong power over the human mind.

Now it is highly remarkable in what way the peoples of the south – and in what other way the Germanic peoples of the north – to the gift of the world: Christianity, by virtue of this state of mind, had to behave. Let us be clear that the peoples of the South, with their worldviews born out of the old clairvoyant ideas, had to receive this Christianity. They had to compare it in what it revealed to them with what they knew, or at least what they could have the definite conviction that one had once known through direct experience. A longing such as is taken for granted today, and as it developed among the Germanic peoples: a longing for the spiritual worlds, a — I would say — tragic longing to penetrate the veil that separates man from the spiritual worlds. Such a longing could not, in fact, arise among those peoples who had direct knowledge that a spiritual world existed, because they were in contact with these worlds in special states of consciousness. What a longing for a worldview makes possible, how it moves the soul inwardly, and how it can affect the whole person, can be seen particularly in the peoples of the North. Therefore, the peoples of the South could only receive the incoming Christianity by comparing it to the character that their old ideas, born of the earlier Hellsehen, had; that they regarded it as something given to man from outside, to which the human mind surrenders. Everywhere we see a twofold world coming to life among these peoples as well: a world to which the mind is devoted for the everyday relationship, for the historical relationship – and the world of the earlier given ideas, born out of the old clairvoyance, which is now illuminated and illuminated by the revelations of Christianity.

But Christianity had a different, quite different effect on the souls of the Germanic peoples, on those souls in whose innermost depths there lived a longing, a tragic longing for the spiritual worlds. To these souls now came what Christianity is able to give to souls; all that was of infinite warmth, all that moved the heart and mind, all that could flow into the souls from Christianity, came to them. And when one looked at the suffering of the Redeemer, when one looked at the Mystery of Golgotha, it was felt that it was intimately related to what the deepest impulses were in the foundations of the soul, with which man lives in the everyday. And so these souls felt as if what was revealed to them from the outer world was something that was born out of the soul itself, something that the soul had only not known, but which it had experienced in its depths long, long before. The Germanic peoples took up Christianity as an inner element, as an intimate matter of the soul itself, not as an external revelation. And the great difference that resulted for an emotional, for a sentimental understanding of the world can be particularly appreciated by looking at the relationship of man to nature and to the environment, by looking at the southern peoples who received Christianity, and then at the Germanic peoples. This Christianity directed souls – all souls – towards the eternal, towards that which has descended from the sphere of the cosmic and entered into the development of human history. It was something different from what was revealed in nature, in the outer life, and could be felt and experienced. Therefore, a peculiar view of nature developed among the southern peoples, something that has often been mentioned, a certain contempt for nature; a view of nature arose as if it were of less value for life, a descent from the divine-spiritual worlds. And a belief developed as if one must now turn away from life, become estranged from nature and life around. To put it radically, one could say: a kind of contempt for natural existence and human life in the physical world developed.

How different the attitude of the Germanic peoples towards nature was! Something lived in them that must have come from the characterized development of their souls. When the connection with the old clairvoyant ideas had dawned, they were dependent on living together with nature and with people. Thus they developed the character traits, the emotional traits, that could ignite in nature and human life in the most intense way. They looked into nature, they saw and felt everything that one can feel in joy at nature, and also how one can grieve over nature – over nature, how one sees it develop gloriously every spring, or when one sees the bright dawn, and how one sees it sink again when we see the sun sinking into the evening glow, or when autumn and winter set in. But they also felt a special connection between human life and their state of mind. This human life presented itself to them in such a way that what held this human life together with the forces that pulsate and wave out of the spiritual worlds through this human life was no longer alive for them, as it were. A certain tragic, one might say, “mournful mood” developed in these peoples from this view of nature and human life; and we see this mood of mourning, this lamentation poured out over the view of the gods of the old Germanic souls. The poet of the Nibelungenlied himself says that he wants to show his listeners how sorrow follows joy. After all, the Nibelungenlied ends in sorrow, in destruction, in hardship and murder and death! The poet of this song wanted to show how sorrow comes from joy. And if we survey the Germanic pantheon, we see how the ancient Germans looked upon their gods as those who would one day experience the 'twilight of the gods', who would one day no longer experience their rule as usual, but would lie in battle with one another, so that each would kill the other. The ancient Germans looked upon the world of the gods as the basis of nature and human life with a mood of sorrow and tragedy. This is a different mood from what, to put it radically, one might call disparaging and contemptuous of nature. It is a life intimately connected with nature, a life together with nature, but a life that mourns over existence, that reveals itself through the fate of nature and man, that loves the fate of nature and man, but believes that through this love it must experience impulses of suffering and lamentation.

That is the great, enormous difference in the conception of nature in the south and the north. And so we can empathize with the Germanic state of mind, and can initially look to those who, among the Germanic peoples, were, so to speak, the outposts of the European mission of the Germanic peoples, that is, to those Germanic tribes that first, in greater or lesser numbers, came into contact with the peoples of the south: the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, the Lombards. We look at them; and however barbaric the external appearance of these peoples may appear to us, if we only want to see, we see at the bottom of their minds, at the bottom of their conception of nature and life, the character traits that have just been characterized. And with these character traits, with this view of nature and life, they moved into the peoples of southern Europe and into what became of these peoples of the south and West. And we know that these peoples, who have just been named, merged with the peoples of the South and West. The Romanesque culture emerged.

But if we take a closer look at this Romance culture, what do we find in it? We find in it that which still lived on dimly from the old world-view born out of clairvoyance, and we find this permeated and interwoven and pulsating with what the individual Germanic tribes, who have disappeared in the world have disappeared except in name, have incorporated; and everything that developed in the west and south of Europe as Romance culture has at its core the Germanic soul, even if it was then drowned out by the continuation of ancient Roman culture. And only then can the Romanic element be understood when one knows that it draws its life from the perished Germanic soul world. One understands the creative spirits of Italian culture, one understands the wonderful Italian music, even spirits like Augustine and John Scotus Erigena, as well as the great artists of the great Italian Renaissance and the Quattrocento, one understands even Dante can only be understood if one realizes that the substantiality of the soul of these ancient Germanic peoples has been absorbed into what was then drowned out in the outer works by the continuous flow of ancient Roman culture. — Thus we have the first outposts of the Germanic soul world in these peoples, who, as it were, sacrificed themselves in the progress of external history. And it is only from the blending of the old Roman soul-life with the soul-life of the Germanic peoples that the cultures of the South and the West essentially arose and were then able to develop further. What was absorbed into these cultures can be called precisely the “Germanic soul-life,” which developed as indicated.

Now this Germanic soul-life was particularly opposed to Christian Revelation in such a way that it received it as a finished product, something that had been shaped into fixed forms in comparison with the traditional world views of antiquity. From this developed a juxtaposition, a duality of that which is spiritual, religious revelation, and that which is ideological; and as a different, as it were, second inner world, the emotional and the soul-like, which had come over from Germanic paganism, developed. Either this latter took up the Christian revelations like an exterior, or it developed later within the Romance-Germanic element from the soul-like – which still stood in contrast with inwardness to what Christianity had to give – the critical. The purely rational arose, which then reached its particular peak in Voltaire.

One might say that it was predetermined in world history that a part of the Germanic soul had to be sacrificed for the south and west of Europe; it flowed into those peoples. But another part remained behind in the center of Europe, and this had the special task of allowing the soul-like aspect of these peoples to progress through the further development of the soul into the spiritual. For we have so far basically only described the Germanic soul-life. But while the others, the advance troops of Germanic culture, spread out as soul-substantiality to the south and west of Europe, we see a core of Germanic soul-life remaining in the center of Europe. And how does this core develop? It develops that which has emerged as character traits, as emotionality in the peoples of Germania, and which has been illuminated and warmed by Christianity, upwards into the spiritual; for the spiritual is the higher development of the soul. And as the soul develops into the spiritual, the spiritual, because Christianity is the ruling power, must develop in the periods up to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in such a way that a still more intimate relationship is formed with that which the soul itself experiences intimately and which is revealed in Christianity.

As early as the ninth century, we see the first glimmering of the spiritual from the Germanic soul in that wonderful poem that originated in the Saxon lands: in “Heliand”. In Heliand we see the life of Christ Jesus related; but we see it related as if Christ Jesus were one of the Teutonic kings who went forth conquering through the world, having assumed a wholly Teutonic nature; and those who follow him, his disciples, appear in this poem as Teutonic vassals. Christianity is completely absorbed into the Germanic folk element; resurrected, reborn is the Christian legend from the souls of the people of Central Europe in the Heliand. And we feel that at this particular point, something arises that was already evident in ancient paganism but then passed away: the Germanic soul of the people relies not on receiving Christianity from the outside, as did the Romance world, but on generating from within itself that which can be experienced in Christianity, in the Christian impulses. Therefore, in the Heliand, the story that took place in the life of Christ Jesus is told as if it had taken place in Central Europe, at the center of Germanic culture. The author recounts the story as if he wanted to describe events in his homeland, not only in form but also in the way the locations are described and so on.

Then we see how the upward progression of the soul into the spiritual continues to confront us in that wonderful flowering of German intellectual life that we refer to as medieval German mysticism, which begins with Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, reaches a particular expression in Paracelsus, then progresses in Valentin Weigel and Jacob Böhme, and finally in the wonderful sayings of Angelus Silesius, who lived in Silesia in the seventeenth century, from 1624 to 1677. Here in this German mysticism we see, first with Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler and then with the others who became their disciples, how the soul-life passes directly over into the spiritual perception.

What is the relationship of these minds to what they call their “God”? Their relationship to what they call their God is that they want to overcome, to strip away from themselves everything that feels and wills and thinks in the individual personality, in the individual individuality, that they want to feel only as an instrument through which God Himself speaks and feels and thinks and wills. This feeling is expressed in every word, in every beautiful word: they want to become empty, that is, they want to cast off what one can call: 'I feel in this way through my personality, I think this and that through my personality, I want out of my impulses'. No! these spirits would not want that. What they call their God, what they also feel as the God who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, they want Him to fill their minds, all their inner powers completely, to spiritualize them completely, to fill the soul completely with Him, so that nothing of their own lives in them, but that they are completely filled by the Divine, and that the Divine wills in them, and they are only a vessel for this Divine. They want to place themselves in the spiritual order of the world so that they can say: When my hand moves, I know that it is the God in me who unfolds the power to move my hand; when I think – it is the God in me who thinks; when I feel and will – it is the God in me who feels and wills; I want to reject everything that is my own life in me, and I want to let only the God rule in me! And they expected everything from the grace that can radiate over them when they empty their soul and let themselves be radiated over by the grace of God that can flow into them. They expected the perfection of their souls from this.

What do we experience in these personalities? We experience that what appears to be a natural quality of the human soul, the old Germanic emotional life, the old Germanic emotional life, which was once filled with hope and longing for the spiritual world, permeates the Christian impulses with the same impulsiveness with which it once permeated the outer physical experience. What a person is in the outer physical world, that merges in these masters with the inner experience of God and the divine world order. It merges to such an extent that, for example, in a beautiful saying that I will read out, Master Eckhart was able to characterize this mood of the soul, where we see the soul-like merging into the spirit-grasping, with the words “If you love God, then you can do whatever you will, for then you will will only the Eternal and the One, and whatever you do, you do in God, and God does it in you.” This self-knowledge with God is what we encounter when the Germanic soul gives birth to the German spirit. And this inner experience of the spirit, this active presence of the spirit in the soul — oh, it shines out to us so wonderfully, in such a glorious — I say — in such a wonderfully glorious way from the beautiful poetic sayings of Angelus Silesius of the seventeenth century, in his “Cherubinischer Wandersmann”. We stand there as if at a high point of the development of the soul, steering towards the spirit. I cannot refrain from reading to you some of the sayings of this German mystic who lived in Silesia and was involved in the birth of the German spirit out of the Germanic soul:

That God is so blissful
and lives without desire,
He has received from me,
as I have from him.

How united a soul knows itself with its God, which can speak in such a way that it understands how to say: God is so blissful and without desire because he can experience bliss in me, because he receives it from me just as I do from him. Of course, in this, one must no longer think of the ego that is bound to the self-will of life, but of the ego that knows itself to be completely pulsed and warmed by what God wills - as I have just read from Meister Eckhart. Another saying

I myself am eternity,
when I leave time,
And in God and God
in me, combine.

What intimate interpenetration of the human ego with the divine is here generated by the feeling that the ego lives in the feeling that it itself grasps God in eternity! And

now the question: What is my God's form?
Go, look at yourself,
He who beholds himself in God, beholds truly God.

Unity of the human being with the divine. And so completely — I would say — intoxicated by the connection of the human soul with what lives in the mystery of Golgotha, with what lives in the impulses of Christianity, is the next saying:

The cross at Golgotha
cannot deliver you from evil
unless it is also erected within you.

That means that man must experience within himself everything that he can experience when he feels and relives everything that can arise before his spiritual eye in the process of sharing in and experiencing the sufferings and triumphs of the Redeemer. And this eternal consciousness comes to us most particularly in two sayings of Angelus Silesius, sayings of which one would like to say that it is one of the greatest good fortunes of life that these sayings were ever spoken in the German language. The first:

I neither die nor live:
God himself dies in me:
And what I should live, he also lives for and for.

Looking at death, beholding death – and knowing: “It is not I who die, but God dies in me” – that means nothing other than knowing that the human being passes through the gate of death alive. For if he knows that God lives in him, then he also knows that death is then overcome for knowledge; for to know that God dies in me is to know that I do not die; for God does not die. Thus once upon a time one of the German mystics knew how to put the greatest riddles of life into the most concise words. And just as profound is another saying of Angelus Silesius:

The love that proves
yours to God within you,
Is God's own power,
His fire and holy spirit.

It is not I who speaks – so says Angelus Silesius – it is not I who loves; God's language, God's love in me, that is what I can “become” for. That means that divine life descends into my soul and fills my soul when I try to become more and more empty, to be only a vessel for what can enter the soul as divine spiritual life.

And the forces that had thus entered into the development of the German spirit continued to work, and we see them emerging again where the German spirit has given its people the deepest impulses to date. In the period which we call the German classical period, we see the longing arising for the deepest experience of one's own human spirit, for the seeking out of everything that man can experience in spirit, and for the shaping of what the human spirit can experience into a world view. We see it dawning on minds like those of Lessing and Herder; we see it rising to great heights in Goethe and Schiller and in the German philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. And what do we see as the deepest strength of the German people, as it seeks to look at what has been handed down historically, but also at what can only be given through the outer physical contemplation of the world? She seeks the truth to which the human soul is predisposed, for which she searches in her depths; and she comes to it, out of the spirit, to recognize and give birth again in a new form everything that has been and continues to be through the whole of world history. And in this sense, Lessing provides an abstract of all human striving and research in the writing that also marks the conclusion of his life: “The Education of the Human Race”. In it he shows how divine spiritual forces run through historical development, how all history is an educational work on the part of divine spiritual powers, and how the Christian impulse presents itself as the greatest impulse in the progress of the development of the earth. But there is also something dawning in German spiritual life that can only gradually find its full expression in the future, that must first be grasped again in spiritual science in the present – the realization that how earlier historical epochs interact with later ones, how what man has conquered in earlier historical epochs can be carried over into later epochs. And Lessing, in explicitly saying that he is not afraid to recognize that a greater truth need not be considered inferior because it first appeared in the course of development and in times when humanity was not yet darkened by the prejudices of school, comes to the recognition that the human soul lives in repeated earthly lives, that the complete life of the human soul proceeds in such a way that it returns in ever new earthly lives, and that between two earthly lives an existence in a purely spiritual world passes, where the soul transforms the powers it has acquired in the last earthly life, in order to return and carry over into later epochs what it has acquired in earlier ones. In this way a continuous process of development is created, in which human beings themselves participate.

Then we see how, through Herder, the spirit that grasps itself, that seeks to flourish into such religious fervor in German mystics, how this spirit, illuminated and clarified, seeks to permeate all of nature and human life. A great and magnificent work is that which Herder created in his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”, where he describes how spirit lives in everything, spirit that he finds when he looks into the depths of his soul, but which at the same time guarantees man's eternal serenity, man's eternal “engagement” and eternal resting in eternal-divine existence.

And we then see how in Goethe — to mention the work again, which has also played a role in earlier lectures — how this work becomes a “person” by creating “Faust”: the striving to connect the soul life of the human being with what rests and creates and works in the spiritual worlds through one's own power. And in addition to this, Goethe contrasted Faust with all the obstacles that can prevent man from this striving in the figure of Mephistopheles. Ultimately, however, man must win freedom for himself, where the word can resound to him from the other world: “We can redeem anyone who strives.”

Furthermore, we see the great attempt of the German national philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who in Germany's most difficult times found those heartfelt tones that he expressed in his “Discourses to the German Nation”. We see Fichte standing before us with his ideas, which create an entire spiritual world out of the human ego, which, however, knows itself to be imbued from the outset with all divine and spiritual impulses. We see one of the boldest philosophical-spiritual attempts in Fichte's philosophy. It is a philosophy that is convinced from the outset that man not only has his five senses and his ordinary mind, but that he also has a higher sense, a sense through which a spiritual world is directly experienced, whereby man knows himself to be one with the divine-spiritual life, and in the external reality only creates material for himself in order to be able to work in it. One would like to say: what still confronts us in a vague soul-like striving in the works of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and even Jacob Böhme and Angelus Silesius, becomes clear light in the philosophy of Fichte. It becomes clear light because here, although the soul element of the soul is the dominant one, it clarifies into ideas full of light that embrace and profess a spiritual world: The entire spiritual world lives in the self. Just as Angelus Silesius wanted to know himself in his I as one with his God, with the whole of divine activity and life, so for Fichte it was clear from the outset: when I really get to the place in my I where this I grasps itself in its deepest reason, then I am with God, then I create not just any old world view, but one that the God in me creates. And one of the boldest, most courageous thoughts is a Fichtean thought. Fichte does not express it as I am about to express it, but everything Fichte said can be summarized in the words: If the human ego, with its powers, with what it is, is to be dependent on anything, be it the external world, be it the brain, be it the body or whatever, then it is bound to something else; then it is not that which the divine-spiritual being can experience in itself. This ego must not be another being in itself, but must create itself again and again; and creating itself must be the most important activity of the ego. This is how Fichte feels. For Fichte, wanting to recognize the deepest essence of the ego means knowing in every moment that one is creating this ego. If it were to lose itself for a moment, it would have the strength to create itself again and again. Fichte conceives of this ego as creative. In this way, it is an immediate image, a real likeness of the spiritual divinity.

What Fichte wanted to find as the innermost core of the soul substance in the human being, the self united with its God, Hegel lays out in—albeit abstract—ideas, which in turn were supposed to span a world and at the same time represent the inner creative power of the world. Hegel reasoned: if the human spirit really comes to allow the pure, light-filled ideas to live in it, then it is not just the individual human spirit that is bound to the brain that then thinks; but then it is the higher power living in man, the divine power permeating the world; then God thinks in man. For Hegel it is only a matter of purifying and condensing his thinking to such an extent that he rises above everything that is bound to an outer world and arrives at the pure thought that God thinks in the soul. This striving is Hegel's philosophical striving.

In this way, the development of German thought had, for the time being, grasped the level of the “spirit” in the highest possible way. It is peculiar that here, at the highest tension of the development of thought, a point was reached that could not be held on to, from which one later fell back, so that in relation to everything that followed, what Hegel once said is truly valid: Only one person understood me, and even he misunderstood me. It was a height that few could reach and even fewer could hold on to.

What had been achieved with Hegel's philosophy – and what had not yet been achieved?

What had been achieved was that consciousness had been developed in the soul, that the Germanic development of the soul had progressed so far in German intellectual life that it had been recognized that man can only relive the spiritual world within himself if he seeks development, if he seeks to ascend into spiritual worlds from which nations once emerged when they still had ancient clairvoyance. But Hegel stopped at concept and idea. For he could not say to himself: Concepts and ideas are still bound to the human body; I must advance to what exists as experience outside the human body. How it is possible for the human soul to achieve such experiences outside of the body has been discussed here several times; it will be discussed further tomorrow, when it will be shown how such experiences and insights can help a person in the serious and happy hours of life. But in Hegel, consciousness has already been attained, as in the outer existence of man the spirit lives, even if he could only show it in the dry, sober ideas. And even if Hegel could only paint a picture of the world that is realized in dry, sober ideas, because it does not rise from inspiration to the grasp of real life in the spirit, the line is nevertheless given, the real direction for grasping the spirit in Hegelian philosophy within German intellectual life. And when we look at the impulses that are present in the Germanic soul, experiencing the spirit in this way, and when we are asked, “Is this the end of the way things have presented themselves?” then we can say: no! This is not an end; one might say that this is only a stage of the beginning. With Hegel's philosophy, something is achieved, of which one must say: if one can immerse oneself in it and make one's soul an inward tool of the ideas, then the soul develops further. So the German soul must have been entrusted with the world mission of rising from the abstract idea, from the comprehension of thoughts and ideas that pervade nature and human nature in nature, to the direct, living comprehension and experience in the spirit and in the spiritual world. We see the German spirit at one stage of its development, and we understand why it must be at such a stage of its development: because it has developed in such a way that, starting from the self-contained mind, it must first grasp within itself that which must unravel the riddles of the world. That is why this German spirit is so difficult to understand. It is curious, for example, to hear that the brilliant Pole Adam Mickiewicz gave a lecture in Paris in 1843 in which he said: “The German students had no idea about Hegel: does Hegel believe in an immortal human being? Does he believe in the true Christian God?” Mickiewicz said that Hegel's philosophy does not address these questions of life, so that one cannot even tell whether it wants to talk about these things at all. And he says: the Polish and French journalists understood Hegel much better than Hegel's students; for, he says, these Polish and French journalists knew that Hegel knew nothing of the immortal human being and the true Christian God. — How foolishly the otherwise bright Mickiewicz speaks about Hegel! Why could the French and Polish journalists so easily “understand” Hegel? Precisely because the journalists are navigating in shallow waters and do not realize that with Hegel one must descend deep, deep down, that the questions are posed there, that they must then be asked deeper and deeper, and that the mind, which is otherwise available, cannot reach the point of intuiting from the given concepts in Hegel the perspectives from which the great riddles of the immortal God must be solved. Mickiewicz meant nothing more than what has just been stated, than what can be characterized by a saying of the old satirist Lichtenberg, which I will quote, bringing it together with Mickiewicz's remarks: “When books and heads collide, and it sounds hollow, it is not necessarily the book's fault.”

That is the point: at the beginning of the nineteenth century, German intellectual life had learned to make a beginning in true intellectual science, a beginning in living spiritual knowledge, a beginning that carries within itself the power of progress, the power of completion. What follows from this consideration – and from this last consequence of the consideration for the essence of the German spirit? What follows for us from it – so that we can take it into our feelings, into the feelings that we can harbor in these fateful, difficult days, when so much precious blood and so much strength is being consumed for German spiritual life, for the German spirit in East and West? What follows from it?

We see the continuous development of the Germanic soul into the German spirit; we see the German spirit in an initial stage, we see the germs that are there and the promise that it must still ascend to heights that are already implicit in it and that must not be killed, but must develop because they belong to its essence. Individuals can die before they have lived their lives to the full. People can die in the early years of their existence because they return in other earthly lives, and because others can take their place in earthly cultural life. Unfinished human lives can take place in the outer physical existence. Unfinished national lives cannot! For if a nation, before it has fulfilled its mission, were to be wiped out or its existence curtailed, then another national individuality would not take its place. Nations must live out their lives! Nations must go through the cycle of their existence – not only childhood and manhood, but also their existence to the highest perfection. The German spirit, the German intellectual life is not at an end, not before a completion; but it is at a beginning. Much is still allotted to it. When the wishes of the enemies, who strive for the opposite, are raised from all sides against the possibilities of existence of the German people, of the Central European world, then this must be what gives the Central European world, what gives the German people the strength to resist, the strength to keep alive the germs that we find in its soul, especially when we consider this soul in all its living development. And the belief in the triumph of German life need not be a mere blind faith; it can arise out of a living realization of the German character, out of that living realization which comes to the view that German life must live on because the German soul must fulfill its mission in the evolution of the world, because nothing else exists that can lift the purely external materialistic world view to that most ideal spiritual height, the intention of which lies in the German soul. Truly, in this German spiritual life lies that which will one day lead the purely materialistic world view to the contemplation of the spiritual world. And that the best minds have sensed that there is a beginning and not an end to German intellectual life, we see in all great minds as they have expressed the impulses of this intellectual life. Herman Grimm, who is often mentioned in these lectures, once looked — this passage is in his Goethe lectures — at what the materialistic world view has made of the world in the present. He looks at the Kant-Laplace theory, which posits a great cosmic nebula as the starting point of our world development; this nebula condenses into a large ball of gas, which somehow begins to rotate, and in this way the other planets, our Earth also comes into being; over time, in some way that is not known, spirit and life develop on Earth, and later, according to this theory, when the Earth has died, all life and all spirit will fall back into the sun. For Herman Grimm, such a materialistic view of world development is incompatible with what can come from the sources of German intellectual life. That is why he is so drastic in his Goethe lectures about such a representation:

"No less fruitless a perspective for the future can be imagined than the one that is to be imposed on us today in the guise of being scientifically necessary. A carrion bone that a hungry dog would give a wide berth to would be a refreshingly appetizing prospect compared to this excrement of creation, as which our Earth will eventually fall back to the Sun. It is the our generation absorbs and believes such things, a sign of a sick imagination, which the scholars of future epochs will one day spend a lot of ingenuity explaining as a historical phenomenon of the times.

What hope can we derive from such a consideration of the German spirit, as it has been presented to us today? We have seen how the Germanic soul-life has developed out of the old Hellsehen; we have seen this soul-life develop further into the German spirit, the first glimmering of which is shown in German mysticism; we have seen this German spirit develop further into the appearance of appearance of Faust, to the spirit of Goethe, Schiller and the others, and today we can see how it will develop further in a permeation of the world, up to the sources of the spiritual, in which the human soul, if it grasps itself deeply enough, can truly participate. Looking at the German spirit in this way gives us confidence that German strength must be invincible; it gives us a confidence that is not based on mere blind faith, but that must be our consolation and our hope in these fateful and difficult days.

At the end of this reflection, let me summarize what follows as a consequence of it:

The German spirit has not yet completed
What it must accomplish in the world's evolution.
It lives in hope, in the future's cares;
It hopes for future deeds, full of life;
In the depths of its being, it feels mightily
Hidden things that must still mature and work.
How can a wish for his death arise in the power of the enemy,

In yesterday's lecture, I took the liberty of pointing out how the struggle and striving of German intellectual development contains the seeds of a true spiritual science that the future is to bring us, that is to be born out of the present. And I tried to suggest that in that spiritual work, in that spiritual striving, which was necessary to lead to the ideas, to the conceptions and views that emerged in German intellectual life in the first half of the nineteenth century , that in this striving and wrestling lies the preparation for the recognition of what, admittedly, can still be recognized only to a limited extent in our present time – for understandable reasons that have, after all, been discussed here in these lectures on several occasions. The point is that one can only arrive at this spiritual science through a development of those powers of the human soul that are hidden in this soul, that one can only arrive at it if, through energetic inner thought work – through so-called concentration and meditation – those forces are brought out from the human inner being, which once, in more dim states of consciousness, led to the clairvoyance mentioned yesterday, which were present in the souls at the origin of humanity and of nations, and which can be brought out again through conscious thought work. But then they arise as conscious powers in the soul, so that these states of clairvoyance, revealing the conditions of the spiritual world, approach the soul fully consciously and while preserving human individuality, just as the conditions of the material world approach the human soul. The meditation, concentration and inner soul work in the life of thinking, feeling and will that are necessary for such a development of the soul have often been the subject of these lectures. Today, however, we will not speak of this. For today I would like to point out how the results of this spiritual knowledge, attained through spiritual work to increase our life energy, to strengthen and invigorate our human life in the serious and happy hours of life, can lead to this.

It is quite natural and self-evident that for the materialistic thinking of our time, it seems absurd, paradoxical, perhaps ridiculous, when spiritual research today speaks of the fact that man does not only consist of what external science - biology, physiology, etc. - recognizes about this man, and what so-called psychology recognizes; but when this spiritual research claims that man is in truth composed of a series of members, of which the physical material, the bodily part of man is only one, while the other members — perceptible only through the aforementioned spirit-knowledge — prevail in the invisible, supersensible and from there are active in man. As I said, it is quite natural that even today people may scoff at the idea, that they may polemicize against it, that man has not only a physical body, which serves him in the sense world for outer deeds and outer sense perception, but that he has finer members, more spiritual members of human nature. That man, in addition to the physical body, has, first of all, a so-called etheric body, a finer body, “finer” in contrast to the conditions of the coarse physical body; that these two members of the human being are the ones that remain with man in physical existence even remain when man sinks into the unconsciousness of sleep; but that higher, more spiritual members of human nature — those which we call the astral body and the human ego — pass from sleep to wakefulness into a spiritual world. Spiritual science has to recognize this, and furthermore that these members of human nature, which rest in the unconscious during sleep, are the actual actors, the actual activity that animates and permeates the physical and etheric bodies, that moves into them when the person wakes up from sleep.

If today an external scientific view cannot or does not want to speak of these higher aspects of human nature, does not want to recognize them, then such a non-recognition is similar to the non-recognition of air by someone who only wants to accept what is visible with the physical eyes and what can be grasped with the physical hands from what is visible. For just as we inhale and exhale the air as physical matter in short periods of time, so the physical and etheric human bodies inhale the astral body and the ego when we wake up; and when we fall asleep, they are exhaled again — if we understand the word “breathe” figuratively. With falling asleep the physical human body releases the astral body and the I into the spiritual world. This knowledge of the spirit becomes fruitful when it can be applied in life in an appropriate way, when the human soul can be permeated by it and can look at life in its light.

As human beings we are carried by the stream of life. We drift along in this stream of life between our birth and our death, as it were. I would like to start with a comparison that illustrates this drifting along in the stream of life. When we sit in a train and travel along, looking out the window, it seems to us, at least at first, especially if we are not yet accustomed to traveling by train, as if the trees and houses were passing by, moving past us. — This is roughly how a person lives, traveling the journey of life with their worldviews and perceptions of life, in relation to the luck and misfortune, successes and failures of life. For how do luck and misfortune, successes and failures affect human nature? Just as human nature is initially conditioned by what it can draw from the physical world, so do happiness and unhappiness, success and failure, work in such a way that they always carry with them, as it were, our sense of the world, our sense of existence, that the world itself seems to pass before us in our feelings and sensations, depending on whether we experience suffering or pain in it. And just as we must first get used to traveling in the physical world in order to have the right point of view during this journey with regard to what only seemingly moves past us outside, so it is up to the human being to gain the right point of view in order to that he may remain calm in his feeling for the world, in his sense of existence — calm in the spiritual world, when happiness and sorrow, when success or failure seek to show him the sense of the world, the feeling of existence, in motion, in seeming motion.

Now, we must indeed take into account that the development of humanity is in a state of constant progress, that epoch follows epoch in this development of humanity, that ever new and new experiences enter into this development of humanity, and that therefore the soul must also experience different things in the various epochs of the historical development of mankind – and after its experiences must also relate to life and its sense of existence in different ways. That is why the human being of the present time needs a different relationship to the world than that which the human soul could have in past times in order to find inner satisfaction, calm in the stream of existence. Now spiritual science shows us that in the human souls of the present time a certain sum, a kind of fund of powers of spiritualizing life rests, which want to emerge from this human soul, so that they do not remain hidden in remain hidden in the soul, but to step forth into human consciousness, so that man not only feels them as an inner urge, as an inner compulsion, but can place them in his world of ideas, in his world of concepts. For with what attitude does spiritual science actually speak to people? It does not speak as if it wanted to bring knowledge from foreign realms of existence, as if from unknown lands, but it speaks from the attitude that it basically only wants to say to each soul what lies in the depths of that soul itself. And the spiritual researcher is fundamentally convinced that in all, all people, there is that which he is only trying to put into words, to express in external concepts and ideas, that he has nothing else to say to people than what they already carry within themselves. The whole of spiritual science, when it is brought before humanity by the spiritual researcher with the right attitude, seeks to give nothing but what lies deep within every human soul. This spiritual science is an invitation to the human soul to draw forth from itself that which lies at the bottom of every soul.

Thus we can say: in these deep foundations of the human soul rests a whole sum of forces, which, when brought up into human consciousness, show for the first time what moves man inwardly, what inspires him inwardly. Truly, man is richer and more full of content than he often imagines.

Now there is a remarkable law regarding the relationship between man and his knowledge and perception of the world, a law that, when known, can provide deep insights into many of the mysteries of the human soul. To make this clear in the simplest possible way, I will once more refer to the fact that, through spiritual science, it can be investigated that every time a person falls asleep, his higher being — his I and his astral body — is sent into a spiritual world. In this spiritual world, he is initially unable to perceive anything. But what he sends into this spiritual world really contains at least a large part of what spiritual science wants to draw from the deep sources of existence for daily life from the deep sources of existence. Man is only so constituted in his everyday life that unconsciousness covers what rests in his soul when he is in a dormant state outside his physical and etheric bodies; and when he, upon awakening, carries his ego and his astral body into his physical body and ether body, then this I and this astral body are filled with impressions from external perception, with what the material world transmits to us. The soul is then surrendered to the outer world; and just as during the night unconsciousness dawns on what rests in the depths of the soul, so during the day it is what comes to us in the way of impressions from the material outer world. But does everything that spiritual science wants to bring to human consciousness really rest in the depths of the soul? There is now a law, an important, essential law, which will gradually be recognized as governing all of existence: that which can be beneficial in one state can have a destructive effect when it asserts itself in another state, as it were in another place.

In what remains hidden from man's material consciousness, invisible supersensible forces rest. They rest in what man releases into the spiritual world when he sleeps, stir in this inner being, and bring insecurity to man in his behavior, a lack of direction in life. When these forces are brought up into consciousness, when they are transformed into conscious knowledge, concepts and ideas, then they become beneficial, then they become healing, then they give the person direction and goal, peace and security in life. It is a peculiar law, and it must be admitted, it is a difficult law to understand. But it is true nevertheless: if what spiritual science gives can give the spiritual knower deep satisfaction when it enters his consciousness, it is an unsettling element, an unsettling force, if it only rests below, unconsciously, in the dark regions of the soul. If it rests unconsciously in these regions, which spiritual science wants to raise to clear knowledge, then it remains without influence on the human ego; then it surges and billows in the subconscious, then it cannot have any influence on what the person experiences in terms of happiness and pain, of successes and failures. Then man can bring only that part of his nature into successes and failures, into happiness and pain, which goes along with happiness and pain in such a way that the soul loses itself in happiness, that it sinks in pain, becomes numbed by its successes, filled with pain by its failures. Then the soul goes everywhere with us, then it rocks and floats in the stream of life. But when the soul's powers of knowledge about the spiritual world, which lie dormant down there in the dark regions, are brought up into the ego, so that this ego can take the spiritual knowledge with it when life smiles on us in happiness, when life suffering and pain, then the I no longer rocks and swims in happiness and unhappiness in the stream of life; then it carries a strengthened inner being into happiness and unhappiness, into pain and suffering, and happiness and pain are then experienced differently.

However, we need to gain some awareness of the nature of happiness and suffering, of success and failure, if we want to properly consider the application of what we have just characterized. What do happiness and misfortune actually bring to a person?

We cannot really understand inwardly what a person experiences in happiness, in success, in the cheerful hours of life or in the pain and sadness of the hours that failure brings him – we cannot really recognize this at all unless we take into account the fact that a person consists of a physical outer part and a spiritual-soul inner part. What is happiness, what is life in success?

What is joined together in the human being in terms of his or her essential parts takes on a different composition in terms of the finer relationships in happiness and in suffering. When we experience happiness, when the soul plunges into this happiness, or even when it submerges into its successes, what then happens to human nature? Then, as it were, what is otherwise dormant in human nature tears itself out of the inner being, pursuing what penetrates into us from the outside in the form of happiness and success; the human being becomes estranged from his inner self, he ceases to be merely in himself. The human being enters into a foreign place. This becoming alien to oneself, this coming out of oneself, is what presents itself to us, as it were, as the one pendulum swing of human inner experience in happiness. When a person experiences pain, when he has failures, then the soul-spiritual, fleeing the pain, the failures, withdraws deeper into the inner being than it would have to ; it is then as if the soul contracts, so that the person does not lose themselves in the outer world, as they would in happiness and success, but withdraws into themselves. And since man is so constituted that he can only find peace and satisfaction in harmonious connection with the world, his contracted inner being brings him just as much out of harmony with life as he is estranged from his nature by being absorbed in happiness and success. This is the other pendulum swing of the human inner life in relation to a life of happiness and success: the desire to live entirely within oneself, to flee from the world because it wants to pour failure and pain over us. However, it is necessary for the overall human experience that the person has these two pendulum swings; it is only a matter of how he experiences them. If he does not experience them, then he even seeks them out. And I want to show, in the context of this reflection, how he can seek out this alienation, which we experience in the natural course of happiness, where man is no longer within himself, where he wants to merge into an element that is alienated from his actual self. |

This is the case when a person does not want to admit to himself what is actually contained in this ego, when he does not want to allow the truth to arise in his consciousness about what is contained in this ego, but instead plunges into another element and numbs himself about the truth of the ego by resting in the external world. This numbing can be sought, and it is sought. And we see — let me insert this — especially in our time the saddest examples of such a search, of such alienation and of wanting to live in what does not belong to the ego, because one does not want to admit this ego in its true form. So it may be that whole crowds are seized by such a feeling of wanting to anesthetize themselves with something other than what the ego actually says. Let us assume that the ego of a number of people has been saying for decades: “We want revenge for what has been taken from us – revenge for our own sake,” and there comes a moment when they do not want to admit what lies in the actual self, when one seeks to get beyond it, then one seeks something to numb oneself – and then one does not say, “We want revenge,” but rather, “We want to fight for the freedom and rights of nations!” This is nothing more than the search for the extreme of the one pendulum swing: the stupor. Or one sings for decades or even longer: “Rule Britannia”, “Rule Britannia”, and as the continuation, which is well known, goes – and one does not want to admit this to oneself at a certain moment: one does not say what rests in the innermost form of the self, but one finds it necessary to go out of one's being by saying: One fights for freedom and justice for the peoples!

This compulsion can sweep across entire masses of people like an epidemic, numbing them in what is grasped from outside, because they do not want to remain within their own selves. But a person can only find direction and security in life if they are able not only to remain within their own self, but also to carry their self into all happiness, all suffering, all successes, and all failures. We achieve the strengthening of this ego, the inner securing and energizing of the ego, when we bring forth what makes the ego insecure. And what makes it uncertain is the knowledge of the spiritual world, which remains in the dark regions of the soul, which rests there and takes the form of a rocking boat, as long as it is down in the depths of the soul, but which gives security in life when it is brought up, as it were, to another place — into consciousness. And it is strange that when we are asked why we seek spiritual science, we cannot answer, “To satisfy ourselves with this spiritual science, to have the joy of the upliftment of this spiritual science”; but we have to bring this ability to recognize into consciousness because we already have it in our subconscious, but because it must not remain there. And the more we strive to have knowledge of the spiritual world within us, the more we will find that — whether this spiritual knowledge gives us joy or sorrow — something else is changing within us. For it is easy to imagine that while this unconscious inner being is otherwise filled with the forces that can emerge as spiritual science, this subconscious inner being becomes empty to the extent that we consciously imbue ourselves with what spiritual science can give us. It is truly justified to compare it to wanting to pump out the air from an air pump: we empty the space of the recipient, and other air can enter it. In this way, something else can enter our soul when we empty it of what we bring up into our consciousness.

And what can then enter the soul? Those forces can then enter our soul with which that soul is connected according to its actual character. For when we empty our soul of what wants to come up into consciousness, we then open the now empty soul to the interventions of the divine-spiritual impulses, which glow our will, which warm our feeling with the forces that the divine-spiritual impulses and give us security in life, so that we can say at the right moment: This is where you should turn, this is how you should perceive what comes to you in life as happiness and joy, as pain and suffering. Therefore, the human being will notice that it does not so much depend on what comes to us as spiritual science, but rather on what becomes of our soul through spiritual science. We can diligently observe our soul and will notice: As you make an effort to bring these insights into your soul, something quite different emerges from your soul than what it used to be. Moments occur that were not there before, in which the soul feels: “Now I have this to do — now I have that to do.” Impulses arise that bring us what gives us the balance of life, impulses that would not be there if they had not been repressed by the still unconscious knowledge that is brought up by spiritual science.

When we cultivate spiritual science, we behave in relation to our inner being as one behaves who wants to regulate a stream: he does not go directly to the water to direct it somewhere, because he would get little done that way; but he first goes to the earth, seeks to empty it in one place, seeks to make a fissure in the earth through which the stream can then pass. The same applies to our soul. What can bring us certainty of life, harmony of life, what can bring us a calm view of life in happiness and suffering — we cannot approach it as if we were approaching water directly; but just as water flows by itself into the space we have prepared for it in the earth, so spiritual forces flow by themselves into the will and into the mind when we prepare the bed for them. And we prepare the bed for them when we bring out of the depths of our soul what would otherwise prevent the penetration of the divine spiritual world – but which no longer prevents this penetration when we bring it up into our consciousness. That is why we not only recognize and experience something through the study of spiritual science, but we are transformed in the real sense of the word, because that which otherwise cannot enter our soul then flows into it and we feel, so to speak, an inner strengthening, an inner permeation of the soul as the result of our study of spiritual science.

Strengthened by what? We cannot feel it in every moment. But we can perceive it in such a way that when we encounter a happiness that could otherwise numb us, captivate us, we do experience this happiness, live through it fully, but then carry ourselves with the strengthened inner soul, with our inner being that has been permeated with strength, into this happiness; that we experience a pain just as sadly, but can immerse ourselves in this pain, carry our ego into it . and need not become estranged from the world by carrying our ego into this pain.

One must look a little deeper into spiritual science if one wants to recognize the full extent of what such a change in relation to happiness or suffering actually means for life. The state that occurs in the human soul as the — if the word is not misunderstood — awakening of the soul can be seen as a waking up, in that through this waking up one enters into a world of which one knew nothing, as long as one only had the views and judgments about the physical world. Now let us assume that a person would suddenly “wake up” like this while immersed in happiness and success. Let us imagine a person who has so far only been accustomed to looking at the physical world and letting it take effect on him, thus immersed in this physical world without the power that spiritual science can give him; and let us imagine that such a person would wake up in the midst of success, the spiritual world would be there. What would he see then?

Such a moment of awakening can be a deeply dark moment in an otherwise happy life. In such a moment, what has been characterized comes to mind: the alienation of the soul from itself. And what a person has enjoyed in happiness and success, what he has just gone through, he sees sinking, so to speak, and sinking so much that he cannot hold on to it because he does not have the strength to hold on to it. That we lose ourselves in life when we steer into happiness and success without spiritual knowledge can come to our soul in a very special way through such a waking up. For we recognize through spiritual science that the moments we achieve in happiness and success can only become truly strengthening forces for our eternal self, passing through the gate of death into eternity, if we do not lose ourselves but maintain ourselves in the experience of happiness. Spiritual science is not intended to sour or begrudge man happiness; spiritual science does not want to take away or weaken an ounce of happiness and joy. But what it does want to point out is that happiness that is experienced without the characterized connection with the world cannot connect with the deepest forces of our ego. For anyone who goes through the world without spiritual knowledge, unstrengthened in relation to his I, derives nothing from happiness but only a longing for new happiness, and from this in turn only a longing for further happiness. He does not derive from the one experience of happiness the strengthening forces for all subsequent life. But he who carries into happiness those powers that open up to him when he seeks spiritual knowledge draws from happiness sustaining, invigorating strength, which he carries into his ego because he has strengthened it through spiritual science; and he carries with him for all eternity what happiness and success can give him.

And it is similar with pain, suffering and failure. Again, we can start from the knowledge of the spirit, which gives us the answer to the question: what would present itself to a person if he were to suddenly awaken in the moment of greatest pain and suffering, if he were to see what is there as a spiritual world? He would then see the effect of shrinking back from the world, of convulsive contraction; he would see the darkness of what is around him. Man would perceive spiritual darkness if he were to wake up suddenly without spiritual knowledge. This darkness is transformed again for him who carries a soul strengthened by spiritual science into pain; waking up is different for him, it is light around such a soul. And thus living through the pain in spiritual awareness, the soul becomes victor over pain, over all failures, and the fruit of pain, of failure, emerges for the soul from such an experience. This fruit is an increase of knowledge, a permeation of knowledge with the consciousness of spiritual life.

Because this is so, I have often mentioned here in these lectures an experience that the spiritual researcher can undergo. After all, happiness and joy always — or at least mostly — come to our soul from outside. They are like something that comes from outside. When we become absorbed in our pain and suffering, we withdraw into ourselves. We would like to grasp happiness, we would like to flee pain; but we could only escape it by clenching ourselves up into ourselves. Now one could ask the one who has gathered some spiritual knowledge in his soul: What would you rather do without in your life: what you have experienced in terms of happiness and joy – or what you have experienced in terms of pain and suffering, even in terms of failures themselves? And the spirit-discerner will answer: I am grateful, very grateful to the spiritual worlds for sending me my happiness and joy; but if I have to choose what I would rather do without in my life – happiness or pain, I would rather do without happiness; because I can thank my luck for a lot, but the light I have gained about the world I owe to my lived-through failures; and what I have become with my knowledge, I have become through my experienced pains, and in the true sense of the word I must say: I have found myself through my pains, harmoniously ordered to the world through my pain experiences!

Man comes to understand pain and happiness so thoroughly when he has gained his relationship to spiritual knowledge. And when we ask ourselves: What, then, is it that, one might say, like an elixir of life, like a living force of life, flows into the soul in that man lets the spiritual-divine forces flow into the soul and fills it with spiritual knowledge? We can say that calmness, balance and security flow into the soul – such calmness, such balance, such security that happiness and suffering, success and failure now become something completely new for life.

What happens? — Well, because we have our connection with the outer world through happiness, happiness becomes a strengthening of our whole being; it flows into our feelings, our mind and our will impulses. We do not dull our happiness, we do not sour it; we do not disdain happiness. We accept it gratefully from the hands of the Powers of the Universe, but we pass through it in such a way that we pluck eternal fruits from the Tree of Happiness, fruits for our will, fruits for our mind. And anyone who is in a position to enjoy happiness in this way can experience that he truly experiences no less from this happiness than the person who experiences happiness in an unspiritual way. The experiences of happiness are more refined and intimate; more refined and intimate because they give us, as it were, windows into a spiritual world, because they become the means of mediating that strengthening of our soul that can come to us from the spiritual worlds.

And if we immerse ourselves in pain? Truly, spiritual science is not meant to be a sentimental consolation for the pains of life; spiritual science cannot make a person a shallow person. Whatever causes us pain must cause us pain, that is salutary; for pain hardens us for life, pain hardens our strength. Thus spiritual science does not seek to gloss over pain. On the contrary, one will penetrate even deeper into it, one will have to savor its essence to the full, especially when one has become spiritually enlightened. But just as we can gain strength of will and mind from happiness, so from pain there will come a strengthening of knowledge, the certainty of knowledge, and the strengthening and certainty of another part of the mind, more than can be gained from happiness. Just as the man who dies a martyr's death to the sorrows of life shows us, in a wonderfully moving way, the victory of the light over the darkness of life, so man, by bringing his spirit-conscious self into pain, perceives how the spiritually aware self rises above the pain, but, in rising above it, becomes ever more radiant and radiant and is filled with that light that is a beacon in the storm of life and in the struggle for existence.

Not only does spiritual science give us knowledge. What it gives us is initially only a cause. But the effect is an ego strengthened by life balance and calm, the acquisition of a resting pole in the flight of appearances. But the most important thing is the life energy that spiritual science gives us, and the consciousness through which we say to ourselves: Through your efforts in spiritual science, you not only attain that which ultimately presents itself to you as knowledge; you have striven for knowledge, but you have only brought it out of the depths of your soul because you wanted to empty your soul. Now you see that it has become full, that the divine spiritual life flows into the depths of your being by grace, making you secure and harmonious in life. This effect of spiritual science is characterized by a deep religious sentiment, a feeling for the divine that flows through the soul in this soul. And we are filled with a mood of thanksgiving, of a lasting mood of prayerfulness towards that which wells up through the world when we have freed the soul for that which can flow into it, when we recognize how the divine, when we have prepared the place for it, truly becomes one with our soul — entirely in accordance with the demands of a Meister Eckhart, a Johannes Tauler, Jacob Böhme, Angelus Silesius. And by placing ourselves in an expectant mood, as it were in the emptiness of our soul, we prepare the possibility that in the intuitions of life, in the inspirations of life, that which warms and pulses through our minds will warm and pulsate through us, which makes us do the right thing. We recognize ourselves as instruments of the spirits of the world, who want to enter into a relationship with us. But this gives life richness and security that cannot be lost.

What is it then that draws into our empty soul? What is it that connects the soul in its essence with what is its very essence? The Divine-Spiritual draws into it. Only then can the soul become aware of the Divine-Spiritual. For it remains unconscious in the depths of sleep, when I and the astral body have been exhaled, and it also remains unconscious in waking life, because it is then drowned out and illuminated by the external impressions of physical existence. But when we are imbued with spiritual knowledge, we become vividly aware of the eternal life in our soul, and then we find the way to grow together in the right way with that which carries us through life through the life stream.

But what carries us through the stream of life in our souls? One word indicates it to us, a word that is full of meaning: human destiny. How do we grasp destiny as long as we cling only to the externals of material existence, as long as we only want to combine these externals with the combining mind bound to the brain? How do we grasp destiny? We regard it as something that befalls us, that comes to us; we speak of the “fortuities” of life. In one of the last lectures it was already mentioned here how, without touching on spiritual science, these fortuities of life make a very different impression. If we examine ourselves at any moment in life, what we actually are, what we have become, and then look back in our lives to a certain point in time after our birth, we find that we have become what we are because certain coincidences of fate have befallen our ego. Perhaps we experienced real failures once during our youth: when we had to solve an ordinary school task, we could not solve it, or we solved it wrongly; but because we solved it wrongly, it had this or that consequence for us. But these consequences have become deeply ingrained in our soul; they still sit inside our soul in old age. But the fact that we can make a quick decision in a particular case in life is the consequence of what earlier brought us failure. In this way we have been able to strengthen our powers. What we are now, we owe to what fate has brought us.

If we pursue this realization, we can find the identification of life, of our self, with fate without touching on spiritual knowledge. We are our destiny; for our destiny has made us what we are. If we expand this realization to the spiritual-scientific realization that we carry our ego into the coincidences of fate in happiness and suffering, then we enter into the coincidences of fate. And whereas in happiness and suffering we find: we must, as it were, isolate ourselves from happiness and suffering, we must not be submerged by them, now, when we contemplate our fate, everything that befalls us in the course of our destiny, we find just the opposite: it has had to approach us and through ourselves! For everything that fate has done is intimately connected with our I. Gradually, our consciousness unites with fate: we grow together with fate, we carry our ego into the course of our destiny. We come loose from ourselves. We enter into our destiny, we go out into the course of the world. We become one with the course of the world, enter into the stream of life itself; we selflessly merge with what we otherwise only observe with sympathy and antipathy. While we have otherwise regarded a stroke of luck with sympathy and an accident with antipathy, from now on we will know towards fate: You are in there yourself, and if you were not in there, you would not have become what you are now!

What I have just explained is easier said than done in life. But when a person brings their I into the course of fate, then the question of fate becomes something quite different from what it usually is in ordinary life. Then it becomes something alive in life, then it kindles forces in us. Just as knowledge empties our soul and divine spiritual forces can flow into us, so that we can feel empowered, so now — while the ego was otherwise empty for the events of fate — by we carry our ego out into destiny, into this ego flows that which passes through death and birth, which leads us back to earlier earthly lives and shows us how this present earthly life is the starting point for newer earthly lives. There is no other way by which man can become one with his eternal nature and being, which passes through births and deaths, than to become one with the current of fate, to become one through the realization that we have often prepared our fate in the past, and that we have prepared our fate for this existence in our previous lives. We become one with that which connects us inwardly with the soul and the spirit. While otherwise we are a person who, as it were, swims in a boat on an endless sea and knows nothing but what is going on in this boat or in its immediate vicinity, through spiritual knowledge the person experiences that in this sea there is not only one boat; but he sees many boats going in one direction, many boats going in the other direction, and he then knows that his life in this one boat – between birth and death – lasts for a certain period of time, but that he is then, released from the forces that bind him to life in this boat, going through a life in the spiritual world, but after some time he is in another boat again – as he knows that he was in another boat before. Just as one would be insecure if one felt tied only to the one boat, but becomes secure when one knows that one can flee from one boat to the other at a certain time, so life in the eternal stream of existence becomes secure when we place ourselves in the midst of fate in such a way that we identify ourselves with fate in our own selves. What we experience in life, what comes to us as our karma, as our destiny, becomes what we have become in life. We learn to recognize the question of fate as the question of our soul's perfection. We then say to ourselves: If you experience suffering, pain, failure, then these sufferings, pains, failures penetrate your soul, make it stronger in that part where the conscious forces are, and you go with the strengthened soul through the gate of death and enter another life with the strengthened forces. If the question of fate is otherwise one that spreads darkness over life for us, it becomes a question of perfection for our soul as soon as we permeate it with spiritual knowledge; and inner peace pours over life when we are thus able to approach the question of fate. One can say: Whatever can confront man in life, whatever life necessarily demands of man, all this appears in a new light, and man confronts all this with a new strength when he enables the entry of the divine spiritual powers into his soul by filling the conscious part of his soul with spiritual knowledge. Therefore, spiritual knowledge is not mere theoretical knowledge, not something we absorb only in concepts and ideas; but by absorbing them in concepts and ideas, we make our soul into something else. We do not “prove” the immortality of the soul through spiritual science, but by devoting ourselves to spiritual science, we prepare the soul in such a way that it experiences itself in its living nature and thus experiences its immortality. Spiritual science gives the human soul a new life, a resurrected life.

In a few brief strokes, I tried to show that spiritual science can become a real elixir of life for the soul. And anyone who follows the course of German intellectual life can recognize from the inner nature and essence of this intellectual life itself that this intellectual life is a preparation for the recognition of a real, living spiritual science. What was presented yesterday as the Germanic soulfulness, as the German spiritual life, is, so to speak, a tournament of spiritual forces, in order to arrive at that which can still be achieved — which can be achieved in particular by the whole national soul having strengthened itself by first striving to gain such knowledge, conceptions and ideas, as was spoken of yesterday. All this was a strengthening for a new life. But in life everything is in a living inner connection. Therefore, it may be regarded as justified to believe that what has emerged in German intellectual life as a preparatory, life-strengthening spiritual knowledge, what has been shown in the forces that have been developed by the soul, that it not only lives in German philosophy and literature, but that it lives in the innermost roots of the German national strength. That is the peculiar thing about the strength of the German people: that, wherever we follow German art, German literature, German philosophy, it never appears to us as if it were only a superficial phenomenon, but as if it were constantly emerging from the depths of life. We can look at the finest achievements of German intellectual life, as it appears to us, for example, in the refined way in which Novalis presents it, and we will always find: There is a stream flowing from this refined life down to the roots of the nation. Hegelian philosophy is certainly for most people a mental exercise that they flee because it is difficult to find their way into the crystal-clear, crystal-cold trains of thought; but as crystal-clear and crystal-cold as these trains of thought But however crystal clear and cold these trains of thought may be, there is a path leading from what appears to be so abstract down to the roots of the folklore from which those forces flow that, in the East and West, constitute our hope for a complete rescue of the German existence against the attacking enemies. In a living organism – and such a living organism is what we call the German spirit – everything belongs together. And when it is said that other nations are now united, it must always be emphasized, as has been emphasized here many times before: What often appears to us to be the same in different areas of existence is not always the same. In that in which we hope, in the German essence, what now unites and strengthens the German essence and calls for selfless action, there lives – even if still unconsciously – that power that is to bubble forth in the spirit-inspired recognition that awakens and furthers life; and because this power lives in it, unconsciously, it now breathes the magic breath of unity into the deed of the German people. Therefore, we may hope that this unity will indeed bring about in action what the German spirit wills in its germinal power. And it is nothing else that the German spirit wills but to recognize in unity the physical and spiritual world, to recognize in unity and to order in unity all life from the knowledge of the spirit, of the spiritual world as well as of the physical world.

To recognize unity – oh, it means a great deal! A great deal in the outer spheres of life as well. We live in difficult and serious times. There must come a time when we live under different conditions, when people live peacefully again, but devoted to the struggle for spiritual possessions, devoted to that which must ultimately fill the greater part of life. And there must be strength there, as strong as the present strength is, if the cultural sun is to warm properly, which must develop from that twilight that we are now living through. What kind of people can there be when humanity becomes a little imbued with spiritual knowledge, when it combines the spiritual with the physical a little?

We look at what is now so painfully approaching our souls, we look at so many who have gone through pain and suffering and death, whose souls we already know in those worlds to which we look up through spiritual knowledge. But we are learning to see into these spiritual worlds according to the demands of our time, according to the demands of the human soul in our time. This has already been hinted at in what is being considered here. When we turn our gaze to all those who, in the prime of their lives and in loyal love for their nationality, have passed through the portal of death, we see a sum of unconsumed forces, those unconsumed forces of mind and will that the persons concerned could still have applied in life had they not passed through the portal of death prematurely due to the events of our time of duty. Let us look at this sum total of unspent energy in the physical world, which could still have developed into the strengths of those who were carried away by the difficult events of the time. Is what these people could still have experienced if they had not gone through the gate of death prematurely is that no longer there? Is it lost?

If we were to look up into the spiritual worlds only with the means of our physical observation, we would not find an answer to this question. But when we know how to combine the worldviews of the spiritual and physical worlds into a single life force, then we look into the spiritual world, and then we know that these forces are not lost, that they flow through existence, and that for future times, for whole generations, for whole epochs, those who have now passed through the gate of death prematurely have given their powers. And united with these forces we will see the work on earth in the future, the spiritual world will unite with the physical world, we will gain a new understanding of how the forces that now seem to be lost flow into our souls, which have become empty through spiritual knowledge. The people of the future, strengthened by spiritual knowledge, will have the opportunity through this spiritual knowledge not to let the seemingly now lost forces be lost. But the lost forces will continue to have an effect in the course of time; and in what people will do in the days to come, the forces that have passed through the gate of death on the battlefields of the present time will live on, but consciously, not unconsciously as in earlier times. In earlier times, nations were unconscious of the existence of their dead, as long as the nations still had remnants of ancient clairvoyance. It can touch us strangely when we hear how in the year 378 the Goths went out to fight against the Romans: while at the beginning of the battle an inarticulate cry arose on the Roman side, the Goths struck up battle songs in which they sang for the glory and honor of their invisible dead. They consciously felt themselves led by their dead; they had an understanding of the eternal continuation of the invisible. Mankind will regain this understanding – but now in a conscious way; and through this understanding, security and fertility will also develop, spread throughout this great life. So when the souls of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, all those left behind in the physical world, look up at those who have been snatched from them in their grief, they will look up at them as at the truly living , as those who, out of the confines of their physical existence, have poured out their strength into the general existence of humanity; and the dead will be not lost, because they will be felt to be alive and surviving in the general existence of humanity. Such will be the effect of spiritual science, even in the simplest human soul. For spiritual science is an elixir of life; spiritual science gives direction to life and harmonizes the soul; spiritual science is that which is able to sustain us, to carry us in joy and suffering, in success and failure, in luck and misfortune, because it is able to give us from the divine that for which we have emptied our souls. Souls that have emptied themselves through spiritual knowledge will also be empty for the inflow of what can stream into these human souls and human hearts from the spirits that have passed through the gate of death, the fallen. Only souls that have not emptied themselves in this way will have to lose themselves in the pain and suffering that the great events of the present must cause to so many individuals. But people who go through this strengthened by spiritual knowledge will find that their emptied soul will be given back by the gods what the earth has taken from them physically. They will understand the language of the spirit, which speaks to them vividly after death, when they have had to stop listening with the physical ear to the dear language of their loved one.

Thus strengthening heart and mind, life and being, spiritual science should not only go through human reason and human intellect, but it should go through human hearts, should go through everything that fills the human soul. And spiritual science in particular can do this for those who want to know themselves as the most enlightened of all. It can give us the certainty that we can have the hope of passing through everything that is now seriously surrounding us in a light-filled way. And everything that arises for us in serious reflection can be focused on the seriousness and great dignity of our time. We may also summarize today's reflection, as it were, in a feeling through which we would like to live with all those who are fighting today and who may have already passed through the gate of death – we may summarize it in a language that may be conscious to one and unconscious to the other – but may be conscious to all the dead. We can look hopefully to those times that must come to humanity for its progress, for its salvation – must come as fruits of this our present time. We can look forward to what will bring peaceful days to mankind again, peaceful days in which there will be a surge through the world, through human souls and human hearts, of all that can flow from the totality of the divine-spiritual power of blessing for human salvation, human progress and human strengthening. Men will act, inspired and permeated by these divine spiritual powers that surge and surge through the world. But we can look forward to this future with the uplifting feeling that spiritual science Science gives us the answer to the anxious question of the time: What will then live in all those who will work in a peaceful time in which the arts and knowledge and the power of peace will be cultivated? And we will be able to know that in all that people will do then, that which now so numerous in human strength, which still looked into the future as a youth, will pass through the gates of death in the fields of the east and the west!

Is this not also a lesson for bearing life's joys and sorrows, when we look at the death and suffering in our difficult times and may know that out of this death and suffering, forces, invisible forces, will arise that will prevail in the most peaceful times of the future for the good and progress of humanity? For forces will arise with which those who will then have to work on earth will connect, who will have to combine the visible and the invisible becoming in order to work among brothers not only in the visible but also in the supersensible world, and who in turn — spiritually — will have won the hearts that they have lost in our serious time.

That seems to me to be an elixir of life too! Invigorating and strengthening, it can flow in our power and in our veins, especially in our time, when we truly need such an elixir of life – very much so! And if we grasp the actual inner meaning of spiritual science, we know that this elixir of life must come. For whatever the outer life brings: this elixir of life is not connected with what the outer life brings, but with what we can become in our innermost being through our own strength. And what we have acquired through the deepest, innermost effort of our actual inner nature will not be lost to us as human beings, not in time, not in eternity. No suffering, no pain, and not even death can take that away from us.

This evening, too, I would like to take a look at the more general conditions of the German essence within this lecture cycle, because it seems to me that in our great, but also painful and sorrowful time, spiritual-scientific considerations have a kind of ethical obligation in a certain respect, and because, in addition, the truly human feeling is to illuminate the horizon of the fateful events within which we stand from a spiritual-scientific point of view. This evening, however, it will be more a matter of allowing the “light of feeling” given by spiritual science to fall, as it were, on certain processes in German intellectual life and on the understanding that is brought to bear on this intellectual life. Tomorrow I will again take the liberty of dealing with a more specific spiritual-scientific topic.

If we look at those phenomena in German intellectual life that can particularly express the whole character of this intellectual life to us, one of them is the one that has already been these lectures: Herman Grimm, the great German art historian, who viewed art from the deepest sources of what German intellectual life, with all its impulses, has poured into his soul. In one of the lectures this winter, I took the liberty of calling Herman Grimm, so to speak, “Goethe's governor in the second half of the nineteenth century.” In the way he lived with everything he produced, in what – concentrated in Goethe – was contained as German essence, as essence in the German folk soul, and what then poured into the stream of German intellectual life – in this way Herman Grimm is, in a certain respect, a representative personality of German intellectual life from the second half of the nineteenth century.

Not quite two years before Herman Grimm's death, essays from the last period of his life appeared, which he gave the collective title “Fragments”. In the preface to these fragments, he says something extraordinarily characteristic. He points out that these individual, sometimes very short essays on this or that question of German or foreign culture arise from a whole of his intellectual world view. And Herman Grimm mentions that he had intended to combine the lectures he had given on this subject over fifty years at the University of Berlin into a single book, which would present the growth and development of the German spirit. But at the same time, he points out how, each time he moved on to the next lecture, he found himself compelled to rework what he had already written. And now he says that this would have to be done for the last time if these lectures were to be combined into a book on German intellectual life as a whole; he does not know whether he will live to do so, because this reworking requires a lot of effort and time. But – and this is the characteristic thing – this whole of German intellectual life stands before his soul, and he wants the individual essays that he publishes to be understood as if they were individual parts, taken from the whole, that stands before his soul.

Herman Grimm did not live to write the book he had in mind. He died in 1901, not quite two years after publishing these “Fragments”. He had actually planned to write an entire spiritual history of the development of the European peoples during his youth. And if we now consider how he in turn – as he often emphasized – wanted the individual main parts that he had given to be understood from this overall presentation of European intellectual life – his great work on Homer, his biographies or monographs on Michelangelo and Raphael and finally his work on Goethe – if we take this into account, we are confronted with something extraordinarily characteristic. We are actually dealing with something that lived in Herman. . Grimm's soul, which was never really portrayed by him in the form in which it lived in his soul, but from which, one might say, every single line he wrote and every single word he spoke in his life emerged. And if we now consider the whole way in which Herman Grimm speaks about art and German cultural life, something else in addition to what has just been said emerges. Herman Grimm always endeavors to advocate with all his soul, with his entire undivided personality; and anyone who has the urge to have all things clearly “proven,” who loves a line of argument that advances from judgment to judgment in a demonstrative manner, will not find what he is looking for in Herman Grimm's presentation. One would like to say: everything he has written springs directly from his entire soul, and one has nothing as proof of the truth but the feeling that overcomes one: the man, this personality, has experienced a great deal in the broadest sense in the things he presents; and he presents his experience. Thus the individual thing he presents springs from a whole that is not really there at all.

What is it, then, that lives in Herman Grimm? What is it that teaches us the conviction that every single thing arises out of a whole? What do we sense, as it were, as a shadow of the spirit behind all the details that Herman Grimm presents, that he has given to the world?

I would like to describe what one senses and what permeates one as one turns the pages of his books: it is the sustaining power of the German spirit, that German spirit which, for those who truly understand it fully, is not just some abstraction that one categorizes with concepts , with ideas, that one expresses in images, but which is really felt like a living being through all of German history; like a being that one feels as if one were holding a dialogue in one's soul with this being and allowing oneself to be inspired by it for everything one has to say. So that basically, once you have such an experience, you need nothing more than the certainty that this spirit is behind it as an inspirer – and you have given something that has good “proven” reason. This being, which one can say is the living German spirit, is slowly and gradually approaching German development; but it is entering the consciousness of the best minds in the most definite way.

We can find this German spirit, this fundamental German spirit, particularly characteristic in one remarkable place. It is there where one of the best, one of the most brilliant Germans, Johann Gottfried Herder, has tried to depict the overall life of humanity in its development. Herder, this great predecessor of Goethe, basically set out early on to let his gaze wander over all the development of the peoples in order to get an overall picture of the forces, of the entities that live in this development of the peoples. And what he was then able to accomplish as a presentation of his ideas about this process of development, he summarized in his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”. In these “Ideas” we encounter a tableau, a journey through the development of humanity in such a way that we sense that in all the individual phenomena and events, beings and forces live that all have a fully vital effect on Herder's soul. Already in his early youth, Herder turned against Voltaire's historical approach. He fully recognized that Voltaire was one of the most ingenious men; but what he found in his view of history was that this whole view ultimately culminated in a sum of ideas that prevail throughout history, as it were. In contrast to this, Herder objected that ideas only ever give rise to ideas. Herder did not want people to speak only of the “ideas” that are effective in history. He wanted to speak of something less abstract, something more alive and more concrete than the ideas of history. He wanted to speak of how invisible living beings are behind all historical events. He once said, for example: What the outer historical events are is actually only of value to the observer if one takes into account the spirits and spiritual forces at work behind them, from which what can be perceived through the senses first clearly emerges; for what takes place externally is only like a cloud that arises and passes away, but behind which lies the whole activity of the spirit that runs through human history, which one has to observe.

Slowly and gradually, German development rose to such a grandiose historical perspective. It can be said that such a historical perspective was already present in ancient Greece. We find there already echoes of it, longings to give such an overall picture of human development. But such efforts then receded again; and only later, as in Italy in the fifteenth century, do we find new attempts in this direction, as well as in the rest of Western Europe, in France and England. People began to seek connections in the historical development of humanity. But these connections were conceived in a certain materialistic sense. What happens in the course of history is made dependent on climate, geographical conditions and all sorts of other factors. It was only when the German mind took hold of this comprehensive view of history that it was truly brought to life, one might say. And in Herder's soul arose an image that synthesizes natural events and the crowning human events that take place upon them. Herder first turned his attention to how the beings of nature develop and how the spirit, which works in nature at a subordinate level, comes to be more characteristically expressed in man. This spirit, which Herder consciously lets emerge from the essence of the All-Divinity, works in nature, but it also interweaves the human soul. And what man accomplishes in history is not for him merely a sum of successive events, but it has significance in that man on earth himself continues the coherent plan of the divine spiritual entities through what he does.

There is greatness in Herder's calling man an “assistant of the deity” in his earthly work. In this there is again something of the ideas and intuitions and feelings of German mysticism, which seeks God directly in the human soul itself. Herder seeks God in history, as He manifests Himself in the deeds that take place in historical development. God Himself does what historical development is; and man, insofar as he is imbued with God, is God's assistant. For Herder, the whole of nature is built upon the next, then the human kingdom and on that the kingdom of higher spirits; and he makes the significant statement: Man is a middle creature between animal and angel. Herder thus places man in the overall development in such a way that man appears as a direct expression, as a revelation of divine spirituality. And when one examines how Herder, who was not a systematizing philosopher and was far from constructing any abstract ideas, came to sketch out an overall picture of development with inexpressible diligence and truly ingenious foresight, through which the deeds of man can be summarized with the deeds in nature, then one must say: It is a divine power that inspires Herder himself. He is aware that the divine powers that rule in history live in himself. It is the sustaining power of the German spirit in Herder that creates an overall picture of human development and also of natural development.

“Evolution” has become the magic word that seems so significant for the world view of our time. In the days when Herder lived and when Goethe spent his youth, he rose through Herder and others to the world view supported by the German spirit. The idea of evolution entered into German intellectual life. This idea of development was more profound and more profound than it is taken from the materialistic world view. For in what is regarded as “developing”, the German mind saw the mind at work; and in every single natural product, insofar as development is considered, he saw mind as the architect, the carrier, the accomplisher of development. Thus he was able to introduce the idea of the spirit as developing, shown in the becoming of man, fruitfully into the history of ideas, into the whole history of development.

And standing beside Herder as one of the great signposts in the spiritual life is Winckelmann, who first brought art history into that current which can be called: the world view based on the history of development and carried by the German spirit. Goethe says of Winckelmann, the first German art critic: “Winckelmann, a second Columbus, discovered the evolution and destiny of art as bound to the general laws of evolution, keeping pace with the rise and fall of civilization and the destinies of the people.

Thus we see how, through these minds – it has already happened through Lessing – mind is seen in all becoming as the actual bearer, as the actual substance of development. And this world view leads directly to a sense of being carried by the mind, to being carried by the mind. And this permeates the soul with confidence and inner strength. One is tempted to say that all this already contained an inkling that this German spirit, with all its idealism, contains the seeds of a truly scientific spiritual world view that humanity must move towards. For when we consider that spiritual science strives for knowledge of the world, which is attained through the soul developing its inner powers slumbering in its depths, so that it comes to see with the organs of the spirit or — to use Goethe's words — with the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, to see what, as the invisible, works and lives behind the visible. If one considers this and then recalls a certain saying of Herder's, then a feeling of confidence comes over the soul: humanity will one day partake of spiritual world-view. For how beautifully Herder's saying resounds: “The human race will not pass away until the genius of enlightenment has passed through the earth.” Herder's gaze was always directed towards the intimate weaving and essence of the spiritual that prevails in all sensuality. Herder regards every human being – not just the great historical figures – as thoughts that are not merely thoughts grasped by our brain, but as something living, existing and weaving. And when they are suited to be seized by the spirit of the age and incorporated into the stream of events, then Herder speaks of those people who, through such thoughts, have a formative effect on an entire era: often these people – the geniuses – live and work in the greatest silence; but one of their thoughts, grasped by the spirit of the times, brings a whole chaos of things into good form and order.

When we consider these things, we can never say that they arose out of mere abstract philosophical reflection; for they do not stand in isolation as the impressions of a personality, but stand as if organically with the continuous stream of German intellectual life, and always in such a way that one must regard the personalities who express them, who thereby reveal their convictions, as inspired by the sustaining power of the German spirit. And this sustaining power of the German spirit is deeply felt even in the most recent times by those who have an inkling of it. What is felt as this sustaining power of the German spirit is not only taken up in an abstract philosophy; it is taken up in the deepest feeling of souls.

Thus, for example, when the late Paz! de Lagarde (who died in 1891) – another of the most German minds – once said the following, which is quite characteristic of his whole attitude to this fundamental force of the German spirit: “On one occasion I was requested by a relative of a friend whom I was accompanying to the grave to deliver the funeral oration, and to do so first at the cemetery.” Apparently, Lagarde then spoke of what connects the human soul with the eternal, with the spiritual, what passes through the gate of death as a living being, for now he continues: “Now I actually felt ashamed. What was I then actually? What am I then actually, that I dare to speak of that which is connected with the eternal-spiritual? I was ashamed, but I found that what I had said found fertile soil in the minds that had escorted the dead to the grave.” And now Lagarde says, drawing the conclusion, as it were: “That is how it is for the German when he speaks of love of country: he feels that this speaking of love of country is basically such an intimate, sacred thing that he feels ashamed to speak of it; but he also feels: if he speaks of it, it can fall on receptive minds.”

One need only recall this saying, which truly captures the essence of the German character in the most eminent sense, and one can see from it how the German, when he feels truly at home within the German national character, must to the spirit of his nation, in which he perceives the expression of the divine spirituality of the world in general, and how he feels it to be a living being, which he approaches — even with knowledge — only in reverence. Lagarde is one who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, out of deep learning but also out of deep, soulful feeling, spoke about Germanness in many ways, about the sources of Germanness, about the prospects of Germanness. He is one of those who never tire of pointing out again and again that the essence of Germanness resides in the spiritual, in that which, as the spirit common to all, permeates the entire German evolution. He who wishes to grasp the essence of Germanness at its root is not satisfied with what a materialistic view designates as “blood” or “race” in the nature of a people. Lagarde was not satisfied with this; for he felt that the essence of Germanness can only be expressed through spiritual ideas, through spiritual perceptions. Thus Lagarde says: “Germanness lies not in the blood but in the soul. Of our great men, Leibniz and Lessing are certainly Slavs, Handel, a son of a Halloren, is a Celt, Kant's father was a Scot: and yet, who would call these un-German?” — In which Lagarde, one of the most German of Germans, seeks the German essence, that is the supporting force of the German spirit, in which the one can immerse himself who understands German essence within himself and how to realize it. Time and again, the best Germans never tire of explaining how the essence of the German can only be expressed and revealed through the spiritual.

When one reflects in this way, the German spirit takes on an ever more concrete and real essence. One feels it flowing through the stream of German life, especially through the stream of German intellectual life; and one then understands how the German, in the course of his development, felt the need to enrich his own being in the present more and more with what the German spirit had already allowed to flow from its sources into the German nation in older times.

Thus we find, as the German Romantics, leaning on Goethe, as it were, renewing the old German essence, delving not only into the folk song but into the entire German spiritual being, in order to absorb it and revive it in their souls, so as to allow what is peculiar to Germanness as a whole to take effect in their own souls. And then we see again how the German development in the Brothers Grimm is inspired by what German essence produced in ancient times. We see how the Brothers Grimm descend to the people and have the old fairy tales told to them in order to collect them. And what lies in this collection of German fairy tales, which really convey such a hundredfold impression, taken directly from the people's minds? Nothing else lies in them but the fundamental power of the German spirit!

And how does this fundamental power of the German spirit continue to work?

We have been able to see it particularly in the achievements of the already mentioned Herman Grimm. Often, when one allows these fine, elegant, comprehensive artistic characteristics of Herman Grimm to take effect on the soul, when one especially visualizes some of the extremely intimate subtleties that lie in these writings, one must ask oneself: How did this personality manage to make the soul so elastic, so pliable that it could delve into the deepest secrets of artistic work and artistic creation? And I believe there can be no other answer than the one that follows from the clues as to how Herman Grimm, before he began to contemplate the art of humanity, expressed himself poetically and artistically. For this expression is particularly characteristic of the supporting force of the German spirit. I would like to point out only a few.

The first of the stories and poems collected in the volume Novellen is Herman Grimm's The Songstress. This is a story that, as is usually the case when presenting novellas, is used only to depict events that take place before the eyes of people, that can be grasped directly with the imagination that is tied to the body. Herman Grimm also masterfully presents what takes place in the external world: he presents a female personality that is deeply attracted to a male personality; but through her character and her whole being, this female personality rejects the male one. It would take too long to go into the details now. So it comes about that the male personality commits suicide. The female personality remains behind. And now, after the death of the man who loved her, she feels not only pain and suffering; no, something intervenes in her soul life that is directly supersensible. She spends a night at a friend's house, the friend at whose house the suicide of her lover had taken place. She feels disturbed. At first she does not know the reason for it. But then she says that she cannot sleep alone in the room; the friend should watch over her. And as he watches over her, it turns out that she has a vision, which the poet clearly shows that he wants to express more than a mere play of the imagination. At the door of the bedroom, the ghostly figure of the deceased enters. And if one investigates what Herman Grimm actually wants to express with this apparition, it is that he wants to say: with what is happening here before the eyes of man on earth, the event is not yet exhausted; but spiritual factors, spiritual entities intervene in physical events; and when death has occurred, what has passed through the gate of death is present there in the spiritual world and is effective for those who are receptive to it.

Herman Grimm is thus a novelist who allows the spiritual world to shine through his artistic portrayal. What actually appears to the bereaved lover has often been described in these lectures. It is what the etheric body of the deceased in question can be called, which can show itself in the form of the deceased to those who are receptive to it. But not all people are receptive to this.

Herman Grimm also wrote a novel, “Unüberwindliche Mächte” (Insurmountable Forces), which is of great importance as a cultural-historical novel and also otherwise in the spiritual history of humanity, but unfortunately it has been neglected. Here too, the lover dies. And when she seeks healing in a place in the south, she wastes away more and more in the memory of her lover and finally dies. Herman Grimm describes her death in a very unique way in the final chapter of 'Unüberwindliche Mächte'. He describes how a spiritual figure rises out of her body and rushes towards her lover. Again, Herman Grimm does not conclude the account with the events visible on earth, but brings together what is visible to the senses, what is visible to the mind, with the supersensible, which continues beyond death.

I would not cite such examples if they did not correspond entirely to what spiritual science has to say about these things. Of course one cannot cite artists as proof of spiritual science. But if one cites such examples as proof of what spiritual science has to offer humanity, it can be done to the extent that the nascent spiritual science lies in a spirit like Herman Grimm, who was artistically active in the second half of the nineteenth century. He is not yet able to express spiritual science as such, but artistically he presents things in such a way that one perceives: spiritual science wants to make its entry into the spiritual culture of humanity out of the supporting power of the German spirit.

Herman Grimm — this emerges from his entire literary work — never wanted to admit to himself what actually formed the basis for his giving such descriptions. He was somewhat shy about bringing these things, which he only wanted to approach in the most intimate, artistic and spiritual way, into ordinary concepts. But if he was not able to approach these things in the way that spiritual science can speak about them today, and yet these things are properly – one might say “expertly” – presented by him, then what lived in him? The inspiring force was the sustaining power of the German spirit! And so we find this sustaining power of the German spirit to be a very real entity, and we must turn our spiritual gaze towards it if we want to get to know the German character at all.

Now Goethe once spoke a very significant word, which should be taken into account when speaking of the relationship between the German spirit and the individual German, when speaking of how German essence lives directly in German lands – one might say – lives before the eyes of people when they have fixed their eyes on any personalities and any people within the German lands. In a confidential conversation in recent years, Goethe said to his secretary Eckermann: “My works cannot become popular; anyone who thinks and strives for that is mistaken. They are not written for the masses, but only for individual people who want and seek something similar and who are moving in similar directions.”

This is a significant statement. One would like to say: it is in the nature of Germanness — to use this word of Fichte's — to really feel the German spirit as a living thing and to still experience the totality of the German essence, the unity of the German spirit, as something special alongside what appears externally as German life. The totality of the German essence is no less real for that; it can at least be present for each individual. Hence the urge of the German to consider the individual phenomena of the world in connection with the whole development of the world and of humanity. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a poet living in the German-speaking districts of Austria went, one might say, around the whole world to understand the individual human being from the perspective of the overall spirit, despite the most diverse cultural influences. I refer to Robert Hamerling, who in his poem 'Aspasia' attempts to make the collective Greek spirit speak through an individual human being; who then attempts to portray the intensely personal German character in his 'King of Zion'; who further tries to express the actual spirit of the French revolutionary hearth in his drama “Danton and Robespierre” and finally wants to express the spirit of our time in his “Homunculus” in a grandiose, comprehensive way through poetry. Hamerling always feels the need to depict the individual in connection with what, as a spiritual weaving and becoming and as a sum of spiritual entities, animates and permeates the stream of human events. The view of the whole, of a living spiritual reality, interweaves the German intellectual work through the individual phenomena where it appears in its most intense manifestations.

Therefore, for someone who—one might say—does not look much further than a few meters beyond his own nose and considers something in a limited area of German life, it is extremely difficult to grasp the German character; for it can only be grasped by really considering the connection between the German soul and the spiritual entities that are weaving through the world and bringing themselves to revelation in the German spirit. And this is, in addition to much that has already been mentioned in these lectures, the reason why this German spirit, why this fundamental German spirit can be so misunderstood, why it is now so reviled and so insulted. One must ask oneself: How does this German spiritual life relate to the spiritual life of other nations?

I would like to discuss a characteristic example today, tying it in with a specific occasion when it became clear how difficult it is for a German who feels connected to the German spirit to make himself fully understood when the application of what he feels from the German spirit is to be applied to a single phenomenon. Recently, there has been much talk of the fact that the aging, somewhat decadent French intellectual life has undergone a kind of rejuvenation, that there are young French people who no longer go along with official Frenchness. And in many circles, which will hopefully have their eyes opened more by this war than they were previously open, people had begun to see something in this young Frenchness that would now understand the German mind much better than official Paris and official Frenchness. People had pointed to characteristic phenomena within young Frenchness. Indeed, there is much to be found there that one might say is quite significant. There are young French intellectuals who are not satisfied with official France itself – but that is the France that is currently at war with Germany.

What do such young Frenchmen say? – I would like to give just one brief example by quoting what Leon Bazalgette has said:

You can see how they swell with satisfaction when they utter the words: “French Renaissance” (three years of existence – they announce – the child is chubby-cheeked and already playing with little soldiers), “Awakening of national pride”,

These are the men who would divert the entire energy of a people to pour it into the enthusiasm of that still unknown virtue: hatred. In an age when the whole world trembles with activity, ambitious endeavors, dreams and new desires that cross borders, their only thought and aspiration, of which they are proud, is to settle an old neighborhood dispute with a fist fight. Oh, poor conceited people, who are incapable of conjuring up other forms of heroism than the “revenge”. Poor little fools of passion, who have no more appropriate desires to satisfy your hunger for action...

... In the name of what great idea – one of those ideas for which almost no one at all times has hesitated to give up his life – would we go to war with Germany? Is it about our freedom? Do we live under the yoke or are we threatened by it? Is it about countries that need to be civilized by being annexed, or about peoples that need to be snatched from slavery? No, it is solely about trying to reconquer territories that belonged to us and that we lost in a war, territories of which a good half are no more French than German...; and even less is it about reconquering these territories as such as it is about satisfying an old desire for revenge. That is the “idea in the name of which this country, which likes to give itself the title of ‘fighting for noble causes,’ would start a war.

One was — one would like to say — somewhat touched by the charity in certain circles at the sound of some voices that came from the young Frenchmen, those young Frenchmen of whom it was said that they wanted to found a new France. And one of those who, especially before the war, was also counted among these young Frenchmen by certain Germans who would create a new France, is Romain Rolland, who wrote a great novel, “great” in the sense of spatial expansion, because it has very many volumes. It is interesting to note how certain circles here, albeit perhaps smaller ones, viewed this particular novel by Romain Rolland.

One critic could not refrain from saying that this novel “Jean Christophe” — the German name is Johann Christof Kraft — is the most significant act that has been done since 1871 to reconcile Germany and France. In fact, there were quite a number of those who said: This novel 'Jean Christophe' shows how one of those young Frenchmen looks at Germany with love, with intimate love, and how he is one of those who will make it impossible for these two nations to live in discord in the future.

Not only has this proved to be a deceptive hope, but something else has emerged: Romain Rolland is one of those who, with Maeterlinck, Verhaeren and so on, immediately expressed themselves in a rather unmodest way about Germany and the German character when the war began. But now it is interesting to see a little how this man, Romain Rolland, of whom so many of us said that he could understand the German character so well, that he really grasped from the innermost core of the German national soul and the German spirit what is the supporting force of the German spirit – how this man understood the German character. I am well aware that I am not offending any true aesthetic sensibilities by saying what I must say, uninfluenced by the many judgments that have been passed on this novel, especially in the direction I have indicated.

What particularly excited people is that the Frenchman portrays a German, Johann Christof Kraft, who has outgrown the German way of being — we will see in a moment how — and who, after spending his youth in Germany, goes to France to find his further development there. In this, one sees a very special bridging of the contrast between the German and French way of being. Now, in order to fully understand what is to be said, we must first visualize the basic structure of this Jean Christophe.

I know how highly the critics regard this novel, and they have expressed their opinions as follows: the character of Jean Christophe is one that has been taken directly from life; no trait—so they feel—could be different in this drawing. But I must say: this Jean Christophe seems to me to be a rather indigestible ragout, his character welded together rather disharmoniously from the traits of the young Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Karl Marx. The admirers of Jean Christophe may forgive me, but that is the impression. This Jean Christophe grows up – he is simply transported to the present – in much the same way as Beethoven grew up. One recognizes all the traits of the young Beethoven – but distorted into caricature – down to the last detail, but in such a way that the life of the young Beethoven appears everywhere as a grandiose work of art, while the life of Jean Christophe appears as a caricature. Now, it is not the poet's task, when he alludes to history, to be faithful to that history. I can make all the objections that critics make in this regard myself; nevertheless, I must say this: Jean Christophe grows up in an environment that, in the opinion of many people, provides a picture of the German character. His grandfather, grandmother, uncle and other friends are presented. He grows up in such a way that the German character, which he outgrows, is perceived as the greatest obstacle to his developing genius. German character, for example, is presented as follows. Like Beethoven, young Jean Christophe is a kind of early composer; he makes compositions at a young age. His father, who is a drunkard, feels compelled to show off this precocious talent to the world. This father is a secretary, servant to a small German prince. The particular Germanic nature of this father is presented in cultural-historical terms when, while planning a concert with the young, seven- to eight-year-old Jean Christophe, at which the prince is also to be present, he reflects on how he should dress the boy. In the end, he comes up with a very clever idea, which is described as “a culturally historical idea of genuine, true Germanism”: he has him put on long trousers and a tailcoat, along with a white bandage, so that the boy looks like an eight-year-old little man. I will not recount how this German undertaking later unfolds, because that would take us too far afield. I will also not describe in detail how he feels disgust for everything that the entire German environment offers, this environment that is marked with “love” — according to some people — and that is supposed to give a true picture of the German character. But when he can no longer stand this environment, he feels compelled — as it says in the book — to be inspired by the Latin spirit. So he goes to Paris. There he finds a friend who is a clear reflection of Romain Rolland himself in many ways. This is the person who expresses what the young, newly emerging French identity promises for the future; it is he who teaches this confused mind, this doll welded together from the young Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss and others, some order of mind. That is the “love” with which, according to certain people, a German character, Jean Christophe, is drawn. Jean Christophe then also goes through various experiences in Paris – we now notice some traits of Richard Wagner. And when he loses his friend, he turns further south, undergoes many experiences that border on the criminal, which even lead him to suicide, which then only fails. And now, after Jean Christophe, who has not been able to flourish in his German surroundings, has gone through Latin ways, he comes to himself, as it were, in a lonely old village; he conquers his own spirit. Eternity opens up for him.

Now let us just take in a few examples of the truly loving immersion in the German character, taken from the novel. For example, the father, who is portrayed as Beethoven's father, Melchior, is characterized. Of course I know that someone might say: You are taking words out of a novel that may not actually reflect the author's opinion. But the artistic composition of this novel is entirely in line with what Schiller demanded in the beautiful words he wrote about “Wilhelm Meister” and what really belongs in the artistic composition of a novel. When Goethe was criticized for the fact that certain traits of the personalities in his novel did not appear entirely morally, Schiller said: “If people can prove to you that the immorality comes from your own soul, then you have made an aesthetic mistake; but if it comes from the characters, then you are justified in every respect.” This golden rule of art is also something that was later incorporated into the sustaining power of the German spirit. The best works of art that we find in Germany were truly written under the influence of this Schiller-Goethe attitude. But in Romain Rolland's work, one constantly encounters, almost on every third page, statements that clearly show that it is the author speaking and not the characters. Therefore, it is only an excuse in this case if one objects that one should not find what the author says on occasion – one cannot even say that it is the characters who express it – but what the author says on occasion of the characterizations characteristic of the way in which the author has immersed himself in the German essence. For example, Father Melchior is described in the following way:

“He was a smooth-talker, well built, if a little plump, and the type of what is considered classical beauty in Germany: a broad, expressionless forehead, strong regular features and a curly beard: a Jupiter from the banks of the Rhine.”

Then, to characterize Melchior's friends, how they gathered at the father's house and played and sang there together:

“Occasionally they would sing together in a four-part male choir one of those German songs that, one like the other, move along with solemn simplicity and in flat harmonies, ponderously, as it were, on all fours.”

What a loving description of the German character! I will only quote it as a characterization. Then there is an Uncle Theodor in the novel who is actually the grandfather's stepson; he is described in the following way. I have nothing to say against the fact that individual persons are presented in this way, but I do object to the fact that this description is supposed to be a cultural image of the German character; for one notices that Romain Rolland continually mixes in what itches him so that he can say it about the German character. Of this Uncle Theodor it is said:

What a loving description! Then Jean Christophe falls in love with a young noblewoman, who is portrayed as the epitome of a young German girl. Her name is Minna:

“Minna, for all her sentimentality and romanticism, was calm and cool. Despite her aristocratic name and the pride that the little word ‘von’ instilled in her, she had the mind of a little German housewife –” and then it continues:

“Minna, this naively sensual German little girl, knew some strange games.”

And now, to explain in cultural-historical terms what is supposed to be particularly characteristic of the German character, it is stated that she also understood how to spread flour on the table and put certain objects in it, which one then had to search for with one's mouth.

Now it will be shown why the German character becomes so unpleasant for Christof; and again, one can only say that the author is itching to express how he himself feels about the Germans. He wants to describe the dishonesty and hypocrisy in German idealism, the idealism that Romain Rolland believes was invented because people find the truth uncomfortable and therefore look to the ideal. They lie about the truth and call it idealism. Thus the Germans have the characteristic of not looking at people calmly, but of “idealizing” them, of lying to themselves about their true characteristics. Christof had also appropriated this characteristic, but it had become increasingly distasteful to him:

“Once he had convinced himself that they” — certain people — “were excellent and that he should like them, he, as a true German, tried hard to believe that he really liked them. But he didn't succeed at all: he lacked that compliant Germanic idealism that doesn't want to see and doesn't see what it would be embarrassing to discover for fear of disturbing the comfortable calm of their judgment and the comfort of their lives.” ‘German idealism’ invented for the sole reason of not disturbing the comfort of life! Now, once again, a young girl is described, with whom Jean Christophe naturally falls in love, an archetype of ugliness, “little Rosa.” One can literally feel from the novel how her nose is hardly in the right place on her face, and much more; but from a loving cultural description of her, it is said:

"The Germans are very indulgent when it comes to physical imperfections: they manage not to see them; they can even come to embellish them with a benevolent imagination, finding unexpected relationships between the face they want to see and the most magnificent examples of human beauty. It would not have taken much persuasion to get old Euler – Rosa's grandfather – to declare that his granddaughter had the nose of Juno Ludovisi.

But after he had tested the mendacity of German idealism on his own person – we have experienced this again and again with well-known “geniuses”; but we did not believe that it should be characteristic of the German character, that it should be a special characteristic of the Germans, that they 'idealize' people, was not believed earlier – he now also comes to the conclusion that basically all German musicians have a catch, something is wrong somewhere; this is also connected with German idealism! And now he comes to the conclusion that he must be more significant than all the rest. As a characteristic example, a few words about Schumann:

Now that he is only a: returned Beethoven – who of course lives according to Wagner – and is supposed to become a genius the like of which has never been seen, he must also vent his anger on Wagner. And so all kinds of affectionate things are then put into his mouth – you really can't say, “Johann Christof,” which would be forgivable; instead, they are always expressed in such a way that they are separate from the person of Johann Christof and become something that the author himself gives the absolute coloration to. So, with reference to Lohengrin and Siegfried, it is said about Richard Wagner:

“Germany revelled in this art of childish maturity, this art of wild beasts and mystically quacking maidens.”

Well, I would like to say that the German character is characterized even more profoundly in such a loving way. Here is another example:

"Especially since the German victories, they did everything to make compromises, to bring about a disgusting mishmash of new power and old principles. They did not want to renounce the old idealism: that would have been an act of courage that they were not capable of; in order to make it subservient to German interests, they contented themselves with falsifying it. They followed the example of Hegel, the cheerfully duplicitous Swabian, who had waited for Leipzig and Waterloo to adapt the basic idea of his philosophy to the Prussian state,” – it may perhaps be said that Hegel's fundamental work, ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’ – but Romain Rolland probably knows very little about this when he says that Hegel's philosophy was created after Leipzig and Waterloo – was written during the cannonade of the Battle of Jena, that is, in 1806, and already contains Hegel's entire philosophy –

"And now, after the interests had changed, the principles were also changed. When they were defeated, they said that Germany's ideal was humanity. Now that they were beating the others, they said that Germany was the ideal of humanity. As long as the other countries were the more powerful, they said with Lessing that patriotism was a heroic weakness that could very well be dispensed with, and they called themselves citizens of the world. Now that victory had been achieved, there was no lack of contempt for “French” utopian dreams: world peace, brotherhood, peaceful progress, human rights, natural equality; it was said that the strongest nation had an absolute right over the others, while the others, as the weaker ones, had no rights over it. It seemed to be the living God and the incarnate spirit, whose progress was achieved by war, violence and oppression. Now that it was on their side, might was canonized. Might was now the epitome of all idealism and all reason. To give honor to the truth, it must be said that Germany for centuries...

perhaps the only thing people seek in Germany, to do honor to the truth! — “had suffered so much from having idealism without power that after so much trial it was well justified in now making the sad confession that it needed power above all, however it might be constituted. But how much hidden bitterness lay in such a confession of the people of a Herder and a Goethe! And what renunciation, what humiliation of the German ideal lay in this German victory! — And, alas, this renunciation found only too much compliance in the lamentable tendency of all the best Germans to subordinate themselves.

“What characterizes the German,” said Möser more than a century ago, “is obedience.”

And Frau von Stael:

"They obey well. They use philosophical reason to explain the most unphilosophical thing in the world: respect for power and the habituation to fear that transforms respect into admiration.” Christof found this feeling in Germany at all levels, from the greatest to the smallest – from Wilhelm Tell, the deliberate, small-minded bourgeois with the muscles of a porter, who, as the free Jew Börne says, in order to reconcile honor and fear, walks past the post of “dear Mr. Geßler” with his eyes downcast, so that he could appeal to the fact that he who did not see the hat was not disobeying – “up to the honorable seventy-year-old Professor Weiße, one of the most respected scholars in the city, who, when a lieutenant passed by, quickly left the footpath to him and went down to the road.”

And further it says:

“Moreover, Germany did indeed bear the heaviest burden of sins in Europe. When one has won the victory, one is responsible for it; one has become the debtor of the vanquished. One tacitly assumes the obligation to lead the way for them, to show them the way. The victorious Louis XIV brought the splendor of French reason to Europe. What light did the Germany of Sedan bring to the world?”

This is the loving description. But I must not forget anything, and in order not to be unjust, I must not conceal the fact that at one point something of the loving description of the German character from this novel shines through clearly and distinctly. It is where a German professor in a small town – his name is, of course, Schulz – is enthusiastic about the early works of Johann Christof, which are misunderstood by everyone else. Johann Christof is once able to visit the old professor. Two other acquaintances turn up, and then there is – in addition to Johann Christof demonstrating his works to the delight of the three people – a feast, a huge midday feast. Salome (!), the old professor's cook, who has been a widow for a long time, takes particular pleasure in how everyone can eat. And now a piece of German character is described in a truly “historically accurate and loving” way.

Salome, to see how they were enjoying a piece of German culture inside, looked through the crack in the door; and what she saw is described as:

It is not surprising that Johann Christof, after having gone through all that, wants to get out of this environment, because his genius cannot flourish in this environment. But he doesn't really know anything about France, this Johann Christof. He is completely uneducated, just a great musician. But since he knows nothing, his going to France is characterized in the following way:

“Instinctively (since he didn't know France!) his eyes looked towards the Latin south. And first of all towards France. Towards France, the eternal refuge from German confusion.”

In France, he meets his friend Olivier, who enlightens him about the young French. And perhaps it is what these young French say about the Germans that is so appealing on this side of the Rhine. Olivier tells Johann Christof about the young French's particular view of the nature of official Paris and about what he used to polemicize against like the others:

"The best among us are shut out, imprisoned on our own soil... Never will they know what we have suffered, we who cling to the genius of our race, who, like a sacred trust, guard the light we have received from it and desperately defend it against the hostile breath that would extinguish it; and yet we stand alone, feeling the polluted air of those metics all around us, who, like a swarm of mosquitoes, have attacked our thinking and whose disgusting larvae gnaw at our reason and defile our hearts; we are betrayed by those whose mission it would be to defend us, our superiors, our stupid or cowardly critics; they flatter the enemy to obtain forgiveness for being of our generation; we are abandoned by our people, who do not care about us, who do not even know us... What means do we have to make ourselves understood? We cannot reach them... And that is the hardest part. We know that there are thousands of us in France who think the same; we know that we speak on their behalf, and there is nothing we can do to be heard! The enemy occupies everything: newspapers, magazines, theaters... The press shuns every thought or only allows it if it is an instrument of pleasure or a party weapon. Intrigues and literary cliques only leave room for those who throw themselves away. Misery and overwork crush us to the ground. The politicians, who are only concerned with enriching themselves, are only interested in the corruptible proletariat. The indifferent and self-interested citizens watch our dying. Our people do not know us; even those who fight with us, who are shrouded in silence like us, know nothing of our existence, and we know nothing of theirs... Unhappy Paris! It is true that it has also done good by organizing all the forces of French thought into groups. But the evil it has created is at least equal to the good; and in an epoch like ours, good itself turns into evil. It is enough for a pseudo-elite to usurp Paris and ring the immense bell of the public to stifle the voice of the rest of France. Far more than that: France confuses itself; it remains silent in dismay and fearfully pushes its thoughts back into itself... I used to suffer greatly from all this. But now, Christof, I am calm. I have understood my strength, the strength of my people. We just have to wait until the flood has passed. It will not gnaw away at France's fine granite. I will let you feel it under the mud it carries with it. And already, here and there, tall peaks are emerging...

You don't really need more than that to characterize the French character that is now waging war against Germany. But now, I would like to say, there is something even more beautiful. So this novel was published. It has also been translated into German. I would now like to read you a few words from a German critic of this novel, addressed to Romain Rolland in the form of a letter printed in a Berlin newspaper.

"For me, the completion of your 'Jean Christo is even more of an ethical event than a literary one... Gobineau, Maeterlinck, Verhaeren and even Verlaine have had their greatest impact and achieved their greatest fame in Germany rather than in France, and it would be only fair if you too were appreciated earlier in our country than in your homeland, because your book belongs in Germany, in the land of music, more than any other book. In many ways it is a German book, a coming-of-age novel like Green Henry or Wilhelm Meisten. German music, which Germany has given the world, has also made you its advocate. It was music that led you to the German language and made you love Goethe, whom you have memorialized many times in your work with love and admiration.

I find myself at a loss as to how many times I should actually thank you. The human being, the connoisseur, the artist, the German, the world-joyful in me, each of them wants to come forward and say a word to you. But another time the artist will say a word about this novel, another time the connoisseur, and the human being will wait until he can shake your hand again. Today only the German should thank; because I have the feeling that French youth has become closer to us through this book, which has done more than all the diplomats, banquets and associations."

This is a prime example of how the sustaining power of the German spirit can be misunderstood, and how the painfully great events we are having to live through must have an eye-opening effect in many respects, truly: must have an eye-opening effect. And please forgive me if I bring up something at the very end that seems personal, but which only ties in with personal matters because I have only just learned about it today.

The spiritual science movement to which we belong was for many years connected with a theosophical movement based in England and India. This movement gradually became so absurd that anyone with a sense of truth could no longer have any connection with much of this Anglo-Indian theosophical movement. Therefore, many years before this war, we completely separated from it. At that time we were reviled enough, even by German followers of that movement; perhaps stronger words could be used. But one would have thought that the matter was now over and that there would be no reason to return to it now. But the president of this Anglo-Indian movement has found it necessary to refer to this matter again and to characterize us Germans. And she does so with the following words, which are not mentioned here out of personal considerations, but to show how, from a certain point of view, one is capable of characterizing in such a way what we as Germans had to do out of our sense of truth:

”... Now, looking back, in the light of German methods as revealed by the war, I realize that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I frustrated those efforts, the complaint that I had spoken about the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace, instead of giving the honor to the Kaiser – that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, skillfully used by German agents here – in India – to push through their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into a weapon against the British government and trained it to look to Germany as its spiritual leader – instead of standing, as it has always done, for the equal alliance of two free nations – then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India.

So that is what we are, seen through English-Theosophical eyes, in our spiritual scientific movement. But I may say – forgive this remark; you know that I do not like to make personal remarks – I can give the assurance that I had no intention of doing all this, and especially had no intention of leaving the German spiritual scientific movement. For such a thing did not live in me and, I believe, did not live in many others either, who know that they are connected with the German spirit and its sustaining power – something that lived in Johann Christoph Arnold, who was driven out of Germany by his instinct. For even if it is difficult to find the immediate manifestations of the sustaining power of the German spirit in the immediate phenomena that Rolland, the traveler, with his uncomprehending eye, has focused on, it must be said that the truthfulness of the German spirit will make it more and more possible, especially through the experiences of our fateful time, to build a bridge between what we experience in everyday life and what is the fundamental force of the German spirit. And when we are presented with all the figures in Johann Christian's environment, from which his “genius” drives him out, then perhaps, in conclusion, and without arrogance, something may be said.

I don't want to quote a foreigner now. But I may quote someone who has been dead for a long time, who died in 1230 and who, for his part, also expressed an opinion on whether a German genius must necessarily be driven out of all that lives in it by its environment, out of all the Minnas and Rosas with crooked noses, which German idealism knows as the nose of Juno Ludovisi. Perhaps not with a genius like Johann Christoph, but with one of whom we know from the context with the supporting power of the German spirit that he was a German genius. With such a German genius we may perhaps, without arrogance, think for a moment: with Walther von der Vogelweide. And we may admit to ourselves: it is not with Johann Christof, the hero that Romain Rolland has drawn, that we judge how German men and German women affect a genius, but rather with a spirit like Walther von der Vogelweide. With his words, then, let these reflections be closed, to be followed tomorrow by a special lecture on the humanities.

Walther von der Vogelweide is not driven out of Germany by his instinct; he must think differently about those among whom he lives. I don't know how they would be described if they were to fall under Romain Rolland's fingers; but Walther von der Vogelweide says of them – and this seems to me to indicate a better understanding than Romain Rolland reveals –:

German men are well-bred,
their women are as pure as angels.
He who scolds them is deceived,
I could never understand it otherwise.
Virtue and pure love,
Whoever seeks them
Shall come to our land, where there is much bliss.
Long may I live in it!

I would like to address the question of the mortal and the immortal in man in two reflections, of which this evening, the first, is to be devoted mainly to man's mortality, and next week's second lecture will deal with man's immortal essence. We live in a time in which materialism, even though it is now more or less in decline, has nevertheless taken hold in wide circles. And even if one wants to deceive oneself about this fact by the fact that the word materialism is often frowned upon, the way of thinking and attitude, the nuance of world view, is nevertheless in a state of continuous increase, which must be correctly designated by the word materialism.

Now materialism has a very, very simple answer to the question “What is mortal about the human being?” It has the answer: everything about the human being is mortal. One need only refer to the bible of the newer materialistic times, to David Friedrich Strauß' “Old and New Belief”, to substantiate this. It is true that David Friedrich Strauß's “The Old and the New Faith” is no longer read to the same extent as it was a few decades ago. But this is not so much because people have withdrawn from the innermost impulses that dominate David Friedrich Strauß's materialism, but rather because in our fast-moving times a book is hardly able to survive for a few decades.

We can and must ask ourselves the question in view of everything that has come to light and been discussed within today's materialistic world view: Can materialism provide any answers to man's legitimate spiritual questions, or can materialism provide proof that the questions that a spiritual scientific world view must raise are unjustified, that they, so to speak, refer to nothing? If one, esteemed attendees, is aware of how deeply rooted the materialistic world view is in what many people today consider to be the only truly scientific view, then one must raise these questions with particular intensity. For within today's science, or rather within the view that results from today's science for many, there are strong impulses that take a stand against the science of the spirit. In today's science there are many instruments of power that can be brought into play against many of the objections that one or the other side may have to the materialistic world view. Anyone who can really see what has emerged from the so-called scientific world view, which claims to be based solely on true and real facts, must say to themselves: Only then can a spiritual-scientific world can be developed that is able to meet the demands of modern natural science, if it is able to deal with this natural science in such a way that this natural science comes into its own.

It must be fully admitted that natural science can easily deal with the objections that are still being raised from many sides today; at least insofar as it can easily penetrate with its arguments against the immortality of the human soul in those who, from the outset, have an inclination to deny the free activity of the spirit, independently of the material.

It has often been emphasized that spiritual science seeks to engage with the spiritual cultural process of our time, and it seeks to do so on the basis of – it may well be said – a complete transformation, a complete renewal of people's habitual ways of thinking and imagining. Precisely for this reason, because spiritual science must appeal to something that is unknown in the broadest circles today, really unknown, even in those circles that usually oppose it, that is why it is so difficult to make this spiritual science of the time formation really somewhat understandable.

Spiritual science differs fundamentally from what is usually called a philosophical way of thinking today. Philosophical thinking, which seeks above all to arrive at its results through considerations of reason, through mere combinations of concepts, through conclusions and the like, — philosophical thinking, as it is often understood today, is not capable of grasping that in human nature which really passes through the gate of death, which is truly capable of living independently of corporeality, of physicality.

For spiritual science, however, this purely philosophical approach, based on concepts and ideas of the external world, is from the outset something — forgive the somewhat trivial comparison — it is this philosophy, based purely on rational arguments, as one often says, is something that can just as little arrive at real results about the spiritual life, just as little get the spirit into human knowledge, as man can nourish himself by eating himself. Just as the process of nutrition must take hold of something that is outside its structure if it is to serve the human or animal organism, so human cognition must take hold of something that lies outside the mere connection and concatenation of concepts and ideas if the true cognitive needs of the human being are to be satisfied. In the second half of the nineteenth century, we have an example of how materialism, in its strict logic, is able to proceed from conclusion to conclusion, but because it is unable to really engage with a spiritual reality, it nevertheless becomes entangled in contradictions, which are not noticed by this materialistic world. conclusion to conclusion, but because it is impossible for it to really engage with a spiritual reality, it nevertheless becomes entangled in contradictions, which are not noticed by this materialistic world view itself, but which are noticed by those who have trained themselves to a certain universality of thought. In his book 'Old and New Faith', David Friedrich Strauß also presents Goethe's idea of immortality among the various proofs of human immortality that he wants to refute. He takes up this idea and behaves very strangely in doing so. David Friedrich Strauß does admit that there is something heroic about Goethe's idea of immortality, but then he belittles this heroism – one would like to use the word that Nietzsche coined for David Friedrich Strauß – like a real philistine. Goethe made not one but many statements about human immortality. For Strauß, only the one that I will mention now comes into consideration.

The thought occurs to Goethe that when the human soul tries to grasp itself, it becomes aware within itself of having abilities and talents that it cannot fully develop and unfold in one human life; and now, from the depths of his being and at the same time from what I yesterday called “the sustaining power of the German spirit,” the word comes forth: If nature has given me such aptitudes that cannot be satisfied in this life, then it is obliged to assign me another life after death, where these various aptitudes can really come to fruition.

Now, first of all, Strauss makes a kind of joke, as it were, by saying: Perhaps nature is indeed obliged to do so; but who can tell us that nature will keep this obligation? But he objects to something else as well. He says: Does not the whole of natural science contradict the view that all the tendencies that appear within the series of nature's beings are actually developed? Could it not be that tendencies develop in human nature that do not reach ultimate perfection, that do not come to fruition? And now it certainly looks very logical when David Friedrich Strauß says: that not all tendencies come to development, that can be seen very clearly in the germs of fish, how thousands of fish-germs arise and how few of them develop. But it can be clear to anyone who has once walked across fields or through gardens and has seen how many apples have fallen and decayed without coming to their development.

Now one can say: that is all certainly correct and it looks as if it could be convincing. But then, if one forms one's thinking somewhat more universally, the objection arises: yes, do all apples perish? Do they all fall from the tree before they are developed? Or do no fish germs come to fruition at all? Does not nature itself show that it is fundamentally concerned with the actual final development of all germs? If man then notices in himself that there are certain tendencies in him that do not come to fruition within his lifetime, then, according to Strauß's logic, the development of such tendencies in every human being should not be achieved. But life does not show us that at all. But David Friedrich Strauß shows us that he cannot think things through to the end. However, that is not enough for him, so he finds something else. You don't even have to read between the lines, it's pretty bluntly stated, and I will just translate it into slightly different words. David Friedrich Strauß says something like this: Basically, Goethe's saying is not even correct. Because if you look at old Goethe, you can clearly see that Goethe was actually able to develop all his abilities. Then he points out to us that, if you look at it properly, every person will actually find that their abilities are being developed. If Strauss had been just a little more modest, he might have realized that perhaps Goethe was more justified in speaking of the unfinished potential in human nature, which is only seeking to develop, than Strauss was.

Thus we can see from this example – and hundreds and thousands of such examples could be cited – how, as it were, a general course of mere philosophical speculation, even if it has a materialistic coloring, does not come to anything other than that it runs into an easily refutable contradiction that destroys itself before the universally observing soul.

If one asks oneself how it is that people have such a difficult time talking about the immortal part of their soul, the answer must be: between birth and death, people do live entirely in what is mortal in them, what is transitory in their nature, as we shall see in a moment. And one would like to say: only quietly and intimately does that which is immortal in the human being come to light, does the immortal part come to light. Indeed, one can say that this immortal element appears so quietly and intimately that in ordinary life the human soul does not have enough strength, enough endurance, but above all, does not have enough attention developed in a higher sense to observe what is quietly and intimately announcing itself in it as the immortal.

When we observe the human soul in its life and how it expresses itself, we encounter it, so to speak, in three ways of expression: as a thinking soul, as a feeling soul, and as a willing soul. Now, as has often been discussed in these lectures, the path of spiritual science into the spiritual worlds consists in bringing forth the powers lying in the depths of the soul in order to develop thinking, feeling and willing to a high level, to a sharper and more intense than those in which they usually are, so that through this training, through this activity, they can become organs that not only enable the human being to grasp the physical, but also enable him to grasp the spiritual that is all around us. Now, however, the usual consideration, which seeks to become clear about the mortal and the immortal in the human being, usually assumes that it is considering this mortal and immortal part of the soul and now asks itself: Is there anything to be found in this thinking, feeling and willing that betrays that the human being is able to carry something over from the mortal into the immortal?

Here I must take up what I said in one of my lectures this winter about the development of the human faculties for spiritual scientific research, in order to show how it is possible to find, and not find, in thinking, feeling and willing that which distinguishes the mortal in man from the immortal. One of the paths into the spiritual world that has often been mentioned here is that which is called the concentration of thought life, of thinking. I will only briefly point out what this concentration consists of and what it leads to. If we place some thought, preferably one that we have formed ourselves, not one that the external world stimulates in us, if we place such a thought formed by ourselves into the horizon of our consciousness, if we forget everything that lives around us and otherwise in us, and become only one with this one thought, when we can live completely in this one thought for a certain time, then we can throw all the soul forces that we would otherwise apply to the entire activity of the human being onto this one thought, then it is made stronger and stronger; then our whole being flows together with this thought, we concentrate on this thought. This experience occurs as a result of spiritual-scientific experience, but it is brought about by not growing tired of repeatedly and repeatedly placing a thought at the center of one's consciousness and identifying completely with it. For one must often apply this inner energy and perseverance, this concentrated attention to a thought for years. Even if one says, as a precaution, that one must not overdo this, a short time must still be devoted daily to such practice. But once one has devoted oneself to such practice, depending on one's abilities, depending on the structure of the soul after the experience of the human being, one gains a certain experience, one enters into a certain experience. Up to a certain point this inwardly concentrated thought intensifies; it becomes ever brighter and brighter; the one thought takes hold of us more and more, absorbs us more and more, and we feel, as we are concentrating, that we can forget the world, we feel more and more and more within this thought. But just when we feel strong in this thought, we feel at the same time how this thought, as it were, disappears from us, and how with this thought the power to apply our thinking in this way, as it were, dies away. We feel with this thought as if the thought and with it we ourselves were taken up by powers that live around us; as if our thinking darkened from a certain moment on. All this must, of course, remain a purely spiritual process, only then is it a healthy process. Today is not the time to mention that all the objections raised by pathology and psychopathology are quite wrong when they say that in this way the human being would work himself into illusions and self-suggestions, that he must arrive at ideas that are pathological in nature. One has only to read the relevant chapters of my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” to see that the path described here is precisely the healthiest path for the soul, provided it is followed correctly. When the moment has come, one feels how a spiritual power that surrounds us, as it were, snatches the thought from us and allows it to die away in us; one then feels what the soul must go through in order to find the way into the spiritual. One feels as if one were losing one's spiritual footing, and this too has already been hinted at here. One feels as if one had in a certain way become acquainted with the Nothing. And a state can easily overtake a person that can be compared to a boundless fear. But it is precisely such a state that is suitable for bringing certain powers out of the soul that would otherwise remain undeveloped in man. For in overcoming such conditions, which I have now compared to fear, and many others that are part of the experiences of the spiritual researcher, deep powers of the soul that would otherwise remain undeveloped are unfolded, and therein lies that strengthening of the inner life of the soul, through which alone man can find his way into the spiritual worlds.

When one has gone through an experience such as that indicated here, one has yet another feeling. And all these experiences, which lead to one's actual entry into the spiritual world, are of an intimate nature, are fine, quiet processes of the human soul. When one has come to the point indicated, one feels as if that which one has hitherto addressed as the human faculty of thought, that which thinks in us, that which has the power to think, — as if that were to go out of us and go to the world, as if one were to lose it for the time being and as if one were to be transported with it into the objective world. One must have such experiences; one must have them in such a way that one really comes to know them in their reality, in their reality for the human being, otherwise one cannot speak about them in a true sense. But so that the human being does not remain stuck with this experience, as if only what had previously lived in him as thought had been snatched from him and he had been carried out into the world with this thought, so that he does not remain stuck with this experience - because this process of knowledge would simply leave him falling into a nothing - another must come to it. I have often described it here under the name meditation.

Meditation has also been hinted at here – meditation on something that we usually speak of as being outside of man, but which, if we look at the individual human life, we can see how intimately it is connected with man. When we look at what we have gone through in this life between birth and our present point in life and what we summarize as our destiny, then we are accustomed to saying: this or that stroke of fate has hit us here or there. But on closer reflection, it can show up even for ordinary life how one-sided such a saying is. If you ask yourself: What are you today? What can you do today? What abilities does your soul possess? — then we have to look at what we have gone through. We usually do not look for the context; but if we do, it enlightens us about what we actually are at the present moment. It enlightens us about how we would not have these or those abilities if we had not been struck by this or that stroke of fate, this or that twist of fate, twenty or thirty years ago or more, and guided us to acquire these abilities. But if we did not have them, our self would be something quite different in the concrete. We do, after all, consist of our abilities, our powers. But these are brought to us through our destiny. If you think this thought through to the end, you say to yourself: We are much more intimately connected with our destiny than is usually believed. We grow into our destiny with our innermost being, with our I. And we finally come to the thought: Basically, your self has become you through the fact that these or those strokes of fate, good or bad, have happened to you; but you have become you out of them. That which you are now lay in your destiny. Our self goes out of us, goes into our destiny. When we really learn to feel through what we usually call destiny in this way, when we really connect with it completely, we come to extend not our thinking but our will to our entire destiny and say to ourselves: If you want to know yourself as you are now, you have to develop your will. In relation to your entire destiny, you must say to yourself: You are what you are now because your ego has become what it is now. We are fully immersed in destiny. That is to say, we understand that if we want ourselves now, we must want ourselves in our destiny; in other words, that it is I myself who, in destiny, rules, lives and exists.

We learn to say about what has happened to us in our destiny: we have done it to ourselves; we were in it in every single blow of our destiny. Man's will — and here again only experience can show us — becomes, by grasping his fate as being fully identical with his own nature, by will-ing his fate, is thereby greatly strengthened. Man's will, by becoming so strengthened, becomes that which, in a different way from what has been characterized in thinking, is now, as it were, detached from man as he stands before others. While we have driven thinking out of us through concentration, we succeed in such a strengthening of the will, as it has been described in the grasping of the fate thought, that we enter into something that lies outside of us, which, as we say, falls to us. We enter into something with our will that we otherwise ascribe to the outside world. When we steel our will in this way, strengthening and intensifying it, we then have a second spiritual experience. The intensifying of the will now in its turn becomes independent of our being and follows the thinking that has gone out of us. And so we are able to strengthen this thinking, which threatens to die due to the first experience, from the will.

What happens to the thinking that has become shadowy at a certain point and has almost ceased? It is filled with content, it acquires substance, in that we send the will after the thinking, in a sense send ourselves after the thinking with the second part of our being. When thinking and willing are thus removed from our being, then we come to achieve what today, however, can hardly be admitted for the contemporary world view — we come to be outside of that in which we otherwise live in the waking state. We have gone out ourselves with our thinking and willing; we stand really outside ourselves. And that in which we are otherwise always becomes for us an object, something that is outside of us, like the table or any object outside of the sensory body. We look back at the sensory body, at the life circumstances that this body has gone through. We look back at the spatial and temporal aspects of our human nature. We become acquainted with that in us which has separated itself from that which is mortal.

Thus the spiritual researcher answers the question: What is mortal in the human being? — so that he must say: That which remains when he unites the will, strengthened by this grasp of the facts of fate, with the thinking that has been dispersed in the universe through concentration of thought, and marries and feels outside of himself in his being thus grasped in spirit, beholds then that which is otherwise too quiet in us, the eternal, the immortal, is so greatly intensified that we experience it, we know ourselves in it, we know ourselves in it, but outside of our body. And only then do we begin to notice it. But we also begin to notice what ordinary thinking, feeling and willing, in short, the ordinary life of the soul actually is.

When we consider ordinary thinking, how it is stimulated by the external-sensual nature, how it proceeds bound to the process of our brain, then for someone who is able to look at the world spiritually in the sense just indicated, it is something that does not belong to our immortality at all, as it presents itself to us in the mortal body. You realize this when you stand outside of the mortal body in your true essence. Because then you realize: everything that this mortal, this physical body actually is – I would like to use a comparison that is not just a comparison, but that points to the truth – you recognize: this physical body is a mirror that is able to reflect that that a person in ordinary life knows nothing about, that he can only know when he, as it were, peels it out of the physical, that he only knows something when he stands in his immortal self opposite the body. He knows that the body is only a mirror and that thoughts have the same relationship to the body as the mirror images have to the observer. Just as if one had a number of mirrors on the wall and passed by the mirrors and saw one's own figure as long as one was there, but no longer saw oneself when one was not there and saw oneself again when one was there again, so man sees that of which he lives, but of which he knows nothing, when he is in the body and the body reflects its own nature back to him. And thoughts are present in the form in which we have them in ordinary life only as long as the mortal body reflects them. But something else is that which thinks; something else is that which exercises the immediate activity that reflects itself as a thought in the mortal body.

When examining human thinking, one cannot say that one can find anything in this thinking that could provide any insight into immortality, because these thoughts are reflections that are evoked by the mortal body. And that which is immortal is not standing in front of the mirror now, but is reflected in the thought forms. What is it that lives in front of the mirror, in our case in the mirror? Is there any way to express this at all in human words? Yes, there is a way. But what is to be expressed here at this point is not observed by man; for he is satisfied when he can take hold of his thoughts for orientation in the outer world, when he can live in his thoughts. That something lives in this thought, which one has to describe as the will within the thoughts, as the will that is active there, - man is usually not aware of this at all, or when he becomes aware of it, he draws a conclusion, as Schopenhauer did. Then he has no direct vision, then he does not grasp himself in this volitional thinking, in the thinking volition, in what he is, but in what this thinking volition gives him, namely in the thoughts, which are only mirror images. Only when man has brought about the marriage between thinking and willing as I have described it, only then are the soul powers so strong that all thinking appears permeated by a supersensible human entity, which is of a will-like nature, but in such a way that it shows its true, will-like nature, mirrored as thoughts. As truly as it is really our countenance when we see ourselves in the mirror, so truly do we mirror ourselves in our thoughts; but it is not what we are in this mirror image. That which we are is mirrored in such a way that we can never grasp in life, in strength, in thinking, what stands behind thinking and of which thinking is only a reflection. Just as the reflection lasts no longer than the time we stand before the mirror, so too this thinking in the material body lasts no longer than it is stimulated by the actual immortal in us, which is reflected in the thought.

Another thing becomes apparent to us in the ordinary process of willing, in the process by which we commit our actions, move our limbs. While we do not notice in thinking that what is essentially mirrored in it stands behind thinking, we do not notice in acting, in the actions we perform, that behind the human will there is something everywhere that is quite unlike our world of thoughts, quite unlike that which is mirrored in thoughts. The reason there has been so much controversy in philosophy about the freedom of the will is because man does not get to know the will as it really is. He only gets to know the power of the will, but not the living entity that is really inherent in the power. And in the will, the living entity is of a mental nature. You see, that which is the actual immortal in man is so quiet, so intimate, so hidden in the external sensual world that in the thought process the thought is hidden, that in the will process it is not even noticed that every smallest will process depends on what is reflected in the thought, but which cannot be noticed at all. One only notices this when one observes the course of fate in the manner described; when one strengthens the will so that it is united, standing outside us, outside mortal man, as I have described, with the thought. Then one notices how the will is united with the thought, then one notices the two sides, which always confront us separately in life as thought and will, united; for one has only brought them to marriage. One then lives in a thought-will process. But then one has only grasped that which goes beyond death, which goes through the gate of death. And then one realizes what mistake, what tremendous mistake those have made who have often thought about the immortality of the human soul in a purely philosophical way. Those who have thought about this immortality of the human soul have always wanted to hold on to something that is, after all, in a certain way similar to that which lives in sensuality or in sensual thinking. People have spoken of a substance of the soul, have searched for something that, like a fine materiality, passes through the gate of death. That one must grasp the eternal in man outside of the body and that one needs completely new concepts and ideas for this, which no external perception, no thinking bound to the brain, can give, will become clear to mankind through spiritual science. That, as it were, the immortal consists precisely in that which has nothing in common with the sensual, that is what will gradually have to be grasped.

Such things have always been sensed; scientifically substantiated from the present into the future, they will be. Schiller says:

Do not talk so much to me about nebulae and suns.
Is nature only great because it gives you things to count?
Your subject is the most exalted in space,
But, friends, the exalted does not dwell in space.

So he pointed out that one must go beyond the spatial in order to arrive at what is actually spiritual. Now, however, for the one who thinks in materialistic terms, reality ends precisely where the immortal begins; and since for him reality ends where the immortal begins, he cannot arrive at any concept of this immortality. We see again in David Friedrich Strauß, the representative of materialism in modern times, how strangely these things are thought of. David Friedrich Strauß has a very low opinion of the church fathers. For him, they are dismissed people; but he does remember one of these dismissed people, one of these church fathers, who he liked. He expresses himself somewhat strangely about him, somewhat coarsely, but in a certain sense, cleverly. David Friedrich Strauß gives this characterization mainly because the church father said, “Only that which is not is incorporeal.” — That is also David Friedrich Strauß's conviction: Only that which is not is incorporeal. One might just as well say: what is non-spatial; but “the spiritual — the sublime — does not dwell in space”.

This is what still causes particular difficulties for the world view of our time. This world view of our time assumes that in order to understand something that can be grasped at all, it is absolutely necessary that it be linked to familiar concepts. The thinking habits of our time demand that when we speak of spiritual realities we use concepts with which they are already familiar. They do not want to be led to unfamiliar concepts, but want to have something they already know. One should point to something that they already know. This is what all philosophers have done who have spoken of a soul 'substance'. They say: the soul must simply have a substance; this then passes through the gate of death. But one can say: natural science in particular could prepare people for what spiritual science will actually have to address these things bit by bit. You all know the very simple way in which one elastic billiard ball can be steered towards another; then the other takes on any direction. And the direction that the second ball gets depends on the direction and movement of the first ball. Physics is clear about the fact that the state of motion of the second ball has emerged from the state of motion of the first and that everything that can be found in the state of motion of the second ball can be found in the motion of the first. There is a transition of the motion of the first ball to the motion of the second. But anyone who would think something completely absurd would say: I cannot imagine that the movement of the second ball depends on the movement of the first ball. But just as absurd is the thought of the soul for someone who cannot imagine that the soul-spiritual is something different than what reminds of the physical in its essence. Just as it would be if one were to demand that the first sphere send some of its substance into the second so that something would be present in the second, — so it would be if one were to demand that in the life which the soul enters into after death there should be that which can already be found in the experiences which the soul undergoes while it is in the body, only through this body.

But it is also necessary to recognize the difficulty that stands in the way of spiritual science, namely that this spiritual science must not only speak of things that go beyond the sense world, but must also expect people to accept new, different concepts than those they have in order to grasp this spiritual; that the concepts must be enriched, that one must not merely talk around with the same concepts and ideas. Therefore, what spiritual science has is often incomprehensible to those who stand on the standpoint of today's habits of thought, because they actually only hear words that sound fantastic, that appear to be coined together, and because they do not engage with what the spiritual researcher takes from his experiences. For when the spiritual scientist has brought these things alive from the spiritual world, they are comprehensible to the power of judgment. One can understand with sound judgment what the spiritual researcher has brought from the spiritual world. To do so, not everyone needs to be a spiritual researcher; one need only examine without prejudice what the spiritual researcher is able to give, and one will be able to understand it. He who says that no one can possibly admit that what the spiritual researcher says is true without becoming a spiritual researcher himself, should also claim that no one can prove by any kind of reasoning that someone is a thief if he has not carried out the theft himself. Such things seem absurd when they are expressed, but they are all the more correct in the light of a universal logic. Above all, however, one thing will become completely clear to humanity when the spiritual-scientific results of this humanity become comprehensible, when people begin to think about things without prejudice. One thing will become clear: that there is something in human nature that is a weaving and living only in the spiritual, even in everyday life. There it is, but it can only be interpreted in the right way with the help of spiritual science. Something in our daily life from waking up to falling asleep is spiritual in nature; but the materialistically thinking person will not accept it: it is the process we go through in our memory. When we remember something, when we look back on an experience we had in the past, then this remembering, this directing of our soul forces to something that no longer takes place, is an entirely spiritual process; the soul performs it only in the soul-spiritual.

One will only admit this if one has already grasped the nature of the spiritual. For, of course, from the present state of natural science, one can easily say: Yes, movement transforms into warmth, as physical research shows us; why shouldn't external processes transform into sensation and thought within us? Of course they do. They do it by evoking processes that are the mirror in which our being is reflected. One can say: natural science is quite right. Only by fully embracing natural science and not fighting it, but then also asserting spiritual experiences, can one make progress. So someone might say: So the spiritual processes are a transformation of the external processes. Just as movement is transformed into warmth, so that which is outside in the world is transformed into that which is within us. But this was only valid as long as it could not be proven that when we transform movement into warmth, something always remains that is there, always there. That has remained warmth, is never anything but warmth. This is apparent to someone who really follows the bodily process from outside his body, who follows what the body can actually do. It is apparent to him that although, when we perceive in the external world, the process that is built up by the senses and continues in the brain is a continuation of the external process, this is not correct in relation to what we remember. And it is precisely at this point that the ever-advancing science will show that, by focusing attention on the physical processes, the process of memory, which is a purely spiritual process, could never somehow arise from the physical processes. It will be possible to show, in a strictly scientific way, that what happens physically in us when we remember is not the mental process, or has more to do with it than the strokes of a pen on paper have to do with what I read. When I have a word consisting of certain lines in front of me, I do not read by looking at the word and tracing my thoughts, but by connecting a meaning with this sign through something in me that has nothing to do with what is on the paper. Thus one will come to realize that the memory process that takes place in the body has as little to do with physical processes as my reading process has to do with the forms on the paper. Memory will present itself as a spiritual process that intervenes in physical life. But then one will also recognize that already in our ordinary physical life between birth and death we are surrounded by the essence that we must grasp in a higher, more intense sense if we want to look towards the immortal. When materialism asks: What is mortal in man? and answers: Everything that man experiences here in the sense world! — then spiritual science can also say to him: Yes, you are right; everything that a person experiences here in the world of the senses is mortal in the human being. But just as an event passes by in our physical life and we remember it at a later point in time purely through the spiritual essence of our soul, so too is it with our soul. As long as we are searching for a “soul substance,” we are incapable of even approaching that which is immortal in the human being. As soon as we know that what is not even noticed in our ordinary mortal existence because it is as if a person stands before a mirror and sees only his reflection, only knows himself in the image, — as soon as we know that what what is ignored in ordinary life, what we know nothing about in ordinary life, what we only know as in an image, - that precisely this is what is retained after our death and lives in the memory of earthly life, we can also understand: What we are here, it goes as a fact, as that, as what it lives here, perishable in the human being. That which remains for the soul, the soul that does not know itself in life, that is the memory that will be incorporated into the experiences that the human being then undergoes in the purely spiritual world after death.

Only when one begins to understand what a purely soul-spiritual process memory is, only then does one point to that which continues beyond death. Here, the power of memory already lives in the formation of thought and will and reveals itself here as spiritual. In the memory that lives in us, we do not carry across the threshold of death as soul substance, but as power, that which we are in the time between birth and death. For anyone who does not aspire to spiritual science, the possibility of imagining anything in what has been said disappears immediately, for the reason that he has nothing left to remember according to his ideas. For in everything he can think of, he has in mind that he must have something substantial that he already knows. He does not want to come to the realization that he has something only as a gift of memory that he does not know.

Thus, in our memory, we are actually given something that leads us to the otherwise unknown concepts of the spiritual process by which an immortal separates from the mortal, so that we have to recognize it. And so it appears to us in something else in the spiritual research process that we must, as it were, take hold of ourselves more strongly, so that the powers of comprehension expand beyond that which would otherwise receive no attention, in order to enter the spiritual world. For example, we can hold up an ideal to ourselves that is yet to be achieved, that is just as absent in the present as a past experience. Then we also stand in a purely spiritual process to this ideal. The materialist will indeed lose himself with a kind of voluptuousness in a certain impasse; he will want the soul to have a physical relationship to an ideal. But the real relationship to an ideal is a purely spiritual one. Only those who know that memory is also a purely spiritual process can understand this.

Now, however, a person usually does not experience the ideal in such a way that he can become fully warm, let alone fiery, towards the ideal. It remains somewhat cold, even if he admires it. At most, he becomes warm when he is directly involved in a process in which the ideal lives in some way in the outside world, where he can go along with the ideal. But when the ideal is raised in his soul purely as a thought and he can then connect feelings and volitional impulses only with the ideal, so that he also directs his will towards it, and when he does this more often, when he adds these volitional exercises to the concentration, — then gradually a feeling develops in the soul that we not only have a power of intuition and memory, but that we also have something that, although it is of a volitional nature, can be described as a foreknowledge of future events. There is something prophetic in the human soul. This is not just some kind of superstition. Spiritual science shows that this prophetic gift is extremely difficult to manifest in man only because man in the physical body must use the powers that would otherwise allow him to perceive what is approaching him; he must use this power to build up the physical body; it flows into it and is transformed. Because we have already gone through the past life process, we are able to apply the growth forces that we have retained from it, in terms of soul and spirit, as a power of remembrance. As we live in the physical body towards the future, we have to apply the strength we need to maintain the body in the physical body. So it is very difficult to get to know certain forces, though not in the way people imagine, but in a much more intimate and quiet way. They are present in the human being. Spiritual research can get to know them in such a way that it learns to understand that in what is immortal in the human soul, there is something that really carries this soul's rich content through death and into the future. Through this spiritual science, man really becomes aware of the power itself that carries him through the gateway of death.

Thus spiritual science cannot answer the question, “What is mortal about the human being?” as easily as one might think. But it shows the way to find out what is mortal in the human being, by showing what lives in man as the immortal, unnoticed by ordinary attention, and how this immortal can, as it were, objectively survey one's own ordinary life between birth and death. But this can only be the case when a person comes to recognize that his being is a self-contained entity, outside of the physical, and that this self-contained entity actually has an effect on the body from outside of the body. Just as a person standing in front of a mirror affects his reflection, so the true essence of the soul affects the physical, reflecting back what it is for this earthly life. Because in earthly life we have only a reflection of our true nature, and this can only be present as long as what is reflected stands before the mirror, what we actually experience as present in earthly life is fundamentally the mortal part. Man gets to know that which underlies it as mortal, as that in which his immortal part dwells, as in his tool – I do not say in his shell, but in his tool.

In this way, the question, “What is mortal in the human being?” can be answered in full accordance with current natural science. And this will be of tremendous importance for the future of spiritual development. It will be of tremendous importance because the natural scientist can always point out when one speaks of an independent soul, of soul substance, and can always say: Yes, just look at this soul; it grows with the growth of the body, of the brain, it grows with aging. When the body falls ill and dies, the soul is no longer there. Merely inferring the soul from external appearances does not make it possible to object to facts. The soul must be recognized in a field that lies outside of facts. One must be able to say yes to all legitimate objections, not no. And spiritual science can do that. Therefore, when those who believe they are standing on the firm ground of natural science come and say, “We know that! We know that! We know that!” You must not come to us with spiritual science! then the spiritual scientist stands before them and says: Nothing, absolutely nothing, to the very last thing you say, is denied by spiritual science; for what you know, what natural science knows, that is mortal in the human being. Nothing is denied to you by spiritual science, it only shows that there is a path of human knowledge to something other than what you know. Then the natural scientist is no longer able to argue with logical reasons, but he must forbid that one knows something other than he knows. Then he has only this single objection. And that is really the only objection that can come from natural science. One cannot refute the spiritual scientific world view, because the objections that one makes, the spiritual researcher admits them all. It must be asserted: I alone have the right to decide where research may be carried out; and if you assert anything other than what may be asserted according to my will, then you are a fantasist. — From that side, spiritual science cannot be refuted with reasons, but only and solely by fiat. Spiritual science can only be eliminated if people agree to suppress spiritual scientific research by majority vote. Spiritual science cannot be refuted by logic, but only by brutality; but it will only be able to stand up to natural science if it is on a par with natural science, if it does not come up with amateurish things and wants to refute natural science with them. It must be able to show that it is capable of conquering a field in which even the old philosophical concepts of the soul's substance can no longer be applied, but for which new concepts must be created. That is why so much of what appears in the literature of spiritual science still seems absurd. But the absurdity only exists because we have never been accustomed to such concepts; that is why we reject them. Spiritual science is producing something completely new. It is not by fighting natural science, but by opposing something, that we can pave the way for spiritual science. Even in terms of its way of thinking, spiritual science can fully meet the justified demands of natural science. For if someone were to say: I stand on the firm ground of natural science; anyone who has their five senses and relies on them and on what the mind can grasp on the basis of these five senses cannot agree with the fantasies of spiritual science, — then the spiritual researcher replies: Just take a little look at yourself! You admit that for a long time people lived as those who relied on the healthy five senses. Then came Copernicus. He established a world view in relation to the outer world that flies in the face of the five senses. Indeed, it took many people a long time, right up to the present day, to recognize or acknowledge the truth of Copernicus' world view. But just as human truth found a way to go beyond the five senses in relation to the external science of the world in those days, so spiritual science will lead beyond that which is to be established by the fiat of the five senses with regard to the supersensible. For this supersensible allows even less that one should rely only on one's “healthy five senses”.

Now we see that the path of development that a person must take if he wants to become a spiritual researcher is not something that everyone needs to take. If there were only a few spiritual researchers and they established truths that the intellect could grasp, then everyone would be able to understand them. We see that the path that the spiritual researcher is led along consists of taking hold of one's own soul in order to guide it further. Just as the child must develop by being led from the time when it cannot yet say 'I' to itself, to a time when it can say it, so the soul, when the spiritual researcher has a hold on it, can develop to become a companion of the spiritual world. But here the soul must take hold of itself. This is a purely spiritual-soul process. Humanity has been on the path to this process for a long time. One of the spirits of Central European spiritual development, of whom I spoke here recently, coined a beautiful phrase that could be said to point the way for human feeling, human thinking, human will — the path that ultimately leads to the human becoming a spiritual researcher themselves. The German mystic Meister Eckhart, who died in 1327, coined a beautiful phrase. A word, so to speak, that, when meditated upon, has the power to point the soul to the path that leads into the spiritual world. You cannot just let such a word sink in once or a few times, but you have to let it sink in day after day. For behind such a saying lies a deep spiritual experience, which the one who brought it forth out of the innermost structure of his soul has already gone through. Master Eckhart says:

"He who wishes to attain the highest perfection of his being and to see God, the highest good, must have a knowledge of himself and of that which is above him, to the very bottom. Only in this way will he attain the highest sincerity.

Therefore, dear man, know yourself; this is better for you than if you knew the powers of all creatures.

Know Thyself! — the saying that already stood on the Apollonian sanctuary. But self-knowledge, which is most intimately connected with the path into the spiritual worlds, is, so to speak, the most, most difficult! Even the most external self-knowledge is something difficult for man. The philosopher Ernst Mach gives a curious example of this. In his “Analysis of Sensations” he reveals how he fared with regard to self-knowledge even in the most superficial area. He recounts how he was once crossing the street and saw his own image in a tilted mirror. He was shocked by the ugly, repulsive face that looked back at him, and lo and behold: it was his own. And when he was already a professor, something similar happened to him. He came tired from a trip and boarded a bus. On the other side, he saw a man get on, and he thought: What kind of dried-up schoolmaster gets on there! And again, the person who got on the bus opposite him turned out to be himself; he had seen himself in a mirror. And he says: So I knew the profession of Habirus better than my own. We see from this case that one can even be a famous professor and have all the qualities and powers of a famous professor and yet not have come very far in terms of the most external self-knowledge.

But much more difficult is that which can be attained of self-knowledge of the soul. And it must be said that what is often defined as self-knowledge is nothing more than an egoistic feeling about an inner experience. Truly, real self-knowledge can only be acquired through spiritual science.

But – and perhaps it does not seem far-fetched; for not far-fetched is also everything to which not only logic, but also feelings, which are caused by much of what occurs in the present is caused — this path, which must lead to spiritual science, is indicated particularly by such impulses as those just mentioned by Meister Eckhart, but which can be enumerated in many other ways. For humanity is on this path. And if we want to point to someone in more recent times who, in terms of working out the spiritual from the material, was also on the path to spiritual science, we can point to Goethe. Goethe, to mention just one example, wanted to show in his Metamorphosis of Plants how, in the leaf, in the individual leaf, there is that which can transform itself and, in transforming itself, presents itself as a different organ. But he also endeavored to implement the idea of transformation in other fields. This proved fruitful for him and led him to remarkable scientific results, some of which are still rejected out of hand by science today. And yet, many seeds for the future spiritual-scientific world view lie in Goethe's way of thinking. When one builds up one's own structure of ideas and transforms it into a living spiritual experience, one realizes how fruitful Goethe's world view is, which is so vividly contained, for example, in the small work 'Metamorphosis of Plants'. One then realizes that the highest spiritual powers, for which one must first seek words, concepts and ideas, those processes that the soul undergoes when it leaves the mortal body, already have a metamorphosis in the ordinary memory process. One needs only to have enough universality of mind to follow this process in metamorphoses, to recognize it as a life process of the soul freed from the mortal body. Then one notices that what is mortal in the human being passes away just as the flower that remains, which withers, is understood to be separate from the germ, which continues into a new plant. But it was only logical that Goethe should apply this way of thinking to the physical world as well. It is only that he is not yet understood. It must appear comprehensible that the physicist, who believes himself to be on the ground of truth when he is on the ground of physical hypotheses, rejects Goethe's theory of colors. The deeper reason for this rejection is none other than that Goethe's Theory of Colors is grasped and set forth by a human being who has allowed the inner driving force to take effect in him, which lives in the human being's spirit, and that today one seeks a theory of colors in physics that is based only on those cognitive abilities of the human being that are mediated by the body.

As spiritual science develops as a fruit of human spiritual striving, something like the Goethean theory of colours will also be recognized along with spiritual science itself. Then people will understand why another spirit, who also felt the impulse of the eternal spiritual in his soul, who, motivated by the same impulse, also wanted to comprehend the outer world, why this spirit stood up for the theory of colours, and indeed for something else — Hegel, Hegel was also one of those who were deeply connected with the sustaining power of the German spirit, which has already been described here yesterday. With all the power of eloquence that was his, he opposed the belittling of his fellow countryman Kepler, the great Kepler, who is known to anyone who has even slightly looked into a physics book as the one who found the so-called Kepler's laws. Hegel showed that these laws already contain what Newton had merely formulated in mathematical formulas. The world has otherwise noticed this only a little. Hegel has shown: Newton puts mathematical letters where Kepler has expressed his laws; he only changes a little the formulas. Newton has done nothing but expressed in mathematical terms and formulas the Kepler laws. But Hegel was concerned with the reality and not with the form of expression.

I already said that I would like to mention something that only belongs here in a subjective way. I would like to draw attention to the fact that this has happened to us several times recently, as it did there, that the person who only found the form of expression is presented as the great physicist, instead of the person who actually found the essence of the matter – Goethe. In accordance with a spiritual world view, Goethe discovered everything that is connected with the developmental theory of organisms. However, one must be borne by the spiritual, as he himself was, if one wants to see this spiritual world view as the natural developmental theory. For the spirit behind all sensuality, Goethe was strengthened, not weakened, by his natural developmental theory. But in many cases it was too difficult for humanity to understand the transformation of organisms in the Goethean way. People grasped it more easily when it was presented to them in a way that did not place such great demands on the intellect as in Darwin's account. And these things could still be applied to many, many more things.

The second half of the 19th century is the time when people fell victim to shallower thinking in many fields. In German intellectual life, the deeper impulses and germs of thought lie everywhere for that which a shallower way of thinking has stood for. It will certainly be a matter of reflecting on what the “supporting forces of German intellectual life” are; of reflecting on how the true theory of evolution must be presented not in the Darwinian sense, but in the Goethean sense. But this leads to the thoughts that, as I explained yesterday, can bring about a change of heart in many areas in our difficult times, that we have to achieve victories in other respects as well, perhaps more than we think: the victory of German intellectual life, the victory of the deeper principles of a world view, as they are prepared in German intellectual life, – in contrast to what has come over from England so often as the shallower things. This is not said in a nationalistically chauvinistic spirit but simply and historically. The German mind must realize that much that is English must be sent back to its source. And one can say: in this respect, German intellectual life can hope that the germs within it will come more and more to fruition in the future. But then that which is the German soul, the German spirit, must be defended in the same way as it is defended by our self-sacrificing contemporaries. For what is being defended here is the most sacred possession of mankind. Not only are German territory and German people surrounded on all sides by enemies as if in a fortress, but the noblest German spiritual heritage is also surrounded and besieged as if in a fortress and must be defended. Truth is the same everywhere; but it is also true that the capacity for truth is not developed in the same way everywhere. As regards German intellectual life, it may be said that the clarity and religious nature with which German idealism approached the spiritual is a beginning from which there is a gradual ascent to a truly spiritual Weltanschauung. Hence we may cherish the hope, based on truthful knowledge and not on mere feelings, that the German spirit will be given the opportunity to develop that which those who are familiar with the German spirit are familiar with in this German spirit, those who are familiar with the connection between the German spirit and the path to the spiritual worlds. And there is a word of Goethe's that the Alsatian poet Lienhard refers to in his remarkable brochure “Germany's European Mission” — a word of Goethe's that he uttered in 1813 in a conversation with Luden. He says:

“The destiny of the Germans is... not yet fulfilled. If they had had no other task to fulfill than to break up the Roman Empire and create and order a new world, they would have perished long ago. But since they have continued to exist, and in such strength and efficiency, I believe they must still have a great future, a destiny...”

In many other areas, too, there are still many German determinations to be found. But there is no doubt that the determination to lead German idealism to spiritualism, to a completely spiritual world view, also still lies within the German development. For, whatever may happen, only one thing can happen: that what has emerged from such a deeply inner experience as a word of Goethe's, which he has just placed at the end of the poem where he presents the deepest human struggle with the world spirit, will be a fruitful part of this process. It is not without reason that the German world-view has given rise to Faust, this portrayal of the struggle with the world spirit for a way into the spiritual world. Just at the time when Germany allowed itself to be overcome spiritually, to a certain extent, by a foreign world-view, the strange dictum was repeatedly expressed that Germany was Hamlet. Germany is not Hamlet. It is only a misunderstanding to believe that. In the innermost forces of German development lies something that can never be uttered by Hamlet – “To be or not to be, that is the question” is a saying of Hamlet – but the German spirit says: the spirit is the source of all being, and the soul finds its true destiny, its true essence; and “only on spiritual ground, only by looking beyond the material, can the soul unfold its full power.” That is the German development, considered in the right style, connected with the spiritual essence of humanity in general, that one must say: May the present painful events bring much more, - but that lies in the German development itself as a deepest justification, that one will have to say:

Such a victory of the German spirit must emerge from these painful times, in the face of the onslaught of all enemies of the German spirit, that, by virtue of the other purposes of the German people, it can also fulfill what springs from the words with which the most German, but at the same time the most profound poetry of mankind concludes – which sounds like a victory cry against all materialism, like the herald's call before every spiritual world view: “The transitory is not the permanent”. At the end of “Faust” we are met with what sounds like a true motto of a truly spiritual world view: “All that is transitory is only a parable”.

And the German spirit still has much to contribute to making this the goal of human endeavor. And we hope that the present difficult times will help it to fully fulfill its destiny in this direction.

In this winter series of lectures, I have taken the liberty of alternating purely spiritual lectures with those inspired by the great and significant events of the present. Today's reflections on the nature of the German national soul and its relationship to other national souls in Europe are also intended to be inspired by the feelings evoked by our time. Tomorrow, another reflection will follow, which is purely spiritual scientific. In the introduction to today's reflection, I will take the liberty of pointing out some things that have already been discussed from a different point of view in one of the previous lectures, which also dealt with the nature of the folk soul.

If one speaks of folk souls today, one encounters many misunderstandings if one takes the point of view that is to be adopted here. One is often reproached for thinking something purely fantastic. And that is basically quite in order; because our present-day world view cannot help but see a fantasy in what must be addressed as the folk soul, in addition to other real, concrete spiritual beings. It is therefore only natural that, when the folk soul, among other spiritual beings, was spoken of as a real being in my book 'Theosophy', this chapter in particular was found to be particularly strange. That is precisely what a purely externalistic world view will never admit: that alongside those entities that can be perceived by the senses, that can be grasped by the intellect and are connected with the brain, there are also other supersensible, invisible entities beings that can only be seen with what Goethe called the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. These beings have a reality, however, just as the beings of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms around us have reality. And so spiritual science also speaks of the German national soul as a real, actual entity. It speaks of this entity as conducting the dialogue — subconscious, unconscious dialogues with the individual human soul — already mentioned in the previous lecture on the supporting forces of the German spirit. It is impossible to give an indication of the nature of the real, true national soul without saying at least a few words about what spiritual research will eventually have to say to mankind about the nature of the individual human soul. The present official science of the soul, or psychology, approaches the human soul in such a way that it sees in it, I might say, a more or less chaotic but ordering unity, in which will, feeling and thinking act in confusion.

But now spiritual science must speak of this human soul in a sense that physics speaks of color and color nuances that arise from light. Physics is aware that it can only study the essence of light if it seeks out this light in its effects, which appear as the different color nuances of the rainbow, the spectrum. On the one hand, we have the reddish-yellow color nuances, in the middle the greenish ones, and on the other hand the violet-bluish color nuances. Just as physics now already admits that the nature of light can be fathomed by studying the effect of light through matter in the various color nuances, so the spiritual science of the future will most certainly have to distinguish in the human soul as a whole that which one could call the revelation of the human soul light, that this is lived in the human soul in three parts, as it were in the three distinct nuances, one of which must be called the nuance of the sentient soul, corresponding to the reddish-yellowish band of colors of the rainbow or the color spectrum; thus, one must speak of the soul of understanding or feeling, corresponding to the middle green color nuances of the rainbow; and thus one must speak of the soul of consciousness, corresponding to the bluish-violet color nuances of the rainbow. And it is not a matter of an arbitrary classification of the soul activities, but rather of something that has to do with the reality of the human soul, just as the colors have to do with the reality of light. For spiritual science shows that what on the one side of the spectrum of the soul must be recognized as the sentient soul reveals primarily those powers of the soul that stream out of the impulses of will and feeling and express themselves in a certain instinctive way in man ; but at the same time it shows, and this is the remarkable thing, that precisely in this instinctive nature of the soul, in this nuance of feeling of the human soul, is contained that which we shall show tomorrow to pass through births and deaths as the eternal of the human soul. It is mainly in this part of the human soul that the eternal essence of the soul is contained.

Then we have, as it were, the middle color nuance of the human soul, the intellectual soul. In this, soul expressions directed equally to the eternal and to the sensual-real, the transitory, can be found; instinctive tendencies and those which rise above them and look at the senses in order to spiritually comprehend the world of the senses.

Thirdly, we have the consciousness soul, which, in the present stage of human development, elevates man to his self-awareness, which makes it possible for man to stand in his soul in such a way that he can say: “Within me, even within my physicality, between birth and death, there dwells an I.” But at the same time, it is that which is in these powers, that which, for the present development of humanity, contains the feelings of the human soul life that are turned towards the transitory, the external, obvious reality. Just as light reveals itself in the different color nuances, so what is the unity of the human soul reveals itself in these different members of the human soul. And one can say: just as light lives in red, green and blue, so the human ego lives in all three aspects of the life of the human soul.

Now, for spiritual science, what is to be regarded as the folk soul is a real supersensible entity, not merely what a more materialistic world view sees, a totality of characteristics that climate, education or otherwise are peculiar to a nation, but for spiritual science the folk soul is a spiritual entity that works from the supersensible worlds into what are the functions of the human soul.

And now, according to the way in which the folk soul works in what is the work of the human soul, the basic character of the folk soul life can be seen through different European peoples. These are things that spiritual science has to say, so that one day it will form a science, just as the physics of color within natural science forms a real scientific discipline.

I would also like to make it clear this time that what I am going to say about the interaction of the national soul with the individual soul elements in the various European nations has not been caused or provoked by the current war events and the existing conditions of the European nations. Rather, many of the listeners here can confirm that I have been saying for years, based on spiritual science, that We are dealing, for example, when we consider the more southern peoples, when we consider the soul of the Italian people, with an interaction of this national soul with the individual human being in such a way that what the national soul does, what it has to accomplish in a dialogue with the individual soul, flows directly into the sentient soul. So that one can say: insofar as a member of the Italian nation is Italian, he expresses himself from the character of his nation in such a way that the forces of his national spirit tremble and have an effect in his sentient soul. It is with this sentient soul that the national spirit, the national soul, holds its dialogue. Of course, it must always be emphasized that the individual soul can rise and take on the general human character in every nation. What has been said here about the relationship between the national soul and nationality applies to the extent that the individual is connected to the national soul through the expressions of his life. And everything that the Italian national soul arouses in the individual sentient soul of the Italian is, in essence, Italian culture. Hence the Italian culture, which emerges directly from the passions, can be traced from the individual impulses of the people to the mighty painting that Dante created of the world. That is why what is called humanism was also imprinted on European culture from Italy. The connection of the whole human being with the sentient soul through what one feels, what one has in one's emotional impulses, insofar as that comes into its own, flows through the whole of Italian culture. Spanish culture is similar and related to this.

When we consider French popular culture, we have to say that it is the result of the direct interaction of the folk soul with what is called the rational soul. Hence the peculiarity of the French national character, which seeks to bring everything into a certain system, even if it is the system of feeling and art. A certain mathematical character is inherent in everything that belongs to this culture. You only have to surrender to the flow of a French poem or the course of a French drama to feel this result of the relationship between the soul of the people and the soul of the mind everywhere. If you look at it from a spiritual scientific point of view, this mathematical disposition of the French character becomes highly understandable.

And again, when we look at the English national character, we must bear in mind those relationships that develop between the national soul and the consciousness soul. That is to say, the English national character is primarily shaped as follows: through the consciousness soul, the English national character is directed outwards to the struggles and congruities of physical reality, to that which is transitory in life. Hence the empirical character, the outward-looking character of English culture, which can be traced right back to Shakespeare, despite the greatness of Shakespeare.

And if we then go to the center of Europe, preferably to German culture, we must point to a relationship to the folk soul, a relationship of the individual to the folk soul that can be expressed directly as a connection of the folk soul not with a single soul element, but directly with the self, with the I. Therefore, the impulses that the national soul has to stimulate flow directly into the individual Germans. And it can then express itself as the ego struggles to reveal itself not only in one direction, but through the various members of the soul life, alternately or cohesively. Hence what I had to say eight days ago about the supporting forces of the German spirit, the direct influence of the spiritual world on the individual human personality. Therefore, it is not the human passions, the human passions wrestling with something transcendental, nor the ratio, the intellect wrestling with the transcendental, nor the consciousness soul being active, but always the direct confrontation of the individual human being with his divinity, of the individual human being with the spirits of the transcendental world. But this brings about the peculiar thing in the whole German development, that the individual German must always take up the highest impulses of spiritual life. We have a German development in which we see individual great characters appear. Again and again, the individual great character has to start anew, so to speak, without being able to tie in with what is historically given, because he has to let what the soul of the people has to give him shine in his deepest inner being.

But there is another aspect to this: since the German is always compelled to establish a direct, elementary relationship with the folk soul, this folk soul must also have an ever-present effect on him with its elemental power, and he always again impelled to go back to the purest sources of popular life; and he feels strengthened and refreshed when he can sense his connection with this popular life.

That is what the German feels impelled to express when he wants to consider his relationship to the supersensible world. This is also what gives the German world poem, Faust, its special magic. We see Faust living in the midst of a culture that has grown old, as it were; we see how he has allowed the individual expressions of this culture to take effect in him, and how he now strives to go directly to the sources of all knowledge, to enter into a relationship with individual spirits, with the spirit of the earth, the world spirit. We see how he strives to achieve what could be called a rejuvenation of the whole human soul. There has even been mockery, at least contemptuous talk about what stands as a kind of rejuvenation scene at the beginning of the second part of “Faust”, where Faust is in a kind of sleep state and the spirits of the cosmos permeate him, in epochs, as the night passes, with what they have to give him. But anyone who knows that such things can only be depicted in images will not be able to succumb to such a misunderstanding. After Faust has first tried to rejuvenate what has grown old in him through sensory life and the world of external science, a relationship is established in him between the elemental forces of his soul life and the supersensible world, and through this he is rejuvenated so that he can then accomplish all that is presented to us in the second part of Faust: that he can enter the great world in order to work there as an active force; that he can take the path to the mothers, where he has to discover the primal forces of being in that sphere, of which the materialist will always say it is a nothing, of which the one who knows something about the spirit must always use Faust's words: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.”

But we also see in Faust how the rejuvenating powers of spiritual life work in him through the fact that he is portrayed as a German spirit. These rejuvenating powers work in him in such a way that in the end, when he goes blind, everything that could be called his connection to the physical-sensual world dies. And while it grows dark around him, a bright light shines within him. That is to say, he has come to the forces that Goethe really drew from the essence of the German national soul and that are awakened in him in such a way that he has sensed the rejuvenating power of true German life in the external culture that has grown old. These rejuvenating forces work in the soul in such a way that what his soul thinks and feels and does is seen directly in his inner being as the thoughts, feelings and will of the divine-spiritual beings themselves. spiritual beings themselves and feels connected to the spiritual world itself, which works in him as a rejuvenating force that does not allow his culture to grow old; which always gives him hope that, if any branch of culture has become spiritually dry, so to speak, the rejuvenating forces can bring about a new germ. This direct proximity of the national spirit to the individual soul of the human being, in turn, distinguishes the soul of the Central European from that of the Eastern European.

In a remarkable way, Russian Slavdom presents itself to spiritual science. The Russian has his national spirit as a ruling power, so that this national spirit does not, as with the Italian, for example, directly into the sentient soul or as with the Frenchman into the intellectual soul or as with the British into the consciousness soul nor does it dips into the ego; but that the folk soul, as a spiritual, hovers over the individual, to which it is looked up like to a cloud, while below, with their soul forces, the individual works, into whose soul forces the folk soul does not reach. Hence we see among these Eastern peoples that the individual soul powers, which have not yet been grasped in the stage of development, work together in an anarchic way. Because the national soul-life does not bring about their inner harmony, these three soul-forces work as if in anarchic confusion; they cannot find the possibility of being in harmony with each other. This is the peculiarity that seems strange to the Western European when he turns to the spiritual culture of the East. This lack of togetherness of the national soul in relation to the togetherness of the national soul with the individual human soul is what distinguishes the German from the Russian. And this distinction becomes particularly apparent when we turn our spiritual attention to the actual forces of the German national soul.

How does the development of German culture enter into the whole evolution of the world? After the Germans had had their encounters with the Romans and the southern peoples, German culture presents people who are directly seized by the power of the human in their being here in the world. To mention just one figure, we see Siegfried before us; we see the other figures of the Nibelungen before us. They carry the forces through which they are called to work in the world directly in their souls, and they feel that which they have there in their soul as that which guides, rules and sustains the world in general. What has been preserved in the popular mind, in the spiritual life, of this relationship between the soul of the people and the individual soul, as it already appears at the beginning of Central European culture, what has been preserved there, we can find it characteristically in a similar way to how the relationship to the spiritual world appears to us in mysticism. The mystic feels that which courses through him as the same that courses through the entire cosmos. He feels himself to be part of what he calls the Divine, the spiritual. One need only compare what pulses through Siegfried or the other figures, which are echoes of the oldest coexistence of the German folk soul with the individual soul, with the figure that has maintained great popularity within Russian folk life, the figure of Ilya Muromets. There we see how he, as a human being, feels the divine-spiritual in the distance, how he looks up to it, how it is something for him that is not directly in his soul, for which he can at most sacrifice himself and give as a champion. The courage, the strength in the Siegfried nature, the humility, the direct sacrifice in the Muromez nature.

And we can say: That which we see in the early days of the German flowering is like something that then disappears in the turmoil of the later times, succumbing to foreign influences. And then, in a wonderful way, from the twelfth, especially the thirteenth century onwards, we see a renewed effort of the German spirit shining through the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul.

Take figures such as Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. We see how figures and poetic subjects are indeed taken from the West, but how what is taken from the West is only the scaffolding and how an immediate connection with the most elementary forces of the supersensible world, for example, inspires Wolfram von Eschenbach to to make out of his Parzifal one who undergoes his journey to the Grail through the powers of his own soul; in that he seeks in the outer world, he wants to expand his soul powers with every step and to the same extent bring about a spiritualization in his soul. In this period, to which Wolfram von Eschenbach belongs, we see a deepening and at the same time a rejuvenation of the German character.

And then we see again how foreign influences gradually assert themselves; how, as it were, the German character ages. But we see the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul at work throughout all this aging. And we see these rejuvenating forces of the German national soul emerge in a remarkable way after Germany was made like a cultural desert by the enemies all around it in the Thirty Years' War; we see these forces glowing, we see a working out of the national forces, which in turn undergo a complete rejuvenation. Where do these rejuvenating forces come from? Here we must refer to Lessing, who in his works, in what is his spiritual testament, points to the immortal, the eternal in human nature – in that testament, however, in which the very clever do not want to believe. But at the end of his testament, he also pointed out how he sought knowledge, not the knowledge of the learned, who think they are at the pinnacle of education, but the knowledge of the simplest, most elementary forces of the people in primeval times. A rejuvenation, a refreshment of knowledge is what Lessing means when he says: Must every single person have traveled the path by which the human race achieves perfection in the same lifetime? Why could not every individual have existed more than once in this world? Is this hypothesis ridiculous because it is the oldest? Because the human mind, before it was dispersed and weakened by the sophistry of the school, immediately fell into it?

And so we have this deliberate immersion in the popular in order to arrive at the highest wisdom. Anyone who considers his connection with the development of the German people can only say: in Lessing we see an influx of the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul.

And again, in Herder and in Goethe, we see how they, the one supported by the other, delve into the German folk song, into German antiquity, and how they, stimulated by the rejuvenating forces of the German folk soul, achieve an elevation of the poetic and cognitive potential within them. And we see how Goethe created his Faust out of what had arisen in the midst of the people – the Faust figure, which he first knew only through the puppet theater, that is, through what lived within the people. Goethe and Herder experienced a rejuvenation of their lives through their penetration into the impulses of the folk soul. It was Lessing who also placed the Faust problem in its time, who pointed out that what was fundamentally present in drama in his time – figures such as those that lived in the people in old plays – should be brought to the stage again. And he gave a scene that draws on an old folk tradition, that draws on the connection with the spiritual world.

And if we visualize the trend of the Romantics, who sought a connection with the spirit through immersion in German folklore and mysticism, we see, for example, in Novalis, a deep immersion into the spiritual world.

When we consider all these circumstances, many things can be explained that have certainly already been emphasized, that have been accepted as something that has been recognized through observation, but that have not been understood in their context. The extraordinarily brilliant Karl Hillebrand has beautifully juxtaposed the characteristics of Western and Central European peoples. What he has to say in his very beautiful treatise on the Western world view finds complete confirmation, but also a thorough illumination, through what spiritual science has to say. Hillebrand emphasizes that the Italians brought European culture, the Spaniards mathematism, the English empiricism. And now he ponders: What is it, then, that the German spirit has to contribute to the general spiritual process of humanity? And in his answer he really does come up with an excellent, precise characterization of what the German spirit has to bring to humanity: “The German spirit is the first to have found the idea of the organism.” For those who think only in a British way, the organism does not exist. The essential is viewed from the outside, but the direct organic life and weaving does not appear to the eye. The rationalist of the West seeks to understand reality through historical ideas; but to immerse oneself in the real so that life is grasped in the real — Hillebrand also knows that this is the peculiarity of the German mind. And so it is precisely through spiritual science that the misunderstandings prevailing among European nations with regard to Germanness will come to light more and more.

It must truly be said: It is understandable how the German spirit, in its struggle for an inner, elementary, direct connection with the soul of the people, can be so difficult to understand. That which characterizes him, that which is in his own nature, and that which exists within his nature, is something that is organically connected with the spirit, that he must experience directly in the objective connection with his soul, and that is so difficult for the spirit, for example, which in his soul life grasps the folk soul only with the consciousness soul. Herman Grimm, who had such a thorough and beautiful understanding of the workings of the German national soul, says a beautiful word about the Englishman Lewes' biography of Goethe, which is indeed outstanding in certain respects: “When one reads the biography, then, if one, as a German, experiences Goethe's nature directly, one must say: Yes, this Mr. Lewes, he writes about a person who was born in August born in Frankfurt in August 1749, who experienced a youth so similar to Goethe's, a person to whom Goethe's life events are attributed, to whom Goethe's works are ascribed, who dies in March 1832, but from whom nothing is noticeable that the German observer feels and strives to prove in his Goethe.

And it is, after all, very understandable that the most intimate German conception of the world, the comprehension of the organic-living, seems improbable to the Western people. And so it could come about that, in a grotesque misunderstanding, the French philosopher Bergson was able to give a lecture around Christmas time in which he said that the German essence lacked a living grasp of the organic-living in the present, that the whole German essence had become a mechanism.

One has the feeling that this French philosopher, Bergson, who certainly has many depths in his nature, which he owes precisely to German idealism – Schelling – and which he then expresses in his own way, is lacking in depth when it comes to the German nature.

One may find it strange that this philosopher views the German nature as mechanistic because he believes that the old idealistic life has vanished. He judges the German people by the fact that German cannons are now facing his people. It is just as if Bergson had expected the French to be met, not by rifles and cannons, but by Germans reciting Goethe or Schiller poems to them. Since they do not do this, people, including philosophers, notice nothing of the German spirit, but only see the German mechanism, which confronts them in rifles and cannons.

But in many other respects, too, what is most intimate in the German spirit is difficult for those to understand who do not want to get involved in the most intimate peculiarity of German intellectual life, in which the soul of the people and the soul of the individual interact. Because this seems to me to be quite characteristic, I would like to share three sentences that were born, so to speak, out of the deepest, most intimate peculiarities of German development; these sentences are formulated as if the German wanted to express the essence of his soul in them, as he has overheard it in his national spirit.

The first sentence: “In the mind lives the spark in which the world soul reveals itself in the human soul.” This sentence was spoken by Eckhart, the German mystic. It may well be said that it is truly spoken from the essence of the interaction of the folk soul with the individual soul. Now try to translate this sentence into any Western European language in such a way that it is really translated. You will not be able to do so because the folk spirit of another language does not produce what the translation of this sentence would be, which so correctly expresses the content of the sentence in the sense of German mysticism.

The second sentence: “The German does not want to remain in a closed state of being, he always wants to become.” The German thus regards his nationality as something that he sees as an ideal to strive for. Fichte says: One is Italian, one is French, but one becomes German by feeling one's Germanness intensively and effectively within oneself; just as Faust feels that which he “always strives for”. “The German becomes, he does not want to remain in a closed state of being.” Try to translate that again so that it conveys this intimate sense. You will see that you cannot.

The third sentence is one in which Hegel expresses what appears to him to be the connection between the supersensible and the individual human soul. Hegel says that in the transition from being to non-being, from non-being to being, lies the living becoming, in which Fichte also grasped the essence of man in the ego. Not in the rigid state of being, but in that which is always creating, which always has within it the potential for transition from non-being to being, from being to non-being. This third sentence is eminently German: “Being and non-being unite in becoming to form a higher unity.” Try to translate this sentence into a Western European language, and you will not be able to.

What is German in the sense indicated will be particularly difficult for Eastern Europeans and Russians to understand. And it must be right to focus on the nature of the Russian people in our present day. For it is precisely the infinite vilifications that come to us from all sides, including from the east, that show the greatest lack of understanding of the German character. For decades, the eastern European character has been preparing to erect a barrier, a chasm, to the central European character.

Of course, in Western Europe, people are trying to capture in strict logic what the German seeks in a variety of ways, including in a variety of back and forth ways, because he must always remain in living unity with the supersensible if he is a German in the truest sense of the word. But this logic is, after all, a strange logic. And it is especially apparent to us now, when, out of such strange logic, it is still being said, despite everything that has happened: Who wanted the war? and then the strange implication is made that the people of Central Europe wanted this war. These logical arguments are on the same logical level as the sentence: “It is your fault, Germans, that the present wars can be waged at all, because you invented gunpowder.” The reasons that sound out to us from the immediate events of the present are more or less the same. We can even be blamed for the fact that the war in the newspapers is being waged against us, because the Germans also invented the art of printing. If this had not happened in Central Europe, the invective and abuse of the West could not now befalling us.

Many currents must be emphasized, which, when viewed in their entirety, compose everything that comes to us like a spiritual atmosphere from the East. There we see how, after the first half of the last century, something arose in Russia that was called Slavophilism. If we consider Slavophilism as it has now developed, we can discern three aspects in present-day Pan-Slavism. The first aspect, which arose radically, is that Slavophilism believes that Western culture is corrupt, that it is ripe for decline, and that Russian culture must save European culture. That is the first aspect. The second is: in the West, individualism reigns. This is not entirely incorrect if one understands it correctly, because one can call that coexistence of the individual soul with the folk soul an individualism; the individual wants to experience his divine-spiritual directly with his own soul powers. But Slavophilism considers this individualism to be something harmful.

And as a third reason is given: that the Western European and the Central European live out their religious feelings out of the enthusiasm of their soul, not out of mere humble devotion to a spiritual element that hovers like a cloud above the people and above the individual. This is why Dostoyevsky, for example, said: “We Russians must form the synthesis; that is, we must synthesize, we must form the confluence of all European cultures. For just as we speak all languages and understand all civilizations, so we also understand everything that has influenced all cultures and can express it in all freedom. We also understand human life in such a way that man stands by his God as the one who humbly bows before what he recognizes as the God hovering above the individual. Therefore we do not let ourselves be bound by a legal system; that contradicts what the individual directly experiences in his childlike humility. Thirdly, Dostoyevsky cites the Orthodox religion, of which he says that it never appeared as a militant church like the Western European one.

What these three statements of Slavophilism express is basically what has inspired many, at least the important minds of the East, what has filled their souls and then also become popular, what has been passed down from leading personalities to the people, and what has an enormous effect. We can distinguish different phases in this Slavophilism. Take, for example, Khomyakov. He still approaches the matter from the standpoint of spiritual knowledge. Orest Miller, a thoroughly noble man who was deeply immersed in Russian folklore, turns away from the dark side of Slavophilism and takes up what Khomyakov also emphasized: that the Russian ideal is not yet alive in every individual Russian. Thus we read in this Slavophile: “Our fatherland condemns the yoke of bondage, godless flattery and servility, nauseating falsehood, soulless and disgraceful apathy, black lawlessness in the courts and all manner of shameful deeds.” Or: “We will be the democrats among the other nations of Europe and the heralds of humanitarian principles that promote the free and independent development of each tribe.”

Orest Miller, who is well known in Russian folklore, was also enthusiastic about such a national ideal. However, when Khomyakov increasingly began to deify the Russian people instead of seeking the divine in the heavens, Orest Miller dared to voice a few objections. The result was that he was dismissed. But we see how what has been smouldering in the East for a long time is now haunting the West and is taking shape entirely out of the Russian character.

Thus we see how perhaps the most outstanding Russian, Soloviev, takes it up in his own way, but idealizes it, one might say spiritualizes it, elevating it to the spiritual, how he ties in with Slavophilism. But not in the way that a German would say: If the power that lives in the folk soul is to take effect, it must take hold of the individual human being, it must work through the soul forces of the ego; the individual human being must be the channel of what the folk soul has to say to the world. Thus Solowjew does not stand by the forces of the national soul, but he stands so that he also points upwards to that cloud-like spiritual image which stands above the individual in a spiritual height, in a spiritual distance. And then he says to himself: This Divine-Spiritual will work on the national soul. This Divine-Spiritual has set itself the task of carrying out a certain mission through the Russian people. And it does not matter what the Russian people are like. Whatever the case may be, what has to happen will happen by a miracle. Sinful or not sinful, vicious or not vicious, foolish or wise – that can do nothing to help it; but that which is at work there, it works through a cosmic miracle, simply through people, however they are. These are Solovyev's own words:

“That power which will give a new and complete content to the history of mankind can only be a revelation of that higher, divine world; but the people in whom that power will reveal itself must become the mediator between the human race and the superhuman reality, the free, self-conscious instrument of the latter.”

The human race, by which he means his people, is to become the instrument for the divine miracle that will take place, without the national soul allowing the individual souls to receive the powers for what the Russian people will accomplish in the development of humanity.

When we see that one of the most significant and best seers is far removed from what constitutes the character of the German being, we understand that a man like Boris Chicherin, who died in 1904, was unable to penetrate very far when he wanted to place himself on the peculiar basis of German thinking, when he wanted to tie in with Hegel. In his great work 'Science and Religion', Boris Chicherin attempts above all to develop the idea of how the human soul, through the ideas and thoughts it can develop within itself, gradually finds its way up to a point where it can mystically grasp the great divine rule. He tried to carry out this idea in jurisprudence and political science. But he fell from favor and was dismissed as Mayor of Moscow after Alexander III came to power, when he gave a speech that was completely imbued with the idea that what man can grasp in his soul can truly merge with the Russian essence.

More and more, we see how Slavophilism takes hold of that which those who could see through it a little had to say: it is no longer about some ideal, about something conceptual, but about something quite different. It is about asserting not some supernatural, not some conceptual, but simply the immediate physical powers of a race. And I believe it is good if a Western European does not choose a star witness who is a Western European, but someone who could have known. And someone who could know, as we shall see in a moment, says of Slavophilism, after it had passed through the minds of Katkov and Aksakov and others: “Slavophilism had become a fairground commodity, filling with wild, animalistic shouting all the dirty streets, squares and back alleys of Russian life.”

But the man who said this, and who also said another telling word about what Slavophilism had gradually become, he knew! The other word he said, directing it against Danilevsky, was: “The Russian writer lacks the strength to rise above the gloomy present; he content himself with the task of summarizing the contradictions prevailing among humanity into a well-rounded system and to draw from this system some practical postulates for his own fraction of humanity to which he himself belongs.”

All this can be seen as a consequence of what has been said: that the individual soul forces work chaotically, inharmoniously, at the moment when the divine life hovering over the individual is not grasped, not grasped in the soul of the individual himself. And this is particularly emphasized by this knowledgeable spirit in these words. And who is the knowledgeable spirit? It is the same one about whom a well-known Russian speaks the following words:

The man of whom the Russian prince Trzbeizkos says these words spoke, as I have quoted it, in turn of Slavophilism, from which he himself also started, even if he idealized it; for it is Solowjew himself who speaks about Slavophilism in this way. What is important is that we hear from an informed source what has been brewing in the East and is now coming towards us.

But, you see, even at the highest level of Soloviev's thinking, there is still something anarchic in the soul of the Eastern man. For whereas Solowjew, as early as 1880, in his “Criticism of Abstract Principles,” expressed himself as I have quoted, he comes, at the end of the eighties, to realize how far what is reality, what surrounds him as reality, is removed from what he has dreamed. Then the demand arises in him that politics should become moral. In “Morality and Politics,” Solowjew says the following: “We must not delude ourselves: the politics of selfish interest, which in international and social relations has hatred in its train, is transformed into the politics of anthropophagy (he means man-eating), which in the end destroys all morality, even in private and family life. For man is a logical being and cannot long remain in the monstrous discord between the principles of private and political activity. We are preached about our special sublimity and mission, but let us remember that the resulting and mutually exclusive claims must ultimately, in the name of cultural sublimity, lead to a fight to the death and the right of violence."

Thus Solowjew himself, who must gradually look away from reality in order to live in peace, one might say in peace of mind, with what he has dreamed up as an ideal, a spiritual Slavophilism: “The Russian people are not only an ethnographic unit with its innate characteristics and material interests, but a people that feels that above these characteristics and interests the cause of God hovers; a people ready to sacrifice itself for this cause; a theocratic people by vocation and duty.

But Solowjew also sees that what he dreams of and sees has not yet become a duty, not even an awareness, in his people. And one may use his words when answering the question he raises: why Europe cannot love what is really going on in the East. Solowjew himself raises the question: Why does Europe not love us? And he gives the answer. It is at the same time the answer for much that comes to us from the East like a spiritual aura in our immediate present. He asks this question: Why does Europe not love us? And he answers it in 1888: “Europe looks at us with disgust, because it sees the decisive thing not in the power and mission of Russia, but in its sin.” So Solowjew. But there were also very hard realities that had to be faced by this soul in order for it to arrive at such a conviction. It was especially hard for him when he had to see what Slavophilism had gradually become, which he himself had to say had become a fairground commodity. And finally, he finds it only logical that this Slavophilism should have come about in the end, because the Russian people, without looking at what they themselves first wanted to make of themselves, were to give Europe directly what they are. Solowjew finds it consistent that the Moscow University professor Yarosh should have praised Ivan the Terrible as “the perfect model of the qualities of a Russian in general and of an Orthodox and a tsar in particular”. This was said not in jest but in complete earnest, and Solowjew finds it consistent. For, he argues, if you look at what the Slavophiles actually have in mind when they speak of the Russian people, then it basically comes out typically in Ivan the Terrible. Nothing else could have come out as the ultimate consequence, Solowjew argues. But now he asks himself the question: how does Slavophilism come to such strange forms? Solowjew saw before him how the Slavophiles gradually said: the West is rotten, we can't use anything from it; new, young life must flow from the West to the East, and this new, young life is to be found with us. Solowjew saw all this. But in a certain respect he is thoroughly a genuinely Russian man, such a Russian man that he had something left over, one would like to say, for those who at least had the courage to carry this last consequence through. Of Katkov he said: “He had the courage to strip rational religion of all ideal embellishment and to present the Russian people themselves as the object of religious worship, not in the framework of the supposed virtues of the people, but in the name of factual power, of which the state is the living word or the embodiment of the deified people.”

That is what Solowjew says. But he asks himself: Yes, but where does the Russian, who is full of humility, get it all from? That was a question for Solowjew. He wanted to examine where it actually is in the Russian that is shown by those who threw the provocative Slavophilism into the people as a firebrand. And lo and behold, he found a strange answer. He examined the works of Danilevsky, the successor of Katkov and Aksakov. And he found that the people who hurl and have hurled fiery torches against the West had initially borrowed them in the thought-forms, in the whole logic, from the French Jesuit pupil Joseph de Ma istre, Solowjew could prove that the whole stamp of thought of the Slavophiles is borrowed from the one who is a Western European spirit; that Western European spirit who at the beginning of the 19th century established the doctrine: People cannot come into the spiritual through what is within themselves, but only and alone through authority, and he means the papal authority. That which she decrees can lead people to the spiritual world. If you want to read about de Maistre, you need only read the beautifully written article that Georg Brandes, the all-rounder, wrote in his “Geistesströmungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts” (Spiritual Currents of the Nineteenth Century) – the same Brandes who who is, of course, less a gardener of intellectual culture, who does not like to plant, but who knows how to cut the flowers everywhere and put together fantasy bouquets that may seem very ingenious to people. But if you want to get an idea from these bouquets, you can easily get everything from Brandes.

Thus Solowjew had made a strange discovery, which was illuminating for him, though. That with which Europe is to be invaded and overcome from the east comes from the— as Solowjew says—Jesuit pupil, that is, from his thoughts into the thoughts of the Slavophiles. And so Soloviev has no choice but to say the characteristic words at the end: “A tiny morsel from the intellectual banquet of the West proved sufficient to nourish our national and political consciousness for half a century, and a single one of the countless twigs from the Western European tree of knowledge of good and evil were not only proudly contrasted with the whole tree from which they had been plucked, but even contrasted with it as the Russian tree of life, which should grow and embrace the whole world.

That was indeed a remarkable discovery. But Solowjew pursued the matter further. And finally he discovered a remarkable book by Bergeret: 'Principes de politique.' And he found that this reactionary spirit Bergeret also reappears with his thought forms in the Russian Slavophiles. And finally he discovered a German book written in 1857 by a 'strange fellow', Heinrich Rückert. I do not believe that there is a person here in this hall who knows anything about this book. I also do not believe that there is anyone in Berlin who knows anything about it, except perhaps scholars in this specialized field. The book is entitled: 'Textbook of World History in Organic Development'. But Solowjew says: Russian patriots have also copied from this book. Now he had it together. Now he knew the forces that had come together to be effective, to be led into the field against the West. Now he knew what had seduced even such fine minds as Orest Miller and others. And Solowjew spoke the words:

“Our patriots condemn various views because they are Masonic. In this case, their own view of Russia and patriotism is doubly condemnable, from our point of view and from theirs, because it is alien, un-Russian, slavishly transplanted from foreign soil.”

That was certainly an important revelation. And after this revelation, Solowjew did not find many friends among those who had been his friends before. But this Solowjew was really a strange person. After his first Slavophile period, after Alexander II had been murdered, he gave a fiery speech in which he advised the successor to prove himself to be truly Russian. Solowjew saw this “genuinely Russian” in the fact that Alexander II naturally had to pardon the murderers of his predecessor; the idea of the sublime must first be expressed in this. And they “behaved Russian” in response to this speech. Solowjew was chased away, he was chased out of his position. He had already had the fate of seeing that some of the things he had seen in his idealism were different in reality than he had dreamed them up.

Now, when you bring in such an impeccable star witness as this great philosopher is, you can see how, little by little over decades, a current bordering on megalomania has arisen in the East that must necessarily lead to arson in the end.

I have chosen to invoke Soloviev as a characterizer of the Russian character and the Russian national soul in contrast to the German national soul because we are particularly accused by Russia of not being able to understand the Russian character. Well, I think we can help ourselves by not characterizing it ourselves, but by having it characterized by someone who lived in such a way that he was interwoven with Slavophilism, albeit an ideal Slavophilism; that we call upon such a one, upon whom we may indeed call.

And if we now add this to what has been said about the relationship of Germans and Central Europeans to the outside world, then much of what has happened becomes understandable from its intellectual underpinnings. What is said about Germany in our times often coincides with nonsense and futility.

What the German feels to be his essential nature must be particularly offensive to him in this time; offensive for the very reason that from such a consideration what has been said from other points of view can also be derived: the great hope for the future of German activity and of the German spirit. This German spirit, when we consider its relation to the soul of the German people, appears as a spirit that tends to deepen the spiritual life of the whole cultural development of mankind.

If only those who so glibly speak of the German character from abroad would observe in detail the struggles of those souls who are truly gripped by the German national spirit. Then they would not, as I stated last time, depict something like Romain Rolland's “Schultze”, but they would see something different; because in many places something different can be seen, as I have only given a few examples of.

In this lecture, I wanted to point out how German idealism itself is still a germ, how it must develop into a flower, into fruit, into a complete grasp of the spiritual world, which is grasped in its true, concrete vitality, precisely because the German national soul is connected with the individual souls.

A personality comes to mind, a man who died as a grammar school headmaster in Bromberg in 1867. He is a very different kind of spirit in German intellectual life from this 'Schultze' of Romain Rolland. He is Johann Heinrich Deinhardt. His treatises are written from a thoroughly German way of thinking. They contain a remarkable passage. His treatises were published by his friend Schmidt, including a treatise on the immortality of the soul, which was written in a simple style to his friend, who was then his editor. In it, he wants to show how it occurred to him that man, even while he is here in life, is working on an immortal body; that everything he accomplishes serves to organize an immortal body that passes through the gate of death. — Thus we see this simple school teacher on the path of spiritual science.

And so much more might be cited. In such instances the co-working of the German national soul is fulfilled through what the individual strives for. In such matters it is revealed how this German national soul provides the individual soul with the impulses to work towards the very first sources of knowledge and to link the individual soul life of the human being to the eternal in the soul life. But we will continue this discussion tomorrow.

Today, however, I would like to summarize what I had to say about the supporting forces that are contained in Germanness and that are shown precisely in this ever-renewed connection to the very first sources of human knowledge and human experience; I would like to conclude the consideration that I have given to the German national soul in relation to other national souls, with the words of a little-known Austrian poet, who, from a truly German soul, one might say, from a dialogue with the German national soul, published his “German Sounds from Austria” in 1881. In these “German Sounds from Austria” by Fercher von Steinwand, we find a poem that shows so well how vividly the individual German can feel in it, in what lives and moves, always rejuvenating the German essence, as the German folk soul. It presents itself to us as in a vision. As if all those who are interested in it come to the Kyffhäuser mountain to see as guests the mystery of the Kyffhäuser, the mystery of Emperor Barbarossa resting within, who keeps the power of the German essence hidden like a mystery. And for Fercher von Steinwand, one of the guests who come here represents the German spirit: the spirit, as already mentioned, that Fercher von Steinwand, the poet of “Deutsche Klänge aus Österreich” (German Sounds from Austria), also feels as the spirit that constantly rejuvenates the soul of each individual because it always allows that which speaks from the world of the stars, from suns and moons, to shine within; the spirit that speaks to the heart in the most intimate sense, because it speaks of the vastness of the universe; this German spirit, this rejuvenating German spirit, is what the German poet from Austria, Fercher von Steinwand, lets speak with words, in which I would like to summarize what I have tried to hint at today in terms of my feelings about the German spirit, especially in comparison with other European national spirits:

What springs from the riddles of this earth,
What finds hearts, what masters minds,
What flows eternally speaking from the stars
And reveals an inimitable God,
What seemingly gets lost in time and the world
And yet shoots around us in a thousand streams:
That is the primal power of the German spirit,
And to speak it clearly is the oath it has sworn!

If it must always be close to the human soul and the human mind, and must be one of its most intimate concerns, to raise the question that is to be the subject of today's reflection, — in our time, when so many, many have to go through the gateway of death at a young age, it must be even more important for the soul to direct one's feelings and thoughts to that which is immortal in the human being. Admittedly, in our time, a consideration such as the following is met with prejudice after prejudice, especially those prejudices that come from those who, from their firm ground, as they say, of the scientific world view, regarding this question, either considering it as something that transcends the limits of human knowledge, or regarding it as something about which anything that is said must be in clear contradiction to the achievements of the scientific way of thinking. If there were to be a sentence tonight that could not stand up to the strictest criticism of the scientific world view, I would prefer to leave this consideration unsaid. For what natural science has to say about this question from its point of view must, from the point of view of the spiritual-scientific world view, from which this is spoken, - it must not only be anticipated by him, but, insofar as it proves to be justified in our time from the point of view of current science, it must also be recognized as fully justified. But those who raise objections to expositions of the following kind from a standpoint that appears to be a natural-scientific world view, always proceed from the assumption that even in our time one can still make do with the thoughts and ideas, or, better said, the thought habits of a world view that is drawing to a close, in the face of advanced spiritual science. And it is still extraordinarily difficult for people today to understand that anyone who wants to talk about such questions of spiritual world view must appeal to insights into the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit, that go beyond what natural science is able to produce, that, so to speak, enter the terrain of a completely different field of knowledge, but that, alongside and above natural science, can exist as fully as natural science. The spiritual-scientific world view wants to let that which it has to say flow into the spiritual development of humanity, just as that which we today call the natural-scientific world view flowed into this process of development three to four centuries ago. And just as this natural scientific world view was at that time contrary to the thinking and prejudices of a wide circle and yet found its way to the human sense of truth, so spiritual science will take this way to the human sense of truth, even if today, quite understandably — I say it explicitly — it must still meet objection after objection; and if something like what has to be said today must, quite understandably, be seen by many as a flight of fancy, as a fantasy.

Because that which can answer the question: What is immortal about the human being? can be answered, must first be drawn from the hidden depths of the human soul. A research method is needed that is based on intimate inner soul work, that rests deep within the human soul, that reaches for nothing but what is present in every human soul, but what eludes observation and the attention of this human soul in the everyday life of this human soul. What a person carries through the gateway of death, what they carry up into a spiritual world in which they find themselves when they have laid down their bodies, cannot be grasped with everyday powers, cannot be grasped with the powers of knowledge that one has for everyday life as a way of observing the world. A more intimate inner work of the soul is necessary for this. Already on repeated occasions have I been allowed to speak here in this city about this intimate inner path, the purely spiritual-soul path that man has to go through if he wants to enter the field of spiritual entities and spiritual realities. From a particular point of view, this path of the soul to the spiritual will be illuminated again this evening.

We cannot recognize from the everyday life of the person standing before us what belongs to the spiritual world about this person. Nor can we recognize this as we can see from the water that the hydrogen, which is quite different from water, is contained in this water. First chemistry must come and separate hydrogen from water by its laboratory method; then one obtains something that can come out of water and which shows quite different properties from those of water. While water is liquid, hydrogen is gaseous; while water extinguishes fire, hydrogen burns. But no one who only has water in front of him can know what the properties, the peculiarities, the essence of hydrogen are. Chemistry must first come and separate hydrogen from water. Just as little can one recognize in the human being who stands before us in everyday life what lives in him for eternity, for immortality. One would like to say that the spiritual-scientific method must come like a spiritual chemistry and separate from the body that which cannot appear in connection with the body. And however fantastic and dreamy, perhaps even foolish it may still appear to some today, there will be a science of the future that is clear about the fact that there are spiritual-soul methods that bring the spiritual-soul of man, the immortal part of man, out of its connection with the body, so that man can really know: “I now live with my soul outside my body; I experience myself in the soul outside the body!” And only through this research, which leads to a knowledge whereby the soul experiences itself cognitively outside the body, can one enter the realm in which the soul has its immortal members. But it is not external methods, not tangible methods, such as those used by external natural science, that can serve to, so to speak, chemically separate the soul from the mortal body, if the crude expression may be used, but rather intimate soul methods, inner soul experiences. Of these soul methods, these inner soul experiences, we want to present two in particular today.

The first method is called, I would say, using a technical term from spiritual science: the concentration of the life of thought, of feeling, of the life of will impulses. When described in this way, this concentration of the life of thought, of feeling, of the life of will impulses seems easy; but, to quote Goethe's Faust, “Yet the easy is difficult!” And what I have to describe concerns the soul's experiences of tremendous inner impact, experiences in the face of which we stand in recognition of a much greater inner tragedy, I would say, than one can ever stand in the face of physical death. That is why those who have been close to spiritual science at all times have always emphasized that the path into the spiritual worlds, the path into spiritual knowledge, leads to the gate of death. It seems simple — but this simplicity must be grasped with all intensity, with all energy — what one has to do to free the soul from the experience with the body. A thought, a feeling or a series of thoughts, a series of feelings, must first be fully grasped with the soul, making them fully present in the soul, then placing them at the center of consciousness, so that nothing but these thoughts and feelings, placed at the center of our consciousness at will by our soul, stand in this consciousness; that, as it were, the whole world around us, with all sensory impressions, with all other sensations and thoughts; and only that which we place at the center of our consciousness through our free will must merge completely with the soul and its powers, the soul must know itself to be completely one with that which it thus places at the center of consciousness.

This is a task for a long, long time. Depending on the person's aptitude for it, it may take weeks, months, years; even if he only devotes a few minutes to it during the day, it will take a long time to evoke in the soul that inner faculty capable of rejecting all other thoughts and perceptions, all other feelings and volitions, and of placing only a certain kind of thought at the center of consciousness. It does not matter so much what the content of the thoughts is, but it does matter that they place a clearly perceived sensation or thought at the center of our consciousness in such a way that we actually live only in what we are thinking or feeling, that we forget ourselves in doing so, that we know ourselves to be completely one with it. In this way we concentrate all the powers of the soul on this single sensation, this single thought. At first, however, a person must be clear about the fact that, as already mentioned, this seems easy; but the easy is difficult. Various things are important when practising the concentration of thought. Above all, it is important that we place such a thought at the center of our consciousness that we can fully comprehend it. With most of the thoughts we have, all kinds of inner sympathies and antipathies, all kinds of feelings, memories, play a role; they color our thoughts, so that we usually do not even know what is going on in our soul when we have a thought in everyday life and concentrate on it. Anyone who is grounded in psychiatry or psychology or modern science today naturally has a cheap objection to all this. He will say: When the spiritual researcher concentrates on a thought, he cannot know what is playing out in this thought from the subconscious depths of his soul and how he then lives in self-suggestion and fantasies. It is certainly quite understandable that such objections are raised from a scientific point of view; they are seemingly fully justified in a certain way, and the spiritual researcher can well see that they have to be made. However, what usually has to be observed in all these things is not taken into account. You will find a detailed and careful compilation in the two books: “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in my “Occult Science”. But often one passes by what should be fully observed. It is important to place a thought or feeling at the center of one's entire soul life that can be easily surveyed, that cannot remind us of anything, that cannot evoke anything from the subconscious depths of the soul. Therefore, it is even better not to place in the center of one's consciousness an idea that is taken from some external reality, an idea that depicts something, but rather an idea that is purely allegorical, purely symbolic , in which it is only important that we concentrate the soul forces, that we focus all the work of the soul forces on detaching ourselves from everything else in order to concentrate purely on this one point. I will give a very simple example. Someone can immerse themselves in the idea:

And one would not be able to follow, one would feel how the soul, as it were taken out of the body, unites with the general spirit that blows and works through the world. One would feel estranged from oneself. Therefore, the exercise that is implied by this must be modified by another, which must proceed simultaneously with it. And anyone who takes the path to spiritual research as I have described it in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” will thereby receive the individual rules by which he can really modify what I have just described, so that it does not happen that we feel, as it were, wrenched from the best part of ourselves. Something else must therefore be added. The first thing that separates the soul from the body was the concentration of thought, the intensification of the life of thought. Through this intensification of the life of thought, we are, as it were, snatched from ourselves.

The second contradicts the first, so to speak; it is something opposite, the other pole; but life proceeds in polar fashion, passing through opposites. Therefore, if one has a realization that is not to be a realization in abstract terms, but a realization of the laws of nature, of life, one must move through opposites. The second is what one might call a complete surrender of the will to the ruling, present, and active world powers. Just as, in the first case, we bring our sensory perception, our intellect, which otherwise plays according to the guidance of external sensory perception, to a standstill, so in the second case we must bring to a standstill every inner stubborn will, in a sense, everything in us that is will. Now there is a certain means by which one can develop the strength within oneself to make one's own will truly subservient to the general weaving of the world: this is when one acquires a completely new attitude towards what we call our destiny. How do we experience our destiny in our ordinary existence? Well, we experience our destiny in such a way that we regard what befalls us as fate in good and evil as something that befalls us; that we encounter it with sympathy or antipathy, so that we regard what is, so to speak, what befalls us, what happens to us, as something that comes to us, so that we stand outside of it, we see ourselves as the I-, the self-being, on which fate has an effect, to which it comes.

Even in ordinary life, it can be seen through truly rational reflection that we basically cannot relate to fate at all. If you look at yourself at a particular point in time in your later experience, you will say to yourself: what you are then, what you experience in your inner being, what you can do and achieve, is inconceivable without the ordinary destiny of life between birth and death. Just think about it carefully. Everything we can do in the present moment – if we trace it back to our ordinary life between birth and death, we have to say to ourselves: it is connected to something we went through earlier. The fact that I can do something now may be connected to the fact that the person who was responsible for my education once brought me into this or that sphere. What happened to me then united with me, became strength in me; now it is my ability. Whenever you really think deeply, “What am I actually, what is there in me?” you will see that what is in you or in other people at the present moment is woven together out of fate. And if one pursues this thought properly, one might say in one's soul, one comes to understand how one must, as it were, grow ever more together with one's destiny, how one must recognize that which one calls one's self as a weave of destiny. What one otherwise speaks of as a coincidence is now found within oneself, interwoven within oneself; one finds oneself as the result of fate. One grows so close to fate that one identifies with it. Just as in the earlier way of spiritual research one identified with a thought or a feeling, so now one must recognize oneself as identical with one's destiny through the circumstances themselves. What I am saying now must not remain merely theoretical, it must not be just an abstract consideration, but it must be lived through inwardly, felt in one's innermost being. Then we feel how we gradually see our will streaming out into our destiny, and we see how we say to ourselves: “You have so far regarded something as a twist of fate, but it was you yourself. That which is in you has brought this twist of fate upon you, otherwise you would not be this being, this I!

In essence, when one meditates on one's destiny for weeks, months or years, depending on one's disposition, one experiences an emotional surrender to fate. One learns to recognize that one must go out of oneself from the little room in which one has previously felt locked up. One learns to flow with the stream of one's destiny. When one thus recognizes how the self, the I, actually lives outside, how in what we call “happens” to us, in truth our will rests, how the I flows along in destiny, then this will is torn out of us again with us, as we surrender ourselves to our destiny. And that is the second. But it must be achieved, must be achieved in inner emotional and mental experience. It must fill the whole person, that is, it must be surrendered emotionally to fate. Then one feels how one grows together with fate and with spiritually effective world forces that permeate and interweave the external world. What seems to flee from us in the concentration of thought, what seems to take away our selfhood, is then followed — that is, the thought is followed — by an element of will, an emotional element of will. While we feel the thought flowing out of our head in the way indicated earlier, we now draw something out of our whole being. We sacrifice the will to the thought. And then the soul, the thinking, the feeling, the sensing, the willing steps out with the thought and we go with it.

What I have described is a real process, an actual stepping out of the soul from the body. It is something that can be experienced just as truly and intensely and really — one might say experimentally — as the hydrogen leaving the water, the hydrogen detaching from the water. It is like the soul detaching from the body, which then remains behind so that this body, with all its outer experiences, becomes an external object; the soul has stepped out of the body. As one otherwise regards the table or the chair in the sense world, so the soul regards its body, which it has left. And what is most important, it does not just experience itself in the abstract, but as truly as it develops an inner experience in the body, so truly it develops an inner experience outside of the body, of which it knows it is a spiritual-soul experience. Fully in the inner experience, so the soul experiences itself. And truly, just as people did not know for a long time that oxygen could be separated from hydrogen and had to learn it first, so the spiritual culture of humanity will learn that the spiritual-soul can be separated from the physical, however baroque, foolish, and absurd this may still appear to present-day humanity. A real spiritual science is that which the future will have - and through which the future of the human soul will bring that knowledge which the human soul needs when the forces that have been there from time immemorial have matured in it for such things. We await such a time. Only he can deny it who misjudges the signs of the time, who does not know the deepest longing that lives today in numerous souls, consciously in some, unconsciously in others, and that will take hold of all mankind: the longing to know about the spiritual. But when the soul seizes itself in the actual experience free of the body, then it becomes acquainted with powers within itself, which one does not have in everyday life, which one cannot unfold in the body. One power becomes known to us, which may be described in the following way:

When we live through our everyday life, in which the soul develops the power of imagination, feeling and will, we come to what is ultimately called memory. And anyone who reflects a little on memory knows what this memory means for the whole cohesive being of the human being. We could not develop a sense of self if we did not remember the experiences we have gone through since a certain point in time after birth. It is only because the stream of memories does not break off, because we know that it was we who have lived through this stream, that we are a self, a self. Even world views can only work with memories that the soul stores and can then bring these memories into a harmonious or logical context. We can therefore understand what the soul has before it in everyday life as its final experience, as memory. What is the basis of remembering, of memory? Well, from an external point of view, we can say that when we go through experiences, we form ideas, we feel this or that about the experiences. Then we have a picture stored in our soul, and when we have long since moved beyond the experience, we know that we can look back on the picture in our inner experience; the experience itself is not there, but only the inner picture is there, something is there that our soul is just weaving. In order to approach this image, to approach the essence of memory in general, we can now consider the following – I can only sketch it out in broad strokes, as it were, with charcoal lines, which you can then follow in detail in the literature of spiritual science.

If we want to approach this memory, we find that in the first period of life after birth, after entering the world, this memory is not yet alive. This memory only occurs in the earliest childhood; up to a certain point in early childhood, we remember back later. What happened before that must be reported to us by our environment, but we do not remember back. What is the basis for remembering back? It is based on certain powers that the soul can use to retain images, powers that enable the soul to store these images within itself. These powers were already there before the memory was there, they were already present immediately after birth, but they had a different task then. They had the task of still working on the delicate organs of the human being, on the nervous system and the brain of the human being; on the nervous system and brain they have to work plastically. They were still formative forces of the human organism, of that which is still soft, so to speak – roughly speaking, but it means a reality – that which must first be formed so that the human being is this particular human being. As formative forces, these still run into the physical organization in the earliest childhood. And when this organization has hardened — again, this is a figure of speech — so much so that these formative forces no longer flow into it, then they are reflected back from the physical into the soul. The physical works like a mirror. And what we then experience in our soul, especially what is stored up in our memories, are mirror images reflected back from our physical life. In truth, we remember because our body is a mirroring apparatus. Science will fully understand this when it continues on its path. Then it will also see through the contradictions that it still raises when such things are presented. It is as if one mirror were hanging on the wall after the other and we were passing by, we would only see ourselves as long as we were standing in front of the mirrors. The mirror reflects our own image. It is the same with our inner spiritual experience. The body is a mirroring apparatus; it reflects what the soul experiences. Through this, the soul itself experiences what were previously formative forces in the most tender childhood, what was used, so to speak, to build the mirror in the first place.

A further stage is this: Imagine the following – I present it to you as a comparison, but it means something very real – imagine standing in front of a mirror that gives you the opportunity to see yourself, to see what you yourself send to the mirror as a ray of light. You see yourself because the mirror reflects your physical image. In the same way, your body reflects that which is in the soul. But now imagine, if — in the soul — you were to acquire the strength to dispense with the mirror altogether, you would develop such great strength that you would, as it were, look into space at that which the mirror otherwise reflects as your own image. But this happens through the soul exercises that I mentioned: concentration of thought, immersion in the will - surrender to the order of the world, you could also say. In this way the soul powers are so strengthened that what would otherwise be reflected back from the body, which is only like a mirror image, emerges as one's own inner, soul experience, that it becomes inwardly alive through the soul's own power. Therefore, what the spiritual researcher experiences inwardly when he has separated his soul from his body is a higher developed, active memory work. While in ordinary life we only go as far as memory, for which we depend on the reflection of the body, the exercises suggested here now give us the ability to develop inner soul forces and to make our soul's inner life actively engaged, so that it radiates an inner reality.

When the soul reaches the point where it creates its inner forces, as it were, but in truth draws them from the deepest inner being, then it will notice that it not only unfolds these forces, but that with the unfolding of these forces, with the creation of the inner mirror image, so to speak, something else takes place that we can call: perception, direct grasping of a spiritual world. However, this perception is quite different from the perception of external sensory reality. When we perceive external sensory reality, we look at objects with our eyes, we listen to sounds with our ears, and we touch external objects with our hands. In this case, it is the object that we approach that has an effect on us from the outside. But when we develop what I have described as the inner powers of the soul, which really come to life so that the soul knows itself outside the body in a system of inner forces, then what is spiritual essence, spiritual reality, flows into these forces. I will use another comparison: When I touch this corner here with my hand, perceive it through the senses, the corner is outside of me; the corner touches my hand from the outside. It is not the same in spiritual perception, but rather, if this were a soul power, which the hand now represents, and if I do not let it work, then the spiritual flows into the hand from the rear, as it were. While the physical touches things from the outside, the spiritual does not touch from the outside; the spiritual flows into the soul forces, so that we have to acquire completely new concepts if we want to speak of this spiritual recognition and perception. We perceive external things; in order to enter into a relationship with the spiritual, it is necessary that we develop powers into which this spiritual world flows. That means that we must say: through soul development we experience the great and powerful that the spiritual world perceives us, that we become something like a thought, like a will impulse of higher spiritual beings that invisibly and supersensibly stand above us. The spiritual researcher must speak of these spiritual beings, which are invisible and supersensible in relation to the cognitive powers of the soul just discussed, in the same way that the natural scientist speaks of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and the physical human kingdom, as the four natural kingdoms that are outside of us. And just as we, when we stand before these beings of the four kingdoms, say: We perceive, we reflect on these entities - they are outside, and we make sensory images of them - so we must say: as we go out of our body with our soul we ourselves become — but in a much higher, in an inner liveliness and essentiality — we ourselves become thoughts, feelings, and volitional impulses of the higher spiritual beings. We are perceived, we experience ourselves being perceived by the higher spiritual beings.

From this you can see that anyone approaching the question, “What is immortal about the human being?” cannot ask themselves the question in the way that people still so often do today. They approach such a question and say: Well, I have acquired this or that concept. How can I be proved the immortality of the soul? Yes, with these concepts, which one has acquired in the outer life and in science, one cannot prove it; because these concepts relate to what the soul experiences in everyday life and what is only an inner reflection. Just as a mirror image does not remain when the mirror is no longer there, what the soul thinks, feels and wills in everyday life does not remain either, because it is only a mirror image of the body; even the memory in which it is stored is a mirror image of the soul. He who would prove the immortality of the soul by thinking, feeling and willing is on the same path as he who would prove the permanence of the mirror image from the picture in the mirror. Everything that is a mirror image must be admitted to the natural scientist — and nothing else is presented to him. All that which in ordinary life we call the soul does not pass through the portal of death. But the soul contains something — for what spiritual science brings up is contained in the soul — that passes through the gate of death, and passes through the gate of death in such a way that it can only be grasped in concepts and ideas that one does not have at all unless one first develops them. While for ordinary experience one must say that the human soul perceives, for spiritual experience one must say: the soul is perceived by higher beings. While in sensory experience one perceives oneself, for spiritual experience one must say: after death, the human being is received by the higher spiritual beings. When man incorporates his thoughts from external natural things into his soul, then the entity that rules over him supersensibly incorporates itself into him; he is remembered, he is carried away into the spiritual world. That is why it is so difficult to answer the question: What is immortal about the human being if you want to answer it with the ordinary concepts of the day, which do not apply to it at all.

And all philosophers who have tried to approach the immortality of the human soul, to answer the question of the immortality of the soul, have always come back to saying: there must be something fine and substantial that goes beyond death. We have seen that nothing of the substantial remains, but that the soul's powers are themselves a highly developed memory life, that it is a being perceived, a being born in the spiritual world. They all know that such processes in the life of the senses even have their symbols, their analogies. When one billiard ball strikes another, the physicist says: the state of motion of the first ball passes into the second. What has passed from one ball to the other? It is not the substance of the first that has passed into the second, but only the force passes.

Those who have thought about the immortality of the soul have always thought of it as something that is in ordinary life and passes through the gate of death; while what passes through the gate of death must first be sought, because it lies so deeply hidden in the soul that it is not noticed at all, that attention is not focused on it in ordinary life; but it is there after all. And when someone who has so truly, chemically, as it were, separated the soul and spirit from the body, then experiences this soul and spirit as it is sheltered in a supersensible world of spiritual beings that stands above it, then he also knows that in this of the soul — just as hydrogen is hidden in water —, that in this he has something that works very secretly, so to speak between the lines of life; which absorbs the finest powers of the soul, of experience, of the moral abilities of the human being, just as the small plant germ absorbs the forces from the whole plant in order to concentrate them. And just as, after withering, after the leaves wither and the blossom dies, the plant carries over into the following plant as a small germ what lived in the previous plant, what the plant has saved as a germ — so it is in the human soul. If you distill it out in this way, you realize that, in every moment of life, waking and sleeping, this human soul works in the depths of everyday life, working out everything we acquire in terms of abilities acquires is permeated, deeply permeated, by what it has done in the way of right and wrong, beauty and ugliness. And then one knows that what lives hidden in the soul goes through a life between death and a new birth – and then returns to earthly life. In the life between death and a new birth, man gathers strength from a spiritual world, but these become formative forces so that through a new birth he can unite with what he has received from his father and mother and from his line of ancestors. Thus the human soul does not live through one earth life, but successive earth lives.

The complete life on earth therefore consists of a succession of lives that take place between birth and death, and of the life between death and a new birth, which are longer than the lives on earth where the soul dwells in purely spiritual spheres, where it is active and occupied there – where it has grown together with the spiritual world just as it has here with the physical world. That the human soul experiences repeated lives in its universal, that each subsequent life on earth is the effect of previous lives on earth, is what spiritual science will gradually incorporate into the spiritual culture of humanity, just as the Copernican worldview has been incorporated into external culture. It is certainly still the case today that people often say: Yes, what you are telling me, contradicts what the five senses consider to be true! Well, people have even had to experience quite different things that contradict their five senses. For thousands of years, people believed according to their five senses that the sun and the starry sky moved around the earth. That it is the other way around, that the earth moves around the sun, he had to believe despite the contradiction of the five senses. Thus, what must now contradict the five senses, that man goes through repeated earth lives, will also enter into the thinking habits of men. But then man will speak out of a real science about what is immortal in the human being. He will seek this immortal, as it were, between the lines of ordinary experiences, will know within himself an inwardly working being, which is sheltered in a spiritual world, just as the thinking being is sheltered in the sensual outer world in our ideas and thoughts and sensations.

Then the human being will know himself connected with his eternal, his immortal, connected with the spiritual world. This is the destiny of the evolution of humanity. And we may truly remember this in our time, in the time of difficult but also glorious trials; we may remember how precisely German spiritual life — you will not find it incongruous if I mention this in the last part of my discussion — how precisely German spiritual life has been working for a long time to gain such a science. We need only recall Lessing, the great standard-bearer of modern German intellectual life, and consider the store of enlightened ideas for him and for humanity that he gathered in his soul. He summarized them, as if in a testament, in his beautiful essay 'The Education of the Human Race'. Of course, many people today, especially the very clever ones, say: Well, Lessing! He wrote and said many things throughout his life, then he grew old, his mental powers weakened, and then he also wrote such complicated stuff, in which he advocated something like the doctrine of repeated lives on earth, of intermediate lives between death and a new birth in the spiritual world! People consider it a crazy idea, and they forgive the great minds if they also come up with such complicated ideas, which are not seen as such in ordinary life, which can be grasped with the five senses. But Lessing said something very significant at the end of the work: 'There have always been people in the most ancient times who, through ancient clairvoyance, through ancient abilities of the human soul that were still closer to the spiritual forces of the world, knew something about repeated earthly lives. And Lessing says: “Is it to be denied that the soul of man has achieved something through original powers, before it was corrupted by the sophistry of school?”

Lessing was right. Spiritual science will show humanity that what was effectively there at a primitive stage of development will come at the highest level of truly developed scientific knowledge, when science has progressed to the point where it not only chooses as its tools not only external, tangible methods that can be grasped with the five senses, but when it allows spiritual-soul experiments as such methods — which has just been described as a kind of spiritual chemistry. And it is precisely German spiritual life that has always pointed to this intimacy of the soul life, through which the soul comes beyond itself into a higher life of feeling, which is not a mere life of memory but an immersion into spiritual reality. A higher life of thought, a higher life of feeling, a higher life of will. To achieve this, to strengthen the soul's powers so that it can leave the body, has always been the aim of German spiritual life; and this is one of the germs of German spiritual life to which I referred yesterday, which has yet to come to fruition as the blossoms and fruits of this German spiritual life.

We see, of course, how very remarkably inward-looking minds, such as the wonderful Novaks, how these German minds always and again, through the inner living contemplation, through the contemplative experience of their soul, arrive in direct contemplation at the knowledge that this as an immortal soul through the portal of death; and how they then arrive at concepts that seem foolish to ordinary experience, but which, because they do not fit ordinary experience, are precisely suited to an experience that goes beyond ordinary experience. He who in spiritual science wants to find only the ordinary concepts cannot come to it. This spiritual science requires an inner mobility, an elasticity of mind, so that one can come to new concepts. Most people would like to spare themselves this out of inner laziness. They believe that the spiritual world must be something like a finer copy of the sensual world; they imagine the spiritual world to be material and substantial again. But when you experience the world spiritually, nothing of what you are accustomed to remains in it; instead, something completely new awakens that you have not yet known, but with which you must enrich your soul in order to experience within yourself what is immortal in the human soul.

So when such people speak of the spiritual world, to which the soul belongs in the immortal, they must first form the words, the concepts. That is why I have to apologize to you, so to speak, for today's lecture. In a lecture like this, where one speaks of the spiritual world but in words that are coined for ordinary life, one has to struggle with the words. One has to demand that one's formulations use words that are uncomfortable for those who want to stick to the familiar. Time and again, critics come along and say: What you have said does not even exist! I know that. Of course, these gentlemen know an infinite amount, but when they apply their old concepts to something that must have completely new concepts, then their criticism does not apply to what they want to characterize. But in German intellectual life we have minds – Novalis is one of them – who know how to speak in a language that is indeed the German language, but which seems like a wonderfully living essence distilled from the German language to show something that is as real as the sensory world, that is the reality into which the soul passes when it walks through the gate of death. What such people say can have an effect on those who are receptive to it.

And now I will give you a remarkable example; it is too beautiful for me to withhold from you, because it shows how Novalis has worked. I will purposely relate to you his effect on a Belgian-French poet-philosopher who studied Novalis, who, as he claims, immersed himself completely in Novalis, and who received an impression that he describes in the following way.

Before I present this, I must say that another Franco-Belgian poet and philosopher, Maurice Maeterlinck, immediately after the outbreak of the war and repeatedly, found particularly harsh words about the German barbarians and launched a most outrageous attack on this barbaric culture. That is Maurice Maeterlinck, for whose fame in the world German intellectual life has done more than French. But gratitude is not something that needs to be demanded in this day and age. He really did insult and revile these German barbarians, much as the others I mentioned yesterday.

In contrast to this, there is another Belgian-French poet-philosopher, Novalis, who has allowed himself to be influenced by one of the most German of German poet-philosophers, with all that he has to say about what is immortal in the human being, and he then talks about this influence. He cannot but say: When one reads Sophocles and Shakespeare in this way, when one sees what Sophocles' figures, what Shakespeare's characters experience, what Hamlet even experiences, then what these people do and suffer is entirely earthly; it only interests the earthly human being. But if – so the Belgian-French poet-philosopher believes – a spirit were to descend from another planet, it would not be able to take an interest in what the characters of Sophocles and Shakespeare experience; these are only earthly matters. But in Novalis, this Belgian-French poet-philosopher finds a soul that has something to say that would interest even spirits who would descend from the universe to pay a visit to Earth; because Novalis speaks of the eternal of the human soul, which not only interests the human souls insofar as they live in the body, but must interest all beings that belong to the extra-terrestrial world. And with beautiful words, this Belgian-French poet-philosopher speaks of what he has experienced in Novalis, the German poet-philosopher:

“But if other proofs were needed, they would lead him among those whose works almost touch silence” – he means, the ordinary language of the day is for what is transitory; but what is immortal, one should actually remain silent about it or find another language for it —, “she would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without caring about the little gestures of their bodies. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness is heightened by a degree, and where all those who are plagued by restlessness about themselves attentively circle the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our higher worlds. It would go with him to the borders of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are in the invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. Only at this level are there thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas that resemble it and are as compelling as itself. There, humanity has ruled for a moment; and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth to the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a foreign reason; but the people I am talking about have come out of the little village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community!"

Such are the words of the Belgian-French poet-philosopher. If he were to hear Maurice Maeterlinck railing against the barbarians, the same barbarians who gave rise to the subject of the Belgian-French poet-philosopher's words, would he not call him a useless brawler? Yes, but there is a catch, because the words were written by Maurice Maeterlinck himself – before the outbreak of the war, though!

These are the things we experience today; that is why I said yesterday: what we are experiencing in the world today is a characteristic chapter of psychiatry. For what follows from the incredibly paradoxical fact that the same Maurice Maeterlinck utters these words about the German Novalis – and then goes on to revile and curse the entire German people as barbarians? What follows from the fact that what he said years ago and what I have read to you is deeply untrue and false? It is indeed a peculiarity of our present culture that because it is so full of what has been accumulated through language and external influences, the soul can also produce very beautiful words, words that sound beautiful but which may be false on the inside. But it is precisely one of the soul's paths that lead to the spirit in the way I have described, that everything the soul produces and experiences is profoundly true, truly true, shockingly true. If only a single phrase, only a single lie is in the soul on the way into the spiritual world, then one cannot find this way into the spiritual world. This path of truth is a following of the one who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!” — that is, the connection of the three. Such a path of imitating the one who said this is this path of truth. And if he is only a phrase, however beautiful a phrase may sound, he will not find the truth; he will only find the great deception, which can also penetrate into the soul where the soul wants to find that with which it is connected as with its immortal part. Inner truth alone connects the soul with what, as the Divine, permeates and permeates the world.

And when, again, the German spiritual life gives voice to the beautiful and profound words of Meister Eckhart, the philosopher, that there is a spark in the mind that ignites that which of the divine in the individual can live of the Divine in the individual human soul, one must say that the human soul can only experience authentically what is to be kindled like a spark in the mind if it is deeply inwardly true.

This, however, requires self-knowledge. But this self-knowledge is difficult to achieve in life. When a person, as I have explained, manages to rise out of the physical with his soul and spirit, then he has his ordinary earthly self before him, as he otherwise has external things before him. But he must be able to see his earthly self and, before he begins this spiritual path, must be able to acquire self-knowledge as an inner habit. But how difficult it is, a comparative example to illustrate: a rather famous contemporary professor, the Viennese philosopher Dr. Ernst Mach, who wrote various books that are highly esteemed today, gave a sample on the third page of his book 'Analysis of Sensations' of how difficult it is to come to self-knowledge, even in terms of one's physical form. He recounts: “As a young man, I once saw a face in profile in a shop window where two mirrors faced each other as I was walking down the street. I thought: what a person with a repulsive, even revolting face do I encounter here; and I was not a little surprised when I discovered that I had my own image in front of me, which was shown to me by the fact that the mirrors were arranged in this way.” And as a second example, the same professor tells the following story on the third page of his book: “Once, when I arrived quite tired from a journey, I got into a bus. I saw a man getting in from the other side, and I thought” — he says, he admits it, he is completely honest — “what a run-down, unpleasant schoolmaster is getting in there. And again I saw: it was myself.” And he adds: ‘So I knew the habitus of the species better than my own.’ A lady who had heard this, after I had said it in other lectures, related an example of such a lack of self-knowledge with regard to appearance, which she had observed in a relative. This relative went into a restaurant in a strange city. She did not know her way around. Then, as she walked towards the wall, she saw a lady coming towards her from the other side. “Well, what kind of ugly country girl is that?” she thought. She was a very elegant city woman. It was only when she spoke to the lady and the lady did not answer that she recognized herself.

These are examples that I would say are taken from the coarsest external sensuality. But if a person has so little insight into his external physical sensuality, he has even less insight into the soul in ordinary life. But this possibility of looking at oneself, of knowing oneself as an external object, is part of the real grasp of what is immortal in the human being. And anyone who really immerses themselves in the spiritual world and can then also follow what is real in this spiritual world, who can therefore follow the human being not only in their life between birth and death, but beyond death, knows that when he communes with the soul, the soul looks back at death, precisely in that it looks back at itself in self-knowledge, at what one has experienced between birth and death. Self-knowledge is, as it were, the eye of the immortal spirit. Through self-knowledge we must see the whole spiritual world in the time that we live through spiritually between death and a new birth. All this is really so that we can say: the seeds that must come to further development and evolution are contained in German intellectual life, and these must be grasped vividly in the course of time. Then real insight and real spiritual comprehension will emerge from this German intellectual life in the future.

If you take a brief look at the intellectual cultural history of modern times, you will also be led to recognize how the German spirit, in particular, is called upon to develop its idealism, which it has developed in its great philosophers, into spiritualism, into spirit-cognition, into spirit-experience, into scientific knowledge. One is tempted to say that the German spirit was pressed, suppressed and suppressed by the foreign spirit. We see how Goethe, who is rooted entirely in the German spirit, sighs under what is coming from France, especially in his time. While the German mind is actually geared to recognize more and more intimately the spirit that pervades and interweaves the world, the French mind is more geared to grasp everything that can be grasped by the intellect, to rationalize. This can even be seen in the peculiarity of French poetry. Reason, however, being bound to the brain, is basically only capable of developing materialism. Therefore, materialism is basically a genuine French product. Materialism is not inherent in the German character when it comprehends itself in its deepest intimate interior. This inner Frenchness, this inner materialism, must also be defeated by the German spirit in the course of time.

And if we follow a characteristic phenomenon of the development of world views in the British Isles, precisely in terms of the leading philosophy that comes from there, we can summarize it as follows: The British philosopher – and this can be proved in detail everywhere – starts from the same point as Locke, Hobbes and so on: only to accept what the senses perceive and what is combined from them, and to make the intellect only a servant of sense perception. This leads to external empiricism or to skepticism, to a search for doubt. But this has also deeply influenced the German mind, and that is also something from which it must free itself. After all, we are experiencing many things in our time, just below the surface of our soul. While England, with its world-view, was called upon to swear by mere sensory appearances, and France was called upon to cultivate man from out of rationalism, out of the intellect, to the point of the sentence 'Man as a machine', the German spirit, after it had emancipated itself from France, cultivated idealism, which is the predecessor of spiritualism, of the actual spiritual science. Idealism does not seek to stop at materialism, which is tied only to the intellect; it does not seek to stop at the empiricism of Englishness, which wants to hold only to the senses, nor at the rationalism of Frenchness, but seeks to grasp what lives in the soul. But by liberating himself from foreign influences, by the German fully relying on himself spiritually, German idealism will incorporate the living spiritual knowledge of the culture of the future.

If you try to do something for this living spiritual knowledge today, you will, however, initially encounter a great deal of resistance. If I may mention this here in a personal capacity: since the 1980s, I have been striving to establish Goethe's theory of colours and its depth against the materialistic English Newtonian physics. It is easy to understand why physics objects to Goethe's theory of colours; one can easily list all the objections. But the Goethean Theory of Colors is itself a living penetration into the physical reality of colors as a scientific product; and as spiritual knowledge will take hold of human culture, it will be realized how infinitely higher this Goethean Theory of Colors stands than the English one. Today, however, one is still talking to deaf ears; the corresponding writings are not yet being read – or only by a small circle. But it is always like that.

As the ancestor of true spiritual science, Goethe established a naturalistic world view of the development of living beings. I have been writing about this since the 1880s in an effort to show how this Goethean theory of development is a spiritual view. It is based on the fact that Goethe was able to make true what he was able to emphasize to Schiller, that he already sees the idea in reality. But here too, one still preaches to deaf ears; for the other is more comfortable. This Goethean teaching was inconvenient for humanity to accept. And when Darwin came along and presented all of this in a way that was more comfortable for the senses, in an outwardly sensual way of looking at things, in a way that the English mind so relishes, it was accepted, it flooded the world; and the difficult, uncomfortable, but spiritual Goethean teaching was ignored by people. When Darwin conveniently brought the theory of evolution, it was accepted.

And the great philosopher Hegel, who also has a lot to do with this city, has shown another example. He has shown how the German astronomical philosopher, philosophical astronomer, to whom science owes so much, Johann Kepler, has achieved great things in terms of understanding the world's context. Yes, it was indeed the case that Kepler was affected by Kästner's famous epigram, because he saw through the course of the stars, because he saw through all of this and expressed it in wonderful formulas, he had to lead a life of which the epigrammist Kästner says:

No mortal had ever risen higher
than Kepler rose – and died of starvation.
He knew only how to amuse the minds,
so the bodies left him without bread!

But Hegel goes even further and shows that Newton's famous theory of gravitation, on which, as every physicist says, modern physics is based, is nothing more than what the Swabian Kepler achieved, expressed in mathematical formulas. The real thing is Kepler's. One is faced with a historical lie when one speaks of the justification of Newtonism.

The German spirit will have to stand on its own. This will stand out from the many sad but also glorious events of our time as a marker of the historical development of humanity. However, what has worked so thoroughly from the west and northwest has worked on human souls in such a way as to make the path I have described, the path into the spiritual world, more difficult.

I will now say something, forgive me, that many will consider very stupid; but I know that it is a truth. Perhaps the time will come when this truth can be shown in detail. All that is needed is time. I can only state the fact that the opportunity for the free development of the powers of the soul, as indicated, to pave the way to the spiritual world, has been thoroughly lost to souls from childhood on. As a result, for example, the path has been lost – I am not speaking out of national chauvinism, I am speaking out of psychological, cultural-historical knowledge – the path has been lost because the poison of Robinson by Defoe still poisons and contaminates the lives of many boys and girls; and in this lies that which takes root in the soul in order to imbue it with the empiricism of Englishness.

Many internal victories, which are in the interest of German culture, will still have to be fought. But what is happening now is the great, bloody, but also glorious harbinger. And those who now go through the gate of death as heroic souls – especially the spiritual scientist must point this out, because he knows how souls go through death as realities and how those who are dead only live on in a different form – they will be among us in a high sense with their unspent powers. For in their soul-spiritual there is something that could have supplied the body with formative forces for decades to come — after all, these are young, flourishing human lives that are leaving the earth in our time —, that could have supplied the body with formative forces for a whole long life. But this will still weave and live in its immortal soul; it will be there in the spiritual sphere; it will be there and will help when humanity approaches it with understanding in the creation of a truly spiritual worldview, a worldview that is spiritual through and through, that is scientific in the fullest sense, in the strictest sense of the word. Spiritual science will thus be able to be something very much alive and real. For the spiritual scientist knows that when what he has to give as the result of research comes to life in souls, then these souls will become so immersed in earthly life that the great gulf, which today gapes as a materialistic world-view between the physical and the supersensible, will be bridged. In a much more real sense than one suspects today, people will live into a world view that, in addition to the directly present earth citizens, will also show them people in their effectiveness who have passed through the gate of death. But this is a world view that at the same time admonishes us for the large number of deaths that our fateful time has brought upon us. Much blood, much death, much adversity, much suffering and pain, much courage, much willingness to make sacrifices, tremendous greatness rushes and weaves through that which surrounds us in our fateful, momentous, and historically significant present. But it is particularly appropriate in this present time to point to that which points beyond all death, beyond all mere temporal life, to the hidden, to that which is immortal in the human being.

Not everyone will be able to become a spiritual researcher, just as not everyone can become a chemist. But times will come when just as what the few chemists have to give will be made fruitful for all, so too what the individual spiritual researchers have to give will benefit all of humanity and its coexistence. One need not be a spiritual researcher oneself to find the truth of what spiritual researchers discover; one need only be free of the prejudices that today's habits of thought put in one's way, and the things that have been hinted at today, spiritual science, can be understood. In order to discover the facts for oneself, to give just one example of what formed the main subject of today's discussion, one must follow the path of spiritual research oneself. In order to penetrate into the spiritual world, where divine spiritual beings, just as real as the things and beings of the physical world, dwell, in order to speak of these worlds appropriately, in order to really bring messages from this world and these beings, one must go the way of spiritual research oneself. To understand what is brought from the spiritual worlds, one really needs only to approach the matter with an unprejudiced sense of truth. People who are unable to believe this sense today, combined with what spiritual research says, do not realize that it is not the sense of truth, but the habits of thinking caused by prejudice. But when these habits of thinking have been done away with, as the old habits of thinking were done away with in the face of the Copernican world-picture, then spiritual science will bring something infinitely more fruitful for the soul and spiritual life than natural science has brought for the outer life. For what natural science brings relates to what surrounds us, to what we build for ourselves, to many things by means of which we make our life comfortable and pleasant, what is useful to us. But what spiritual science has to give is something that every soul desires, if only it becomes aware of the powers of this desire in the spiritual and soul; that which gives people the opportunity to develop in such a way that desolation, loneliness, disharmony of life, but what strengthens the soul so that the soul can also face life strongly, and that will demand more and more of the soul in the future. Spiritual science will incorporate something of the spiritual development that will evoke a living consciousness in the soul of what is immortal in the human being. And in this coexistence with the immortal part of the soul, man will become more aware that the world is more comprehensive than what the senses see, than what one experiences in time. The knowledge, which will not remain abstract or theoretical, will be concentrated in certain feelings that will inwardly gladden and uplift the soul, but will also make it industrious, strong and capable.

In conclusion, I would like to summarize in a few words what can be awakened in the soul through spiritual science. These words may fade away what I, as I said, could only say in brief strokes, like a charcoal drawing, about the question today: What is immortal in the human being? This may fade away into the words that are, so to speak, the residue of feeling of spiritual scientific knowledge and of the spiritual scientific confession in relation to the question of today's contemplation:

The senses of man speak:
The things in the vastness of space;
They change with the course of time.
Awakening itself, the human soul awakens
From the vastness of space
And unperturbed by the course of time
In the stream of becoming in eternity!