The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I have tried to give you some insight into the nature of the human being and thereby into the nature of the developing child. For pedagogical artists, such insights are quite practical in that they enable us to guide this human material into life in a fruitful way. From what I have already indicated, you can see that the question I posed in the first lecture can be at least partially answered. I believe that question is particularly important for today’s teachers. The question is: How is it that we have, on the one hand, such a wonderful science of teaching, with all its well-thought-out principles and, on the other hand, so much justifiable public criticism of education and current teaching methods?

The reason is that although pedagogical geniuses developed our principles through a kind of instinctive intuition, although we have many theories about how to teach, this recently assembled collection of principles that has permeated our entire worldview is not related to a genuine understanding of human nature. We cannot develop an art of education from the sciences as they are practiced today. I certainly do not want to trivialize the great progress and triumphs of modern science. Nevertheless we must understand the developing human being from a very different perspective. The sciences have remained theoretical and have created a contradiction between external physical existence and the spirit-soul. We can therefore say that they offer no support or help to our pedagogical principles. Putting those pedagogical principles into practice depends upon teachers who are highly skilled at practicing them instinctively.

Pestalozzi, Diesterweg, and others obviously had a marvelous pedagogical instinct and developed an instinctive understanding of the human being. However, we live in a time when we can go no further on instinct alone. In older patriarchal societies, we could survive more or less instinctually. However, we live in a time when we must become more and more conscious of everything, and we therefore need to consciously understand human beings. We can do that only by bringing the practical perspective needed for teaching into a closer connection, a systematized understanding of human nature. What science tells us about human physiology or biology offers us no basis for the development of pedagogical principles. What modern science tells us gives us no direct help in seeing how we can best use a child’s talents when they are unequally developed.

For that to be possible, our understanding of the human being must be different than that of modern science. I have already mentioned some basic goals for such an understanding. We still need to learn what can create a bridge to a genuine art of education. I would like to stress that in this age of materialism, we are less and less in a position of genuinely understanding the physical human organism. On the other hand, we have hardly anything other than language as a means of approaching other human beings. Although illustrative materials can be very useful in certain areas of education, the method of teaching through illustration should not be the only one used. We need to ask whether language, when used as the primary means of communication with growing children, can really bring us closer to the nature of the child. We cannot answer that question without penetrating a little deeper into the nature of the human being.

Everyone who attempts to form a picture of the human being from normal pedagogical texts or texts on psychology, who attempts to fill education with principles from natural science or psychology, ends up with the idea that a human being is just a collection of various forms. Such people would have the perspective that here we have a human organism, and within the skull there is a firm brain (or at least a semi-solid one). They would also think here are the other organs, the liver, the lungs, and so forth. If we look at things superficially or clinically, the drawings we see would convey the idea that these firmly delineated organs are the only things that exist within a human being. But remember that people consist of at least 80 percent fluid, that they are actually a column of fluid; therefore they consist of only a very small amount of something solid. Is it really possible to assume that a human being really consists only of sharply delineated individual organs? The human being is a column of fluid and is moreover filled with gases. Yet these texts describe the nervous system as more or less solid strands, or possibly as a somewhat softer solid. They have no awareness that these are in fact imbedded in liquid or even in gas, a gas that exists in the human organism in the form of vibrations or rhythmic movements.

Aside from the gaseous aspect, the human being is actually a liquid column and the brain is imbedded in cerebrospinal fluid; indeed much of the life of our organs is connected with the up-and- down motion of the cerebrospinal fluid as we inhale and exhale. If we become aware of these things, we will not ascribe parallel organic processes to spiritual and soul facts; we will not assume they are firmly delineated. Instead we will form a picture that describes how while I am thinking, while I am feeling or willing, the moving fluid portions of my organism take on certain liquid structures which again dissolve.

We need to ask ourselves why, for example, we should connect the process of thinking with some vibrations or similar processes in the nerves. Of course they are not. Why shouldn’t they be connected with the vibrations within the liquid portion of the human being? This is a question natural science, under the influence of our materialistic period, have not even asked. We can be satisfied with what science discovers when we accept its common goals. Modern science has brought about numerous practical results in the area of solid or liquid technology where the liquid exists in an external form in space. It has also been very successful in working with gases, such as in steam technology, where the steam exists in space and can be worked with there.

When we are working with the results of conventional science in a technology, working with inorganic substances, we need to take into account how things operate. For that reason, conventional science in this era of materialism has had such great success, since it has had to closely follow advances in technology. Consider this example: if someone constructed a railway bridge using the principles of mechanics incorrectly, we would very soon see how such a bridge would collapse when one or two locomotives went over it. Such a catastrophe would occur because the proven results of conventional scientific testing were not applied; this is how incorrect principles are corrected in practice.

The further we go into areas where inorganic technology can no longer have a correcting effect, the less we can base our practice upon theory. We need think only of how slowly medicine has advanced in comparison with modern technology. You can very quickly see the significance of incorrect principles in the process of building a railway bridge or similar things. However, when a physician treats someone, it is not at all common to try to determine whether the physician has done everything necessary to restore the person’s health, simply because that is impossible to determine. Here the situation is very different; it is simply not possible to correct theories through practice. You will forgive me if I make a comment here, but I think it is important for teachers, since everything in life is important for teachers. In the areas of jurisprudence or economics, for instance, if we followed the way people’s principles were applied, we would very quickly see how lame the concept of control through practice is. What is officially determined in legal matters is then made correct through laws. This is true in all countries. Whether we can justify such things from the perspective of a genuine understanding of human beings is a question that is just as neglected today as it was when Goethe gave Faust the question of which rights we are born with.

Furthermore people have not the slightest interest in finding out how our use of externally superb pedagogical principles relates to what then transpires with the developing generation. That, however, is just what I want to draw your attention to. We hear a great deal about the terrible social things now occurring in the eastern part of Europe and in Russia. The things being done in Eastern Europe under the influence of Lenin’s1 and Trotsky’s2 theories are horrible. However, people today give no thought to what is actually happening. People today have no idea of what the results of those things being done today will be in twenty or twenty-five years, what kind of barbarism will fall upon Europe. It is, however, the task of teachers to observe what will happen to human development.

Now here is something unusual. You see, in Zurich, Avenarius, an honest and upright citizen, once taught philosophy. Somewhat later, Vogt, a student of Ernst Mach, taught together with the philosopher Adler, who was the same Adler who shot the Austrian Minister Stürgkh. We can certainly not say of Adler that he was as honest a man as Avenarius, but Avenarius was an honest, upright man. Nevertheless he taught a philosophy that was possible to teach only because of the materialism at that time. If you now look into the “state philosophy” of Bolshevism, you will find it is none other than that taught by Avenarius. After two generations, what was once taught in Zurich as an appropriate philosophy has become the theory the Bolsheviks put into direct practice.

People pay no attention to the relationships of different periods because they are not at all clear about what happens when the views of one generation are inherited by the following generation. Of course, I do not mean just physical inheritance. The honest and upright Avenarius taught a philosophy which, after a relatively short time, led to the barbarization of Europe. It is important not to simply accept abstract judgments when we want to see what value a viewpoint has for human development. Instead we must look into the way that viewpoint takes effect. An important responsibility of all education is to look at what will become of what we do in the classroom in twenty or thirty years. All education has the task of placing itself consciously in human development, but we cannot do that without a thorough understanding of the human being, an understanding that spiritual science can give to a renewed natural science. A natural science renewed through spiritual science will not be some fantasy or figment of the imagination. Rather it will provide a good understanding of the material human organism as the physical vehicle for the soul and spirit.

Today I want to mention an important aspect of our soul life that you all know well and that will prove particularly important as we move on to the actual pedagogical subject. The phenomenon I refer to is how what we think about as children eventually becomes memory. You all know that to maintain a healthy soul, we must properly transform the ideas we develop from our sense impressions, that result from our judging and so forth—we can discuss the details of this later—and that we must take the results of this thinking into our memory. When we then describe something, we recall from within our souls what we previously experienced in the external world or in our interactions with other human beings. We bring it back into our consciousness. But what actually takes place here?

The general view has moved more and more toward looking at this process in a one-sided, abstract way, as simply a process within the soul. People ask, what becomes of our thoughts once we take them into our soul? What have they become, once they are taken in and returned to us as memory? How does this process take place? We cannot study this process if we have not first looked into the relationship between the spirit-soul and the physical body in some detail. There are some so-called idealists who might say spiritual science is basically materialistic, since it is always referring to physical organs. To believe that, however, would be an enormous error. Spiritual science recognizes the great effects of the soul on the formation of the organs. It sees the soul as having a greater influence than simply working on abstractions, and in fact sees the soul as actually having the power to form the organs. Spiritual science primarily seeks to understand the soul during childhood, when the spirit-soul continues to work upon the formation of the organs after birth.

In my opinion, Goethe’s color theory offers the first beginning of a really reasonable consideration of the soul and physical life, something that has been previously unrecognized. Yet today all one needs to do to be immediately branded a dilettante is speak about it in a positive way. I believe, however, that physicists will soon see it much differently from the way it is seen at present. I do not intend to go on praising Goethe’s theory of color today, I only want to direct your attention to the wonderful chapter where Goethe begins to speak about physiological colors, and to another chapter toward the end, where he speaks about the sensory and moral effects of colors. Physicists have attempted to refute the portion in between. The beginning and the end have been of more interest to people with an artistic nature, and they can more easily understand them. However, for us to develop a scientific foundation of education, we need to accept some of the help offered by Goethe’s considerations of the world of colors. In the beginning, Goethe draws our attention to the lively interaction between the eye and the external world. That lively interaction exists not only while we are exposing the eye to some color process in the external world, but also afterward. Goethe specifically discusses the after-images that result from the direct impression. You all know these after-images, which occur in the eye itself. You need only expose your eye to, say, a green surface and then turn away from this sharply delineated green area. You will see the same area as an after-effect that is subjectively red. The organ is still influenced for a time by what it experienced in the external world. This is the basic process as it occurs in the sense organs. Something happens in the sense organs while they are exposed to a process or to things in the external world, and something else happens afterward, which then slowly subsides. From an external perspective, we also can see a certain similarity between what briefly takes place in a sense organ and what happens in the human organism in regard to memory. Just as the green surface continues for a short time as red, a thought with its associated images resulting from a direct experience exists in our organism, only the time periods are quite different.

There is another difference that brings us closer to an understanding of the difference in duration. If we expose the eye to a color impression and then see an after-image, it is something partial, an individual organ on the periphery of the human organism that brings forth that after-effect. When a memory arises from within the human being, it reproduces something that existed years before. This is something we can feel, that is apparent, that participates in this reproducing—thus it is the entire human being that participates in this after-effect.

What actually occurs within the human being? We can understand this only when we have a detailed understanding of certain interactions within the human being. Here I want to draw your attention to a fact that our modern scientific way of thinking has put into an incorrect light, namely, the function of our heart in connection with the whole human organism. You now find the heart described everywhere as a kind of pump that pumps blood throughout the organism. Actually, the blood circulation is forced upon the heart. The fact that embryology contradicts the standard view and more detailed observations of the heartbeat and such things also offer contradictions is something modern people still do not want to hear. Only a few people have noticed this: for example, the physician Schmid,10 who wrote a treatise about it in the 1880s, and the criminologist Moritz Benedikt. That was not enough, though. There are only a few who have realized that the movements in the heart are a result of the movement of the blood, and that the blood circulation itself is what is fundamentally alive. Thus the heart does not pump; rather its movement is due to the influence of the living movement of the blood. The heart is nothing more than the organ that creates a balance between the two blood circulatory systems, that is, between that of the upper human being, the head, and that of the limbs. These two movements of blood form a pool in the heart. The blood, however, is not something dead; it is not simply pumped like a stream of water. The blood itself has an inner life and is subject to its own movement. It passes that movement on to the heart, which simply reflects the movement of the blood in its own movements. Just as we can say that there is a parallel between the more or less solid organs and processes in the soul, there is also a parallel, which I mentioned yesterday, between the movements of the blood and soul processes.

What is the task of an organ such as the heart in relationship to the soul? I would like to ask that question in the following way. If, under the influence of a genuinely correct science, we say that the blood itself has life and the movements of the heart, the entire activity of that organ results from the blood circulation and are only inserted into the living blood circulation, then what is the task of the heart?

Unprejudiced observation shows that if we expose the eye to the external world, the eye’s experiences create an afterimage that soon disappears. When we develop the world of feeling, that world has a close connection with the circulation of the blood. It has a connection with other things also, but here I am speaking only of the blood circulation. Recall for only a moment that when we feel shame, we turn red. Everyone knows this is because the blood comes to the surface. If we are fearful, we turn pale as the blood moves toward the inside. The physiologist Lange12 from Copenhagen has done a number of good studies about the connection between blood circulation, and other organic processes, and processes in the soul. Just as in the extreme cases where the soul’s experience of fear or shame has an effect upon blood circulation, the normal life of the soul also continuously affects our circulation. Our feeling life is always active, but it influences normal circulation toward one direction or another only when our feelings move toward one extreme or another. Just as we are continuously breathing, we also continuously feel. Just as our blood circulation is uninterrupted, our feeling is uninterrupted. If we were to follow these processes further, you would see that we even feel during sleep.

What circulates in the blood is the external physical expression of our feeling. Furthermore, our feeling is connected with our thinking. What we imprint upon the circulation also vibrates within the heart. Goethe used the word “eye” to mean an inner, living organ, and the heart is just as much a living organ. It does not just move the blood. It has an enormous significance within the entire organism. Whereas the eye is affected for only a short time by light outside it, the heart continuously responds to feeling and thinking as it relates to feeling with small vibrations that are then carried into the blood. After a time, the heart’s vibrations include what lives specifically in feeling and in feeling-related thinking. The heart is a part of the body that influences us when we remember experiences. All human organs that partake of the currents of organic human fluids, that are included in the liquid currents—whether it is the kidneys imbedded in this flow or the liver connected to it in the digestive stream—all these organs vibrate in unison, vibrate with our feeling and willing in circulation and metabolism. Just as an after-image arises in the eye, in the same way a memory arises within the entire human being, though in differentiated and specific ways; it is a memory of experiences in the outer world. The whole human being is an organ that vibrates, and the organs people normally say are placed next to each other are there in reality so that human beings can process and retain spiritual-soul experience in a certain way. We will see that this only appears to be a materialistic perspective. We will see that it is precisely this that allows us to properly recognize the human being as a spiritual being. Today, however, now that I have mentioned this, you can see how we can grasp the entire human being through such a perspective. We can comprehend the human being not only in the way materialistic science does, by placing the individual organs alongside each other, even assuming that they interact mechanically. The spiritual-scientific perspective shows that the entire human being is unified as body, soul, and spirit, but our thinking separates these three perspectives. In reality, body, soul, and spirit are always interconnected within the human being.

You need learn only a little embryology to learn that the heart slowly develops in the organs of the blood circulatory system, in the system of vessels. You can see that the heart is not there first, with the circulatory system developing from it, but that the circulatory system develops slowly, with the heart as the final result. You can see directly from embryology that the situation is just as I have described it. Therefore, when we consider things from a spiritual-scientific perspective, we need to think of the human liver not simply as a liver, the human spleen not simply as a spleen in the way these things appear when we dissect a corpse in the laboratory. Instead we need to try to investigate the significance of these organs in the spirit-soul life. We do not see the eye, or any of the other organs, as merely some physical tool. Although it is commonly believed that the liver is only an organ in the digestive system, it has a great deal to do with human spiritual life.

We can often learn much from language itself. Ancient peoples, who still had a kind of primal, instinctive knowledge, did not always consider things as abstractly as we do. Take, for instance, hypochondria, which in Greek means “below the cartilage of the breast bone,” an anomaly of the soul that has its origins in the human abdomen, which is indicated in the word itself. In the English language, which in comparison to the languages of Central Europe is still at an early stage of development, the word spleen, as an emotional state, has something to do with the soul. However, spleen also refers to an organ, and for good reason, since the spleen of the soul has much to do with the spleen organ. Such things are nearly all lost. Materialism has nearly lost an understanding of the physical organs, particularly those of the human being. How can we work with a human being if we are not in a position to understand what the human being is physically? We must first understand that the human being is built up piece by piece out of the spirit-soul, so that there is nothing physical that is not a revelation of the spirit-soul.

We need to be able to see the physical properly if we are to have a solid foundation for education. When I say such things, some people may think I want to throw out everything in the world that has been learned through hard scientific work. I certainly do not do that light-heartedly, you can be certain of that. In general, it is much more comfortable to play the same tune as everyone else than to counter prevalent views from genuine understanding and from the realization that a true cultural renewal in our decadent times requires such an understanding in the area of spiritual life. Personally, I would much prefer to present all the scientifically recognized perspectives rather than argue against many of them, particularly where the concern is an understanding of the human being.

We also need to resist the standard scientific perspective when we consider human interactions in practice. Instruction and education are essentially a special case of human interaction. We need to differentiate human life before the change of teeth and then again until puberty. I have attempted to characterize how different the forces are during the first period of human life in comparison to the second. It requires a very different kind of soul experience for these two periods, for the simple reason that the forces connected with imaginative thinking are directed toward an inner hardening of the human body during the first period of life. This activity culminates in the change of teeth at about the age of seven. The most important means of communicating with human beings during that time lies in the principle of imitating the surroundings.

Everything a person does during the years before the change of teeth is done out of imitation. What occurs in the surroundings of a child is enormously important, since the child only imitates. Imitation is one of the strengths of children at that age, and that imitation is directly connected with the same forces that produce the second set of teeth. They are the same forces, and, as we have seen, they are the forces of thinking, of inwardly picturing and understanding the world around us. Thus the forces associated with representational thinking are also the forces connected with physical development. These are the forces active in the child’s motive for imitation. Imagine what it means when you grasp that not only intellectually, but when with the entirety of your being, with your soul, when you have a universal, human understanding of it. It means that when I do something in front of a child who is not yet seven years old, not only do I do it for myself, but my doing also enters the child’s doing. My deeds do not exist for me alone.

I am not alone with my deeds, with my willing, with my feeling. I am not alone with my thinking; there are intangibles that also have an effect. There is a difference in whether I live alongside a child with a good attitude and allow the child to grow up alongside of me, or whether I do it with a poor attitude. These intangibles have an effect but they are not yet recognized. If we do not honor the connection between the spirit-soul and individual physical human organs, then we do not honor what exists between human beings as a real force, the spirit-soul itself.

When we look at the period between the change of teeth and puberty, the will begins to predominate in the way that I characterized it. With boys, we experience this eruption of the will in the change in the voice. In girls, this is expressed in a different way that we will discuss later. What is active in children at elementary school age shows us that it is connected with the will. Something wants to enter the physical body from the will; something wants to become firmer. There is more than simply a desire to imitate, although, as we will see, that remains important in the curriculum until the age of nine. Something more than simple imitation wants to develop, and that is the desire to honor authority. If I do not live as an authority alongside a seven- to fourteen- or fifteen-year-old child whom I am to bring up and educate, for the child that would be the same as if I cut off a finger or an arm so that he or she could no longer physically behave in the way natural to children. I would take something from the child that wants to develop, namely, the experience of having older people nearby, people who, as genuine authorities, are to educate and raise the child.

We now come to something we will have to make understandable to growing children in a way other than through example or through language. We now come to the role of love in education and upbringing. One of the intangibles we are justified in exercising in educating a growing child is authority over that child, and that our authority be accepted as a naturally effective force. We will not have that authority if we are not permeated in a certain way by what we have to present to the child. If, as teachers, we carry our knowledge within us just as some dry, memorized facts, if we teach only out of a sense of duty, then we have a different effect upon children than when we have an inner warmth, an enthusiasm for what we are to teach them. If we are active in every fiber of our soul, and identify ourselves with that knowledge, then the love for what we carry in our souls is just as much a means of communication as demonstrations and language. An education made fruitful through spiritual science enables us to understand the importance of this kind of intangibility.

In the middle one of these three lectures there are a number of anthroposophical truths in particular that I would like to develop for you. We shall then see what a great impact on a person's everyday life these particular truths have, and that is what we will talk about tomorrow. Today I just want to draw you attention to some deeper aspects of the being of man.

People very often do not ask the question as to which of man's forces are used to acquire knowledge of supersensible worlds. They try to answer this question merely by saying that there is a possibility of acquiring supersensible knowledge by means of certain forces in man. But what the actual connections are between these forces and man's being, they do not usually ask. That is why so little importance is attached to making knowledge of supersensible worlds really fruitful in ordinary life. It can be said that supersensible knowledge is becoming more and more essential to man, just in our time. In that case it is vital to understand what its connection is with ordinary everyday life.

As you know, the first of the capacities that leads man into supersensible realms is the force of Imagination, the second capacity is the force of Inspiration and the third capacity the force of Intuition. The question now is whether these capacities need concern us at all except in their connection with knowledge of supersensible worlds or whether these capacities have any part to play in the rest of man's life?—You will see that the latter is the case. As my little book Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy tells you, we can see human life running its course in three stages: from birth to the change of teeth, from the change of teeth to puberty, and from puberty till about the twenty-first year. If you do not regard man purely superficially you will be struck by the fact that the nature of man's development is entirely different in the three different seven-year stages. The pushing through of our permanent teeth, as I have often mentioned, is connected with the development of forces that are not merely confined, let us say, to our jaws or their neighbouring organs, but fill our whole physical body. There is work in progress within our physical body between birth and the seventh year, and this work comes to an end with the pushing through of our permanent teeth.

It is obvious that the forces doing this work of developing the physical body are supersensible, isn't it? The perceptible body is only the material in which they work. These supersensible forces, active in the whole of man's organisation during the first seven years of his life, become, as it were, suspended when their purpose has been achieved and the permanent teeth have appeared. At the age of seven these forces go to sleep. They are hidden within the being of man; they go to sleep within him. And they can be drawn forth from your being when you do the sort of exercises I describe in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds as leading to Intuition. For the forces that are applied in the acquisition of intuitive knowledge are the same forces that you grow with at the time of life when this growth culminates in the change of teeth. These sleeping forces that are active within the human body until the seventh year are the forces you use in supersensible knowledge to reach Intuition.

Now the forces that are active from the seventh year to the fourteenth year and go to sleep at puberty in the depths of the body, are drawn forth and form the power of Inspiration. And the forces that in bygone times used to be the source of youthful ideals between the fourteenth and the twenty-first year—it would be too much of an assertion to say that this still happens today—the forces that create organs in the physical body for these ideals of youth, are the same forces you can draw forth from their state of slumber and use for the acquisition of Imagination.

From this you will see that the forces of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition are not just any old forces got from we do not know where, but are the same forces as those we grow with from our birth to the age of twenty-one. So the forces that live in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition are very healthy forces. They are the forces a human being uses for his healthy growth and that go to sleep within his body when the corresponding phases of growth are completed.

I have just shown you the connections between the forces of supersensible knowledge and man's everyday existence. Something similar, though, can be said about the forces of man's normal nature, man's nature as it appears in ordinary life. Only there it is not so obvious. A very important force in ordinary life—and we have discussed it many times—is the force of memory. The power of memory is active within us when, as we say, we remember something we have experienced. But, as you all know, there is something peculiar about the power of memory. We have got it and yet we haven't got it. Many a person struggles at some moment of his life to try and remember something that he cannot remember. This wanting to remember but not being able to remember entirely, arises through the fact that the force we use in our souls to remember with is the same force that transforms the food we eat into the kind of substances our body can make use of. If you eat a piece of bread and this bread is transformed inside your body into the sort of substance that serves life, this is apparently a physical process. This physical process, however, is governed by supersensible forces. These supersensible forces are the same forces you use when you remember. So the same kind of forces are being used on the one hand for memory and on the other hand for the assimilation of foodstuffs in the human body. And you actually always have to oscillate a bit between your soul and your body if you want to dwell in memory. If your body is carrying out the process of digesting too well, you may find you will not be able to draw enough forces away from it to remember certain things. There is an inner struggle going on the whole time in the unconscious between a soul process and a bodily process every time you want to remember something. Looking at memory is the best way to understand how absurd it is basically, from a higher point of view, for some people to be idealists and other people materialists. The assimilation of foodstuffs in the human body is doubtless a material process. The forces controlling it are the same as the forces at work in a process of ideas, namely the force of memory. You only see the world aright if you see it as being neither materialistic nor idealistic, but are capable of following up the ideal aspect of what is presented in a material way and following up the material aspect of what is presented as idea. The spiritual quality of a world conception is hot being able to say 'Over there is base materialism, which is for the 'dregs' of humanity, and over here is idealism, which is for the elect—and the speaker usually includes himself among these—but the essential quality of a really spiritual world conception lies in its capacity to take what it has grasped in the spirit and bring it down into material existence so that material existence can be understood and not despised. That is the fallacy of many religious denominations, that they despise material existence instead of understanding it and looking for the spirit within it.

The crux of the matter is really to go into these things, and not, as is still largely the case, to deal in empty phrases where mysticism is concerned. After having as it were shown you how these things can really be gone into, I would now like to bring something of very great importance. When people speak of material existence and supersensible existence they usually speak of them as though material existence were spread out in the world and as though supersensible, non-perceptible existence were somewhere behind or above this. If you imagine you simply have physical-perceptible existence on the one hand and supersensible existence on the other, you will never understand man. There is no way of really grasping man if you look at things from the point of view of the perceptible world versus the supersensible world. In reality it is like this: The world of the senses and the world in which we work and live socially are spread out around us. Let us represent diagrammatically by means of this line this world that is spread out around us (see horizontal line of drawing). You will only have a complete picture of what is actually there in the world if you imagine that there are forces above this line, supersensible forces (red side). We neither perceive these supersensible forces by means of our ordinary senses nor by means of our intellect bound to our ordinary senses. We perceive only what is in the realm of this line.

But there are forces under this line as well. If we actually want to include the whole of the imperceptible or spiritual realm we must speak of subsensible as well as supersensible forces. So we must imagine that there are also subsensible forces here (orange side).

Thus we have the sense world, supersensible forces and subsensible forces. Where does man himself, as an ordinary person, belong? The part of him you see standing in front of you belongs entirely to this line. But supersensible forces from one side and subsensible forces from the other side work into the part of man that belongs to the line. Man is the result of supersensible and subsensible forces. Now which of man's forces are supersensible and which are subsensible? All the forces connected with understanding are supersensible, that is, everything we make use of for understanding. And these are the same forces that also form our head. So we can say that the supersensible forces are the forces of understanding.

Now subsensible forces also work into man. What kind of forces are these? These are will forces. All the will forces, everything in man that is of the nature of will, is subsensible.

An obvious question is where do these subsensible forces, these will forces, come from? They are the same forces as the forces of the planets, that is, from our point of view, the forces of the earth. Yes indeed, the forces of the earth are perpetually working into man. And it is our forces of will that are connected with these forces of the planets, these forces of the earth. The forces of understanding come to us from the world's periphery, and pour into us as it were from outside, from the outside of the planet. The forces of will enter into us from the planet itself. This is how the forces of our own planet earth live within us. The moment we enter birth the forces of planet earth are active within us.

The question now arises as to how this activity is distributed. There is a considerable difference in this respect in the first, second and third stage of life, that is, up till the seventh year, the fourteenth year and the twenty-first year. The will working in us up till the seventh year works entirely from out of the planet's interior. It is very interesting to see spiritual-scientifically that in everything working in the child up till the age of seven it is the forces of the earth's depths that are active. If you want to see an actual manifestation of the forces of the earth's interior, then make a study of everything going on in the child up till the age of seven, for these are the forces from within the earth. To delve down into the earth to find the forces of the earth's interior would be absolutely wrong. You would only find earth substances. The forces that are active in the earth come to manifestation in the work they do in the human being up till his seventh year. And from the seventh to the fourteenth year it is the forces of the encircling air that work in man, forces that still belong to the earth, to the earth's atmosphere. These are predominantly at work in everything developing in the human being between seven and fourteen. Then comes the most important stage of all, from fourteen to twenty-one. At this stage the subsensible passes over into the supersensible. Here a kind of balance is created between the subsensible and supersensible. Now the forces of the earth's whole solar system work at organising the human being.

So we have the earth's interior in the first period of life; encircling air in the second period of life, that is, what the earth itself is embedded in. The forces streaming down from cosmic spaces in so far as these cosmic spaces are filled with our own actual planetary system, up till the twenty-first year. Not until the age of twenty-one does man tear himself away, as it were, from the influences brought about in him from outside by the planets and the planetary system belonging to these.

Please notice that in everything I have referred to as having an influence on man, bodily influences are of course included. They are bodily processes that the forces from the planet's interior bring about up till the seventh year. They are bodily processes that are formed by the circulating air in connection with the breathing and so on between the seventh and the fourteenth year. There is no doubt that they are bodily processes, in fact actual transformations of bodily organs are brought about; everything being connected with man's growing and becoming larger. Thus man grows beyond all this work being done on him by the earth; all this ceases at twenty-one.

What happens then, however? What happens after twenty-one? Up till twenty-one we draw on what comes from the earth and its planetary system in the way we have described. We build up our constitution with the earth's help. Then, after we have reached the age of twenty-one, we have to draw on ourselves. We gradually have to release what we have put into our organism from out of the forces of the planet and the planetary system.

Activities going on in the blood forces always used to ensure that this happened in the past. As you will probably know, man has not learnt to release the planetary forces, himself, after the age of twenty-one. And yet he has been doing so. He did it as an unconscious process. The capacity was in his blood. It was built into him to do it. The important change in our present time—and the present extends over a long period of several centuries, of course—is that man's blood is losing the capacity to release what we have put into the organism in this way, before twenty-one

The important changes taking place in humanity at the present time are based on the waning of the forces in the blood. These things cannot be testified by external anatomy and physiology; to do that they would need to investigate bodies from the tenth or ninth centuries in order to discover that blood was different then. And they would not even have had the chemical tests to do it. But through spiritual science we can know with certainty that man's blood has grown weaker. And the great turning-point when human blood began to grow weak lay in the middle of the fifteenth century.

What are the consequences? The consequences of this are that what we cannot carry out unconsciously any more by means of our blood, we have to carry out consciously. We have to educate ourselves to do consciously what was simply done unconsciously by man's blood in the past. For the strength in our blood is in the process of fading away. What would happen if a time were to come when human beings completely lost hold of their youth, and were unable to draw on their youthful forces, if there were no means of resorting to doing consciously what was once done unconsciously by the blood?

You must not take these things in a purely theoretical way, of course. As theories, they may be interesting, but to take them as theories is not enough. Nowadays they have to be put into practice, for they are connected with the practical matter of the evolution of mankind. They must be put into practice to the point of making us conscious that man's whole educational system has to change. We have to help man to develop a strong, conscious capacity to re-experience later in life, as though with the force of elemental memory, what he has received in his youth.

Everywhere, people are still working contrary to this requirement. For instance they are proud of the visual aids used in primary school education, and they attach great importance to getting down to the mental level of the child as far as possible, and not teaching him anything that extends beyond his mental capacity. They actually rig up calculating machines so that they can teach the children to do all kinds of sums by counting balls. Nothing must go beyond the child's mental capacity. These visual aid lessons get frightfully trivial and trite. It is bound to lead to nothing but commonplace concepts if they avoid giving the child anything beyond its own mental capacity. People who do this, thoroughly overlook an important yet subtle observation of human life.

Supposing a child is taught in such a way that he takes a particular thing in, not because it is absolutely on his own mental level, but because his teacher's warmth of enthusiasm gets passed on to him, and the child takes the thing in because the teacher in his enthusiasm tells him about it. The child takes it in just because it lives in the warmth emanating from the teacher. If the child absorbs something that reaches beyond his understanding, purely because of the infectious quality of his teacher's enthusiasm, he will not yet understand what he has taken in, as people say in superficial life. Yet what he has taken in lives in his soul. At the age of thirty the grown-up will remember what the child took in, perhaps at the age of ten. He re-experiences it. He has become mature now, and he can understand what he is able to release from the depths of his soul; he can understand the thing he was taught purely through the force of enthusiasm, and which he is now able to release from his mature mind. You know, these are the most valuable moments in life, when your mental life does not have to be restricted to what comes to meet you from outside, but you re-experience what you took in in your younger days with inadequate understanding, and which you can now release and absorb with your more mature mind. The more care you take that the child does not just get the sort of lessons where it matter-of-factly takes in what it understands—for that will disappear with the passing years, and neither joy nor enthusiasm will come from it later—the more you will be doing for the person's later development; for lessons taken in purely through the teacher's warmth are life giving when they are re-experienced.

Nowadays this is of particular importance in teaching- In earlier times it was not so important, for in those days the releasing was carried out by the blood, whereas now it has to be brought to consciousness. It certainly makes a difference if you understand the kind of things that are being put to practical use by spiritual science. Because if you understand them in the right way you will find an opportunity somewhere in life of making practical use of them for the good of humanity. In this case, if you understand it properly, you will find an opportunity to make use of the fact that our blood is becoming weak, by attaching all the more importance to the teacher's capacity for enthusiasm.

But people are so little aware nowadays of what is at stake. For standardised education still plays a great part, that is, the kind of education that works with a whole set of standard rules. Education is learnt, how to teach a child is learnt, how to arrange the lesson is learnt. Comparing this with our present day consciousness it would be like learning that man consists of carbohydrates, protein and so on—these are our constituents and they undergo such and such changes inside our body, and we cannot eat before we have understood this; for we do not eat in a physiological sense until we understand it.—I told you once, and you may even have experienced this yourselves—, that you can already come across a thing like this:—You visit someone who has a scale standing beside his plate, and he carefully puts a piece of meat on the scales to find out how much it weighs, for he may only eat a piece of meat of a quite specific weight. Physiology already determines his appetite. But not everybody does it this way yet, thank goodness! It is important to understand that physiology is not part of the eating process but covers other aspects, and that a person can eat without having studied physiology, the physiology of the nutritional process. But we do not take it for granted that we also ought to teach, that is, teach in a living way, without having absorbed standardised education. This standardised education is exactly the same thing to a good teacher as the aesthetics of colour is to an artist. He can have studied aesthetics of colour very well, but he will not be able to paint because of that. The ability to paint comes from an entirely different quarter from the study of the aesthetics of colour. The ability to teach comes from an entirely different quarter from the study of education. The important thing, today, is not to give would-be teachers a seminar of some sort of standardised education that prescribes dogmas, but to give them the sort of thing that makes them become teachers and educators in the same way as people become artists or botanists. It is that the educator has to be born in a person and not that education has to be learnt.

What has to be understood just because of this very change in man's set-up is that education has to be a real art. In the time of transition people were at sixes and sevens as to what to do about education. That is why they invented so many abstract educational systems. The essential thing today, however, is to give people a real knowledge of man, especially if they are teachers. You see, if you possess this real knowledge of man and work out of it with children, a remarkable thing will happen: Let us suppose you are a teacher and have your pupils in front of you. If you are a student of standardised education, the kind that follows the rules, then you will know exactly how you have to teach, because you will have learnt the rules. You will teach according to these rules, today, just as you taught according to these rules yesterday and will teach according to them tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. But if you are the artist kind of teacher you are not nearly so well off. For now you cannot teach yesterday, today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow according to the same rules, but have to learn from the child afresh each time, how he has to be taught; it must be man's own nature every time that determines what you do. And it is ideal if the teacher can teach the way the child tells him to teach, and can keep on forgetting actual education and has not got a clue about the rules. For the moment the child stands in front of him again he will again be electrified by the growing child and will know what he has to do with him.

You must pay attention to the way things have to be said, to the way things have to be spoken about today. You cannot speak about these things today in such a way that they can be put into so and so many satisfying principles, but you can only speak about them by pointing to something alive, something that cannot be reduced to abstract principles but which is alive and produces ever more life. That is the crux of the matter. That is why spiritual science is needed in actual life today, because spiritual science is not merely for the head but is for the whole of man and releases will impulses. Indeed it ought to enter into many realms of life, so that impulses of will are eventually brought into every sphere of human activity.

I have demonstrated this in one particular realm of life, namely education, and shown how the education of children under the age of twenty-one can be made to bear fruit for later life. People do not receive an education only up to the age of twenty-one, though, for education carries on throughout the whole of life. But this only happens in a healthy way if people learn from one another.

This too was done by the blood in earlier ages of history. When people met in social life they used to learn things from one another unconsciously, some people learning more and others less, according to the way their blood worked. But our blood has grown weak and has lost its power. This activity, too, has to be replaced by more consciousness. People must achieve the art of acquiring relatively more for themselves from other people compared with what they produce from out of themselves. In earlier times it was sufficient to rely on life. The blood did everything. Now it is essential for people really to develop a sense for the other person's being. This will come about as a matter of course if people steer their thoughts in the direction of spiritual science. Different kinds of thoughts are stimulated with spiritual science than without it.

You will not doubt this fact, for the way spiritual science is received by people who do not want to know anything about their thoughts shows that spiritual scientific thoughts are different from thoughts without spiritual science. It is necessary to develop a totally new way of thinking. The kind of thinking we develop when we accustom ourselves to working with supersensible thoughts is the kind of thinking that has an effect on our organism. And when I told you today that memory is the same force that transforms food into substances man needs for his organism you will no longer be astonished to find that other forces can be transformed in man, like for instance the force with which we understand supersensible things being the same one that helps us to know the human being better than we would know him if we had no healthy longing for supersensible knowledge.

You people study what is in my Occult Science, and to do that you have to develop certain concepts that most people would still call 'Utter madness'. A few days ago I got yet another letter from someone studying Occult Science, and he says that nearly every chapter is pure nonsense. You can understand people saying it is pure nonsense. Why, it is quite obvious that they often say it these days. Yet these people who do not put themselves out to accept the kind of concepts that lead to Saturn, Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, and do not get down to developing ideas about a world that is not limited to the senses will also not acquire any knowledge of man. They do not see the human being in the other person but notice at the most that one person has a more pointed nose than the other, and one has blue eyes whereas the other has brown. But they notice nothing of man's inner being that manifests as his soul and organises his body. The same force which enables us to take an interest, and I am not saying now that it enables us to have supersensible occult powers, but the same force that enables us to take an interest in supersensible knowledge also gives us the kind of knowledge of man that we need today.

You can set up the most grandiose social programmes and develop the finest social ideas, but if people shy away from acquiring any knowledge of man and do not see any real humanity in one another, they will never be able to bring about social conditions. They cannot produce social conditions unless they establish the possibility that people can be social. But people cannot be social if they do not see the human quality in one another, but live entirely within themselves. Human beings can only become social if they really meet one another in life, and something passes between them. This is the root of the social problem. Most people say of the social question nowadays, that if certain things were arranged in such and such a way people would be able to lead a social existence.—But it is not like that. If things are arranged like that, social people will be good people in a social sense, and anti-social people will be anti-social with any sort of arrangement.

The essential thing is to make the sort of arrangements that allow for human beings to develop really social impulses. And one of these social impulses is knowledge. But as long as you go on educating people, for instance, with an eye to their becoming clerks or army officers or some other kind of civil servant, you will not educate them to recognise the human quality in others. For the sort of education that is good for becoming a clerk or an officer only helps you to see clerks and officers in other people. The kind of education that makes human beings of people also enables them to recognise people as human beings. But it is impossible to recognise people as human beings if you do not develop a sense for supersensible knowledge. And the realm in which supersensible knowledge is most indispensable is in the art of education. Therefore the natural scientific, materialistic way of thinking has done more damage in the field of education than anywhere else. And here you can experience the most amazing things.

In every department you find well-meaning people today, who want to reform everything, even revolutionise them. But if you talk to these people about these things, something very strange transpires. They will admit quite honestly to a particular conviction about reforming things. Yet one of them who happens to be a tailor will ask you how his existence as a tailor is going to be affected when things change. And another person, who is, let us say, a railway clerk, asks you how his life as a railway clerk is going to suffer when things are changed.—These are only given as examples to show you that people are perfectly in agreement that everything should be changed as long as nothing changes and everything remains exactly the same. The vast majority of people today are convinced that everything must stay exactly the same when it changes. Make no mistake about the fact that the sort of social improvement people long for today is of extremely abstract dimensions. People long for a great deal, but nothing must change where their comfort is concerned.

And this is particularly true where it is a of people taking an inner step into an entirely new situation. Nevertheless the essential thing is that people open themseIves to the possibility of making the transition to thinking in quite a new way about man changing himself in his innermost being.

All sorts of questions arise from these considerations, questions that are absolutely pertinent to life. What we must realise is that we have constructed a deeper foundation for these questions, by saying that although certain forces appear to be of a spiritual-soul nature, they also come to expression in our bodily nature. For the capacity is terribly lacking today, to bring down to a material level what we think of on a spiritual level. Not until we are capable of bringing down on to a material level what we think of as being spiritual shall we be able to grasp the actual nerve of the social question.

Thus it is virtually a matter of aiming towards a way of thinking that really develops a knowledge of man that is at one and the same time a social impulse. A way of thinking based on anything else is not adequate. A mentality based on the life of the state or the life of economics creates clerks and officers. But the sort of mentality we need creates human beings. This can only be the sort of thought life that breaks away from the sphere of economics and the life of the state. That is why our Threefold Social Organism had to happen. We had to show in a radical way that any kind of dependency of thought life on economics or on the life of the state had to stop, and thought life had to be set up on its own basis. Then thought life will be able to give economics and the life of the state what economics and the state cannot give to the life of thought.

That is the important thing, that is what is vital! Whole human beings will only arise again when we work out of an independent life of thought.

One of the repeated objections to the search for spiritual knowledge, in the last third of the nineteenth century, is this: when a man has passed through the gates of death he will see the nature of the spiritual life as lived without the physical body, but while here in the physical body attention must be paid to earthly life; here man should live as if the earth were his sole sphere of activity. A deeper study of Spiritual Science shows us increasingly what a superficial grasp of spiritual life is contained in such a statement. It teaches us that things are not really as though life in a physical body before death were entirely separate from life in the spiritual world after death, as if the one did not contact the other. We shall best come to a common understanding for study, if we consider what we already know of the connection of the spiritual life with physical life. Let us begin by reminding ourselves of what we have learnt from Spiritual Science about the alternating life of man between sleeping and waking. We speak of this rightly when we say: The Ego and astral body are outside the physical body during sleep. This is a sufficient answer for the immediate demand for knowledge, but only one aspect of the full truth; it is as though we were to say: the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, and is not there in the interval. We know that for the earth this is not the case; we know that during the time the sun is not shining for us it is shining elsewhere, giving its light to other inhabitants of the earth when it is dark for us. It is much the same with the life of the Ego and astral body in. relation to that of the physical and etheric bodies, if we take a wide view of it. True, the Ego and astral body are outside the physical body during sleep, but only partially they are outside the blood and nerve-systems. When we all asleep the sun of our Ego and astral body sets in this way for the blood and nerve-systems; yet from the Ego and astral body outside, the forces radiate while we are sleeping into those organs not connected with the blood and nerves. Our body lives in two spheres. We live in one while awake, when we are ensouled by our Ego and astral body; and in the other when we sleep, in the sphere from which the radiations and force of our Ego and astral body pour into the activities of our body-with the exception of the functions connected with the blood and nerves. Actually during sleep we are in the spiritual world with our Ego and astral body—as it were inserted into it—and just those forces of the astral body and Ego of which man is unconscious in normal human life, stream into his bodily organs when he is asleep. Thus we see the enormous significance of sleep for healthy human life on earth. I will make this clear by a little diagram. Let us take (a) for the sphere of the spiritual world, and (b) our body on earth. I will then shade the part connected with the blood and nerves; the other contains the organs apart from the system of blood and nerves. This cannot really be so sharply divided, for in a certain sense the nerve and blood systems are themselves organs with activities of their own like the other organs; but in so far as they are instruments for the conscious soul-life they may be considered as ensouled and inspired by the Ego and astral body.

This same Ego and astral body are taken into the sphere of spiritual life during the night and they thence radiate their forces into the other organs of the body. Thus we may say: There is in our physical body something that is strengthened and revived by what our soul in its sleeping condition draws into itself from the spiritual world and with which it is permeated by the spiritual world. The sun of our Ego and astral body sets for the nerves and blood, in so far as the Ego is connected with the blood, and the latter is not merely bodily life. It sets for the blood and nerves when the human being sleeps, and shines into the other organs functioning in our body. From this fact we can easily understand that sleep is an important Healer, and that unhealthy sleep may be regarded as one of the most deep-seated causes of illness, especially in relation to certain inner functions of our bodily life. Spiritual Science shows us that the way in which our Ego and astral body leave the blood and nerve-systems during sleep and enter spiritual life, is a matter of great consequence. Such things as I am about to discuss can apparently be refuted easily by so-called external experience, but the Spiritual Scientist must become accustomed to the fact that these refutations are only apparent, and that what is actually derived from the observations of inward processes is true. If the outer facts seem contradictory, we must search and see in how far they are illusion. I will now give a concrete instance, verified by Spiritual Science, which has an important bearing on this point.

Human life changes with respect to many things, but certain fundamental facts of life remain constant for long periods. In the Middle Ages there existed a certain fear, the so-called fear of spirits, of all sorts of elemental beings and ghosts; this we now call mediaeval superstition. In our day the object has changed, but not the fear; for just as the people of the Middle Ages were afraid of ghosts-—those of the present time are afraid of bacilli and similar things. It might be said that ghosts are more respectable and more to be feared than bacilli. The change has come about through the fact that formerly people were of a more spiritual disposition; they were afraid of the elemental spirit-beings; while now as the disposition is more materialistic, the spirits must be of a physical nature. This corresponds better with the age of materialism. What I wanted to say, however, is that Occult Science reveals the fact that bacilli are nourished in the human body if they are to thrive. Human beings do cultivate them. Of course everyone in the present time will say that it would be silly to breed bacilli. This is not a question of principle of any kind, but of looking at things from the right standpoint. It cannot be denied that, as Spiritual Science teaches, an Ego and astral body which have been fed on materialistic ideas alone, and have rejected all spiritual conceptions and wished to have nothing to do with them, when they leave the body during sleep, send into the bodily organs forces from the spiritual spheres which are just what the bacilli need. Nothing better can be done for the rearing of bacilli than to carry crude material ideas into sleep-life; thereby calling forth Ahrimanic forces which stream into the body and become the cultivators of bacilli.

To form a proper judgment of all this, we must understand clearly that the moment we turn to the study of spiritual life, we immediately have to consider what is called human fellowship. For a common co-operation in fellowship is effectual in a far greater measure when working at spiritual matters than when only concerned with the physical plane. We might say that in order to have no harmful bacilli in our bodies, it is best to apply the remedy of falling asleep with spiritual thoughts in our minds. Perhaps that might become a remedy, if it were to be medically proved, so that the most materialistic people in times to come would allow spiritual thoughts to be prescribed for them; and something contributing to spiritual life might be hoped for in this way. But the matter is not so simple, for the importance of communal life really begins when we touch spiritual matters, and there we can say: it is perhaps of no advantage to the individual to cherish spiritual ideas if all those around him are breeding bacilli by their materialistic thinking; here the one breeds for the other. This is an important fact and we must bear it in mind. Therefore I must again emphasize what I have already told you, that Spiritual Science can only be fruitful in its service to humanity when it does not merely serve the individual. It is not enough for the individual to accept it; Spiritual Science must patiently wait until it can become a factor in civilization, until it grips the heart and soul of the many; then we shall see what it can do for man.

There is, however, something which affects the Ahrimanic beings in the bacilli just as strongly. I say Ahrimanic beings, for I can easily show you the difference between Ahrimanic and other beings—and even externally it can be easily seen. Around us we see Nature with her many creatures; all that lives outside in Nature draws its life from the good, wise and progressive beings. Everything having its existence in other organisms and preferring to thrive therein belongs to the creatures of a Luciferic or Ahrimanic order. All parasites are of Luciferic or Ahrimanic origin; if we remember this we can easily distinguish the differences in the nature-kingdoms. There is something, as I said, very helpful for Ahrimanic creatures when they infest the human body. Suppose we are living at the time of an epidemic or plague. Naturally at such a time we must look after others, and a strong human fellowship or co-operation comes into being, for the karmic conditions may actually be such that the one who in his individual life seems least likely to have the illness, falls a prey to it. Nevertheless—we must not be deceived by appearances—what I am going to say is generally true. If we are living among the sick or dying and have to absorb these pictures that are around us and then fall asleep with these pictures in our minds and if nothing is linked with them but selfish fear, the imaginations arising from these pictures in the soul during sleep become filled with this selfish fear, and that enables injurious forces to enter the human body. Imaginations of fear are really the fostering forces for the Ahrimanic enemies of man. When a noble disposition is present, so that egotistic fear retires and loving help for others prevails, and we pass into the sleep life, not with fearful imaginations but with the effects produced by loving help, this means destruction for the Ahrimanic enemies of humanity. It is quite true that by the encouragement of such an attitude we could put an end to epidemics, if we regulated our conduct accordingly.

Here I may indicate how some day (but it cannot be yet) the results of knowledge of spiritual life will be seen in the social life of humanity: human souls will become strong through spiritual knowledge, and those whose disposition is to accept spiritual Knowledge will work healingly on material life on earth.

Hence we see how unjustifiable the objection is, that while living on earth we need not bother about spiritual life. A great deal depends upon the kind of spiritual life we take with us into sleep while here on earth, for by it we mold our souls into good or bad instruments for the sending forth of forces from the spiritual world into those organs of the body which are not used as instruments by the soul in the day consciousness, but which function physically and chemically beneath the threshold of consciousness. Those functions which do not belong to the activity of nerves and blood in the human being but are simply of an organic nature-physical and chemical activity—those are not life functions such as obtain in the plant and mineral kingdoms, but functions into which the forces of the spiritual world flow during sleep. Therefore we see the importance of being able to carry spiritual knowledge into sleep life, and we realize the attitude of mind it creates. If there still is doubt as to the inter-working of the spiritual and physical worlds, we may, among other things, make the following remarks.

Let us imagine that some sort of climatic change were to corrupt the whole ground of the earth, so that nothing good for food could grow on it; we should then discover how important the earth's mineral and plant kingdoms are for man. If the earth were to decay under our feet, we should realize how much we need the lower kingdoms of earth, that human life may be sustained. What the ground and fruits are for our physical life that we are, as living beings with the activities of our souls, for those who have passed through the gates of death. It is a fact that the dead living in their sphere have need of a ground from which they may gather fruits. The following illustration will give an idea of this: Let us think of a crowd of people asleep, all filled with conceptions belonging to earthly life alone, materialistic ideas. This ground which they form for the dead, is just as sterile for them as waste, corrupt ground would be to us. The dead feel this as a region in which they starve.

Every spiritual conception which we take into our soul and carry into sleep helps, while we sleep, to create part of the ground needed by the dead, even as the mineral and plant kingdoms are needed by us. In a certain sense souls filled with spiritual ideas during sleep, form the fruitful spiritual basis for the nourishing of the dead; and we take away the nutriment which the dead need and which must be gathered on our earth, if we allow our souls to become desolate, i.e., empty of spiritual ideas—and conceptions. Here we see still more clearly the importance of cosmic spiritual knowledge, and its fruitfulness for the spiritual world itself. Just as our sleeping souls provide the ground from which the dead draw their sustenance, so, if we knowingly cause spiritual concepts to pass through our souls that helps the dead in their power of perception. For this reason I have advised those who have been bereaved to read to their dead. If we call them to mind, and read in thought something from Spiritual Science, or cause any other spiritual thoughts quietly to pass through our souls, our dead will perceive these. They observe them and are nourished by the unconscious after-effects of the spiritual ideas. Their own consciousness is refreshed or revived by means of what has been read to them. Here again we see constant intercourse between the physical and spiritual worlds. It may easily be suggested that the dead are in the spiritual world and that this method of reading can be of no use to them. Yes! They are in the spiritual world, but the concepts of Spiritual Science have to be formed on earth, and nowhere can they be conceived except in the minds of men on earth: the dead are indeed in a spiritual world and precisely there can these conceptions reach them and sustain them, and we enhance their consciousness if from earth we send these to them. As the most intimate connections exist between the dead and those amongst whom they have lived, the best persons to read to them are those who were friends and helpers before they died, or who have been closely related to them. If you cultivate such thoughts about the connections of the physical with the spiritual world, you will actually experience a new disposition, which truly in the greatest sense of the word must be called the religious disposition of the future. From such spiritual-scientific studies as have just been given, a disposition will be developed which in the highest sense deserves to be called religious, for he who thus acknowledges the spiritual world will build upon the foundations of the Divine Wisdom streaming through the Cosmos.

It is tremendously important that we should acquire this feeling of the ruling Wisdom in the Cosmos and that we should fill ourselves with it. When humanity is permeated by this feeling, it will, with a deep genuine confidence in the wise ruling Wisdom of the Universe, accept its destiny and all the strokes of destiny which are so hard to bear. When we observe the spiritual worlds in which the dead live, we can often see how much easier it is for the dead when the friends they left behind on earth are permeated with this ruling Wisdom of the Universe. Weeping over the dead is, of course, quite natural; but if we cannot put an end to our weeping it looks as though we doubted the ruling Wisdom of the Universe; and he who can look into spiritual worlds knows, that those who long for their dead to be here and not in the spiritual world, are doing the greatest harm to them. We very much help the dead in their life after death if we accept our destiny, and think of the dead as having been taken from us at the right moment by a good ruling Wisdom, because they were needed for other spheres of existence beyond earth. In the future much will depend on people helping more (not less) in all that touches the sorrows of humanity, having a clear knowledge that destiny is ever at work, and that if through Karma even death has befallen those who belong to them, this had to be. This must not prevent us, as long as a person is living, from doing all that is possible to help him when he is ill if he is amenable to treatment, but as human beings, we may not presume to go beyond what is allotted to us as such. We must be sure that the ruling Wisdom of the Universe is wiser than we are. This is all commonplace and trivial, but it is too little spoken of to-day. Great happiness would come to both the living and dead, if this knowledge were more generally circulated; if it could enter as a conviction into men's souls, if they could think of the dead as living, as having experienced a transformation of life, and not think of them as having been taken from them.

If we only observed a little of this connection between the physical and spiritual worlds, we should see the manifold ways in which the one world is intimately linked with the other, and that the affairs of the physical world only become clear when observed in the light of the spiritual world. If with reference to anything that happens to us in the physical world we could but succeed in finding the spiritual causes of some stroke of fate or misfortune, we should look beyond it, and understand that what seems supremely sad may be understood at the fount of Cosmic Wisdom. We must emphasize this over and over again. It does not alter the fact that much suffering may come to us; but it does alter our attitude to it, we do not sink under it and shut ourselves egotistically in our sorrow, or withdraw from the world's life, which we certainly ought not to do. Many other things are similarly linked together and precisely these significant incidents teach us the falsity of the saying that we need not trouble about the spiritual life during our physical life on earth. For the bringing of spiritual ideas, feelings and convictions into physical earth-life is of great importance. Let me now add some examples to what I have told you to-day. Examples will show us clearly the truth of what I have been saying.

A person well-known to some of the members of our Society died before attaining middle age. If a person dies early in life, about the beginning of the thirties, it is often asked: What is the meaning of this? Why should a person be cut off from earth life in the first third of his physical life on earth? When we traced this person back, to describe what she was as an individual, we came to an earlier incarnation about the third or fourth century after Christ, in which she had acquired certain forces, of which we may say that, civilization being as it was at that time, these and similar soul-capacities did not really belong to that period. The time had not arrived when the talents then acquired by the soul of this individual could be used. She was born again in a new life, became one of our members and died before the first half of her life, the ascending part, had been completed. In this case we could immediately see, on studying the whole connection of the physical with the spiritual, that this person was one of the most important and significant workers with us in all our Cosmic work.

Materialism is rampant in our times, it puts its stamp on earth-life more than we realize. In our day particularly, materialism is so strong that those beings of the higher Hierarchies whose task it is to carry on the progress of Cosmic evolution actually cannot rescue all the souls who have to-day become materialistic. These must not be left behind, they must be saved; yet their salvation can only be accomplished by the death of certain souls at an early age, who take with them into the spiritual world the forces which would otherwise have been used in the course of their earth-life, and which they then transmute so that they may help the beings of the higher Hierarchies who are working for the redemption of the materialistically-minded souls. Persons who have thus died early in life, are a wonderful help to the higher beings. Now in the case of the soul to which I am referring, something special resulted. She brought with her into her latest incarnation the powers which could not be fully used in her earlier life, poured them as it were into her body, which became weak and ill because of the penetration of these forces. The soul was too powerful for the body; it really contained very great powers. This person died at the above mentioned early age, and, with the forces which instead of being weakened by age remained at their youthful strength, she passed through the gates of death into the spiritual world, still possessing the fund of strength which would have served a long life in that incarnation, and filled to overflowing with earthly force would have so poured itself into the body, as to bring the same into relationship with the external world. Instead she was able to take up spiritual ideas enthusiastically and thus to bring a great supply into the spiritual world. When we trace this individual, who was dear to a large number of our friends, we may learn a great deal from her. What we see in her is, that at a definite time (in this case about the Third or Fourth Century A.D.) certain forces appeared on the path of human evolution which could not be brought to fulfillment then, and that the work to be done through these forces must be taken up later—we have to look back to what belongs to an earlier period and is preserved by certain individuals for a later life. Now when we look for this individual during her life after death we observe direct results—we see that the powers which have lain dormant for a time, reserved for a coming period, now burst forth and are preparing for humanity's future. Thus we see how a later life must be linked with an earlier one, when talking of human evolution. We could not know certain things, of which it may be said that what had existed in the third and fourth epochs had to be revived in the fifth post Atlantean times, unless we could see into the spiritual worlds and say: ‘There we see an individuality who, by means of a short life on earth, acquired faculties which shine forth like a revival of something that has been lost to human life.’ A great inflow of strength comes to the spiritual investigator on observing such individuals in their life after death.

If the time of physical life on earth were ever so bad, if ever so many enemies were to arise against Spiritual Science, and if danger threatened on all sides, it would certainly be a sad and desperate outlook; but there is one thing which may always be a comfort for the future of Anthroposophy, that is, that in those who have died, in such a way as the person above mentioned, we have the best helpers for our earth, the most powerful fellow-workers. This is a case in which a short life on earth served for the gathering of strength with which to take possession of certain fruitful forces requisite for a later period on the path of human evolution. The wise ruling Cosmic powers far surpass in Wisdom all that we, with our merely earthly wisdom, can comprehend. Naturally such fruits of a shortened earth-life can only result when life is shortened in a purely natural way. In anthroposophical circles it should not be necessary to mention that such results do not occur in cases of suicides, and would be quite impossible.

Now, having said all this, I shall give you another concrete example in reference to a member who has not long since passed from our midst, who had a very long illness, which was connected in a remarkable way with his condition of soul, a lively intellectual person, a renowned poet in his earth life and as we can clearly see, a much more important individual than we had deemed while observing his life on earth. After a life lived in sickness of body and long years of suffering, how strangely the fruits of his suffering on earth, after a relatively short period, reveal themselves in the spiritual world; though only in their beginning. That I may make you understand what I want to say, I should like to lead up to the right concept by means of a comparison.

With deep feeling we can admire nature—a scene in nature or a group of people-but we do not on that account lose anything when a clever artist comes along and depicts the scene as his own soul sees it. We then find in the picture created by the artist something which he has placed alongside nature. We know that we have gained by having looked at Nature through another's soul as well, if we can observe nature side by side with it. Why do I say this? To make use of an illustration: we can go into the spiritual world, we can observe things there; yet it is of great importance to observe something else besides. The person to whom I am referring, who died after a life of much suffering on earth, had during his long illness formed for himself a world of Cosmic imaginations, as it were lifting them up out of a sick body gradually approaching death. In the measure in which the body became more sick and incapacitated, there arose from it this world of Cosmic imaginations. That person then passed through the gates of death, and his imaginations are beginning to shine out in wondrous beauty so that in the spiritual world they can be perceived as a wonderful spiritual work of art, as if created out of the Cosmos. They had their origin in the sick body, and were carried from the sick body into the spiritual world; and for those who are able to see the spiritual worlds in other ways they provide a far richer gain in spiritual knowledge than can be acquired by direct spiritual observation; as in a work of art one sees the world as another soul sees it, side by side with what one sees oneself. The above-mentioned person absorbed spiritual conceptions with great devotion, and was even able to put into his poems much of that which comes to the human soul when it grasps the Mystery of Golgotha in a truly Anthroposophical way, when we allow ourselves to be permeated with the thought of the Christ Whom we have learnt to know through Anthroposophy. For we then so recognize Him in our nature, that we really live according to the Pauline saying ‘Not I, but Christ in me contemplates the Universe.’

These truly Rosicrucian Christian thoughts flowed into the later poems of this personality. While his conscious earth-life was occupied with such poetry and creating these poems, his subconscious powers were molding this world of Cosmic imaginations which really consumed the body by the strength of their inner life, but which so worked that to this person in the spiritual world is probably allotted a task about which I will not speak further now. In any case it must be said that behind this conscious life lies another which passes through the gates of death and so manifests that we know it had already been prepared during earth-life through the disposition which is the result of Spiritual Science, and which has turned into beautiful tableaux of Cosmic imaginations which radiate toward the exploring spiritual investigator, and explain much that perhaps would not otherwise have been so easy to discover, but which will continue to work in the tasks which will be allotted to such an individual.

We must regard such results of Spiritual Science with awe and deep reverence. For if in past times the religious sense of the soul had to be aroused through feeling, in the times in which we now live spirituality must be kindled more and more in man through the inter-working of the physical and spiritual worlds, we must become more and more concrete in our spiritual life. In the future, humanity cannot be prevented from seeking the spiritual in a concrete way, and from thinking about how a human individual continues to work on after death with the forces which, as in this case, were prepared before he had passed through the gates of death.

What depths will be found in human life, how noble will be the feelings with which one human being confronts another I They will in the true sense of the word be moral, and filled with the Divine essence which will then be weaving and working in human life, when the thoughts which speak of the dead in as concrete a way as we now speak of the living, find a home in the hearts of men.

We must think of all this, that we may gain in our hearts and souls a proper sense of the mission and work of Anthroposophy in the future.

I should like you to ponder over the things I have said in the last part of this lecture, regarding them as really springing from that attitude towards Spiritual Science which can only speak of such matters in sacred modesty and with deep reverence, and with this feeling I should like to leave in your souls what I have said.

Tomorrow I shall tell you of other facts, for the stimulation of Spiritual Science in your hearts.

Yesterday we spoke of the relation of the spiritual world to the physical world, as expressed by the actual facts which, in a sense work from one world into the other, in so far as the relation between them means something to life in the physical world, in so far as the filling of the soul with feelings and emotions gained through spiritual knowledge is essential and of significance for human life. Something of a general nature must now be added. Here in the physical world we acquire our ideas through our sense perceptions, through the feelings and emotions experienced when events of physical life touch us. Our conscious life in the physical world arises from all these things, and when we observe that life in the physical world, it seems to the vision of the spiritual investigator that in the main, the more this consciousness serves the physical plane the less are its chances of spiritual experiences in the spiritual world ever surrounding us. We may say: the more a man limits himself to his life of ideas and feelings, allowing these to be aroused by the physical plane alone, the less inner strength and power he possesses for gaining a real relationship with the spiritual world. Of course at first a person does not notice that reliance on merely physical ideas is a hindrance to the gaining of a relationship with the spiritual world; but he is compelled to notice it when he has passed through the gates of death; for if during earth-life a man has gained no conceptions beyond the excitements and requirements of the physical plane, his soul is too weak to adapt itself to the experiences of the spiritual world. This can easily be seen when we remember that all that excites us on the physical plane really storms in upon us and so approaches us that we allow ourselves to be captivated by it. Because we allow ourselves to be thus captivated, because we more or less yield ourselves to its influence, we develop too little power in our souls for the spiritual world to mean more to us than a weak dreamy world in which we can neither stir nor move. In order to be able to move freely in that world, something else is needed: viz., that the soul should be inwardly alive, that it should have evolved within itself, by its own efforts, forces to which it had not been incited externally and in which it does not merely remain passive. Out of the depths of our souls such conceptions, such feelings must arise without any incitement from the external world,—however beautiful we may consider that world to be. I may say: Conceptions and feelings arising freely in the soul can alone make it strong enough to establish its own relationship with the spiritual world—a relationship which it needs.

In order that you may properly understand this, I should like to refer to something which is correct though a seeming paradox. Think of a person yielding entirely to the allurements of the physical plane. He thinks and feels only that which is aroused by the physical plane. Such a person is weak in the spiritual world; when he enters the spiritual world after death he can through his own powers only look upon the richness of spiritual life around him, he cannot bring the beings near to him, though he greatly needs them. Spiritual intercourse with them eludes him. Not that the spiritual world is absent, but he cannot find the clues which would bring him into direct relationship with it. Speaking paradoxically, a person who only fantastically arouses ideas and feelings in his soul which, though they are not aroused from outside, yet do not rise above the sense world—this person, who thinks out ideas in a fanciful way thereby produces forces in his soul, which give a free ascending development, and he in a certain sense, finds life in the spiritual world easier than one who will not think at all about spiritual things. It is very significant that we have to grant that visionaries who form conceptions that have nothing to do with outer sense realities, and are only fanciful; nevertheless stand firmer in the spiritual world than those who will not think about it at all. Naturally such fantastic ideas, though they help a man to stand firmly in the spiritual world, only lead him to strange spiritual conditions and relations such as a man would experience in the physical world if his senses were not functioning properly. All the grotesque, lower beings, useless for spiritual life, would come to the person who formed such fantastic concepts; while all that is progressive and helpful in spirit-life would appear before his soul in distorted shape, if it had only been prepared for spirit life by fantastic conceptions. In olden times, before the Mystery of Golgotha took its place in human evolution, conditions were such that human beings could only have conceptions aroused in them from the physical plane; even those ideas which appeared as clairvoyant conceptions were aroused in the physical body. This is the curious part of humanity's ancient clairvoyance; this clairvoyance, these symbolic plastic ideas, although wholly relating to the spiritual world, were aroused through the influences of the physical plane. So that if people had only devoted themselves to the kind of conceptions which reached the level of ancient clairvoyance, they would be in the position of human beings, who look into the spiritual world by means of fantastic conceptions. In order that humanity might have a sound healthy insight into the spiritual world and develop the right relations with it, the various founders of religions appeared in antiquity, Laotze, Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha, etc. these were very great benefactors of humanity. They appeared to their age and to their peoples, speaking to them of these secrets of the spiritual worlds, and so speaking of these secrets that the manner of their speaking was inspired by immediate impulses which came to them as Initiates and founders of religion out of the spiritual world itself. Through their mighty authority they influenced the people to whom they had a spiritual mission. Thus the people did not receive into their souls merely what came to them and stirred them on the physical plane, but also what was sent as a message from the spiritual worlds. These ancient peoples had the capacity of sensing and feeling when such a founder of religion appeared to them—or when one of his successors and disciples appeared; they perceived the breath of spiritual life which streamed through the soul of such a founder, flowing down from spiritual heights into the evolution of the people and the epoch. Thus to the people of antiquity were given thoughts and feelings which were put into their souls by the founders of religion, but which had to be re-awakened by each human being himself (because each was under the influence of the teacher's authority), each had to bring them to active life in his own soul. In this way arose healthy conditions and relationships for human beings in the spiritual worlds, and also the possibility of knowing where they were after they had passed through the gates of death; of possessing the forces which cannot be found in the external physical world, but must be awakened in the soul of the individual himself; of possessing those forces which enable a man to live in the spiritual world, just as by his physical forces he is able to live in the physical world. Since the Mystery of Golgotha many changes have taken place for humanity in this respect. This is precisely the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha; it closes the old epoch of human evolution and begins the new. We can say the old evolution had to be built on authority, as we have just described; on the authority of the religion-founders. But because these souls (our own souls) have in earlier incarnations been through the school of authority, they have become responsible or have come of age let us say; so that now, in the incarnations which have run their course since the Mystery of Golgotha, those impulses which formerly had to be received on authority are now received inwardly. Not only are conceptions now formed inwardly but also our impulses come from within. This is what St. Paul's words mean: ‘Not I, but Christ in me’; that is the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ-Impulse has flowed into the spiritual substance of the earth, and lives in each soul. Souls must learn to understand this Christ-Impulse, which is to be found in the human soul. Humanity has come ‘of age.’ Impulses which formerly had to come from without, must now spring up within. For this reason Christ came to earth. Greater and greater must our understanding of this Christ become. What we gather from our anthroposophical knowledge, what we try to understand about the evolution of the world and of humanity, about the higher worlds and the Hierarchies in those worlds, really brings us at the last to understand more and more the Christ-Impulse which is within us, but which may also remain hidden within us, as do many other things which we do not attempt to understand or to experience. In a certain respect Spiritual Science is a means of attaining what must be reached—of really finding in our souls that which is the Light of Life, the Inner Warmth of life; that Light and Warmth which will lead humanity to its spiritual home, and which is revealed in the soul. In future evolution, human souls will gradually realize that it is simply an abstract idea to speak of ‘the God within,’ if the soul is too easy-going to concern itself with the understanding of the teachings of Spiritual Science. How do we to-day regard the spiritual world in its reality? All that has been written about Spiritual Science, about Saturn, Sun, and Moon, the evolutionary epochs of earth, about the heavenly Hierarchies and all that the spiritual investigator knows and says about the spiritual world, all this he ultimately realizes is a gift to him through the Christ-Impulse which has entered earth evolution. He realizes this Christ-Impulse in such a way that he sees the truth of Christ's words, ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the earth-period.’ Not only at the beginning of our epoch did Christ say this; if we noisy open our souls to Him He is saying it now, here, and in our Spiritual Science, which we must try to spread all over the world. Therefore it is so very necessary that present-day souls should understand that Spiritual Science is the suitable way and the right path into the spiritual worlds for our time. Humanity having come ‘of age’ must consciously develop thoughts and feelings, must seek step by step, of its own powers and not by external authority, to enter the spiritual worlds. Christ has come into the world that humanity may be able to do this. Even though many assert to-day that Spiritual Science must be believed because it is taught by the spiritual investigator—this is not true. If anyone thinks he must believe what Spiritual Science says, without understanding it by the efforts of his own soul-faculties, these only shows that he has not laid aside the prejudices of his materialistic thinking. Anyone who, with a truly open mind, approaches the most daring teachings of Anthroposophy can understand and grasp them. Souls have not passed through their former incarnations in vain; they can find within their souls the inward spiritual language wherewith to understand what the spiritual investigators say. Of course if these souls allow their minds to become clouded, as they are to-day, not by a true Natural Science but by a mistaken outlook on nature, if they allow mist upon mist to accumulate before their spiritual eyes and then say: ‘We do not understand Anthroposophy, we must only believe its statements,’ this does not mean that Anthroposophy cannot really be understood, for it happens that in such a case people create their own hindrances to it. We live in an age when most people never notice how many hindrances there are and how these hindrances can block their path; but we also are living in a century which unconsciously, from its as yet chaotic soul-force, rises in revolt against these hindrances, when longings are arising in the souls of men for an understanding of the spiritual worlds.

Truly of tremendous importance is the work accomplished by Natural Science during the last few centuries, and our friends know how often I emphasize the great significance of the triumphs of Natural Science, and how I compare the present and future work of Anthroposophy with what Natural Science has discovered, especially during the nineteenth century; but we must bear in mind that this Natural Science has become much more dogmatic than the old religions. To-day, people—and mostly those who take up Natural Science as amateurs—stick to dogmas more rigidly and seriously than was the case with the old religious dogmas. Truly the Copernican views represented a great swing of the pendulum; they had to come, they were a step towards the truth, as I have often said; but, they too are in many respects one-sided and must be completed by a spiritual conception of the Universe. If they are held as dogmatically as they are being expressed if it is said that they are absolutely true, they will then force concepts into men's souls which will prevent them from understanding and grasping Spiritual Science. We can even now see the effects of these dogmatic assertions. In our present age of compulsory education children are taught from their earliest years to imagine the sun with the earth revolving around it, also the planets, just as one forms an imagination, if one has in front of one a model. But no one has any right to picture it thus, as if these things were absolute certainties; as though one were able to place a chair in Cosmic space, set oneself down, and from it watch the movements of Sun, earth, and planets as one looks at a model which one sets up in the schoolroom. In these children's souls a consciousness is awakened that the facts really are such. People are amazed when we speak of these matters. Other things are also experienced today, which are false when looked at in another light. During the last few days an apparently very aspiring man sent me a pamphlet. Nothing shall be said here as to whether its contents were right or wrong, but this pamphlet is one proof among many others, of the way in which the human soul revolts against the dogmatism of the Natural Science of the last century; for this writer tries to prove mathematically that the earth is flat, not round. Of course this assertion seems very absurd in our age, and you will naturally say: ‘But a man can easily sail right round the world, therefore the man who says the earth is flat and not round must be a fool.’ The man who wrote the pamphlet knew this however. We need not agree with him, but he knew this and many another valid objections, I assure you. By all this I am only trying to show that in our day souls are already beginning to rise in revolt against all the dogmatic Natural Science stuff which has been piled up in their souls from earliest childhood and which hinders them from exercising the free, judgment which is necessary for the recognition of anthroposophical truths. When humanity has set itself free from dogma, then—yes then, the time will come when we can speak of spiritual scientific knowledge and it will be said; I see that it could not be otherwise. You see, much that is paradoxical must be said now in speaking of the relation of Spiritual Science to our age. Spiritual Science, however, has gradually to flow into human souls, so that they may become ever greater and greater factors in the spiritual civilization of humanity as it progresses into the future. Anthroposophy itself will be able to strengthen them, so that these souls will be enabled to find their links with the spiritual world. Spiritual Science will be welcomed by human beings, will be gradually received by the youngest and they will know: ‘Around me are not only mountains, rivers, clouds, stars, sun, moon, planets, animals and minerals, but also spiritual beings, beings of the higher Hierarchies, and spiritual events, even -as we have around us physical events and processes. I have relationship with both spiritual and physical processes.’

Let me picture a few things which will gradually be more understood by human souls when Spiritual Science becomes a living factor in the soul of man.

In speaking of these things we must start with concrete facts of spiritual research, for they best show man's relation to the spiritual world.

I know a man who, in his twenty-third or twenty-fourth year, had a kind of vision. He wrote about this vision in a clumsy way, we may even say stupidly. The vision was this: He placed into a sort of scene, very awkwardly, the more important spirits of the German intellectual period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; he did not know why he arranged it so-everything that Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, Herder were doing—but they were doing it after they had already passed to the world to which a human enters after death. Thus he had a vision of these great men living in the spiritual world he saw in his vision what they were now doing. As Spiritual Scientists we must ask: ‘What does such a vision signify? What does it show us?’ It shows the soul as having been greatly permeated by certain influences from the spiritual world, they press into it and become as it were a great dream, which expresses itself in such a way that the soul sees in vision, though indistinctly, its own inner feelings and impressions. Influences work into the soul from the spiritual world. How do they work? What is the actual relationship of the human soul to the beings of the spiritual world, for even the dead are beings in the spiritual world during the period between death and a new birth? What is this relationship? Well, we see an object in the physical world if we look at it—that is the right expression to use; I see the rose, I see the table. It is, however, not right to speak in the same way when referring to spiritual beings. It is not correct. The expression is not quite accurate if we say: I see a being belonging to the ranks of the Angels or Archangels. The expression is not correct; it must be put in a different way. As soon as a human being enters the spiritual world and there has feelings and experiences, instead of his seeing the beings there, they look at him; he is aware of them. He feels the quiet soothing influence of their spiritual senses and forces, which illuminate and resound in his own soul. And we must actually say of the spiritual world, ‘It is not I who see or perceive, but I know that I am seen, that I am perceived.’ Can you feel the change of experience indicated here? When, instead of using the words as in the physical world: ‘I perceive something,’ the other words receive a meaning: ‘Placed as I am in the spiritual world, I am perceived from all sides, that is now my life.’ The ‘Ego’ knows of this ‘being perceived,’ of this ‘being carried away by the experiences which other beings have with me.’ When this change takes place, you have an inkling of what a different relation the soul has to its environment when it rises from the physical into the spiritual world. It will then dawn upon you that a soul's experience is actually different when it passes from the physical to the spiritual world. A part of the task given to the dead is, to turn their glances earthwards, towards those still living; that they may, with their spiritual forces observe them; that those still living on earth may be perceived by the souls of the dead. Humanity will learn through Spiritual Science the meaning of the words: ‘Those who have passed through the gates of death see me; they send their forces down to me.’ Human beings will thus learn to speak of the dead as alive, as spiritually living. The one who had the vision described, realized this relation, though very dimly—for truly Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Herder are not inactive after death; in the spiritual they occupy themselves with those who are still on earth; they watch them, perceive them, stimulate them, according to the measure of the forces they receive from the higher Hierarchies. Thus the man who had this vision felt, without being conscious of the feeling, that he was watched by the spirits who had been sent to aid the evolution of humanity. This may not have been clear, but it expressed itself in the vision which he then put into awkward words, saying that Lessing ‘like a marshal in the spirit world went first,’ followed by Goethe, Schiller and Herder, leading and guiding their successors living on earth.

When such a vision, arising chaotically and as if in a dream, presents itself clearly to the soul, it may mean something for the dreamer; it may mean for instance that his consciousness is directly stirred from the spiritual world so that he can rise to the thought: ‘What I say and do, I will so say and do that I can endure the dead looking down upon me.’ It may also happen that a person living on earth, who is inwardly aroused by a similar vision, feels some task to lie before him, whether small or great, and his power, courage, and energy will be strengthened, his conscience will become easier when he has come to the right conclusion and imagines: ‘The dead are helping me, by watching me.’

Thus can the dead help the living? Through anthroposophy, we learn to feel the responsibility of our actions towards the dead and we may also have the happy feeling: ‘While I am doing this or that, my dead friend with his active power is watching me, and his force is added to mine.’ Not that he gives us the strength—which we must develop ourselves; he does not give us our faculties, those we must already possess; but he is a real help as if he were standing just behind us. He really does stand there. I shall give you a concrete example: for after we have for so long carried on together this anthroposophical work, we may bring forward such examples; perhaps they may sound personal, but they are meant quite impersonally, they set forth only facts and may on that account be mentioned as examples.

In Munich we tried for many years to perform the Mystery Plays, and so arrange the scenes that spiritual force might stream through them into this side of our movement. I am conscious that at any rate the really essential things which were done, those which really mattered, were in complete accord with the spiritual world. Over and over again I went to my work in those days, when the plays were being prepared for the stage, with a definite consciousness. At the commencement of our anthroposophical activity, when we were quite a small society, there was a person among us who was very enthusiastic about Spiritual Science; a person who besides working with quiet enthusiasm in all that could be done in the beginning as regards anthroposophy, introduced into its whole management a wonderfully beautiful and artistic understanding and interest. She was a person who united great kindliness of personal action with great seriousness in her spiritual views. She was soon taken from us, from the physical plane. Not only does she remain what is usually called ‘never to be forgotten’ by us, but she became what a human individual can become, who, by dint of circumstances, is able only in the spiritual world to build up what in physical life has been so beautifully prepared and begun here with many latent powers that she is able to develop in the spiritual world. Many years can be thus spent and many years passed in this case, until the possibility was unfolded, as it were out of a sort of chrysalis condition, for this person to link herself with what was germinating here in the physical world. As if through destiny, it happened that she entered upon a free spiritual life in the spiritual world, a life which had acquired this wonderful power of working, just when we had to undertake our staging, when Karma had led us to that point. Of course we had to bring our own powers and spiritual faculties to the work, but, just as no matter how strong the spiritual powers at our disposal, we must bring our physical abilities to bear when we have physical tasks to accomplish, so must certain forces intervene from the spiritual world, when we have spiritual work to do. Spiritual help, spiritual support must come to us; it comes also to those who cannot see into spiritual worlds, although they are unconscious of it, for we are always being influenced and helped by the spiritual world. In the case of which I speak, it is a fact that I always had the consciousness that the individual to whom I refer was watching over and helping us. We felt this watching as a strengthening force; as a kindling of warmth in our souls, enabling us to carry out our task.

Thus must we describe the way in which the spiritual worlds and the beings living in them—among whom are our dead—work with us in the physical world, and how true is the saying: ‘We are perceived by those in the spiritual world who have developed connections with us.’

There will come a time when human life will be enriched through such events as we have indicated when we shall not merely possess memory pictures in our minds of our dead friends, but shall feel them as real helpers in our undertakings. The souls of our dead will then live on in our consciousness, the consciousness of the human being on earth; although it may seem that the relationship is cut off by death. We can quite understand that this is now only possible for the few, and can understand why. It is because spiritual scientific development is only at its beginning; it has not yet produced in souls the capacities and powers that can act freely.

The road to such conceptions as I have mentioned may be the following: it certainly will be so for many souls in the future. We may think of the dead, while at our daily work here on earth. We may awaken in our souls all the love we had for them, and one day the moment will certainly come, it need not be in a vision—truly it need not be in a vision—when an impression comes to us: ‘Yes the one who died is helping me, as if he were working through my hands and fingers, as if he kindled my ardor for the work. I feel his force within me.’ This clear feeling that spiritual influences work down from spiritual worlds is a fruit, a real living fruit, which comes to souls through Spiritual Science.

Now let us think of the great enrichment that will come to human lives when they are not only aware of what is revealed to their senses, but also have the consciousness impressed upon them (not necessarily in vision) in all their physical work and undertakings: ‘While you are busy and at work, this or that dear one who had been your helper or your protector in life, shields you, helps you still, through powers he did not possess in his physical life, but for which he could only prepare here to be able to exercise them in the spirit world.’ Truly, even as our physical health is refreshed when we inhale the fresh morning air, so will human souls feel refreshed for their spiritual life by breathing in the protecting help they will then be able to perceive and feel coming to them, or even from the gaze directed towards them by the beings in the spiritual worlds. We are looking into a future of humanity which is to be prepared by the culture of Spiritual Science, and which will be much richer than the present life of man. Man will, however, need this enrichment from the spiritual world—for have we not said the old dreamy clairvoyance of antiquity was stimulated in the physical body—but the physical body has changed. It is now only suited for giving to human beings their physical thoughts, thoughts aroused on the physical plane. We must acquire thoughts about the spiritual world through Spiritual Science. Ever less will be the knowledge of spiritual worlds which can be gained by man from the physical plane, the physical body will become more powerless; and as all that is physical originates in the spiritual, and the longing of the soul for a real connection with the spiritual world will become greater and greater.

In olden times something was given to man by his physical nature which flashed into his soul as it were from the workings of his physical body, so that he became clairvoyant. Now we may say: the time has come when human beings will gradually know more of spiritual things, and these must be ever more and more brought down from the spiritual worlds, but the transition must not pass unnoticed. We must gain knowledge of the path which leads into the spiritual world through Anthroposophy. We must not evade the difficulties and inconveniences which a soul may feel when it seeks step by step for knowledge of what happens in the spiritual worlds. It is perhaps very uncomfortable to strain our intellect, our powers of reason, our sense of truth, sufficiently; but we must face this inconvenience. The anthroposophical movement, to which we belong, exists for this. Anthroposophy must gradually cause us to see: By their repeated earth-lives human souls are moving forward, they are being changed; and we are living in the age when human beings must go into the spiritual worlds with understanding. It would not be right if in our Society in particular there were not a growing understanding for the fact, that a man who, without having experienced Spiritual Science, still has the old clairvoyant powers arising out of his body, cannot stand higher than one who with intellectual ideas and understanding learns of what can be communicated about spiritual worlds. Human beings are so easily deceived, led away by their sense of ease not to try to exert their soul's activity, not to strain their powers of perception and observation. Naturally these must be exerted if we wish to live in the spirit of Anthroposophy, but humanity is tempted not to make these efforts. Therefore people are gradually forced to value more highly the mental and psychic forces arising as if out of the body, stimulated by the hidden bodily forces. Indeed we may actually hear people say: ‘What you are trying to make comprehensible about the spiritual worlds is not what we are really seeking, we are not impressed by it; we want to experience the incomprehensible.’ People are much more inclined to accept what cannot be understood than to exert themselves to seek what can be grasped spiritually. This then leads to the fact that there exists what we may call a complete misunderstanding of the true spiritual task of the present; if any one comes forward possessing natural psychic powers without anthroposophical training, people say he is very wonderful, and they put a special halo round his head. Because, they say, we do not know whence his powers come, because he has not been trained through Spiritual Science, and has not made efforts, therefore his powers are so very valuable; another world makes itself evident in our world through him. Truly our Movement would not reach its goal if it did not soon overcome this prejudice. We can often hear it said: This or that man must be the reincarnation of a great individual; he must have been so and so, because he possesses these forces, these chaotic psychic forces, without having worked for them in the present life by means of a really active struggling soul-life. Rather we ought to feel sure that the man who reveals such psychic forces within himself, is a backward soul; one who has remained behind at an earlier stage of evolution, and who must be raised and nurtured in the present age through Spiritual Science. Those who have had the most important incarnations in earlier times, appear to-day more like one of whom we shall be speaking tomorrow, the anniversary of Christian Morgenstern's death, as having powers which, unfortunately, are less valued perhaps by many than is a kind of chaotic psychism, but which are fruits of much higher spiritual forces, even though to-day they are represented as of little value, because they are not understood.

In these two lectures I have attempted partly from concrete facts to put before you a picture of the interpenetration of the spiritual world into the physical, and the working of the physical world into the spiritual. I have tried to show you how unjustifiable it is for people to say that it is useless to trouble about the spiritual world while living on the physical plane. I have tried to show how the very reason why our physical life cannot be understood is that we are not conscious of the concrete inter-working of the spiritual world into our physical world. Not that we receive our knowledge from the spiritual world alone—that is not the point; this knowledge has to be there, we must make it our own because it is truth revealed to us from spiritual worlds and is the key to the understanding and experiencing of the world. This knowledge must, however, lead us to an inner mood, an inner feeling, a kind of ‘knowing oneself to be within the spiritual world.’ Then through the new Spiritual Science there comes into our souls what such an important spirit as Fichte said, and which I have mentioned in a public lecture and shall repeat here. There comes into our souls that at which Fichte could do no more than hint. I know that I speak in the same sense as he did when I add a few words to his, for the understanding of which he still works, from out the spiritual worlds. Thus said the great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, during his earth life:

The super-earthly will not come to me only when I have lost my connection with earth life. Even now I live in the supersensible world, in it I live a truer life than I do in the sense-world, it is my only firm standpoint; and in that I possess the supersensible world, I possess that for the sake of which alone I would like to continue my life on earth.

‘What you call heaven,’ says Fichte ‘does not only lie on the other side of the grave. It is everywhere around us in Nature, and springs up in every loving heart.’ ‘Now,’ we understand Fichte to mean, as he speaks to us from the spiritual world.

Anthroposophy, as it blossoms in this age and is to become a germ within humanity, shall be the light which strengthens the feelings and emotions for the spiritual life which springs forth in every loving heart. The loving heart will increasingly beget longings for the spiritual world, and Anthroposophy will more and more have to demand this light from the spiritual world for its own possession.

In saying this we are certainly speaking in agreement with those who have died before us, who longed for the spiritual world. While lifting ourselves up into this world, we are truly in harmony with the Cosmic Wisdom which governs human evolution, in so far as we can understand and recognize it with our human powers.

Recently, the most diverse views, including those from various quarters here in Switzerland, have been expressed regarding the relationship between what has been cultivated for many years in our circles as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, led to the building of this structure here, the Goetheanum, and ultimately to what is to be brought into the world by us in another direction, linking up with the social movements and aspirations of the present day. The fact that we had to add this social endeavor to our anthroposophical striving has met with the most diverse assessments, both approving and disapproving. Of course, this cannot be decisive for the way we have to pursue our path; but it is necessary to draw attention to a number of facts that have come to light in this regard.

Anthroposophists often say that the anthroposophical movement should not have burdened itself with the task of realizing the threefold social organism. And some of those people who have taken an interest in the social movement that is to lead to the threefold social order find it disturbing that the idea of threefold order has taken as its starting point anthroposophical knowledge, which is often perceived as mystical, dark and unclear. Thus the threefolders are often criticized by the anthroposophists, and the anthroposophists by the threefolders. And on both sides, the community is sometimes not welcome.

As I said, this cannot deter us; but it is important to be fully aware of such a fact and to remember the inner connection that we have often had to bring before our souls in the considerations that have been practiced here.

But another thing has also come to light more and more, and this other thing is, I would like to say, something that perhaps needs to be considered more intensively for our task; because ultimately, if people with a social mindset criticize our association with anthroposophy, there is nothing we can do about it, just as there is nothing we can do about anthroposophists emphasizing that it would be better if we had not burdened ourselves with social thinking. We cannot do anything special about that either, but must continue unwaveringly on the path we have recognized as the right one. But what is perhaps more urgently to be taken into account is that more and more people are also speaking out and saying that it is necessary to create an anthroposophical foundation for the personal understanding of the idea of threefolding. The idea of threefolding would be much better understood if an anthroposophical basis were created. And, for example, especially in proletarian circles, there is more and more demand for such an anthroposophical basis. This is something that may come as a surprise to some, although basically it is not too surprising.

The way in which anthroposophical striving was often regarded in the past was already regarded by our friends — which was also due to class differences — in such a way that little anthroposophy could be brought into proletarian circles. And now it is inevitable that every person who encounters the threefold order will somehow also hear something about anthroposophy, and initially become acquainted with it in an external way. And it is very strange that a vivid need for anthroposophy arises precisely at this point.

For example, after the idea of threefolding had been cultivated for some time in Stuttgart without any anthroposophical discussion, we needed to give lecture cycles on purely anthroposophical subjects. This had become necessary for good reasons, and they will be continued.

This is a matter that should be given special consideration here, and it is this thought that I would like to present to you today. Here in Switzerland, we are in a very special position with regard to these two currents, the social current and the anthroposophical current that is connected with it, at least for us. The question of social striving born of anthroposophical thinking is indeed quite different for Central Europe than it is for Switzerland. For Central Europe, the situation is such that it is a matter of life and death, the life and death of the nation. There may be many people today who do not realize the seriousness of the situation; but it is a matter of the life and death of the nation. People think far too superficially about such things. When you say “death of the nation,” they think: you can't kill eighty million people in a short period of time, so it can't be about the death of the nation.

Anyone who thinks like that does not understand at all what is actually at stake. It is quite natural that you cannot physically kill eighty or ninety million people in a short time. But the death of a nation means something quite different. We only need to remember that when Jerusalem was destroyed, it was not a matter of the death of individual Jews living in Jerusalem at that time. Nevertheless, in a certain sense it was a matter of the death of the nation, and this death of the nation can occur in a completely different way than it occurred at that time. It is a matter of life or death! And life can truly — one could think of many other things about the threefold social order — be saved only by the inauguration of the threefold social order. In the immediate future, it is a matter of either-or: an understanding of the threefold social order or the death of the national culture. Today this may seem immodest and perhaps even foolish to people. But it is so. So that one can say: There is much reason to reach out to threefolding out of a certain compulsion. It may take longer or shorter, but there is reason for compulsion. This compulsion also exists towards the East of Europe, towards this East, indescribably crushed by its karma.

The situation here is different. Here there is — or would be — the possibility of voluntarily reaching out for something like the threefold social order; for here, as in the West, it is not a matter of life and death, but of the continuation of events in a more or less spiritual or unspiritual sense. Of course, life in Switzerland and in the West can continue in a materialistic sense for a long time without a spiritual impulse; or one can come voluntarily to see in an eminently spiritual movement, such as the threefold social order movement, that which must give a new impulse. There is no need to think that it is a matter of life or death.

But it is quite a different matter to carry out a task out of free will or under compulsion. And one could also say that for the overall development of the world, it would mean something quite different to arrive at the stream of threefolding out of free insight, especially in a place like Switzerland. Today it is extremely difficult, even for me, to formulate and express these things objectively. I believe it would be a great blessing if someone belonging to the West, or especially to a neutral country, would have the courage to express this openly; for outwardly it would mean something quite different. In particular, the following would have to be taken into account: What would come from the few countries that have remained neutral would also be of the greatest significance inwardly. If, therefore, something like the impulse of the threefold social organism could come out of a country or neutral territories in relation to the earlier warlike conditions, then something very significant would actually be done for the world-historical movement. To understand this is also an anthroposophical question. For only anthroposophy can answer the question: What does the integration of such an impulse mean in the overall development of humanity? And here it is not unimportant that this impulse should be formulated in an abstract form, but it is significant from which fact it arises: whether it arises from the fact of free knowledge or whether it arises from the fact of necessity, as it can only arise in Central Europe because nothing else can arise there now but that which arises out of the bitterest need.

So I think that here in Switzerland, in particular, we should consider what could provide enthusiasm for the idea of the threefold social organism. And the question then arises in the soul: how do you get over a certain dilemma? Among you there are many who have been participating in our anthroposophical movement for quite a long time and have been able to see for themselves how slowly or how quickly — mostly how slowly — what is meant in this anthroposophical movement penetrates people's souls. It is happening slowly. And if it were to depend on people first becoming anthroposophists in order to then be able to think socially in the right way, then it could, under certain circumstances, be much, much too late. Therefore, it had to be borne in mind that the idea of threefolding, even if it appears less strongly founded, has to be presented to the world in its own right, because it is not possible to wait until it emerges as a matter of course from anthroposophically oriented thinking. However, it will probably be necessary for this idea of threefolding to receive a certain amount of support. Since it cannot receive this support quickly enough from the real spread of anthroposophy, which is slow, it should be able to receive this support from the way the members of the anthroposophical movement act. In other words, the members of the anthroposophical movement should try to gain trust by acting socially.

In any case, this is a question that cannot be answered theoretically, but only practically, in line with life, because it is a question of appearance. We must try to represent the social aspect in such a way that people can see something inspiring in the way it is represented, even if the foundation from the anthroposophical side cannot be laid quickly enough.

Now you will ask me: Yes, how is it possible to find the right tact, so to speak, in representing the social movement? — Of course, no catechism-like instruction can be given about this either. But something can be said that, if sufficiently taken into account, will help a great deal: each and every one of us should make more and more effort to really get to know the so-called social movement in a way that is appropriate to life. When a socially oriented movement was started in our circles, it was obvious that this was not the case. Among the most well-meaning and benevolent co-workers in our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science movement, there were quite a few who had completely overlooked the fact that there was and is a modern social movement in the second half of the 19th century and into our own days. That is, I do not mean that all members did not know that there is a social movement. But it does not do anything to know that there is a social movement; nor does it do anything to follow what the newspapers report about the social movement. Rather, it is a matter of really knowing the concrete expressions and aspirations of this movement. Not so long ago I met people in our midst who did not know when threefolding began, that there are trade unions and what trade unions are. We have become too accustomed to ignoring people in life and not caring about what people actually do and do. We must learn to truly care about the souls of people, to really take an interest in the souls of people. There is a major obstacle to this, which I would like to mention without wanting to hurt anyone: “bourgeois goodwill” for the working population. This bourgeois goodwill for the working population, which often oozes with social impetus, is basically a serious obstacle to social effectiveness in the present day. We have experienced what I actually mean by this in a wide variety of areas. Just think of how we have experienced a certain getting to know the so-called 'people'. We have experienced historical novels, folk novels, folk novellas in which people who understood nothing about the people For example, Berthold Auerbach or similar authors – who understood nothing about the people – described the way the people were or are, and what came from this side was then accepted as an occupation, a cognitive occupation with the people. One even felt that it was something belonging to the social question when one saw Gerhart Hauptmann's “Weavers”. Of course, in Gerhart Hauptmann's “Weavers” one sees the misery of the proletarian masses in such a way that one is shown on stage how a poor family has to feed on a dead dog. But it is a strange conception of the understanding of social life when people sit in the stalls or in the gallery in some large city and watch how the poor family has to feed itself on a dead dog, and then go home to, say, have one of the usual soups. I do not want to say that it is perhaps possible in our time to bridge the class divide overnight. But what it comes down to is that we really have to get a sense of what is happening; that we have to stop walking past people and not knowing the contexts of their lives. What is really at issue today is whether each individual can visualize a broad context of world history, a context that only opens up when we look back to earlier times, which have left behind much that lives in our present, and when we look at new things that are emerging in this present as if from the depths of the earth to the surface of life.

One question that comes up again and again when talking about modern public life is that of organization. Our living conditions have become complicated. Work has become more and more compartmentalized. The individual is involved in a narrowly defined area of work and activity. We can only work, we can only be effective as modern people through organizations. There have always been organizations. But people do not take into account that older organizations were quite different from the organizations that have to arise today. Today we live almost exclusively in such organizations, which in part continue the old, but in part already have the new within them, and are constantly experiencing inner upheavals. However, the awareness has not penetrated that something truly radically new must emerge from the depths of human evolution.

When we inquire about older organizations, we can actually identify one thing as the impulse behind such organizations: human blood, the bond of blood. When we look at older times, we see tribes that belonged together, extended families that belonged together. What belongs together is actually organized out of human depths through blood. This means that the organizing principle is often subconscious and does not fully emerge into consciousness. People are organizing, but it does not emerge into consciousness. Higher spirits than man are involved in this organization.

Today we are faced with the necessity to do what used to happen unconsciously, that is, in many cases, to be carried out by higher spirits than man is, out of human consciousness itself. We consciously want to join together in associations, in organizations to promote social work. That which has united people out of blood is gradually losing its significance.

The observed, the recognized thing, the objective must provide the reasons for the union. Subconscious or unconscious union must give way to conscious union. We live in the midst of this interweaving of these two currents: conscious organizing and unconscious organizing, and the convulsions of the present are in many ways connected with the confluence of these two currents. Take, for example, the efforts of socialist parties of various shades that are currently in the public eye. In these socialist parties, there is a certain urge to organize consciously, even if it is still instinctive today. They want to organize. But on the other hand, they have not yet progressed to finding the object for conscious organizing.

You can, by wanting to make this clear to yourself, simply, I would like to say, look at the archetypal phenomenon of today's social striving. Suppose someone were to appear here – let us speak quite impartially – and say: Social striving should be done! – What would he mean by that? He would mean: Social striving should be done in Switzerland. If you were to expect him to think differently, he would naturally feel that this was an unreasonable demand. Or do you think that someone in France would act in this way: he would naturally think that social efforts should be made within French borders. It has also been stated in theory that socialist programs should use the old state borders as a framework for large socialist cooperatives. The state is to be transformed into a large socialist cooperative. But the state is, after all, what is left of the old, consanguineous associations, the old blood associations. So it is simply to be imposed on what comes out of the old consanguineous relationships.

We expect a great deal of people today when we expect them to think clearly about this matter. And people will not be able to think clearly about these things at all unless they become anthroposophists. As strange as it may seem, what I am saying now is true: people will not be able to think clearly about this at all. For what is the call that is going through this world? The call that is going through our world is: the liberation of peoples. That is, the old blood ties that come from the old days are to be reorganized in some way. Liberation of the peoples! As this call goes through the world, it completely ignores what organization out of consciousness should be. Things collide so violently in our present time. Therefore, only a truly anthroposophical, a general understanding of humanity will be able to lead to where we want to go.

But there are good reasons for this. For the anthroposophical understanding, namely the earlier so-called theosophical understanding, has always stopped at this question. It is true that people have said: fraternal understanding of people without distinction of race, color and so on. — But has this become real anywhere in our modern times? It has become theory, abstract theory; it has not become real in our time. And now it is least real of all.

As a result, this anthroposophical-theosophical striving has participated in the general love for the abstract, which has been spoken of so often here, that general love for the abstract that lives in the mental and emotional existences, which are separate from life. We live as modern people, as people of the present, the life that we are not allowed to live, the double life: on the one hand, life in our external work, where we have our profession, where we have many other things as well, and the life where we consider, where we feel. A life of everyday, a life of Sunday. We do not want to hear when the spirit is spoken of, something that intervenes in the life of Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday; we want to have a life when the spirit is spoken of, a life in which we feel comfortable when it is spoken of on Sunday , morning or afternoon, from the pulpit, where we do not need to think about what will happen on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but where we only feel a certain pleasure at the words: brotherhood, love of neighbor, and so on. This extends to the life of science. And there it shows itself in particular how it has been effected; this historical effect must be considered.

You see, our profane sciences no longer allow themselves to know anything about the spirit, and not even about the soul. It is taken for granted that the profane sciences do not allow themselves to know anything about the spirit and the soul. Scholars today proclaim that science must be free from that which is belief, and in so doing they think they are serving unprejudiced science. They think one is prejudiced if one still has something to say about the soul and the spirit in the field of science, because, so people think, only subjective faith decides about such things. But where does this actually come from? In reality it comes from the fact that the age has developed in such a way that religious creeds have monopolized the tendency towards the soul and the spiritual. The religious creeds have formed a monopoly for the soul and for the spiritual. And today it is taken for granted that when something like anthroposophy is judged from this point of view, people simply say: This must not be cultivated; science must remain free of these things, science has no say in the soul and spirit, because the relationship to the soul and spirit should be a monopoly of the denominations. That is why it is so humoristically serious – forgive me for using the expression in the face of a very serious fact, but just as there can be tragicomedy, there can also be humoristically serious, and the tragicomic is sometimes more significant for the development of the world It is humorous to hear from the lecterns today that science must be so and so objective, without getting involved in the things of the soul or the spirit, because that would break the exactness of science. It is therefore humorous to hear such things, because it comes from the fact that people who do not have to defend the faith were forbidden to speak about spirit and soul for so long. And those who believe today, as scientific scholars, that they have to keep science pure for the sake of its exactness, they really want to keep it pure because they have been forbidden by dogmatics to think about soul and spirit. It is the dregs, the residue, the residue of the old ecclesiastical prohibitions, which are proclaimed to us today as exact scientific demands from the lecterns. People simply do not know how historically what they proclaim today as a self-evident and sometimes, in their opinion, high truth has developed. And these things should not be slept through, but people should wake up to them. But without waking up to these things, we will not get anywhere. No matter how many beautiful things we pass down about the social question, we will not get anywhere if we succumb to any illusions about the greatest lie that actually exists, about the scientific lie of the present. We do not yet feel it, this scientific lie, but we must learn to feel it.

What I have just said is not meant emotionally, it is meant quite theoretically, and can only be understood correctly if it is taken up in this theoretical sense. You see, I only feel called upon to speak the word scientific lie because, just as I speak this word and unreservedly criticize present-day science from this point of view, I also defend it just as much ; for it has grown great through all that it has been able to achieve by the mere fact that for some time men have been investigating only the physical and bodily through science, without particularly turning to the soul and spirit. But this may only be regarded as a utilitarian and pedagogical principle of human development, not as something epistemological.

Thus, even today, the necessity must be recognized to permeate again the profane science with real knowledge of the soul and the spiritual. Only from this will the strength arise to tackle the social problems deeply enough. In our time, the human being is now faced with the necessity of recognizing differently than is recognized today in our schools. I would like to say that things are now coming to fruition in knowledge that did not need a long time to come to fruition. For a long time, the Copernican worldview was quite sufficient. It was useful for people to imagine it this way: here is the sun, the earth moves around in an ellipse, around the earth in turn moves the moon, between the sun and the earth Mercury and Venus, further away Mars and so on. — It was nice to present this whole picture of the movement of the planets around the sun in ellipses for humanity. This picture was enough until the present.

But how did this picture come into being historically? I have mentioned this often enough. Historically, this picture came into being because the great Copernicus once wrote his book about the revolution of the heavenly bodies. Right at the beginning there are three sentences. If you pay attention to all three, then it is good. But they were not all three observed, only the first two. The third was ignored. If you only consider the first two Copernican sentences, then the Copernican system, continued in the Keplerian and Newtonian sense, emerges. But this system is not correct. If, according to the calculations of this system, a planet should be at a certain point and you point the telescope in that direction, it is not there! But according to this system, it should be there. Therefore, for some time now, the so-called “Bessel Reductions” have been used; the position is always corrected. Before setting up the telescope, one does not point it towards the point for which one would have to point it according to this system, but towards the point for which one would have to point it after applying the Bessel corrections. But what do these Bessel corrections actually mean? They mean that we must always apply anew what we would apply at once if we were to observe all three Copernican laws, that is, if we had not left the third out of account. But if we take this third Copernican law into account, then history is again at odds with the beautiful revolutions of the planets around the sun. Then we must think of a different world system. But people will not think of this other world system either before they are properly prepared for such a rethinking through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For how do people look at the world today? People look at it today as if they were sitting inside a train, never looking out the window and never getting off, but always sitting inside and only living with the passengers of the train. But a person could also travel through the world with a train in such a way that he travels a distance, then he leaves the train, gets off, experiences what is in a city; it may be that another train then comes along, it does not matter, in which he gets back on. He travels further, experiences something in another city. These are the stages that one experiences there. One then carries this with oneself.

Today's astronomical science experiences the Earth's journey through space as if one were sitting in a train and experiencing nothing but the experiences of one's fellow passengers, never getting off. Now you will say: How can you get off the Earth? Is it possible to get off the Earth? — You can, but it is different to get off the Earth than to get off a train. To get off a train means to walk out of the door of the carriage and then go somewhere. To get off the earth means to penetrate into the human soul. When you really penetrate into the soul, when you reach what is inside the soul, then you have gotten off the earth; then you have undergone the same procedure in relation to the earth as you do when you get off a train and get back on. But now the peculiar thing is that when you get off, that is, when you really delve inwardly, concretely delve, not through illusions, but concretely delve, then you experience something different with each getting off, really experience something different with each getting off. Reciting mysticism that delves into the human interior, that experiences God in the soul, that is just mere reciting. To really experience something inwardly, that turns out to be different in different ages, that it is always a renewed experience. If someone has really experienced something inwardly in 1870, and again inwardly in 1919, the two things are experienced differently inwardly. Why are they different? Because man experiences the universe, always at a different place.

It was through such an inner experiencing that the ancients found their system of the heavens, not through a purely outer experiencing. It was through an experiencing like that in the train that the Copernican system arose. The system of the future will again have to be experienced inwardly, in that man measures the journey through the world in inner experiences. Then something different will come out. Above all, we will learn to experience the world concretely, not in the abstract way that people love today.

Something special happened to me recently in Berlin that basically gave me great satisfaction. Some time ago, a disgraceful article was published in the German magazine “Die Hilfe” (“False Prophet” was the title of the article). Now, such articles are read, even overslept. But a few weeks ago, when I was in Berlin, an American visited me and said that he had actually come to see me because he had read the article in 'Die Hilfe' in which you railed so terribly and in such a way that one had to take an interest. I just want to say that by way of an introduction. What actually satisfied me was a question that this man asked, which was highly objective. He said that he had grasped very quickly what the threefold social order is about, but he would now like to ask: Do you think that this threefold social order is an eternal truth that, once found, creates social conditions that must now always remain, or is it a truth for a period of time that only replaces old things; is it a truth that will in turn be replaced by something else? I was positively amazed that there are still such reasonable people in the present day who do not believe in millenarianism, in the 'thousand-year Reich', where an absolute is once found and remains, only one truth over the whole earth and into all eternities. If someone today thinks in socialist terms, he thinks: tomorrow the social state must be realized; when it is there, it will never need to change.

I then formulated my answer in such a way that I said: Of course the last few centuries have striven for the unified state; now we have come so far in concrete terms that we must build it in three parts. After some time, the other, the synthesis, will come again; then the opposite will have to occur again. — You see, it is not so convenient to always have to follow the concrete circumstances, it is not as convenient as thinking up an absolute system. But today it is necessary to follow the concrete circumstances, to be aware that what we have to create, we have to create for the present world situation. But this can already be understood “astronomically” today, in that we see, firstly, that mystical experiences differ depending on whether they are gained in this decade or that decade, in this century or in that century, and that one can follow the movements of the earth itself, experience them inwardly in a mystical way. But today the “great astronomical” must be seen and felt together with the social. We must gain the possibility of advancing in such a way that we today cross a threshold that can only be compared with thresholds of earlier times, which were not only transitions but also leaps in development.

Take the ancient Greeks. They had their land area. As far as the Pillars of Hercules, the earth was still something concrete for them. Then came the indefinite, the completely indefinite. They had a land consciousness. The newer times emerged, the discovery of America, sailing to the East Indies, similar things. Earth consciousness emerged. The land consciousness of the Greeks became the earth consciousness of modern times. Just as for the Greeks, what lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules was indeterminate, so today what is outside of earth consciousness is indeterminate for man, merely mathematical fantasy, Galilean, Newtonian fantasy, and so on. This imagination must be replaced by real facts. We must transform terrestrial consciousness into cosmic consciousness, as one transformed the terrestrial consciousness of the Greeks into terrestrial consciousness. We are at this point today, and we will not make social progress if we do not find the way to develop the world consciousness of the future out of the earth consciousness of modern times, just as the land consciousness of the Greeks was transformed into the earth consciousness of modern times.

If we do not educate through the teachings of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science the great astronomical world view of that which is outside as outer space, then we do not grasp the truth of outer space. But if we do not grasp the truth of outer space, we cannot become citizens of the world. But we will not become social citizens until we have become citizens of the world in our consciousness.

In the last few days I have spoken about how the human being can advance from the present earth-consciousness to a world-consciousness, just as he has advanced from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the Middle Ages and the end of the Middle Ages, by transforming his land consciousness into an earth consciousness. We do not take these things abstractly, but we try to penetrate into them in such a way that they become concrete links in our consciousness.

In connection with this idea of the expansion of consciousness, I have said that in the first three epochs of his life, man is influenced by forces that we can actually call sub-sensible forces. From birth until the age of seven, the human being is connected with the forces of the earth planet itself. The formative forces at work in the human organism are essentially those that are anchored in the earth planet itself, in the interior of this earth planet. And what then takes effect, organizing the human being, living through the human being from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life, these are the forces of the air circle, which then, namely through the detour of breathing, permeate the human being, and through which he lives through the formations and forms laid down in the first seven years of life. Then the time begins for the human being in which he is exposed, but without this penetrating into his consciousness, to the forces that work on the human being indirectly through the earth from the planetary system.

Man is therefore actually so organized that the organizing forces in him are not merely those that he carries in his body or within the limits of his body, but are forces that take their radiations from the earth planet and later from the entire planetary system. And through such considerations we must gradually come to the realization that man forms a unity with the whole earth.

In the past I have often used a comparison to characterize this awareness from a different point of view. I have said: a human finger is a human finger only as long as it is connected to the human body. The moment we cut it off, it withers away. Just as the finger is related to the body, I have often said, so man is related to the whole Earth, indeed to our entire planetary system. If you were to remove man from the Earth and from the entire planetary system, he would wither away, he would die like the finger when it is removed from the human body. The point is that in human life one gradually advances from the perception of the part to the perception of the greater whole. Man, as he can observe himself, is really a partial being, insofar as he is a physical organism and also insofar as he is an etheric body. He is only considered as an organism when he is in connection with the earth and even with the whole planetary system. But if you really absorb this in your consciousness, you know that you belong more to the world than to the mere earth, because the earth draws its forces from the universe, and while we are at first only dependent on the earth, we gradually move on to dependence on the universe.

But these things can be deepened even further. Among the stars that form planetary systems around the Earth, the most important are, as you know, the Sun and the Moon. And as we gradually grow into a state of dependency on the planetary system from the age of fourteen onwards, that is, in the third epoch of a person's life, we also become dependent on the other members of the planetary system, on Mercury, Mars and so on, but we become predominantly dependent on the sun and moon. But man's dependence on sun and moon can only be judged correctly if one knows not only from external observation what the sun and moon represent. External observation shows man the moon, full and new moon, first, last quarter as a disc, which he assumes to be dark in itself, illuminated by the sun, and therefore turns part of its being towards him in illumination. But that does not exhaust the nature of the moon. We can only really learn to recognize that which is in the universe if we always see it as a sum of forces, a connection of forces. And we must ask ourselves: what kind of forces are actually concentrated in the moon? In the moon, human forces of will are primarily concentrated, or rather, forces that are related to human forces of will, forces that are related to everything that affects people from the subsensible. So the moon radiates those forces that are related to the subsensible in the human being. The physicist tells us very nicely that the moon is a kind of slag, that the sun is something like a glowing, burning cosmic body that has a corona, that sends out radiations of its fire into the world; so that man has the rough idea that if he could wander there slowly or quickly and approach the sun, he would enter a glowing body. I have already told you several times that this is not the case; rather, the truth is that where the sun is, there is a hollow space, a nothingness, and that light radiates only from the surface of the sun. In truth, there is nothing where one suspects that there is something physical; for the nature of the sun is thoroughly supersensible, just as the nature of the moon is subsensible. The supersensible and subsensible aspects of the planetary system, as they are concentrated in the sun and moon, begin to take effect on the human organism from around the age of fourteen. They affect the human organism in the first place insofar as the lunar is more akin to the female element, to everything feminine in the world, and the solar is more akin to the male element in the world. But they also work in such a way that man has a solar element in everything he develops in terms of knowledge, in everything he develops in such a way that he thinks, and has a lunar element in everything he “does”, in all impulses of will. The sun and moon are not only out there in cosmic space; the sun and moon are within us. And in so far as we think, we are sun beings; in so far as we will, we are moon beings. Better said: in so far as we develop organs in us that are the mediators of thinking, the forces of the sun, the supersensible, work in us from the age of fourteen to develop these organs; in so far as we develop organs that mediate willing, the forces of the moon, the subsensible, work in us from the age of fourteen.

Thus, when we transform such knowledge into a living being, we can feel within us: You human being, you are such that not only what is here on earth lives in you, but what constitutes the sun and moon also lives in you. The sun and moon are in you. You are a citizen of the world. You would not be what you are as a human being if the universe did not work in you.

To know such things in the abstract has no great value; but to feel within oneself that one is such a being, in whom the sun and moon are at work, that gives inner life. To feel everything that one can think supersensibly and will subsensibly comes from the sun and moon, and makes one say to oneself: I may be walking on the earth, but with every step I take on the earth not only what springs and sprouts on earth, and what rejoices and suffers on earth, but with every step I take on earth, the sun and moon live in me. I am not just an earth citizen, I am a world citizen. When this surges and strengthens as a living life in man, then a certain power comes over his thinking, which he does not have without this consciousness. Particularly in the present time, people should learn to feel when they are walking on earth that the universe lives in them. This should become feeling, this should become perception. As it were, when man looks up at the sun, he should say to himself: I am also of your essence, O sun! —When he looks up at the moon, he should say: I am also of your essence, O moon!

When man bears this within him as a feeling, as a sentiment, only then does he become ripe for grasping social ideas. Otherwise his thinking bears a certain earthly heaviness. Of course, one can grasp certain ideas in the abstract, but one cannot inwardly animate them in the concrete. The social is something in which man is active as man. Natural science comprehends only that in which man is not present. One can never understand social forces and social activity in terms of natural science concepts. One can only understand social activity through the kind of light thinking that comes from the feeling that we have as world citizens. It is simply the case that such a world-citizen consciousness must arise from our relationship with the sun and the moon. Only when a person no longer feels that he is, as it were, dependent on the earth, only when he feels as if he is a temporary inhabitant of the earth, who brings solar and lunar forces into this earthly existence, only then does his thinking become so powerful and at the same time so light that he can truly grasp social concepts as they live in social existence. For you see, many an economic thinker thinks that he can grasp social concepts with the ordinary way of thinking that is modeled on natural science. Today you can read many concepts and interpretations in economic works about the concept of the commodity, about the concept of labor — I have already made some allusions to this — and about the concept of capital. But all these concepts are actually useless. They do not capture what is truly alive in social life. If you want to try to create a concept of what circulates in economic life as a commodity, and you create this concept in the same way that you create the concept of a crystal or a plant or an animal or even of a physical human being, then nothing comes of it. You cannot grasp the concept of the commodity according to the pattern of natural science. If you want to grasp it in living life, as it is in social life, then you basically need an imagination; because there is something about the commodity that is inseparable from the human being. Every commodity has something of the human being in it, whether the commodity consists of a sewn skirt or a painting – because in terms of political economy, a painting is also just a commodity – or whether it consists of a lesson in teaching. Even a lesson is, from a national economic point of view, only a commodity. But what constitutes the concept of a commodity is related to human performance. And it is not ordinary, fully conscious life that goes into the commodity, but rather, something of the subconscious life goes into the commodity in many ways. That is why you need imagination to grasp the concept of a commodity correctly. And you need inspiration to grasp the concept of labor, and you need intuition to grasp the concept of capital. For the concept of capital is a very spiritual concept, only a reversed spiritual concept. That is why the Bible quite correctly refers to that which is connected with capitalism as mammon, as something that has to do with the spiritual; only it is not exactly the very best spirit that has to do with it. But one penetrates into the highest regions of spiritual knowledge if one wants to grasp what capital actually does in economic life.

Here we are confronted with something quite curious, with a necessity: in order to arrive at correct economic concepts, one must have an idea of supersensible knowledge. That is why all economic concepts that are being advanced today are so amateurish, because people have no supersensible knowledge and therefore grasp these concepts wrongly.

But do not misunderstand me. If you read my “Key Points of the Social Question”, you will say: “But it is not imagination that you give when you talk about goods; it is not inspiration that you give when you talk about labor, and it is not intuition that you give when you talk about capital. Certainly not. One does not need to ascend to the higher worlds to speak of goods, labor and capital, although it is also very interesting to see the reflections of goods, labor and capital in the higher worlds. But one does not need to ascend. But one only needs to be familiar with what imagination, inspiration and intuition are in order to say the right thing about capital. That is what it is all about. Someone who is not familiar with imagination, inspiration and intuition will not say the right thing about goods, labor and capital. Thus, spiritual science and today's social science are inwardly connected, and there is no other way for today's human being than to ascend from earth consciousness to world consciousness, so that he acquires the ease and also the power of thought that enables him to grasp social life. As long as man only crawls on the earth and basically believes that he is nothing more than what he absorbs from plants, animals and minerals, which is only a little differently composed in him, man does not know himself as the right being that he is. Only then, when he says to himself: the sun and moon work in me — then man knows himself as the right being that he is. World consciousness must be attained in a spiritual way; in a spiritual way, man must recognize how he belongs to a greater part of the world than the earth.

Now it is important to really grasp how one must go beyond ordinary everyday concepts in order to arrive at the kind of thinking that is meant here. You know that there are materialistic thinkers in the world. Today the number of materialistic thinkers is very large, and you are probably all convinced in your innermost being that one should not be a materialistic thinker. At least you were convinced to a certain extent and therefore came to a more spiritual way of thinking, felt drawn to the spiritual thinking that is cultivated in this anthroposophical movement. So let us disregard ourselves here. But there are also other people who represent the spirit, and there are many such people in the world who say: Well, there are all those people walking around who think only of material processes and material beings. These materialistically thinking, materialistically feeling people are opposed by the spiritually thinking and spiritually feeling. The latter believe in the spirit and are often despised by the materialistic thinkers as fantasists. But they accept this contempt because they believe that the materialists do not realize how right they, the fantasists, are when they hold on to the spiritual. This distinction is made and observed in the world between materialistic thinking and spiritual thinking, and there is much dispute between the two camps as to which is right, the materialistic thinker or the spiritual thinker. From some of the things that have been discussed here, you should realize that basically the one who has not yet penetrated into the meaning of spiritual science is the one who argues about such things, but only the one who says, 'You are a materialist; that's fine, that's all right,' has properly penetrated into the meaning of spiritual science. You are a spiritualist, that's fine too, that's also very good. Just as you can photograph a tree from one side and photograph it from the other side: it looks different from the different sides, but it is always the same tree. If you grasp the world materially, it is only a photograph from one side. If you grasp the world spiritually, it is a photograph from a different side. Materialism looks quite different from spiritualism. But the secret is that you have neither materialism nor spiritualism in the world, but that these are actually only two photographs from different points of view. Basically, the materialist is just as right as the spiritualist and the spiritualist is just as right as the materialist. Because these concepts, spirituality and materiality, are only valid on the physical plane. As soon as one goes beyond the physical plane, these concepts are overcome. Then one no longer argues whether the world is material or spiritual, because one knows that these are two different aspects. But why does man actually argue about whether man is material or spiritual? Why does man argue about whether one has a mere bodily being or a mere spiritual being? Why do some people see only, I would say, physical corporeality in a person, while others see soul and spirit in addition to physical corporeality? Because a person is both! And the secret of life actually consists in the fact that a person is both. If you say: a thought is only a spiritual entity, it is only something spiritual, then you are right, because the thought is only something spiritual. But the thought is never in you as spiritual-soul without having a physical imprint, so that you can actually always also prove the physical imprint; it is there. So that every thought is also something material. One would like to say: The universe has impartially ensured that one can be both a spiritualist and a materialist. Because you are indeed spiritual; if you see it that way, you can be a spiritualist. But you are also a material imprint of the spiritual; if you see it that way and ignore the other, you can be a materialist, because a person is both, and because one is only an imprint of the other, because one is the same as the other. Therefore, it is really only a matter of whether man puts himself more into his physical being, then he becomes a materialist; or whether he puts himself more into his soul-spiritual being, then he becomes a spiritualist.

You can't really escape what this is about as long as you remain in the ideas of ordinary everyday life or even in the ideas of ordinary science. You can invent all kinds of theories. There is no end to the theories about the soul and body and about the interrelationship or parallelism and so on! But these are all things that have been invented, they are not rooted in reality. For people have forgotten — I have emphasized this many times before — how to think about these things correctly, because in the course of historical development they have been forbidden to do so, as I have said. In the year 869, the eighth general council was held in Constantinople, and that abolished the spirit, that established the dogma that man does not consist, as a Gnostic science had known until then, of body, soul and spirit, but the eighth Ecumenical ecumenical council decreed that man consists only of body and soul, and that the soul has some spiritual properties, hence the medieval scholastics had a terrible fear of speaking of the so-called trichotomy, of body, soul and spirit; because that was forbidden. Today's philosophy professors are not afraid, because they have overcome their fear; but they have not yet overcome the Roman commandment. They also only speak of body and soul, of a duality, and believe that they are impartially imparting unprejudiced science, while they are actually teaching Roman Catholic dogmatics from the eighth general council of Constantinople. They believe that it follows from their unprejudiced research, but they only say that because they are stuck in history.

Today we have the task of returning to the acknowledgment of body, soul and spirit. For when we look at the outer world and our human organization, insofar as it is perceived like the outer world, we perceive a bodily aspect. If we then look into our inner being, whether we consider our thinking, our will, our feeling in an external, superficial self-knowledge, or whether we descend mystically deep, we experience a soul aspect — on the outside bodily, on the inside soul. But the connection, the interpenetration of the two, the constant interpenetration of the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily, is brought about by the third aspect. We do not even have a proper word for it; we have to take the word from one side. The spirit brings it about. So we can say: body, soul and spirit are two different aspects, but the spirit forms the connection. We must return to the healthy concept of body, soul and spirit, otherwise body and soul will always fall apart. You cannot find anything physical in the soul, or anything spiritual in the body, as long as you do not have the spirit in them, in their midst.

Many years ago, to make this clear to you, I used a comparison. Suppose there is a seal here, and engraved in the seal, let us say, so that it is a rather “rare” one, is the name Müller. And now I take sealing wax here, for example on a letter, I can press the name Müller into the sealing wax.

Now the Kantians and the physiologists might come and say: There is no relationship between the seal, which may be made of bronze, and that which is made of sealing wax. - Of course, this is all bronze, the other is all sealing wax. Never does something pass from the bronze into the sealing wax and never does something pass from the sealing wax into the bronze. The two are quite different. It is the same with body and soul. One is expressed in the other, but nothing passes from one to the other, each has its own substantiality, and nothing, absolutely nothing, passes from one to the other. And yet, when you have printed, you have “Müller” in the sealing wax and “Müller” on the seal, one and the same. But the mediation did not happen by something very fine coagulating or trickling over from the seal to the sealing wax; that did not happen. Rather, something happened that is neither sealing wax nor bronze, but is the same in both. And that this is precisely 'Müller' is truly connected neither with the bronze nor with all that is in the bronze, but is in the living. That someone has received the name Müller is connected with life; it points to the whole breadth of life. Thus we have the spiritual-soul, and we have the bodily. The spiritual-soul is reflected in the bodily. But that which is the same in both, the spirit, is a whole wide world. But we do not grasp the spirit if we only look at the soul, just as we do not get to know the miller if we only look at the seal. We also do not grasp the spirit if we only look into the material world, just as we cannot recognize the miller if we look at the sealing wax.

So it is a matter of the spirit imparting to us that which is a relationship between the soul and the body. And in our age, we live in a phase of human development in which we must properly understand precisely this fact.

If you look at the newer natural science, you will find that it imparts to you all kinds of physical, actually only physical things. If you take some of the psychological concepts that come from older times, they convey something of the soul. We can only come to terms with both if we rise to the spirit, for only by grasping our being spiritually do we become citizens of the world, in contrast to the citizens of the earth that we were until today. As you can see from this, we must not merely grasp that which is physical about a person, in the way that we can grasp the external corporeality, but we must see the person in broader relationships. I will tell you of such a case, so that this case can serve as an example.

Ordinary natural science sees the human being only until his death. Then it follows the remains, what is left here on earth, the body, how it is cremated or how it is returned to the earth, becoming dust. Now you could examine what components are in this human dust, which is left over from a human organism. Then science will say: the human substance is breaking down and returning to the earth. Yes, that is not even a quarter of the truth, not even an eighth, it is not the truth at all, if you say it out loud. For that which is given back to the earth, whether by burning or burial, had a human form, and also had a human form because, before birth or conception, a spiritual being descended from the spiritual worlds and worked in this physical body until death. Then this physical body is returned to the earth. Whatever is human form continues to work in the earth, regardless of whether it was cremated or buried. The earth continually receives what it would not have if human bodies were not given to it after death. It is good for the earth to receive human bodies after death. Otherwise the earth would only have earthly substances if human bodies were not imparted to it.

But this human body was inhabited by a spiritual being that descended from spiritual worlds before the birth or before the conception and gave the structure to this human body. This structure remains as an essential in every speck of dust, passes into the earth or into the atmosphere when burned, no matter how, and the earth receives with this human body that which has descended from the spiritual worlds. This is not without significance. This is not just an ordinary truth, but it has a very, very great significance. For our Earth is no longer evolving, and it would have been so long ago that no human being, and perhaps no animal either, could inhabit it today if it were not for the continuous supply of spiritual and soul-like refreshing forces through human bodies. The fact that the Earth is still a habitable place for people today is due to the fact that human bodies are continuously being supplied to it. These always refresh the earth's forces. Since the middle of the Atlantean period, the earth has already been withering. It no longer has the rising powers that it had in the old polar, Lemurian and so on periods. But since the middle of the Atlantean period, the earth has only withering forces of its own and is only refreshed for further existence by the fact that the formative forces of human bodies are imparted to it. These continue to work in the earth. These alone make the earth habitable for people.

From this you can see that, on the one hand, as I have told you, the human being has the inner forces of the planet at work in him, the forces of the atmosphere. But in turn, he returns spiritual-soul forces to the earth; he also supplies the earth with spiritual-soul forces. By being born, he brings spiritual-soul forces from the spiritual universe into the earth, uses them for as long as he needs them, until his death, and then hands them over to the earth in the form of forces. If asked what man means for the earth, the external scientific world view would say something like this: if man had never come into existence on earth, everything would have turned out as it is; man would just not be there. Of course, the houses would not be there either. Cities would not be there, and so on, that is, what man brings forth through his culture would not be there; but otherwise everything would be there, only man would not be there. Spiritual science teaches us that man is not merely a spectator here on earth, but that through his existence he is a co-builder, a co-shaper of the earth, and that through the body, which he hands over to the earth, he becomes a mediator for the earth between the spiritual world and this physical world of the earth.

This, too, is part of the process of gradually becoming aware that one is not merely a citizen of the earth, but a citizen of the world. The citizen of the earth is born of a mother and father, carries the characteristics of inheritance within himself, acquires some things that he leaves as an inheritance to his physical heirs, has children and so on. The person who sees himself as a citizen of the world says to himself: By entering into existence through birth, I bring something of the soul and spirit into this world. In this way I contribute to the future existence of the earth, even after I have departed from this earth through death. The human being only really becomes aware of how his existence is connected to earthly existence, how he is one being with the earth, but a being that basically gives the earth its spirituality, through being a citizen of the world.

All these concepts that one acquires from spiritual science should not be acquired like ordinary knowledge. I would like to say, although this is perhaps a little paradoxical: knowledge is not particularly valuable at all. Only what we become through knowledge is valuable. This also applies to education. The fact that we teach geography to a child has a certain external significance, but not really a significance for the soul. Outwardly, it has the significance that later, if the child wants to travel from Dornach, say, to Zurich, it will not confuse Zurich with Bern and the like. So, outwardly, there is a certain significance to learning geography. But there is an inner significance to what happens to the soul when it learns geography. One becomes oriented in the world. Certain spiritual forces are released from the depths, from the roots of the soul, and it is the release of these spiritual forces that is important.

If we take the period since the middle of the 15th century, then this is the time when people were least inclined to release spiritual-soul forces within themselves. They were more attached to the imprint, to the sealing wax. People have actually entered the material age since the middle of the 15th century. But now we are at the point in time when we have to become aware of this and when we in turn return to the spiritual and connect the spiritual with the material.

Why did all this happen? Superficial thinkers might say: Yes, the Lord God could have made it easier for himself. He could have simply given people spiritual life in the 15th century, then they would not have had to go through the whole detour of materialistic struggle. — Perhaps he could have. It is an insult to the Protestant conscience to say that he could not do it. But that is not what interests us here. He did not do it, however, but allowed people to struggle through materialism. And so they arrived at the low point of materialism in the 19th century. If they were now to struggle towards spirituality, they needed a strong inner jolt; this strong inner jolt is the redeemer of freedom, it is the redeemer for man to turn to spirituality out of himself, not through divine inculcation. If man had not been absorbed in the material, then he could not have struggled out of his own free will to the spiritual. In order to call people on earth to independence, this struggle, this struggle through the material was so strong that even the religions and theology have become material. You see, even today's theologian finds it difficult to grasp something spiritual, sometimes with the greatest difficulty, really with the greatest difficulty. Recently I had an opportunity to test it when I discussed something with a Catholic theologian. It just so happened that I had this discussion with this Catholic theologian under the well-known Raphael painting, the so-called 'Disputa'. The conversation led me to try to exemplify something from the 'Disputa'. I said: We must come back to this – all those who want to strive for the spiritual life – so that it can be understood why Raphael actually painted this 'Disputa' from his contemporary consciousness. Up there are the heavenly worlds with the Trinity, below the Sanctissimum on the altar and the church fathers and theologians. But all this is not the essential thing in the picture. The essential thing is that a theologian who was not frivolous (there were many like that even in those days), who was still serious about his theology and out of whose soul Raphael painted, had the consciousness: When the host, the Sanctissimum, is consecrated and one looks through it, then one looks at the world that Raphael painted in the upper part of the “Disputa”. — It is really the consecrated host that provides the means to see through and into the spiritual world. That is why Raphael painted the thing. I wanted to exemplify that. I wanted to say: we must find our way back to understanding such a picture, which is painted from a different consciousness, with its true content. I cannot paint for you right now the picture of the face that this theologian made when he was expected to see his Holy of Holies in such a spiritual sense. Theology, too, is thoroughly materialized, perhaps more than most. It no longer has any real spiritual basis, which is why Christology itself has become materialistic. For the fifteenth-century theologian to turn his attention to the “simple man from Nazareth” would have been inconceivable. The indwelling of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth was still alive in him. It has disappeared from consciousness. Only a person somewhat higher than Socrates and Plato or Aristotle is the simple man from Nazareth. But he is defined and seen as the simple man from Nazareth even by theologians. Theology itself has become materialized.

We need to make the leap from the innermost grasp of our humanity to the spiritual in freedom. We cannot do this by twisting spiritual phrases, by talking about the spirit; we can only do it by thinking spiritually. And it is spiritual when we say: knowledge is connected with the forces of the sun, will with the forces of the moon. When human bodies are formed here on earth through the currents of heredity, it is not something earthly that works, but something solar in the male force, something lunar in the female force. The earth is covered and permeated with solar-lunar forces, and these forces are related to the powers of knowledge and will. The spiritual permeates the physical, the physical expresses itself spiritually. Synthesis, the uniting of soul and body, is what must be sought today, must be sought unconditionally. It does not include those shadowy concepts that have been developed in recent times since the mid-15th century – they are only thoughts that have been developed in recent times since the 15th century. But a spiritual life that has been experienced is only one that can also have a practical effect at the same time. We have had a basically impractical spiritual life for long enough. As I have already said, people have talked a great deal over a long period of time about being good, being fraternal, and practicing love for one's neighbor. But these were concepts that remained in a certain sphere and had no impact on practical life. Just think: a real modern merchant, a real modern industrialist or, let us say, a civil servant – so that we have all three types – he can, and this also happens, even be a pious man. But there is a significant difference between what a merchant may experience inwardly in his soul as his religious confession and that activity of life that finds its expression in his account books! That which lives in his religious life has no power to penetrate into the account books. And the civil servant is not prepared to be a human being, but rather to be a civil servant. What he has learned as a civil servant, what does that have to do with what he may inwardly profess religiously? — Religious life is a current, so-called life practice is the second current. Because the concepts and ideas have become weak and cannot penetrate down into the practice of life, we cannot find such vivid, strong concepts that lead into social life today. For this, they need to be refreshed by spiritual science, so that the concepts become strong enough to penetrate not only as far as the concepts of a Sunday afternoon preacher, which evoke warm feelings in the heart, inward soul voluptuousness, but do not penetrate into the activity that finds expression in the account book. The concepts that are derived from the spiritual must penetrate further into practical life. Concepts are not spiritual if they do not penetrate through their inner power to the deepest essence of matter. This is precisely the spirituality of the concepts: that the concepts are strong and penetrate to the deepest essence of matter.

We need this if we are to overcome the gulf that has arisen between present-day humanity, which still has all possible inheritances from earlier times, and future humanity, which must truly carry out the synthesis, the synthesis between the material and the spiritual. It is a complete regression to earlier human ways of feeling when one is a materialist on the one hand and a spiritualist on the other. And when one can be both, so that both live in each other, then one is only up to the present demands of humanity.

We have made a number of observations that have essentially been concerned with showing how a recovery of our social and other conditions of human coexistence can only be brought about by people being seized from within by different ways of thinking from those that have, so to speak, been developed over the course of the last three to four centuries. Among the influences that have been particularly effective in bringing forth such ways of thinking that must no longer dominate people, the scientific way of thinking was also particularly influential. It is difficult to speak quite impartially about this scientific way of thinking today, because there is no doubt that great, tremendous progress has been made for humanity through this scientific way of thinking. However, we must realize that the very advances of modern times that have been made in this area are those that have diminished the actual spiritual life of man. Little by little things have turned out in such a way that those parts of human knowledge have mainly undergone progress that could be utilized in external technology. And even the rest of cultural life has been influenced by this tendency to always orient human thinking, human imagination, towards how it can be used in external technology.

It would be quite wrong to think that this statement applies only to that which is dependent on the scientific way of thinking in modern intellectual life. That is not what is meant here; rather, it is meant that the whole thinking of modern humanity, insofar as old ideas, old elements in this thinking have not been inherited, is of the same nature as it has now come to expression in the extreme in scientific thinking and is expressed. It is not only those people who are directly influenced by science who think scientifically today. It is even true to say, somewhat paradoxically, that those people who are directly influenced by science are the ones who think least in the sense meant here. It is only that which is the general way of thinking of human beings that has found expression in a particularly characteristic form in natural science, so that, to a certain extent, natural science is the best way to see how this modern humanity thinks. Thus, we have repeatedly spoken of the influences of the way of thinking that has found its particular characteristic expression in natural science.

Now I would like to point out a particular idiosyncrasy that is inherent in our thinking, in our entire conceptualization, in fact in our entire modern soul life, due to the fact that so much of natural science impulses is present in this soul life. This idiosyncrasy consists in the fact that we, as modern human beings, have, in a sense, forgotten how to observe things impartially. People believe that they observe things impartially; but they do not. Even our school education today is such that it instills in people a great many preconceived ideas, which color our pure perception of things. We do not actually have a pure perception of things at present.

You can raise the question: Should not the particularly harmful aspect of this fact, that we do not have a pure view of things, be particularly evident in scientific research, in natural science? — One should believe that it is so. But if you look more closely, you notice something else. Science saves itself from the devastating and destructive nature of this inability to properly see relationships by directing more and more of its attention to the external sense world, to that which is given to the external senses. The outer senses do not conform to preconceived ideas, and so they constantly correct what comes from preconceived opinions and ideas, especially from preconceived views. In this way, observation constantly corrects what man carries within himself into his view of things. That is why we do not notice when scientific observations are made that all kinds of preconceived ideas are also brought into them. But they are still brought in. And if you then take what is produced scientifically in context, you will find that preconceived ideas are indeed brought into the entire scientific view.

But the particularly harmful aspect of this inability to see is especially evident when the present-day person is to reflect on social conditions. In this case, the facts do not at all correct the preconceived notions that people bring to these facts. And so, little by little, we have really come to the point where, with regard to the social facts of life, you can ultimately assert anything you want to assert. Today, in fact, you find all sorts of opinions represented. On the one hand, you find the opinion that true social reality consists only of economic processes, that all spiritual life is only a kind of superstructure, a kind of smoke that rises up or is erected over economic facts; that is one extreme. The other extreme is this: today, since we have no clear concept of the real spiritual powers that live in the world, we speak of the prevailing, abstract ideas, ideas of things and so on, and claim that these ideas shape – perhaps through people, but they do shape – what external economic and other facts are.

As you can see, there are two opposing opinions. Now it is a matter of proving one opinion and the other opinion. You can give quite correct arguments, incontestable arguments today for both the one and the other opinion, arguments that are equally good for the one and for the other opinion. If someone comes forward today and claims that all events are actually controlled by the spirit, by ideas, he can prove it. And someone else can come forward and say: What you are proving is pure fantasy; in reality, all ideas are only the mirror images, only the superstructure of what are economic facts. He can refute what the other says in the most beautiful way; he can prove his case and the other's. The arguments are in both cases equally good.

This is a phenomenon that is actually far too little appreciated in the intellectual life of our time. People today separate themselves into parties or groups and advocate some maxim or other, some program. They are convinced of this maxim, they are convinced of this program and can prove it. The others represent a completely different maxim, a completely different program; they can also prove it, and it cannot be said that one has worse or the other better reasons for his conviction. This is a phenomenon of public life that should really be noticed, because it is the most characteristic phenomenon of our time. This phenomenon ultimately leads to the most anti-social facts and attitudes. For if one is convinced of some maxim and one knows the good reasons for this maxim, then one considers the person who has a different conviction to be a fool or a scoundrel or some kind of dishonest person. And the other person, who may have the same good reasons, in turn considers the first person to be a fool or a scoundrel or a dishonest person. That this fact is not recognized as such is, in a sense, the tragedy of the present time. It is just that people today are so attuned that they believe that what is true for the human soul today has always been true. And as soon as anyone's attention is drawn to this phenomenon today, one can almost certainly expect that he will come and say: Yes, what you are explaining, that all opinions prove themselves side by side, that has always been the case in the development of mankind. If people would only take the slightest interest in educating themselves about the real development of humanity, they would not make such an assertion; for it was not always so in reality; the well-proven opinions and maxims and programs were not as openly juxtaposed as they are today. For today one can prove very well. Today, if one is as clever as certain socialists on the Left, one can prove Marxism quite clearly, and one can prove quite clearly, if one is willing to take just one other point of view, that Marxism is complete nonsense. Today one can prove very, very well; one should be quite clear about that.

This training, this ability to prove, is instilled in children today. But therein lies something extraordinarily sad for our present time, that one can prove everything so clearly and so strictly, and therefore can be so easily convinced of a thing. Because of all the ways of being convinced of a thing, the easiest, in today's sense, is to prove this thing. There is no easier way to acquire a conviction today than to prove it. It is precisely because of this ability to prove that people have completely lost a feeling, a real feeling, that convictions in life must be fought for and acquired, that overcoming is necessary if conviction is to take root in the soul.

Where does this fact come from, this fact that is so deeply ingrained in our entire lives, that we can prove so very easily? It comes from the fact that we are accustomed to thinking so superficially with our thoughts. People today think superficially about things, without making any effort to penetrate very deeply into them. And the more superficial one's thinking, the better one can prove. It is extremely important to realize this. The thinner the concepts are – and on the surface of things all concepts become thin and abstract – the better these concepts seem to provide evidence for what one wants to believe and accept from completely different sources, from very unconscious sources, from feelings, from directions of will and the like. Our entire party life should one day be studied and described from the point of view that has just been developed before you here.

What can be achieved least of all under the influence of this superficial approach is a real knowledge of the human being. That is why so many people today demand that we should at last deepen our conception in this respect, that man should penetrate to something of self-knowledge, that is, to knowledge of his essential nature. How many writings and lectures and instructions and political speeches there are today that already speak of this necessary knowledge of the human being! But first of all, the basis for such a possible knowledge of man must be established! It cannot be gained from any starting point. And what is necessary in order to get beyond the misery of proof is to learn to see impartially, to see things really simply as they are in the outer life. For a healthy perception and for a healthy view, it is especially necessary that we learn to see things as they are; for that is what we have most unlearned. We prove how things should be; but we do not look at them in reality, as they are, because looking is indeed more inconvenient than proving that things are so or so. One can only arrive at certain assertions, for example in the social sphere today, if one proves. But if one secures an unbiased view of reality, one cannot arrive at such assertions. So what matters most is a real looking at, a real seeing of things as they are.

If you read Goethe's scientific writings, as well as his writings on art, you will see how he tried to point out with all his might how to see with an unbiased eye even in his time. He saw how all the sciences work from concepts that have to be proven. He found this to be something that must be overcome above all else, and he wanted, above all, to achieve that people really get to know the phenomena, the appearances, the facts in their original meaning, to get to know them as they are. It has been of so little use that the ground on which Goethe particularly tried to let the facts speak, the ground of the theory of colors, is still today a ground on which Goethe's right to speak about the matter is completely disputed. But in particular, it is necessary for the knowledge of the human being to come to a real seeing of the facts of life, of subjective life. For example, people today talk a lot about what is external to the human being and what is internal. I believe that if you ask many people today: You see a red color, you hear a certain sound, you perceive this or that in the outside world - is that inside or outside? - that the person in question will tell you: What the senses perceive is the external! - Then he points to his inner being: that is in contrast to the external. Now ask the person if he is clear about what kind of contrast there is between the external and the internal. He will tell you with a fair degree of certainty: Yes, I am quite clear about that; I know exactly: what the senses perceive is the outside, and what is inside, what belongs to the person himself, that is the inside. But if you go further in your questioning and say to him: Look, you say about the outside: the grass is green, the sky is blue, the sun rises, and so on, you say what you observe and list it in detail, fine. But also describe to me in just as much detail what you have inside, what you call your inside! — Try to get any clear answer at all from most people today, an answer in which you are dealing with concrete facts by which a person describes his inner being to you. He is under the illusion that he knows this inner being quite well in contrast to the outer being; but if you penetrate a little into him and say: Describe your inner being to me as you describe your outer being! you will see that this knowledge of the inner self is not very profound. And when a person does manage to describe this inner self, it turns out to be nothing more than a reflection of the outer self, what has developed from the outer self, stored in the memory, at best, faded in the mind's eye. But what a person describes is not much different from the outer self. As a rule, he cannot tell you anything more about his inner life than that the grass is green and the sky is blue; at most he will tell you that he feels this way when he sees the blue sky, that he feels that way when he sees the green grass, and so on. But a real contrast and a relationship between the external and the internal will not be easily described to you by a modern person.

But this has a great consequence. The consequence is that people today do not even come to grasp the contrast between the external and the internal in relation to the human being in any correct way. For you see, natural science, from its present point of view, endeavors to examine the organs that are supposed to be the carriers of the inner processes. And if one regards from the present point of view what is proved there, but is by no means really seen, one will say: Well, the table is outside, inside is the soul life. And here one points to one's own inner life and thinks, for example in natural science, that the inside of the skull is the inside of the human being. One transfers the unclear images gained by seeing to the human body and says: “In there, somewhere behind the eye, is the inside.” If perhaps some people, when they want to grasp more precise concepts, begin to question the things that are given to them as concepts, unconsciously man still thinks: there, at the tip of my finger, that is outside, and in there, behind the eye, that is inside. But the fact that we say this, and in particular that we draw this conclusion for the bodily organs, arises only from an inaccurate seeing. Because in fact, everything that you are entitled to call your inner self is what you experience in the outside world, in the so-called outside world. You are constantly together with the outside world, and what you seemingly experience inwardly, you experience with the whole wide outside world.

In one of the 'Eight Meditations' — you can read about it there — I pointed out how, by observing the outside world, a person actually grows together with this outside world, and that it is quite unjustified to distinguish between the external and the internal with regard to what we experience in the outside world. That which is in our surroundings for our consciousness, we could only describe as our inner being if we really expressed what we see. But that is precisely our inner being. This is, however, an unpleasant thing for some mystics, because they attach great importance to deepening inwardly. But this inward deepening is usually nothing more than calling certain physical ideas of the outer world inward and even renaming them as divine inward and the like. These are favorite ideas that one borrows from the outer world. That which one can see without prejudice and which one usually describes as the exterior, that is what one should actually call the interior. In a sense, a person is inside his own face in his inner being. After all, we are really much more at home, let's say, in the moment when you are all sitting here in this hall than in your so-called inner being, especially if you call what is inside the skull behind the eye this inner being. Because however you may think about this inner life, except for the few concepts that you have absorbed from anatomy or physiology, which are really quite scanty, you know terribly little about what is behind your eye or your brain skull. And if you ask yourself: What is more inward to me, what is around me in this hall or what is behind my brain skull? you will say to yourself: What is in this hall around me is undoubtedly more inward to me than what is behind my brain skull. — In any case, at this moment your inner life is much more affected by what appears to be the outside world in this hall than by what is going on inside your brain skull. What goes on in your brain is very external to you, it is something that is not really within you at all. And if you describe objectively what you see, you must say: the external is actually the internal, and the internal is very much an external for the human consciousness.

Now you may say: these are concepts spun out of a spider's web. — First of all, it is not the case that they are concepts spun out of a spider's web, but rather they are concepts that stem from the observation of what is really perceived in contrast to what is theoretically proven, proved. It is what is really perceived, really seen. It is what is immediately present in consciousness and what one would regard as correct if one were to observe only what is really present in consciousness and if one did not construct the matter through preconceived notions. That is what needs to be said for the time being. But there is an important consequence to this. As long as you entertain the belief that what is out there is an external thing and what is in there is an internal thing, you cannot come to what I always call: understanding spiritual-scientific facts through common sense; because spiritual-scientific facts can only be understood if you take an unbiased look at them. But then one can see them, can see them long before one ascends in any way to clairvoyant views. But with the complicated concepts of today's everyday life, it is of course very difficult to see what the truth is.

The fact that we see the outside world - what we usually call the outside world - as we see it, and that it also contains our correctly seen and defined inside, comes from our senses and has to do with the way our senses are arranged. Through the senses we live in the immediate present. And we experience through our senses what is happening around us in the present. Our senses essentially make us co-experiencers of the present. But while we are absorbed in the outside world, our perceptions give rise to our ideas, which we then carry forward in our memory. We remember afterwards what we have experienced as co-experiencers of the present. We carry that with us. And these are essentially our concepts. People's concepts are mostly recollections of what they have taken from the so-called external world. But these ideas, these concepts and ideas are mediated, not created, but mediated, by what is otherwise called the inner self, what we have now got to know as the outer self. Through that – what you actually don't know – what lies behind your eye, through that, ideas and concepts are mediated. That is certainly the case. These ideas and concepts are conveyed through it. But what actually goes on in this human head?

If you observe what is actually going on in this human head, then you cannot say: insofar as man thinks, insofar as man imagines, he is just as much a witness to the events of the present as he is when he perceives with his senses. — That is not the case as a thinker, but rather, in our head, through our thinking, there is an effect of what we did as an activity before birth or before conception. That is to say, what goes on in there (see drawing), by imagining, is not an activity that you engage in by being a present human being, but you engage in this activity by the activity that you carried out in the supersensible world between death and new birth or conception continuing to resonate.

You are only a present-day human being because you perceive through your senses; by opening your senses to the external world, you perceive the present and live as a present-day human being with the external present. But the moment you begin to think, what plays into your brain is not what you are presently as a human being, but the echo of what you were in the spiritual world, in the supersensible world before birth or before conception. If you want to visualize it pictorially, you can imagine it quite well by thinking: I strike a note; this note continues to sound even after I have long since stopped striking it. Now imagine that you have some kind of activity in the spiritual world all the time between your last death and this birth, which I am describing schematically (see drawing, red). This activity has an after-effect; and this after-effect is the activity you perform when you think as a present human being. You are not performing an activity of the present human being by thinking now, but the activity that you performed in the supersensible world between your last death and your present birth still resonates.

You are only a present-day human being as a sensual human being. As a thinking human being, you carry out an activity that is the reverberation of what you did before your birth in the supersensible world. It is simply not true that, by thinking, we are “engaged in an activity that originates in the present.” If you examine the present scientifically, what is inside your brain, you will of course only find material things, because what works inside your brain outside of the material is something that came into being before birth and only resonates. The living proof for those who can see correctly is the fact that man not only comes out of the supersensible world, but that what he has practiced in the supersensible world still lives on in him while he lives here.

If you imagine that you have experienced a strong pain here in this physical world, which lingers in you, that is the echo of the pain that no longer causes itself in facts. So in the present your thinking is the echo, the reverberation of what you experienced in a much more intense way before you were conceived here for the sensual world.

Thus, only by perceiving with the senses are we men of the present. If we were only people of the present, we would never think, because we are not granted thinking by being born here into the physical world, but we are granted thinking by being able to resonate the activity that we exercised in the spiritual world before birth or conception, and by applying this activity to what is spreading around us sensually here.

One will never understand this fact if one starts from the ordinary concepts of 'exterior' and 'interior', and one will least of all understand the true facts, which express themselves in the human being, if one starts from that stupid mysticism that dominates so many minds today and that speaks: 'There is something to be sought within, something human and supersensible'. What should be sought is the prenatal: you should not point to your inner self by pointing beyond the outer sensory world, you should point to the time you lived through before your conception and before your birth; you should go out of this present human being into the pre-present human being, then you will enter into the real supersensible. That is what it is all about. Because one does not want to work one's way to this sound concept, one speaks in words that actually have no content, of all kinds of divine inner things or the like. The inner being that one seeks in the present human being should be sought in what was there before we were conceived for this life.

And if we act, when the will enters into our actions? Let us take the simplest action: we walk around the room; that is an action, isn't it? First we see ourselves walking around. There is no consciousness in man of how volition is connected with our walking, just as there is no consciousness in man in ordinary life of what he experiences in sleep. The human being does experience himself asleep. Outwardly, he sees as he sees the color blue or a tree or the stars, and also that which this individual of the flesh does, as he walks around. He observes himself. How he wills, he knows nothing about. He only knows that there goes one who is himself. And because he is compelled to think himself in the one who goes about, he says, “I go about.” But how this wanting hangs together with this going about – there can be no question of man's knowing anything about it in ordinary consciousness.

Now, this is again very closely related to what is usually called the “outward” and what is actually an “inner” process. When you walk around, i.e. move your legs, you see how you move your legs (see drawing on page 158). You see the guy walking around and you can see what he wants. You see this external process. But here you can actually see much more that it is actually a human inner process, because you put your will into this walking around, even if you cannot see how it is connected. This walking around is actually a part of him. You can see this more easily here than with the sense world, so that you can more easily call what is there an inner being than with the content of the sense world. With what goes from wanting to acting, you can more easily see that it is an inner being.

Of course, this does not suit the present-day mystics either, who explain external action as an external thing and say that one must penetrate to the divine human being within, who is the truly true human being and so on. But just as we have an inner side in sensory perception and an outer side in the so-called interior of the human head (see drawing above), so we have, in relation to this interior (drawing below), what the human being with limbs is.

And now we come to this strange idea, which of course does not agree with what can be proven today, but which, strangely enough, is correct if you look at it impartially. I do believe, however, that the present mood of human souls is such – excuse me, I must also mention these things – that many of the present philistine natures, and there are quite a few of them, believe that that region of the cosmos that spreads out below their diaphragm has a great deal to do with their inner selves. That is what people call something that has something to do with their inner selves. Now, in truth, this is the outermost part of the human being for human consciousness. We can say that if we call this (drawing above) an exterior, we can call that which lies below the diaphragm the outermost part of the human being (drawing below). What lies below the diaphragm, what is the human abdomen, is the very, very outermost part of the human being. Every tree, every stone that we see with our eyes is closer to us inwardly than what our abdomen is. That is the very outermost. Our true inner being is the sense perceptions, that which we perceive as our actions. The contents of the head are already external, and what lies below the human chest is the very outermost. That is the real observation of what can be seen. And it can be seen.

You see, that has a very specific meaning. Just think, since we have been practicing anthroposophy, we have always said: When a person is awake, his I and his astral body are in the physical and etheric bodies. That is correct. But when a person is asleep, from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up, his I and his astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies. But I have often pointed out what this exteriority mainly consists of. This exteriority consists in that what is otherwise of the I and of the astral body in the head, submerges into what is below the diaphragm. You can even, I might say, have empirical proof of this: You dream of the most beautiful snakes because you have just woken up from your stay in your own abdomen, where you perceived the intestines. You dream this memory of perceiving the intestines as the most beautiful snake dream. — So, when we speak of human conditions, the exterior and interior only really make sense when we know what is really exterior and interior in man.

But only if one can acquire such seen ideas, not those that can be “proven”, but such seen ideas, then one again gets the possibility to understand the spiritual-scientific achievements through common sense. Because what we want arises in a certain way from the most external.

Now think about what healthy ideas have to take the place of quite unhealthy ones. Man believes that when he wills something, it arises from his inner being. It arises from his very outermost part, it arises from that in which he is already completely out of touch during the day, and in which he is at most in touch with when he is asleep. When we want something, we are not at all within ourselves. We are in the cosmos. We are performing something that is a cosmic event, that is not at all merely our subjective event.

I have endeavored, I would say, throughout my entire literary life, to teach the present such concepts that are healthy concepts from this point of view. You can start with my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings,” in which I tried to replace the unhealthy concepts of the present with healthy ones from Goethe's worldview. In these writings, I have pointed out that one can only properly observe certain things that take place within a person if one does not say: That is going on in there, and the person does it - but if one regards this so-called human interior as the arena for human actions that are carried out in this arena from the cosmos, if one regards the so-called human interior as the arena for the cosmic. My entire development of epistemological concepts in my booklet “Truth and Science” ultimately fades away, on the last and penultimate page, into this: that man is a theater for what the cosmos actually does in him, and that he does it in connection with the cosmos, from the outside in, not from the inside out. The last two pages of my booklet 'Truth and Science' are the most important part. And because these two pages are the most important and significant, because they most intensively address what needs to change in the way we present the present, I was only able to design this booklet, which was also my doctoral dissertation at the time, after the doctoral dissertation was over. In the form in which it was submitted as a dissertation, these last two pages were missing; because one could not expect science to draw the conclusions from these things, which have a certain significance for the transformation of the entire world view. What was prepared epistemologically was relatively harmless in the dissertation; because that is an objective philosophical development. But what it amounted to could only be added in the later print. Only then, when one looks at things in such a way that one really practices this precise seeing, that one no longer succumbs to the illusions caused by preconceived notions, only then is one in a healthy way able to gain corresponding insights through the will. For what we see outside when the “guy” or the “gal” walks around, when we observe ourselves doing the simplest of actions, when we move our legs forward, that is only the inner side of our will. The outermost side, the one that has a meaning for the cosmos, is apparently hidden within us. But hidden in our outermost being is a spiritual element that underlies the inner being, which is not readily accessible to people. And what happens in there, the spiritual - of course not what happens physically, but what goes parallel to this physical as a spiritual - that is not a present moment. What is present is what you observe externally in the guy or gal. What is going on internally is something different, something that is only just beginning to happen in the germ, in the embryo. While you are walking around or performing some other action with your limbs, something is happening in your external being that only takes on real significance after your death. This is just as much a foreshadowing of the processes from death to the next birth as what is in your thinking is an echo of what you were in the spiritual world from your last death to this birth or conception. That which resonates in your outermost being, what people call your innermost being, is the embryo of the processes you will engage in between your next death and your next birth. Only he sees the human will that now, in turn, does not look at the present human being, but sees in what lives in the human being, seemingly in the human being, but in the uttermost part of the human being, the correlate, the belonging, to the action, and in the action sees the what emerges through the gate of death, becomes activity between death and a new birth and is formed in such a way that it can come in again and now continues to vibrate here in the external.

When one examines human volition and wants to seek mystically deep in the present human being the source of this volition, the divine source of this volition, then usually the word mystics find that they should not do that in the gut, because that is not noble enough for the word mystics; for them it is not about truth, but about special, unctuous phrases. But if one goes to the truth, then it is a matter of the fact that, with regard to the sensual-physical fact, now, let us say, the most unsavory thing is a correlate that goes through the gate of death into the later world; there we must seek the future man. And so we obtain the evidence from the thinking of prenatal man and from the volition of the man after death, as I have often stated here and as I have even mentioned in public lectures here and there. But these are truths that must be brought to our consciousness without fail today. It is imperative that we realize today that human thinking is something that cannot be produced at all by the human being who lives in the present with his flesh and blood and bones and nerves, but that it from prenatal life, and that the will is not something that can be brought forth by the present human being in his totality, but that the will has a side that remains beyond death. If we really get to know that which in the present human being cannot be brought forth by the bodily-carnal human being, then the eternal human being is present in the human being who stands before us. But these truths are not attained by speculating about the eternal, but by really being able to enter positively into what thinking on the one hand and willing on the other hand is. In this way one attains such knowledge.

It is really necessary: if one wants to pursue higher knowledge in the sense of today's spiritual science, then one must, above all, consider the word mysticism, which is practiced in many ways today, to be the most harmful.

That is why certain things that have to be written down today from the point of view of an honest spiritual science should be accepted. And they are indeed widely accepted. But when it comes to what it is actually about, to the intervention of the concrete facts of human life, then people no longer go along with it, because then they prefer to listen to the chatter of mystifying people who want to conjure up an inner world out of words. But the present is too serious in their lives to be able to indulge in such a pleasure. For most people, mysticism today is just a pleasure. What is to be done today is something that shapes the soul of the human being in such a way that he can really only grasp what lives in social life with these appropriated concepts. Is a person to arrive at social concepts if he cannot see, if he learns from the scientific way of thinking, to approach reality with nothing but prejudices and preconceptions? The pure observation of reality, as we need it today, can only be gained by freeing ourselves from the thicket of ideas to which we have surrendered through spiritual-scientific ideas, and which finds its ultimate, extreme consequence in some mystical aberrations of our time. The mystic aberrations of our time are not the sign of an initial improvement for the better; often they are the last sign of decline, the very utmost of mere empty words instead of real insights.

Real insights provide something like: Thinking is an echo of prenatal life; volition is a prelude to post-mortal life. These are concrete insights. When we speak of such concrete things, we speak quite differently from those who say: the eternal lives in the temporal man, the divine I lives there; when one experiences oneself in that, one has grasped the divine, that is the true I; the other is the untrue I, and so on. You can waste the whole day with playful terms. It can create a great sense of well-being internally, but you won't get any real insights with it.

In these reflections, I have spoken to you from a variety of perspectives about the fact that there is a connection between the assimilation of spiritual-scientific knowledge and social understanding, which should spread more and more among humanity. You have probably felt the need to raise the question more thoroughly: What is the inner relationship between the relationships between people, which we call social, and what can develop as feeling in us as we gradually become familiar with spiritual scientific ideas? The spiritual-scientific concepts show us, first of all, a certain inner soul mood by making us understand that which one experiences in ordinary life but must actually feel as the most incomprehensible: human destiny. This human destiny becomes understandable from a certain point of view by getting to know the law of repeated earthly lives and their interrelations, the law of karma. We learn how an earthly life that we enter and complete is dependent on our previous earthly lives. We have already spoken of the forces that play over from one earthly life into another, and from this we have seen how, so to speak, the cosmic technique of shaping fate is.

Now everyone feels that today, unless he attains higher knowledge, man can only dimly sense how his fate is shaped by the laws of successive earthly lives. What we call karma is something that, in theory, can be relatively easily understood today. You can see this from the last edition of my Theosophy, in which the chapter on karma has been reworked. But the real vision of life that I spoke of yesterday, that simple vision of life, unclouded by prejudice and preconception, which would immediately reveal the law of fate, is still possessed by very few people today. If people would really see what is going on in life as I spoke of yesterday, in terms of simple, unprejudiced seeing, then common sense would speak of the law of destiny in the sense of spiritual science. But that is not yet the case for most people today. Above all, because of their lack of simple seeing, most people do not see clearly how the consciousness of the I lives in the soul. Even today there are philosophers who speak of the sense of self as if this sense of self were the most certain, the most real. This can be said to be just as true on the one hand as it is one-sided, even almost incorrect, on the other. For how do we actually perceive our human self?

Yesterday, you learned with regard to our inner life how our mental life is actually only a reflection of our prenatal life, how our life of will is the embryonic, germinal aspect of our post-mortem life, and how, therefore, what takes place in our soul plays out is fundamentally not at all attached to what envelops us as a body from birth to death, and how our being, which is outside of the body and even outside of time, plays into our thinking on the one hand and into our will on the other. But they also know how we look back on our lives and have the feeling that we have the completed course of life behind us as memory. As human beings, it is very easy for us to imagine that we have consciously traversed our life and stored it in our memory from the point in time to which we can remember going back. It seems to a person that if the moment of the present is here (see drawing), he remembers back to the moment in childhood to which he can remember. You can easily see that this is a huge mistake. If you retrace your life back to the moment you remember in your childhood, and view this as a closed current, then of course it is totally wrong, because in reality, when you look back in this way, you first perceive only the 'events of the last day on which you look back; then there is the night in between, then the previous day, then the night in which you perceive nothing, then the day before that and so on.

So it is a tremendous illusion if you simply overlook the fact that this recall, this conscious recall, does not give you a closed flow, but in reality gives you a continuously interrupted flow, in that all the times you were asleep are left out of this recall. So you don't have a continuous line of recall, but a discontinuous line of recall, a continuously interrupted line of recall.

Now, in order to make the meaning of what I am actually trying to say here clear to you, I would like to convey an image to you. Imagine you have the following image: a white disc and a dark spot within this disc. You can now ask: What am I perceiving here? – The white disc. Where there is no white, you see the black spot. I don't want to discuss whether the black spot is real or just the absence of white. But you see this black spot. You see that this black spot is where there is no white, inside the white disc. Take this image and apply it to the way you actually perceive your self in ordinary life. Just as you do not perceive anything here (in the middle) where the black spot is, so you do not really perceive your ego. You do not perceive your ego at all, but you do perceive your experiences that you have gone through during your various day-wakings. And you do not perceive your ego at all; only by the fact that somewhere, when you survey your experiences, your experiences are not there, just as there is no white here in the black spot, you perceive your ego. When you look back over your life, you perceive the experiences, and you do not perceive these interruptions. Instead, you perceive your ego. It is the absence of the experiences of the day that gives you the real perception of your ego, that is, when you say “I,” you perceive the time in your life that you have slept through.

In fact, the blank space in your life when you look back is what gives rise to your sense of self. Suppose you didn't sleep at all, you would always be awake, then you would have no sense of self when you look back. You would feel like a being that floats, without a sense of self, in the events of the world's existence.

It is extremely important to simply see these things. Because every person believes that the perception of the self is an experience. No, the perception of the self is the respective hole in the experiences. I ask you to hold on to that for the time being.

And now I ask you to remember how I told you over and over again that a person not only sleeps when he sleeps, but that a person also sleeps when he is awake. A person is actually only awake with regard to his world of sense and imagination. A person is only really awake in his sense perceptions and in his imagination. In relation to his volition, he sleeps. Just as little as man looks into what he accomplishes from falling asleep to waking up, he looks into the inner impulses of his volition. Yesterday I spoke about how the “guy” or the “gal” look at each other in their actions, but do not see the volition. With regard to the will, man sleeps. He also sleeps during the day by being a willing person. He only wakes up by being a sensually perceiving and intellectually conceptualizing person. He is only half awake; for the other, for the willing part of his being, man also sleeps while watching.

And now you will understand how it actually is with the I. It does not enter at all as a real being into your sensory perceptions and into your ideas, but remains down in the will and continues to sleep there even from waking to falling asleep. Therefore, you can never see it as a real being, but only as the hollow circle in the middle. You can have the dark feeling that you have an ego in that something of what you have like a hole in your soul experiences sounds out of your will. But the perception of the ego is a thoroughly negative one. It is extremely important to realize this. It is necessary that the superficial idea of the ego, which also appears in many philosophies of modern times, be recognized in its vanity. For only when one has seen through all the facts that I have set out here, will one understand, inwardly understand, the relationship between people in life.

I have described this relationship between people in life in the new edition of my “Philosophy of Freedom” in one of the extensions that I have added to the book in the new edition. We not only perceive our own ego, as I have just discussed, albeit negatively, but we also perceive the ego of the other person. We could not perceive it if the ego were in our own consciousness. If the ego were in our own consciousness, then the relationship between people would be quite fatal; then we would go through the world and only have I, I, I in our consciousness within our world of sense and imagination. We would pass by other people and perceive them only as shadows, and we would be surprised when we reach out our hand that these shadows stop our hand. We would not be able to explain to ourselves where this comes from, that we cannot reach through a person. All this would lead to the fact that we would have the ego substantially, not merely as the idea of a negative in our ideas and in our sense life. We do not have it in our thinking and sense life. There the I is actually in it, but not in the thinking and not in the sense life directly.

When we perceive another person, we actually perceive them through our will. It is not uncommon today, among people who think of themselves as philosophers, to hear the following crazy notion: when we stand in front of a person, we find a form: there is hair on top, then a forehead, then a nose, a mouth, and so on. We have often seen ourselves in the mirror; we look just like the person standing in front of us. And since we have an ego, we conclude by analogy that the other person also has an ego. – This is a crazy idea, a real, proper nonsense! For we actually perceive the other person's ego just as we perceive our own, albeit as a negative. And precisely because our ego is not in our consciousness, but outside of our consciousness, like the will, that is why we can put ourselves in the other person's shoes. If the ego were in our consciousness, we would not be able to put ourselves in the other person's shoes and would only perceive them as if in a shadowy existence. And how does this perception of the other person take place? Something like a very complicated process takes place when we perceive the other person. We are facing him: he, so to speak, takes up our attention and puts us to sleep for a very brief moment. He hypnotizes us, he puts us to sleep for a moment. Our sense of humanity is actually put to sleep for a very brief moment. We resist this and assert our personality. This is now like the pendulum swing: sleeping in the other, waking up in ourselves, and again sleeping in the other, waking up in ourselves. And this complicated process of swinging back and forth between falling asleep in the other and waking up in ourselves takes place in us when we face the other. It is a process in our will. We just do not perceive it because we do not perceive our will at all. But this continuous oscillation back and forth takes place as described in my “Philosophy of Freedom”.

You see, in this vibration between falling asleep in the other and waking up in ourselves, you have the primal element, so to speak, the atom of human beings living together socially. This is the original element of what social life is from person to person. This original element and with it all the complicated structures of social life actually rest in that part of our being that sleeps, even when we are awake. Social life is essentially at most a dreaming being of the waking person; it is not a fully awake life that the person lives in social life. This is why the social element is so difficult to grasp in our ordinary lives, because it is not really a fully waking life at all, because it is a dreamy life, and because we actually always have to defend ourselves against the social feeling, against the feeling in the other, in order to maintain ourselves in ourselves.

Now think about how complicated it makes our lives that we enter into such relationships with different people, relationships that consist of a constant falling asleep and waking up. One person is like that, the other person is like that. We fall asleep into them. This falling asleep is how the other person is. We merge with them as we fall asleep. Just remember the following: Imagine that you have now spoken to so and so many people, for my sake, during the interval or somehow else in the hall. You have fallen asleep in all of them, and that is always there in you after you wake up from them. In this way you take something of the essence of these people across with you. All this vibrates from person to person, this waves from person to person. Basically, it is a dim, dark element that prevails in this social coexistence of human beings. And the present consciousness of the human being does not have much of this social feeling, which waves and weaves from person to person in a dark, dim way.

In our time, it is now our task as people of the present – as you can see from the various reflections we have made – to gradually rise from the old blood relationships to an understanding of what is so dimly and darkly weaving and undulating among us socially. One of the most important tasks of the present time is to acquire an understanding of this weaving and rippling. What I call the “threefold social organism” is basically just a structure of human coexistence that allows people, little by little, after a number of generations, to really absorb this weaving and essence from person to person, which can be described as the social element. This understanding can only come about through the independent coexistence of economic life, legal life and spiritual life, and in particular through the spiritual life being completely free from the other two areas of life.

It is the most important public task of present and future humanity to carry out this threefold order so that humanity can continue to exist at all and so that it can come to a truly social inner understanding of human life. In modern times, since the middle of the 15th century, humanity has begun the process of developing this understanding. It is difficult at present only for the reason that for the first time in the whole evolution of humanity on earth, the divine spiritual powers of the world are appealing to the consciousness of human beings. All progress achieved so far has been brought about more or less unconsciously. The first thing to be done is to consciously strive for a social structure. Old social structures have emerged from blood ties, from the small and large family, from the clan, the classes and so on. They have then expanded into folk connections. Today, humanity is floundering in the belief that it can adhere to such connections in a dishonest way, in the context of nations, while basically it has long since overcome what national connections are, and the need has long since arisen to arrive at social connections other than those represented by the blood relationship between nations.

I have told you that, to a certain extent, the first step on this path to an understanding of the kind that is necessary for the present and the near future was the development, with the Reformation, of the dominance of the economic man. I have pointed out to you how in ancient times the initiate, the initiate, ruled, how then the priest ruled, and how then since the middle of the 15th century the economic man has become the ruler. Since the Reformation, those who otherwise wore purple robes and presented themselves as rulers had to become the puppets of the economic people if they wanted to rule. In truth, more and more economic people have ruled since the middle of the 15th century, those people who took care of the economy of the various territories of the earth. If in name others ruled, it was only in name, and the governments were basically permeated by economic principles. Of course, no one likes to admit that everything that has been done since the Reformation has been done from an economic point of view. People talk about ideals and so on. But for the representative of real history, these are only masks. In order not to lift the veil too much, since the Reformation there have also been ministers of education, justice, and so on. But all of them were actually only somewhat less nuanced economic ministers. Those who look at the realities can see that at most they transferred old traditions, but essentially they did so under economic considerations.

In this respect, the Catholic Church actually understood how to be quite contemporary, especially in the age of the Reformation. In the onset of the Reformation era, the Catholic Church basically understood best how to make progress in line with the newer economic principle. One only needs to pick out one “fact from the other facts. Up to that time the church had managed to draw close together the highest spiritual matters and the most trivial worldly matters. In the old days, sins could be atoned for by all manner of deeds. Gradually it came about that sins could be atoned for by paying. And the Pope, faster than the other worldly powers, understood very well how to take advantage of the progress of the modern age. He anticipated his income from the atoning of sins in later times. When one has the power to be paid for forgiving the sins committed by people, it means a very substantial future income. And when this is as secure as it can be through the faith of men, then it means a very secure income. The largest bank in Siena therefore considered it a safe business to buy so and so much of the future atonement of humanity from the Pope. The Pope received huge sums of money from a Siena bank, while he was already using these funds well. And the banking house sent Tetzel to collect these sums. He then traveled around the countries of Central Europe and collected the sums again for the Sienese banking house.

You see, the church was extraordinarily good at dealing with the circumstances of modern times. That is also history! This history must certainly be considered.

The economic man came up. The church was there. But after all, the administration of spiritual affairs with the help of the Siena banking house and its collector, its agent, is only a mask for the actual spiritual. And if you study modern history, you will find that there is a deep meaning when it is said that the economic man became the dominant one. The Pope has remained such a strong ruler only because he understood at the right moment to become an economic person as well, to adapt to the economic type.

Yes, the economic type has prevailed since the Reformation. It replaced the old priestly type. In the 19th century, humanity in general was only as far advanced as the church, which understood progress much better, had already been at the time of the Reformation. But the economic type of person only prevailed until the 19th century. In the 19th century, another type became dominant. When we say that this type became dominant, it means that the decisive influences in the social structure depend on this type. In the 19th century, in the first and second decades of the 19th century, the usurer, that is to say the banker, then became decisive. If you were to look for an appropriate definition of the banker, then history becomes extremely precarious. If you set up a definition of the banker, the big and the small, from a truly social-economic basis - one avoids that very gladly - then you should not at the same time look for a definition of the usurer. For these two definitions will resemble each other; they can only resemble each other. But this is something that modern humanity has guarded just as carefully as certain secret societies have guarded their “signs” and “words”. It has not been spread among humanity at large. It has remained a secret in social life.

The banker became the ruler. And if you examine how the social structure developed during the 19th century, you find that by the first or second decade of the 19th century, the banker, this particular economic type who only economizes with money, is the man who, just as the economic man did in the past, now exercises his decisive influence on a large scale over everything that turns out to be a social structure, over all the laws of the countries, and so on. It is very important to understand these conditions, it is very important to understand that the economic type of person has been becoming dominant since the Reformation, that the banker has been becoming dominant since the beginning of the 19th century. And one cannot understand the public affairs of the civilized world in the most recent times if one does not see in them a history of the domination of the banking system. Towards the end of the 19th century, what I had already mentioned in 1908 in my Nuremberg lecture cycle then occurred: In the first half of the 19th century and still somewhat into the second half, the individual bearer of the money was the ruler; but then this principle of rule was transformed in such a way that the money itself became the ruler. In the first half of the 19th century, however, the individual human being as a banker was still the ruler. I illustrated this with an example, if you remember. I told you how the Parisian Rothschild was once supposed to be “pumped” by the King of France. If the Parisian Rothschild was supposed to be pumped by the King of France, that already reveals a bit who is actually the ruler. Well, kings don't pump directly, do they. While the king sent his minister – they call this kind of economics minister “minister of finance” – Rothschild happened to be dealing with a leather merchant. The servant told the minister sent by the King of France to wait in the anteroom. Of course, this seemed highly unusual to the minister of the King of France, that he should wait while Rothschild was dealing with a leather merchant. “He shall wait?” He does not wait, but throws open the door: ‘I come to you on behalf of the King of France.’ ‘Please, take a chair,’ said Rothschild. This was, of course, completely incomprehensible to the minister. ‘Yes, but I am the emissary of the King of France!’ ‘Take two chairs and sit down!’

You see, the individual banker was no longer the ruling force. This gradually changed into the rule of shares, of banknotes as such. And we have gradually sailed into the time when the individual money owner is no longer the essential thing, but the abstract, accumulated capital. A person can be rich today and poor tomorrow. The human being himself rolls up and rolls down. The joint-stock company, the abstract one - I explained this in Nuremberg in 1908 - is what has become dominant.

But this means that human development has reached an extreme, an extreme. For as soon as money reigns as such, as soon as money is the actual driving force, the time has come when it must be replaced, I might say, by mere cash figures in money through realities. Now money is the most spiritual part of the economy. It is that part of the economy that can only be grasped spiritually. It has only a spiritual value, money, only a value in human recognition. You can eat bread and meat, but you cannot eat money. You can really acquire something useful for people with money, if the money is recognized. It has only a soul, a spiritual value, a conceptual value, a value of imagination. The time has come when the development of the purely economic spirituality of money must change into something that is truly grasped in the spirit. And what is to be demanded through the threefold order as social understanding is that which must follow directly on from the domination of the most abstract economic factor, namely money. For as dark and dim as social understanding, as I have described it, lives among people, so must it actually become. For just imagine that (see drawing) would be a human life in the present from birth to death. This life would be lived in such a way that the human being acquires social understanding within himself, that the social life, the social structure, would not be built on the monetary value that he has, but on social understanding. Then the human being would go through the gate of death, live through the time until the next birth and then again live through his life from birth to death. What a person acquires here between birth and death in the way of social understanding also lies within him. Above all, it goes into the sleeping will, of which I spoke yesterday; this is carried through the gate of death. So that the person carries his social understanding through the gate of death until world midnight and then carries it again through birth into the next life on earth.

What then becomes of this understanding, acquired through social understanding, in the next life on earth? That is the big question that must be raised today. It becomes understanding of karma. This means that we have now reached the epoch in the world-historical process of human development in which humanity must acquire social understanding; for this social understanding provides an understanding of karma for the next incarnation. But no human being can acquire social understanding other than by acquiring understanding for the spiritual.

You see how things are connected. You see how social understanding depends on spiritual understanding, on a spiritual view of the world and a spiritual philosophy of life. And you see how this in turn determines what, as a conscious recognizing their destiny in the course of human evolution, for those who then, with social understanding, will pass through the gate of death, be reborn and after rebirth understand their destiny.

What is important is to realize how things are connected in the development of humanity on earth. We live in the epoch of the necessity for social understanding. We will be reborn in the epoch of understanding the destiny of the individual human being. It is truly not out of a mere abstract impulse that we speak today of the necessity of social understanding, but it is connected with the innermost developmental impulses of humanity on earth in general.

This is what I wanted to suggest to you today, my dear friends. We will talk about these things further next time.

The lectures in Zurich – you know that tomorrow is the public lecture in Basel – have to be postponed by two days because a hall other than the one initially considered had to be chosen, so that the first lecture will take place on October 24, then there will be lectures on October 25, 26, 28, 29, and 30, and on October 31 there will be a eurythmy performance in Zurich. This means that it is of course not possible for me to give a lecture here next Saturday and Sunday, and I will therefore continue on Thursday for those friends who are willing and able to come here at half past seven next Thursday.

We have spoken at length about the relationship between a humanistic worldview and a social approach to life. We are discussing these matters because it is necessary today, from various points of view, to recognize how a thorough recovery of our lives and a truly fruitful development towards the future are only possible if spiritual-scientific views and ideas enter into the way people think and imagine.

Besides what I said recently about looking back on life, there is something else that applies to this life review. I have drawn your attention to the fact that when a person looks back on his life, he should actually be aware that he is only aware of discontinuous elements of his life with his ordinary consciousness, and that between these discontinuous links, which man looks back on, are the states of sleep, which actually fall away, with regard to which man, in terms of his retrospective view, even indulges in a certain delusion. He assumes that life is continuous; but it is not continuous. This life is such that it only shows us fragmented episodes. But from the spiritual-scientific background one should be clear about the fact that what is not perceived from the review of life is nevertheless an experience, just as much an experience as that which is incorporated into ordinary consciousness.

Now, the experiences that the human soul always undergoes between falling asleep and waking up are not easy to describe, because the person has to free themselves from a number of things that are part of their usual perception of consciousness if they are to have any idea at all of the experiences that take place between falling asleep and waking up.

We live for ordinary life in space and time. When we are completely asleep – from the point of view of ordinary consciousness, speaking now – then it is the case that we live neither in ordinary time nor in ordinary space. When we recall what happens to us in the time between falling asleep and waking up, the memory itself is a kind of shadow image or, as they say, a projection of the experience during sleep into the space and time of waking day life.

But if you want to take a closer look at these conditions, then you must also bear in mind that the state of sleep is not merely rest in relation to the waking state. It is precisely in this respect that one of the cases arises in which people judge more out of preconceived ideas than out of real observation. One might ask, if one calls the ordinary waking life the normal state of man: When does rest occur? Rest actually only exists in two points, at the moment of falling asleep and at the moment of waking up. In a sense, falling asleep and waking up are zero compared to the waking state during the day. But the state of sleep is not zero; the state of sleep is the opposite. We must here resort to the favorite comparison from arithmetic. You may, for instance, have some property, say fifty francs; then you have something. When have you nothing? Well, just when you have nothing. But if you owe fifty francs, then you have less than nothing, then you have the negative. Thus, in relation to waking, nothingness is falling asleep and waking up; in relation to the ordinary waking state, the state of sleep itself is the negative. For while we sleep, processes opposite to those of waking occur, processes of a completely different kind, processes that, above all, in their reality, are not subject to the laws of space and time like the processes of waking daytime life.

But, as you may have already suspected from my previous lecture, it is actually only in this state of sleep that our real self is truly in its element. The self certainly lives in our will, but even there it sleeps, as we know. The real self does not enter into our ordinary thought life. We would not even be aware of the real self if we did not perceive it as a kind of negative. And when we look back on our experiences, we do not say to ourselves: We have experienced days and nights – but we only look back on the days. And instead of saying: We look back on the nights – we say: “I” – we feel, we perceive ourselves as I.

People must gradually come to understand such truths, otherwise they will be crushed by the purely scientific world view, which has indeed taken hold of all other life, of all other views of life, in the majority of modern people. We will only be able to know ourselves completely as human beings if we say to ourselves at every moment of our lives: You are not only a human being in flesh and blood who has a consciousness, as is familiar to most people now living, but you are a human being who has only slipped out of his body from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up. But then you live under completely different circumstances than in ordinary waking life, and only then, between falling asleep and waking up, is your ego in its actual element; there it can unfold, there it is what it can lay claim to: to be substantial. During daytime wakefulness, our ego is present only in our volition. In thinking, in imagining and even in a large part of feeling, of sensing, only images of the ego are present.

Therefore, it is a great mistake when some philosophers claim that there is a reality in what a person addresses as his or her self. Only when a person awakens in sleep in higher consciousness would he become aware of his real self. Or if he were to see through what the process of the will is, then he would experience his real self in willing.

But these things must actually pass over into the human being's intuitive perception, into his feeling, if they are to play the right role in life. Man must, so to speak, be able to say to himself: You are a being who, with his ordinary conception of the world, actually perceives only one half of it; you are embedded with the other half of this being, continually in supersensible experiences, which you cannot perceive with your ordinary consciousness alone. A certain reverence for the creative principles behind man can only be attained by man in the right way, when he can connect with the supersensible in this way. Therefore, in a materialistic age like ours, not only will the view of the supersensible fade away, but in such an age reverence for the creative principles of the world will also fade away. Respect will have vanished altogether from human hearts. There is little respect and few feelings in the present time that can truly uplift the soul to the supersensible! And much of the sentiment that people try to preserve is nothing more than a certain sentimentality, and sentimentality is at the same time also untrue, sentimentality is never completely true.

When one – and I must mention this again on this occasion – takes such things into one's consciousness, intellectually and emotionally, then the fact that human and world life has something of the character of a great mystery comes before one's soul's eye. And without this view, that life and the order of the world are a mystery, real progress in the development of humanity cannot really be imagined. Epochs such as our own, in which no one really wants to believe that life contains secrets, can basically only be episodes. They can serve to cut people off from their own origins for a while, and then, precisely through the reaction against this cutting off, they can penetrate all the more to a real feeling for the mystery of life. But this mystery of life can reveal itself to man neither out of sentimentality nor out of abstraction. It can only reveal itself when man is inclined to enter concretely into the facts of the supersensible world. And it will be something of a beginning of such an engagement with supersensible facts if one can really develop a kind of sacred feeling when entering into the state of sleep and can develop a sacred feeling with regard to looking back into this state of sleep, in which one, one may, without actually speaking figuratively, characterize it in this way: was in the dwellings of the gods.

Ultimately, we must realize how far removed our present-day view of life is from this idea, how thoughtlessly the present human race sees this other side of life. But how can we see through what lies beyond birth and death if we cannot see through what lies beyond falling asleep and waking up? For that which lies in man beyond birth and death is also there between birth and death; only between birth and death it is hidden behind the physical shell. But if there were less egotistical religiosity and more altruistic religiosity - I have already spoken of this - then in what man lives through from birth on, the continuation of prenatal life or life before conception would be seen in the spiritual world. But then the phenomena in human life would appear to us as miracles, and we would constantly have the need to unravel them. We would have the longing to see the revelation of that which is formed, embodied from supersensible worlds into the sensible world, through human evolution. And basically, it is already the case today that we can only understand the after-death life in the right way if we look at the prenatal life.

You see, there are secrets of life. A number of secrets of life must be revealed in our time because of the developmental demands of humanity. A human being cannot become aware of their full humanity if they do not broaden their view of themselves to include prenatal and post-mortem life. For we only know part of our being if we do not allow the prenatal and post-mortem to reveal themselves to us in this physical existence. Even today it is still extraordinarily difficult to speak of these things to people who have not been introduced to them through anthroposophy, because either there is the utmost interest in these things, in which case the truth is not allowed to come among people, or there is a lack of proper understanding. You only need to look around in life, then you will find that the usual world views today pay very, very little attention to prenatal life. They care about the afterlife out of selfishness, because they demand not to perish with their physical body. And the religious denominations count on this selfishness by basically only speaking of the afterlife, not of the prenatal life.

But the matter is not just that, but it is still difficult today to talk about these things because it is a dogma of the Catholic Church not to believe in prenatal life, a dogma that other Christian denominations have also adopted. So that pretty much most Christian denominations today consider it heresy to speak of prenatal life. But it is something that reaches extraordinarily deep into the spiritual development of humanity when one dogmatically forbids looking at prenatal life. It is indeed difficult to imagine — and here I am not speaking of conscious things, but rather of unconscious ones in the development of humanity — that anything could succeed more in lulling man into illusions about his actual being than withholding from him views about prenatal life. For the whole view of man is falsified by the fact that people are deceived into believing that the mere fact of being born of father and mother is the only reason man is placed on earth at all. By withholding man's insight into prenatal life, the church has created an enormous means of exerting power. Therefore the church as such will fight in the most terrible way against all those teachings that dwell on prenatal life. The church will not tolerate that. There should be no illusions about that; but nor should there be any illusion that life simply cannot be understood if no consideration is given to prenatal life.

But something will follow from this that you should really take into account deeply and thoroughly. Consider this: it was in the interest of the church creeds to withhold important information about themselves from people. The church creeds have made it their mission to withhold the most important truths about themselves from people. These church creeds have thus found their means to envelop people in dullness, in illusion. And today it is necessary not to succumb to any illusions on this point, not to compromise out of any kind of indulgence with all kinds of church dogmas. There is no compromising on this. And it should be noted that it is of no avail to assert somewhere: Anthroposophy is concerned with the Christ, it is not atheistic, it is not pantheistic either, and so on. This will never help you, for the church creeds will not be annoyed that you do not concern yourself with the Christ; they do not care much about that, but they will be annoyed precisely because you do concern yourself with the Christ. For it matters to them that they have the monopoly on saying anything about Christ. In these matters one must not practice inner indulgence, otherwise one will always be tempted to shroud the most important things in life in twilight and fog and illusion. Humanity today has a need to approach spiritual knowledge. But dogmatic church creeds are the ones that are most opposed to spiritual knowledge, especially those dogmatic church creeds that have gradually developed in the West. The Church as such cannot actually be hostile to spiritual knowledge; that is quite impossible, because the Church as such should actually only be concerned with the feelings of man, with ceremonies, with worship, but not with the life of thought. The educated Oriental does not understand the Western church creeds at all, because the educated Oriental knows exactly: he is bound to the external cult; it is his duty to devote himself to the ceremonies to which he devotes himself in his confession. He can think whatever he wants. In the Oriental confession one still knows something of freedom of thought. This freedom of thought has been completely lost to Europeans. They have been educated in the bondage of thought, especially since the 8th or 9th century AD. That is why it is so difficult for people of Western culture to understand the things I mentioned the other day: that it is easy to prove any opinion. You can prove one opinion and you can prove its opposite. Because the fact that something can be proved is no proof of the truth of what is asserted. To arrive at the truth, one must go into much deeper layers of experience than those in which our usual proofs lie. But certain church creeds have not wanted to bring experience to the surface; therefore they have separated people from such truths as these: There you stand, O human being! As your organism develops from infancy, what you have lived through in prenatal life gradually develops within you.

And what, in particular, develops mainly from prenatal life in the individual human life between birth and death?

Now, we distinguish between an individual life and a social life in a human being. If you do not keep these two poles of human experience separate, you cannot arrive at any concept of the human being at all: individual life – that which we have, so to speak, as our most personal sense of ownership every day, in every hour; social life – that which we could not have if we did not constantly exchange ideas and engage in other interactions with other people. The individual and the social play into human life. Everything that is individual in us is basically the after-effect of prenatal life. Everything we develop in our social life is the germ of our after-death life. We have even seen recently that it is the germ of karma. So we can say: there is the individual and the social in man. The individual is the after-effect of the prenatal life. The social is the germ of the after-death life.

The first part of this truth, that the individual is, so to speak, the after-effect of prenatal life, can be seen particularly clearly by studying people with special talents. Let us say, because it is good to look at the root of the matter in such cases, that we study human genius. Where does the power of genius come from? Man brings the genius into this life through his birth. It is always the result of pre-birth life. And since, understandably, pre-birth life is particularly evident in childhood — later, a person adapts to life between birth and death, but in childhood everything that a person experienced before birth comes out — that is why, in the case of genius, the childlike manifests itself throughout life. It is virtually the characteristic of genius to retain the childlike throughout life. And it is even part of genius to retain youthfulness and childlikeness until the very last days, because all genius is connected with prenatal life. But not only genius, all talents, everything that makes a person an individuality is connected with prenatal life. Therefore, if you give people the dogma that there is no prenatal life, that there is no preexistence, what are you implicitly doing with it? You are spreading the doctrine that there is no reason for special individual talents. — You know that the actual church creeds, when they are completely sincere and honest, profess that there are no reasons for personal talents. It is not right to deny personal talents themselves; but if you deny their reasons, then you can consider personal talents to be quite meaningless.

This is connected with the fact that an education of European humanity has emerged from the church confessions, as they have prevailed for centuries, which has ultimately led to the modern levelling of people. What are people's individual talents today? And what would individual talents be if the usual socialist doctrine were implemented? In these matters, it is less important to look at the outward name of a thing than at the inner connections. A person who is a Catholic believer in dogma on the one hand and a hater of social-democratic teachings on the other is subject to a very strange inconsistency. He is as inconsistent as someone who says: I met a little boy in 1875, I was very fond of him then, and I am still very fond of him today. But now someone says to him: But look, the little boy of 1875 has become the guy who is now standing in front of you as a Social Democrat. Yes, so the answer goes, I still like the little boy of 1875 in his life back then, but I don't like, I hate, the man he has become. But social democracy grew out of Catholicism! Catholicism is just the little boy who has grown into social democracy. The latter does not want to admit it, nor does the former want to admit it, but only because people do not want to see any liveliness in the external social sphere, but only want to see something made of papier-mâché. When you make something out of papier-mâché, it remains stiff and keeps its form as long as it lasts; but that which is in the social life grows and lives and can also be preserved. But here one must distinguish between 'deception and reality. You see, you distinguish between deception and reality when you, for example, come up with the following idea. 8th century: Catholicism; 20th century: From the real Catholicism of the 8th century, social democracy has emerged! And what is present as Catholicism alongside it is not the real Catholicism of the 8th century, but its imitation, counterfeit Catholicism; for real Catholicism has since grown into social democracy.

This is not generally recognized, not because people are unwilling to face reality, but because they create illusions and deceptions to shield themselves from reality. And it is easy for them to do so. For one simply gives the same name to what has long since ceased to be itself. But if today what is represented in Europe from Rome - I have to describe it - is given the name Catholicism in the same sense as what was represented in the 8th century from Rome, it is just the same as if I were to say of a sixty-year-old man: “He's just the eight-year-old lad!” Once upon a time he was an eight-year-old lad, but today he is no longer an eight-year-old lad.

I am drawing your attention here to something that needs to be considered because social life, too, may be seen as something alive and not as something inanimate and dead. And until such things are seen through, present-day humanity will not rise to an understanding of real social life. The social life has its roots in spheres that we today no longer grasp with our externalized names in any language, at best in the oriental languages, a little in the European languages, least of all in English or American, which is of course very far removed from reality. So our languages are obstacles to understanding the social. Therefore, humanity will only advance in its understanding of the social if it emancipates itself from mere linguistic understanding. But today, anything that goes beyond mere linguistic understanding is very much condemned. And what is most often found today is that when something is to be explained, some kind of word explanation is presented first. But it does not matter what you call a thing, what word you use for it; the important thing is to lead people to the thing and not to the word. So, above all, we must overcome the bondage of languages if we want to advance to social understanding. But the bondage of languages will only be overcome if the greatest prejudices of our time are overcome. During the years of terror that we have gone through, the cry rang out throughout the world: Freedom to the individual nations! — and the smallest nations today want to create their own social structures. A passion, a paroxysm of nationalism has come over humanity, and this is just as damaging to the social life of the earth as materialism is to the life of thought. And just as man must work his way out of materialism to freedom and spirituality, so must humanity work its way out of all nationalism, in whatever form it may appear, to universal humanity. Without this, no progress can be made.

However, we will not find the possibility in languages of completely getting out of nationalism if these languages do not draw on deeper forms of expression for the spiritual. You see, I would like to conclude these reflections more or less with an image. If you reflect on this image, which I will use, you will be able to come up with many things that may be important for your understanding of the present time. Look at any piece of writing today. These little devils standing on the white paper are called letters, which you put next to each other. They have grotesque forms and in their juxtaposition they then signify the sounds of our languages. This goes back to other more expressive forms of writing. And if we trace this back very far, we come to the forms of writing, let us say, as the Egyptians had them, or what the original Sanskrit was like, which more or less developed entirely from the snake character in its forms. The Sanskrit signs are transformed snake forms with all kinds of things attached to them. The Egyptian forms of writing were still painted, drawn forms of writing, were still pictures, and in their oldest times were even the imagination of that which was depicted. The writing was directly out of the spiritual. Then writing became more and more abstract until it became what was more or less bad enough: our ordinary writing, which is only connected to what it represents by learning its forms.

Then came something even more terrible, shorthand, which is now the deathblow to the whole system that developed out of ancient pictographic writing. This downward development must give way to an upward one; we must return to a development that leads us out of all that we have been driven into, especially with writing. And with that an attempt was made to make a beginning. Here on this hill at Dornach it stands. However much is lacking in the Dornach building, however much is imperfect, it is something in its forms that expresses in a contemporary way the supersensible essence to which the human being is meant to aspire today. I would like to say that it is also meant as a world hieroglyph. If you really study its individual forms, you will be able to read much more in them than you can absorb from descriptions of the spiritual. This is at least the intention. The intention is to realize a world scripture in it. Writing emerged from art, and writing must return to art. It must go beyond symbolism, allow the spiritual within itself to live directly, by becoming a hieroglyph again in a new way.

What is written here on this hill will only be properly understood if one says to oneself: There are many demands of humanity in the present time that should have an answer. Basically, the language of today is not sufficient to provide an answer. Such an answer is attempted with the forms of this building. Much in it is imperfect; but the attempt at such an answer has been made through this building. And if one looks at it from this point of view, then one will look at it in the right way.

This is what I wanted to add to the previous reflections.

In the course of these lectures I shall be obliged to draw your attention again and again to a characteristic of our inquiry that must pervade every aspect of Spiritual Science today. We must endeavour to ensure that the concepts, ideas and representations that we form and with which we live, are not only firmly grounded in logic, but also in reality. We must strive for ideas that are steeped in reality. In the matter of our inquiries which have a specific end in view—I will indicate this presently—it will not be superfluous to remind you that an idea may be true in a certain sense and yet fail to reach down to reality. Of course what we really mean by ideas steeped in reality will only emerge gradually, but one may arrive at an understanding of such ideas by means of simple analogies. I propose therefore by way of introduction to use an analogy to illustrate my meaning.

What I am about to say seems unrelated to, or apparently unrelated to our subsequent inquiry; it is simply an introductory exposition. From the sixteenth century until 1839 all the Roman Cardinals were obliged to swear a solemn oath. During the pontificate of Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) a sum of five million scudi had been deposited in the Castel Sant’ Angelo to be used only in times of need. And since the Church attached great importance to this, the Cardinals were obliged to swear a solemn oath to preserve the fund intact. In 1839, under the pontificate of Pope Gregory XVI, Cardinal Acton (note 1) [original note 1] refused to take the oath; he wanted the Cardinals to be released from their oath to preserve the fund.

If nothing more had been heard of the story, all kinds of plausible theories might have been advanced to explain why this remarkable prince of the Church sought to prevent the Cardinals from swearing an oath, still required of them at that time, to preserve the fund which was so important to the Holy See. And all these plausible theories might have been perfectly logical, but they broke down in the face of certain pertinent facts that were known only to Cardinal Acton, namely, that since 1797 the fund no longer existed, for it was already exhausted. The Cardinals therefore had been permitted to swear an oath to preserve a treasure that no longer existed. Acton refused to be a witness to the deception. Thus all the ingenious arguments that might have been advanced by those who were unaware that the fund was already exhausted would have collapsed.

If we meditate upon such an example as this—it often seems superfluous to reflect upon such obvious cases, but we must think about them and compare them with other situations in life—if we meditate upon such an example as this, we can grasp the difference between concepts rooted in reality and those which are not. Now I must draw your attention to the unreality of ideas today because, as you will see later, this is closely connected with the subject of these lectures, a subject that I must touch upon once again from the point of view of Spiritual Science. I will endeavour to relate the investigations which we have already undertaken to the study of a certain aspect of the Mystery of Christ. My last contribution to this subject will serve as a framework for that aspect of the Christ Mystery which I now propose to examine. But first of all I should like to put before you certain things which are seemingly unrelated to our main theme because they will provide an invaluable background to our studies.

In my book Christianity As Mystical Fact, which appeared some years ago, I ventured to indicate a certain way in which one could approach the Mystery of Christ. This book (which in its new edition was one of the last books to be confiscated by the old régime in Russia) was a first attempt to interpret Christianity from a spiritual standpoint, a standpoint which in the course of centuries has been more or less lost to Christianity during its development in the West. Now I should like to emphasize one thing in particular, for this will determine whether the arguments advanced in my book are valid or not. In this book I have adopted a definite attitude towards the Gospels. I do not wish to enter into further details at the moment, for my point of view is explicitly stated in the book. But if I am justified in my point of view we shall have to assume that the origin of the Gospels is not nearly so late as contemporary Christian theology often assumes, but that an early date must probably be assigned to them. You know that from the standpoint of Spiritual Science the origins of the Gospel teaching are to be found in the ancient Mystery teachings. We must see the Mystery of Golgotha as a fulfilment of these ancient teachings. Now such a spiritual conception will run counter to the exegeses of modern historians and theologians who will regard it no doubt as historically unsound. Now it is fairly evident that the Gospels did not exercise any significant influence during the first century, or at least during the first two-thirds of this century. There are indeed Christian theologians today who doubt whether any evidence can be adduced that in the first century of the Christian era people of consequence thought of, or even believed in, the person of Jesus Christ.

Now it will become increasingly evident that if the careful research of the present day broadens its scope and shows itself to be catholic as well as conscientious, then there will be an end to its many scruples. Of course it is possible to draw all kinds of conclusions from certain discrepancies between the Christian and Jewish records. But the fact that the Apocryphal Gospels, i.e. those not officially recognized by the Christian church, are very little known today and are virtually ignored, especially by Christian theologians, militates against these conclusions. The reason for this lack of recognition is that, to a large extent, Christianity, and especially the Mystery of Golgotha, are not apprehended with sufficient spirituality. There was no real understanding of the Pauline distinction between the psychic and the spiritual man. (Corinthians I, chap. XV, 44, 45.) Consider for a moment our division of man into body, soul and spirit, one of the fundamental conceptions of Anthroposophy. In reality, Paul who was familiar with the atavistic character of the truths of the ancient Mysteries implied the same as we imply today when we speak of soul and spirit as two members of human nature. This distinction between soul and spirit has virtually been lost in the West. But we cannot understand the real nature of the Mystery of Golgotha unless we have a clear understanding of the distinction between psychic man and spiritual man.

Now first of all I should like to cite an example (which I also referred to some years ago), in order to show you that the facts of external history are often falsely interpreted, especially in relation to the recent investigations into the life of Jesus. I refer to the generally accepted view that the Gospels are of late provenance (note 2). Now many objections can be raised against this view on purely historical grounds. It can be shown, for example, that in the year A.D. 70 Rabbi Gamaliel II was involved in a lawsuit with his sister over an inheritance. Rabbi Gamaliel II was the son of Rabbi Simeon who was the son of that Gamaliel of whom Paul was a pupil. The case came before a judge and it was difficult to determine whether the judge was a Roman with leanings towards Christianity, or perhaps a Jew with leanings towards Christianity. Now Gamaliel pleaded that he was the sole heir because, according to the Mosaic law, daughters could not inherit. The judge demurred: “Since you Jews have lost your country the Thora is no longer valid; only the Gospel is valid, and according to the Gospel a sister can also inherit.” There was no straightforward solution. What happened? Gamaliel II was not only covetous, but also cunning. He requested an adjournment of the proceedings. This was granted and in the interval he bribed the judge. At the second trial he appeared before the same judge who reversed the verdict. The judge confessed that at the first trial he had erred, that the Gospel could indeed apply to such cases, but did not annul the Mosaic law. And to confirm this he quoted Matthew V, 17, in the version which we have today, but with the textual variations arising from the Greek text and the Aramaic text of the Gospel which existed at the time when this judgement was pronounced in the year A.D. 70. In his ruling the judge quoted the Matthew Gospel, whilst the Talmud which recounts the story takes the Matthew Gospel for granted.

It would be possible to adduce considerable evidence to show that there is no reliable historical evidence for not assigning an early date to the Gospels. Historical research will one day vindicate completely the evidence from purely spiritual sources which forms the basis of my book Christianity As Mystical Fact.

Now everything relating to the Mystery of Golgotha conceals the most profound mysteries for the present age. These mysteries will be resolved with the progressive advance of Spiritual Science. There are many pointers which indicate that these questions are not so simple as people fondly imagine today. For example, the relationship between Judaism and primitive Christianity in the first century of our era is virtually ignored. There are theologians who study certain Jewish writings in order to find evidence for their various theories. But one can easily demonstrate that these Jewish writings on which they rely did not exist in the first century. One thing appears to be demonstrable historically, namely, that in the second third of the first century a relatively harmonious relationship existed between Judaism and Christianity—in so far as one can speak of Christianity at that period. Generally speaking, when enlightened Jews discussed certain questions with the followers of Jesus Christ they easily arrived at an understanding. One need only recall the case of the celebrated Rabbi Elieser who made the acquaintance of a certain Jacob (as he calls him) towards the middle of the first century. The latter admitted to being a disciple of Jesus and had healed in His name. Rabbi Elieser conferred with the aforesaid Jacob and declared in the course of the conversation that what Jacob had said, and especially the fact that he had healed the sick in the name of Jesus, was in no way contrary to the spirit of Judaism.

Now this relatively easy harmony between Christian and Jew peculiar to earlier times came to an end towards the close of the first century. From that time even enlightened Jews became implacable enemies of everything Christian. The Jewish texts which are held to be of importance today date from the second century and testify to a growing discord between Christian and Jew. As we follow the deterioration of this relationship we see how a hatred of Christianity first emerged in Judaism and was associated with a progressive transformation within Judaism itself. Although the modern Hebrew scholars are versed in the Old Testament from their own standpoint, they are unaware of other forces that were still active in Judaism at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and so frequently failed to grasp the major issues with which a serious historical investigation of this period is concerned. We must realize that in the first century the learned Jewish Rabbis gave a totally different interpretation of the Old Testament from that which is given today. Since the nineteenth century the capacity to interpret ancient texts has largely been lost. Certain things which still existed even in the eighteenth century as a sacred tradition in the form of truths derived from the old atavistic clairvoyance, no longer had any meaning to nineteenth-century man. Those who speak of such matters today, even when they refer to a much earlier epoch, are regarded as addlepated!

In my last lecture I drew your attention to an important book Des Erreurs et de la Vérité by Saint-Martin (note 3). This book is undoubtedly a late product of its kind since it is inspired by ancient traditions which are now outmoded. None the less it still speaks from out of these traditional insights. I have recently quoted to you several extracts from this book which modern man is at a loss to understand. But if we accept the point of view of Saint-Martin we shall find that his book presents certain ideas which seem absurd to modern man, unless we are prepared to regard them as pure fantasy—and today almost everything of this nature is regarded as fantasy. Saint-Martin suggests that the human race has fallen from spiritual heights to the world of terrestrial existence. Today, many who are not confirmed materialists are still willing to tolerate theoretically the idea that the present human race can be traced back to a far-distant time when, with a certain part of its being, it stood at a far higher level than at the present time. Despite the materialistic character of Darwinism which assumes that man is descended from animal ancestry, there are others however who believe in his divine origin where he was originally in touch with divine traditions. But when we pass from these abstract notions to the concrete statements of Saint-Martin, statements which are found in Saint-Martin only because they are associated with primeval traditions from the ancient epoch of clairvoyance, we discover that modern man is at a loss to understand them. What can the man of today who has a thorough knowledge of chemistry, geology, biology and physiology, etc. and who has also assimilated that curious amalgam called philosophy—what can such a man think when he learns from Saint-Martin that our present human condition is the consequence of the “Fall”. Originally the human race had been differently constituted. Man, according to Saint-Martin, was originally equipped with a crossbow and a coat of mail. Thanks to the coat of mail he was able to prove himself in the hard struggle which was his lot. He has now lost the coat of mail which was originally part of his organism. He was also armed with a lance of bronze which could inflict wounds like fire. With this lance he could overcome elementary beings in the spiritual battle which faced him. And in the place where he originally dwelt he had seven trees at his disposal and each of these trees had 16 roots and 490 branches. He has now forsaken his former dwelling; he has fallen from his high estate.

If one were to claim for these views the same validity and reality as the geologist claims for his theories about primeval ages, I doubt if he would be considered to be in his right mind. One need only come along with all kinds of symbols and allegories and people are satisfied. But Saint-Martin was not speaking symbolically; he was speaking of realities which he believed had really existed. Of course in describing certain things which existed when the Earth in its original state was more spiritual than in later times, he had to appeal to “Imaginations”. [original note 2] But “Imaginations” represent realities; they should not be interpreted symbolically. Their imaginative content must be accepted at its face value. I mention this in passing. I cannot at the moment enter into details. I only wish to show the radical difference between the language of the eighteenth century in which a book such as Des Erreurs et de la Vérité was written and the language which alone passes current today. The style and idiom of Saint-Martin have completely died out.

Since the Old Testament, for example, can only be understood if we are conversant with certain things which are related to imaginative conceptions, it is clear that in the nineteenth century especially the possibility of understanding the Old Testament has been lost. But the further back we go the more we find that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha there existed in Judaism, in addition to the exoteric Scriptures of the Old Testament, a genuine esoteric doctrine. It is to this esoteric doctrine that must be attributed in large measure the possibility of interpreting the Old Testament in the right way. Now it is impossible to interpret the Bible in the right way unless we evaluate its statements against a background of spiritual facts.

At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha it was Romanism that was most averse to this particular aspect of the Jewish Mysteries. There has hardly ever been perhaps in the history of the world a more deep-seated antagonism than between the spirit of Rome and the Mystery tradition preserved by the initiates of Palestine. We must not, of course, regard the Mystery tradition as it existed in Palestine at that time as Christian, but only as a prophetic prefiguration of Christianity. On the other hand, however, we can only comprehend the ferment within Christianity when we see it against the historical background of the Mystery teachings of Palestine. This Mystery teaching was full of hidden knowledge about the “spiritual man” and provided ample indications of how human cognition could find a path to the spiritual world. Ramifications of this Mystery teaching were also to be found to some extent in the Greek Mysteries and to a lesser extent in the Roman Mysteries. The essence of the Palestinian Mysteries found no place in Romanism, for Rome had evolved a special form of community or social life which was only possible if the spiritual man was ignored. The key to Roman history therefore is to be found in the establishment of a community life under Rome that more or less excluded the spirit. In such a society it would be meaningless to speak of the threefold division of man into body, soul and spirit. The further back we go the more we realize that the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha in ancient times depended upon this tripartite division of man into body, soul and spirit. Paul for his part spoke of the psychic man and the spiritual man. But this was bound to offend Roman susceptibilities and explains much that followed later.

Now you know that the doctrine which is outmoded today but which in the early centuries sought to preserve the threefold division of man and the cosmos was Gnosticism (note 4). In later centuries Gnosticism was proscribed and finally suppressed so that it disappeared completely. I do not say that it ought to have survived; I simply wish to register the historical fact that Gnosticism held promise of a spiritual conception of a Mystery of Golgotha and was ultimately suppressed. Events now took a strange turn. Roman traditionalism was increasingly influenced by Christianity and the further this influence penetrated the less Rome understood its relationship to the “spiritual man”, and certain gnostic Christians gave increasing offence by continuing to speak of body, soul and spirit. In circles where Catholic Christianity had become the official religion there were repeated attempts to suppress the idea of the spirit. They felt that all reference co the spirit should be ignored, otherwise the old ideas of the tripartite division of man might revive again. So matters pursued their course. When we make a careful study of the early Christian centuries we find that many problems that are usually accounted for in other ways are seen in their true light when we realize that, as Christianity fell increasingly under the influence of Rome, the avowed object of Rome was progressively to eliminate the idea of the spirit. When we recognize that Western Christianity had of necessity to dethrone the spirit, innumerable questions of conscience and of epistomology are resolved. And this development ultimately led to the eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 (note 5). This Council laid down a dogma according to which it was contrary to Christianity to speak of body, soul and spirit, but truly Christian to speak of man as consisting of body and soul alone. The actual wording may not have been quite so explicit, but was later interpreted in this way. At first the Council simply stated that man possessed an intellectual soul and a spiritual soul. This formula was coined to avoid any reference to the spirit as a special entity, for the avowed object of the Council was to suppress all knowledge of the spirit.

This decree had unforeseen consequences. Contemporary philosophers begin their investigations by studying body and soul as if they were independent entities. If you were to ask, for example, a man like Wundt, on what grounds he accepted only the dichotomy of man, he would reply in good faith that it was on factual grounds since, from the evidence of direct observation, there was no sense in speaking of body, soul and spirit, but only of the body which looks outward and of the soul which looks inward. This is self-evident, he would reply. He had no idea that this was the consequence of the decree of the eighth Ecumenical Council. Even today philosophers do not mention the spirit. They follow the dogma laid down by the eighth Ecumenical Council. Precisely why they deny the spirit, though not openly, they do not know, any more than the Roman Cardinals knew what they were swearing to when they took an oath to preserve intact the fund which no longer existed. The real creative forces of history are all too seldom taken into consideration. Today anyone who rejects the conclusion of “unprejudiced science”, as it is called, which maintains that man consists of body and soul alone, is decried as an ignoramus, simply because the scientists themselves are unaware that their assumptions are based on the decrees of the Council of 869. And so it is with many other things. This Council is important because it sheds considerable light upon the evolution of Western thought.

You know that Western Christendom was deeply divided by the schism between the Eastern Church and the Church of Rome on doctrinal questions which still divide them today. The dogmatic ground of dissension—for which, of course, there are other, deep-seated motives—stemmed from the famous question of filioque (note 6). In a later Council (the Orthodox Church recognized only the first seven Councils) the Latin Church recognized the double Procession, namely, that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son. This was declared to be heretical by the Eastern Church which maintained that the Holy Ghost proceeds only from the Father. The great confusion over this dogma could only arise because the conception of the spirit had become blurred. All understanding of the spirit had been gradually lost. This is undoubtedly connected with the fact that, from the beginning of the Fifth postAtlantean epoch onwards, man had to be denied for a time all perception of the spirit. In face of this truth, the events described above are only, so to speak, the tip of the iceberg. We must probe beneath the surface if we are to arrive at a valid point of view which is rooted in reality.

Now the period of evolution which played an important part in the establishment of this dogma of the dichotomy of man has not yet ended. The Christian theologians of the Middle Ages who still subscribed to the existing traditions—for it was only orthodox Church doctrine that maintained that man consisted of body and soul, whilst the alchemists and others who were still familiar with the old traditions knew of course that he was a trichotomy—these theologians knew how difficult it was to hold orthodox opinions whilst at the same time they had to admit that the heretical doctrine of man's trichotomy contained a kernel of truth. We see the frantic attempts of these theologians to evade this issue. If we do not recognize this dilemma we shall fail altogether to understand mediaeval theology.

Now this evolutionary period is far from concluded for it coincides with an important impulse in the development of Western civilization. And because, in the course of the twentieth century, many changes will be wrought which we must be aware of if we wish to understand our present epoch, I must refer to this period once again. Originally (if such a word may be used of something that has arisen in comparatively recent times) the being of man was divided into body, soul and spirit. The course of evolution was such that by the ninth century it had become possible to abolish the spirit. But matters did not rest there. These important changes are simply overlooked today. The complete transformation of thinking by Saint-Martin, for example, has been completely ignored hitherto. Having abolished the spirit, matters did not end there. There is now a growing tendency to abolish the soul in its turn. As yet only the first steps in this direction have been taken; but today the time is ripe for the abolition of the soul. But man fails to recognize contemporary tendencies which are of decisive importance. Already powerful evolutionary impulses are at work which are preparing to abolish the soul (note 7). There will be no need to summon Councils as in the ninth century. Things are done differently today. I must repeat that I have no wish to criticize, I merely place the facts before you.

Considerable progress has been made towards the abolition of the soul in many spheres. The nineteenth century, for example, saw the rise of dialectical materialism which is the basic tenet of (German) social democracy today. If we look upon Engels and Marx as the major “prophets” of dialectical materialism—the Biblical term is perhaps out of place in this context, but we may perhaps risk it here—they are also the direct descendants, historically speaking, of the Church Fathers of the eighth Ecumenical Council. We see here an unbroken line of development. The steps taken by the Church Fathers towards the abolition of the spirit were carried a stage further by Marx and Engels in their comprehensive attempt to abolish the soul. According to the materialistic theory of history spiritual impulses are of no account, the driving forces of history are material forces or economic factors—the struggle for material wellbeing. What appertains to the soul is simply a superstructure on the solid foundation of material processes. It is important to recognize the genuine catholicity of Marx and Engels and to note in these aspirations of the nineteenth century the true consequence of the abolition of the spirit.

The development of the modern scientific outlook is another factor which has contributed to the abolition of the soul. This outlook—I am speaking not of the positive achievements of the scientific “Weltanschauung”, which accepts only the reality of the corporeal and regards everything pertaining to the soul as an epiphenomenon, a superstructure on what is corporeal—this scientific outlook is the direct consequence of that development which we have just seen in the decisive impulses of the eighth Ecumenical Council. But the majority of mankind will probably not believe in this possibility until, originating from certain centres of world evolution, the abolition of the soul will receive more or less legal sanction. It will not be long before decrees are promulgated in several States declaring that those who take seriously the existence of the soul are not of sound mind, and only those will be regarded of sound mind who recognize the “truth”, namely that thinking, feeling and willing are the necessary by-products of certain physiological processes. Various steps have already been taken in this direction, but so long as they are confined to the realm of theory they can have no deep or lasting influence or significance. It is only when they are translated into practice in the social order that they exercise a deep and lasting influence. The first half of the present century will scarcely be over before those who are clear-sighted will be faced with an alarming situation by the abolition of the soul, akin to the abolition of the spirit that occurred in the ninth century.

It cannot be repeated too often that it is insight into these things which matters, insight into the impulses which have determined man's destiny in the course of historical evolution. It is only too true that the materialist education of today induces a more or less soporific condition. It inhibits clear thinking, precludes a healthy perception of reality and blinds man to the really important factors in historical evolution. And so today, even those who would fain satisfy their longing for spiritual knowledge lack the strength of will to kindle an awareness of certain impulses inherent in our evolution and to make serious efforts to see things as they really are.

Now there existed in Palestine certain Mystery teachings which were a preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha and in respect of which the Mystery of Golgotha was seemingly a fulfilment. I referred to this when I said that in the Mystery of Golgotha the greatest mystery drama of all time was enacted on the stage of world history. In that event, we may ask, why did Romanism develop such a strong antipathy to Christianity in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, and how was it that this apathy entailed in particular the abolition of the spirit?

These things are more closely related than is suspected by those who only study them superficially. Today few are prepared to admit that Marx and Engels are the direct heirs of the Church Fathers. That is of no great moment, but it leads to something of far greater moment if we bear the following in mind. At the trial before the Sanhedrin, which condemned Jesus Christ, the Sadducees played a leading part. Who were the Sadducees (those who have rightly been given the name of Sadducees) (note 8) at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha? They were a sect which wished to eradicate, to suppress everything that proceeded from the ancient Mysteries. They had a fear, a horror of every form of Mystery cult. The courts and the administration were in their hands. They were completely under the influence of the Roman State; in effect they were the servile agents of Rome. There is unmistakable evidence that they purchased preferment for large sums of money and then recouped themselves by dunning the Jewish population of Palestine. It was they who realized—and thanks to their Ahrimanic, materialistic outlook they were quick to perceive this—that Rome was threatened if it should come to be accepted in any way that the drama of Christ was related to the fundamental teachings of the Mysteries. They had an instinctive feeling that Christianity would give birth to something that would gradually overthrow the authority of Rome. And this accounts for those fierce wars of extermination which Rome waged against Judaism in Palestine during the first century and in later centuries. These wars of extermination were prosecuted with the avowed object of exterminating not only the Jews but all those who knew anything of the reality and traditions of the ancient Mysteries. Everything associated in any way with the Mystery teachings, especially in Palestine, was to be destroyed root and branch.

As a consequence of this suppression of the Mystery teachings the perception of the spiritual in man was lost, the path to the spiritual in man was closed. It would have been dangerous for those who later sought to abolish the spirit under the influence of Rome, of Romanized Christianity, if many of those who had been initiated in the ancient Mystery schools of Palestine had still survived, if those who still preserved a memory of the spirit and could still bear witness to the fact that man consisted of body, soul and spirit. The policy of Romanism was to establish a social order in which the spirit had no place, to encourage an evolutionary trend that would exclude all spiritual impulses. This could not have been realized if too many people had known the interpretation of the Mystery of Golgotha that was adumbrated in the Mysteries. It was instinctively felt that nothing of a spiritual nature could emerge from the Roman State. From the union of the Church and the Roman State was born jurisprudence. In this the spirit had no part. It is important to bear this in mind.

It is important to realize that we are now living in an age when we must awaken the spirit once more, so that it can participate in the affairs of men. You can imagine how difficult this will be since materialism is so deeply ingrained. I believe it will be long before it is generally recognized that dialectical materialism is a true continuation of the eighth Ecumenical Council, before people understand the real implication of the term filioque which was responsible for the schism between the Western Church and the Eastern Church, between Rome and Byzantium. Today people are content to speak of these matters in a superficial way, to pass surface judgements. For the understanding of many things we shall have to appeal to feeling, and feeling can be wisely directed if one thing is kept clearly in mind. The feeling to which I refer and with which I will conclude this lecture today is the following:

When we study the history of Europe from the rise of Christianity onwards, we are no longer satisfied with that “fable convenue” which passes for history and which is the hidden cause of so much misery today. And when we have sufficient courage to reject this parody of history, we shall develop a feeling which will serve as a guiding principle in our enquiries into the evolution of Christianity today. We shall discover that nothing has met with so many hindrances, so much incomprehension and misrepresentation as the evolution of Christianity. And nothing has been so difficult as its propagation. When one speaks of miracles, there is no greater miracle than this, namely, that Christianity has survived. Not only has it established itself, but we live in an age when it must prevail, not only against those who would abolish the spirit, but also against those who would abolish the soul. And it will prove victorious, for Christianity will develop its greatest strength in face of bitterest opposition. By actively resisting the abolition of the soul we shall develop the power to perceive the spirit once again. When, under the influence of the spirit prevailing today (you will forgive the misuse of the word in this context) laws will be promulgated declaring those who regard the spirit as a reality to be of unsound mind—of course these laws will not be couched in specific terms, but under the brutal impact of the modern scientific outlook they will find their way on to the statute book—when this new modernized version of the decree of the eighth Ecumenical Council appears, then the time will have come for the spirit to be restored to its rightful place.

We shall then be forced to recognize that vague, nebulous concepts are of no avail. We must become aware of the deep origin, of the deep-seated feelings underlying these nebulous concepts, for they often conceal the materialism to which modern man has succumbed and which he refuses to admit to himself. And because he refuses to admit this to himself, because he will not acknowledge this openly, he pays the penalty; materialism corrupts his thinking. But Saint-Martin says in the more important passages of his book: “These things are not to be spoken of.” Certainly, it will be a long time before certain things can be discussed openly. None the less many things will have to be proclaimed loud and clear in order to awaken mankind to the true state of affairs. And in the not too far-distant future this warning will serve to reveal the origin of those hidden tendencies behind the evolutionism of Darwin, the source from which the sensual, perverse tendencies of the present materialistically orientated Darwinism has sprung.

But I do not wish to end on a melancholy note. I will not pursue the matter further, but simply direct your attention to these questions. Today I wished to prepare an outline plan which will serve as a basis for a special study of the Mystery of Golgotha. In my next lecture I will endeavour to fill in the details.

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Original Notes:

Note 1. Numerals in brackets in the texts refer to Notes by the translator at the end of each lecture.

Note 2. In Spiritual Science the first level of higher consciousness is given the name of “Imagination” or “Imaginative Knowledge”. It is the result of inwardly strengthened thinking, giving rise to a consciousness filled with living images or pictures.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Cardinal Acton—Charles Januarius Acton (1803–47) Cardinal 1842. Uncle of the famous historian, Lord Acton (1834–1902).

Note 2. The dating of the Synoptic Gospels by Protestant theologians is as follows: Matthew, A.D. 70–75; Mark, circa A.D. 65; Luke, A.D. 50–55; and John, post A.D. 100. Roman Catholic theologians give the following dates: Matthew, post A.D. 70; Mark, A.D. 65–75; Luke, A.D. 70–80; John, A.D. 100.

Note 3. Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803). Under the pseudonym of “The Unknown Philosopher” wrote on occultism and mysticism. Influenced by Pasqually, Swedenborg and Boehme. Alleged to have founded a Martinist Rite, a modification of the Rite des Elus Coëns. Was a firm opponent of the prevailing materialism of his day and emphasised the need for faith and good works. In later life withdrew from Lodge activities into mysticism.

Note 4. Gnosticism. The word is derived from the Greek gnosis—knowledge. The name “Gnostics” is used to designate widely different sects which flourished in the second and third centuries. They speculated on problems of human destiny and professed to teach a knowledge of God and man. Our knowledge of Gnosticism was for long confined to criticisms by its opponents: Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, St. Epiphenius and others. The leading exponents of Gnosticism were the Ophites, Simon Magnus, Carpocrates, Basildes, Marcion and Valentinus. Many documents are lost or were destroyed as heretical. Today our knowledge is based upon the Pistis Sophia (fourth century), the Bruce Codex (fifth century), the Codex Berulensis (now lost), the Manichaean writings found at Turfan in Chinese Turkistam (early in this century), the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic writings in Coptic translation discovered in 1945 at NagHammadi in Egypt, the ancient Chenoboskion. Valuable for further study are: The Gnostics and their remains, ancient and mediaeval, C. W. King, 1887, with descriptive plates of talismans, gems, sigils, etc; The Secret Book of the Egyptian Gnostics, Jean Doresse (from the French), 1960. Very important: The Gnostic Religion, Hans Jonas, Paperback 1963.

In Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, Erster Teil, lectures VIII and IX, Dr. Steiner tells us that Gnosis was a wisdom knowledge, a “survival of ancient wisdom derived from the old clairvoyant insight into the spiritual world. It was suppressed by dogmatic Christianity from motives of hostility to Mystery wisdom, for Gnosis declared that Christ had descended upon earth through the realms of the spiritual Hierarchies and incarnated in the physical body of Jesus which had been prepared for 30 years to receive the Christ Being.”

Note 5. The eighth Ecumenical Council or the fourth Council of Constantinople, 869, condemned Photius who was responsible for the Greek schism (see filioque). A note in the German edition says that it was the abuse of the Pauline distinction between the “psychic” man and the “spiritual” man which decided the Church of Rome to reject the idea of trichotomy.

Note 6. Filioque controversy. Filioque (“and the Son”) was an addition by the Western Church to the Constantinopolitan Creed, namely, that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son (called the double Procession of the Holy Ghost). This was the origin of the Greek schism and the chief ground of attack upon the Church of Rome by the Orthodox Church, which follows the Byzantine rite. Photius refused to accept the insertion of filioque in the Nicene Creed and the Photian schism finally triumphed in the Orthodox Church. The addition of filioque was first met with at the third Council of Toledo 589, and was defended by Patriarch Paulinus at the Synod of Friuli 796. When introduced into the monastery at Jerusalem by Frankish monks in 847 it met with immediate opposition from Eastern monks. It was adopted at Rome after A.D. 1000 and declared to be a dogma of faith in the fourth Lateran Council 1215.

Note 7. In this context it is interesting to note that, in 1926, at an International Psychological Conference, Pavlov declared that we must abandon the misleading term “soul”. “The proper study of psychology is physiology”, he declared.

Note 8. The Sadducees adhered to the letter of the law. They were the dominant priestly party and were subservient to the Roman procurators of Judaea.