The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is beautiful that circumstances permit of our uniting here this evening at this festival. For though the vast majority of our friends are able to celebrate the festival of love and peace outside in the circle of those with whom they are united by the ties of ordinary life, there are many among our anthroposophical friends who to-day are alone in a certain sense. It also goes without saying that those of us who are not thus drawn into this or that circle are, considering the spiritual current in which we stand, least of all excluded from taking part in the festival of love and peace. What should be more beautifully suited to unite us here this evening in the atmosphere, in the spiritual air of mutual love and peace that radiates through our hearts than an anthroposophical movement? And we may also regard it as a happy chance of fate that it is just in this year that we are able to be together on this Christmas Eve, and to follow out a little train of thought which can bring this festival near to our hearts. For in this year we ourselves stand before the birth of that which, if we rightly understand it, must lie very close to our hearts: I mean the

Birth of our Anthroposophical Society.

If we have lived the great ideal which we want to express through the Anthroposophical Society, and if we are accordingly inclined to dedicate our forces to this great ideal of mankind, then we can naturally let our thoughts sweep on from this our spiritual light or means of light to the dawn of the great light of human evolution which is celebrated on this night of love and peace. On this night—spiritually, or in our souls—we really have before us that which may be called the Birth of the Earthly Light, of the light which is to be born out of the darkness of the Night of Initiation, and which is to be radiant for human hearts and human souls, for all that they need in order to find their way upwards to those spiritual heights which are to be attained through the earth’s mission.

What is it really that we should write in our hearts—the feeling that we may have on this Christmas night?

In this Christmas night there should pour into our hearts the fundamental human feeling of love—the fundamental feeling that says: compared with all other forces and powers and treasures of the world, the treasures and the power and the force of love are the greatest, the most intense, the most powerful. There should pour into our hearts, into our souls, the feeling that wisdom is a great thing—that love is still greater; that might is a great thing—that love is yet greater. And this feeling of the power and force and strength of love should pour into our hearts so strongly that from this Christmas night something may overflow into all our feelings during the rest of the year, so that we may truthfully say at all times: we must really be ashamed, if in any hour of the year we do anything that cannot hold good when the spirit gazes into that night in which we would pour the all-power of love into our hearts. May it be possible for the days and the hours of the year to pass in such a way that we need not bo ashamed of them in the light of the feeling that we would pour into our souls on Christmas night!

If such can be our feeling, then we are feeling together with all those beings who wanted to bring the significance of Christmas, of the ‘Night of Initiation,’ near to mankind: the significance and the relation of Christmas night to the whole Christ-Impulse within earthly evolution.

For this Christ Impulse stands before us, we may say, in a threefold figure; and to-day at the Christ-festival this threefold figure of the Christ-Impulse can have great significance for us. The first figure meets us when we turn our gaze to the Gospel according to St. Matthew. The Being who is born—or whose birth we celebrate—on this Christmas Eve, enters human evolution in such a way that three heads of mankind, three representatives of high magic come to pay homage to the kingly Being who is entering man’s evolution. ‘Kings’ in the spiritual sense of the word: magic kings come to pay homage to the great spiritual King Who appears in the high form that He has attained. For as high a being as Zarathustra once was, passed through his stages of development in order to reach the height of the spiritual King whom the magic kings came to welcome. And so does the Spirit-King of St. Matthew’s Gospel confront our spiritual gaze: He brings into human evolution an infinite fount of goodness and an infinite fount of mighty love, of that goodness and that love before which human wickedness feels itself challenged to battle. Thus again do we see the Spirit-King enter human evolution: that which must be enmity against the Spirit-King feels itself challenged in the figure of Herod; and the spiritual King must flee before that which is the enemy of spiritual kingship. So do we see Him in the spirit, in His majestic and magic glory. And before our soul there arises the marvellous image of the Spirit-King, of Zarathustra reincarnate, the flower of human evolution, as He has passed from incarnation to incarnation on the physical plane, and as wisdom has reached perfection, surrounded by the three magic spirit-kings themselves, by flowers and heads of human evolution.

In yet another figure the Christ-Impulse can come before our souls, as it appears in the Gospel according to St. Mark, and in St. John’s Gospel. There we seem to be led towards the cosmic Christ-Impulse, which expresses how man is eternally related to the great cosmic forces. We have this connection with the great cosmic forces when, through an understanding of the cosmic Christ, we become aware how through the Mystery of Golgotha there entered into earthly evolution itself a cosmic impulse. As something yet infinitely more great and mighty than the Spirit-King Whom we see in the spirit surrounded by the magicians, there appears before us the mighty cosmic Being who will take hold of the vehicle of that man who is himself the Spirit-King, the flower and summit of earthly evolution. It is really only the short-sightedness of present day mankind which prevents men from feeling the full greatness and power of this incision into human evolution, wherein Zarathustra became the the bearer of the cosmic Christ-Spirit. It is only this short-sightedness which does not feel the whole significance of that which was being prepared in the moment of human evolution which we celebrate in our ‘night of initiation,’ in our Christmas. Everywhere, if we enter but a little more deeply into human evolution, we are shown how deeply the Christ-Event penetrated into the whole earthly evolution. Let us feel this as we follow this evening a relevant fine of thought, whence something may stream out into the rest of our anthroposophical thought, deepening and penetrating into the meaning of things.

Many things might be brought forward for this purpose. It could be shown how, in times which were still nearer to the spiritual, an entirely new spirit appeared before mankind: new in comparison with the spirit that held sway and was active in earthly evolution in pre-Christian times. For instance, there was created a figure, a figure, however, which lived, which expresses to us how a soul of the early Christian centuries was affected when such a soul, having first felt itself quite immersed in the old Pagan spiritual knowledge, then approached the Christ-Impulse simply and without prejudice, and felt a great change in itself. To-day we more and more have a feeling for such a figure as Faust. We feel this figure, which a more modern poet—Goethe—has, so to speak, reawakened. We feel how this figure is meant to express the highest human striving, yet at the same time the possibility of deepest guilt. It may be said, apart from all the artistic value given to this figure by the power of a modern poet, we can feel deep and significant things of what lived in those early Christian souls, when for example we sink into the poem of the Greek Empress Eudocia. She created a revival of the old legend of Cyprian, which pictures a man who lived wholly in the world of the old heathen gods and could become entwined in it—a man who after the Mystery of Golgotha was still completely given up to the old heathen mysteries and forces and powers. Beautiful is the scene in which Cyprian makes the acquaintance of Justina, who is already touched by the Christ-Impulse, and who is given up to those powers which are revealed through Christianity. Cyprian is tempted to draw her from the path, and for this purpose to make use of the old heathen magical methods. All this is played out between Faust and Gretchen, in the atmosphere of this battle of old Pagan impulses with the Christ-Impulse. Apart from the spiritual side of it, it works out magnificently in the old story of the Cyprian and of the temptation to which he was exposed over against the Christian Justina. And even though Eudocia’s poetry may not be very good, still we must say: there we see the awful collision of the old pre-Christian world with the Christian world. In Cyprian we see a man who feels himself still far from the Christian faith, quite given up to the old Pagan divine forces. There is a certain power in this description.- To-day we only bring forward a few extracts, showing how Cyprian feels towards the magic forces of pre-Christian spiritual powers. Thus in Eudocia’s poem we hear him speak: (‘Confession of Cyprian.’)

‘Ye faithful ones in Christ, who in your hearts
Do cherish true and warm our Saviour great in praise:
Behold my tears outpouring and then hear
While I relate the fountain of my grief.
And ye, who still are lost in dark illusion bound
To idol images, pay heed, ye too, to that
Which I shall tell of their deceit and falsehood.
For never lived a man, who to false Gods
Was given up as I was; never one
So deeply versed in all the demon’s arts.

‘Yea, I am Cyprianus, whom, a child,
My parents brought unto Apollo dedicate.
The orgies’ hue and cry became my lullaby,
What time the fearsome dragon’s feast was celebrate.
At seven years they consecrated me
Unto the Sun-God Mithras. Then I lived
In Athen’s noble city, as a citizen—
Such was my parents’ wish. When I was ten,
I lit Demeter’s torches, and I sank myself
In Kora’s mournful death-complaint. Then as a temple-child
I nourished Pallas’ serpent in the castle’s walls.

‘Then I ascended on the forest-mount,
Olympus’ height, where fools would make believe
The radiant dwelling-place of Gods sublime.
I saw the Horse and the hustling winds,
The days’ long chorus, wafted on on wings
Of fantasy, to speed through life on magic wings.
I saw the spirits’ fiery headlong fray,
And ambuscades deceitful. Some of them anon
Bluster and burst with ridicule and glee,
While others petrified in terror rooted stand.
I saw the ranks of Goddesses and Gods;
For forty days or more I lingered there.
And as the sun did set, I ate the fruits
Of leafy shady bowers. And there, like messengers
From kingly castles, sped the spirit-beings,
Then to descend to earth with thousand ills
To vex the race of men.

‘I numbered fifteen years, already knew
The power and work of spirits and of Gods;
And of high priests my teachers there were seven—
It was my parents’ will that I should gain
Science of all that bides upon the earth,
And in the airy realms, and in the oceans’ depths.
I searched through that which in the human breast
Destruction brews—what ferments in the herb,
In flowery juices; and what sickening creeps
Around the wearied body; nor did I neglect
That which the gaudy snake, prince of the world, conceives
To challenge the eternal goals of God.

‘I wandered on in Argos’ fairest land—
Argos that nourished the rose.
’Twas just the season’s round of Eos’ feast,
Eos white-raimented, Tithonos’ spouse,
There I became their priest.
I learned to know what windy brothers speed
Through airy spaces and this pole’s long round;
What binds the ploughland with the waters’ flood,
And darkens o’er the skies with showering rain.’

Thus had Cyprian learned to know everything that was to be learned by being, so to speak, initiated into the pre-Christian mysteries. Oh! he describes them exactly—those powers to whom those could look up who were entrusted with the ancient traditions of initiation in a time when those traditions no longer held good; his description of them and of all their fruits which were no longer suitable to that age is fascinating.

‘Myself I saw the demon face to face,
When I had won him by my sacrifice.
I spake to him, and he did answer me
With words of flattery. He praised my youth,
My fairness and my skill unto his works,
Assigned to me dominion o’er this world
And spirits to accomplish my behests;
He greeted me by name, what time we parted,
And all his great ones looked on us amazed.
His countenance is like unto the flower
Of purest gold: and on his head a diadem
Of glittering stones; his raiment’s like a flame,
And all the earth doth shiver as he moves.
In dense array around his mighty throne
Spear-bearers stand, their eyes cast on the ground.
Thus he makes up to be a God; he imitates
The Great One’s works, whom boldly challenging,
He yet creates but powerless fantasies—
For all their demons’ being is emptiness.

And then it goes on to describe how the temptation approaches him, and how all this works on him before he comes to know the Christ-Impulse-

‘I wandered from the Persian land away,
And came to Antioch, great town of Syria.
Here I accomplished many a miracle
Of hellish mystery and of enchantments’ crafts.
Here a fair youth, Aglaidas, once sought me out;
And others with him, fired with passionate love.
Towards a maiden was his heart aglow,
Justina was her name. He now entreated me,
Clasping around my knees, to conjure her
Into his arms by means of magic craft.
I hearkened to his prayers and then at first
Appeared to me the demon’s powerlessness.
Many as were the spirit-throngs he ruled,
So many he sent out to tempt her soul;
And every one returned from her abashed.
Me too, who pleaded for Aglaidas, Justina’s faith
And purity and piety could put to shame.
She shewed me then the vanity of mine arts,
And many a sleepless night I fingered on
With manifold enchantments’ drudgery.
Ten weeks the prince of spirits stormed the heart
Of yonder maiden. Till Eros, alas,
Not only sped his shaft to wound Aglaidas:
I too was seized and tom with frenzied love.

And from this confusion into which the old world brought him, Cyprian is healed through the Christ-Impulse, in that he cast aside the old magic to understand the Christ-Impulse in its full greatness. We have later in the Faust poem a kind of shadow of this legend, but filled with greater poetic power. In such a figure as this, it is brought home to us very strongly how the Christ-Impulse, which, with some recapitulations we have just brought before our souls in a twofold figure, was felt in the early Christian centures.

A third figure, as it were a third aspect of the Christ-Impulse, is one which can especially bring home to us how, through that which in the full sense of the word we may call Anthroposophy, we can feel ourselves united with all that is human. This is the aspect which is most uniquely set forth in St. Luke’s Gospel, and which then worked on in that representation of the Christ-Impulse which shows us its preparation in the ‘Child.’ In that love and simplicity and at the same time powerlessness, with which the Christ Jesus of St. Luke’s Gospel meets us, thus it was suited to be placed before all hearts. There all can feel themselves near to that which so simply, like a child—and yet so greatly and mightily—spake to mankind through the Child of St. Luke’s Gospel, which is not shown to the magic kings, but to the poor shepherds from the hills. That other Being of St. Matthew’s Gospel stands at the summit of human evolution and paying homage to him there come spiritual lungs, magic kings. The Child of St. Luke’s Gospel stands there in simplicity, excluded from human evolution, as a child received by no great ones—received by the shepherds from the hills. Nor does he stand within human evolution, this Child of St. Luke’s Gospel, in such a way that we were told in this Gospel, for example, how the wickedness of the world felt itself challenged by his kingly spiritual power. No! but—albeit we are not at once brought face to face with Herod’s power and wickedness—it is clearly shown to us how. that which is given in this Child is so great, so noble, so full of significance, that humanity itself cannot receive it into its ranks. It appears poor and rejected, as though cast into a corner by human evolution and there in a peculiar manner it shows us its extra-human, its divine, that is to say, its cosmic origin. And what an inspiration flowed from this Gospel of St. Luke for all those who, again and again, gave us scenes, in pictures and in other artistic works—scenes which were especially called forth by St. Luke’s Gospel. If we compare the various artistic productions, do we not feel how those, which throughout the centuries were inspired by St. Luke’s Gospel, show us Jesus as a Being with whom every man, even the simplest, can feel akin? Through that which worked on through the Luke-Jesus-Child, the simplest man comes to feel the whole event in Palestine as a family happening, which concerns himself as something which happened among his own near relations. No Gospel worked on in the same way as this Gospel of St. Luke, with its sublime and happy flowing mood, making the Jesus-Being intimate to the human souls. And yet—all is contained in this childlike picture—all that should be contained in a certain aspect of the Christ-Impulse: namely, that the highest thing in the world, in the whole world, is love: that wisdom is something great, worthy to be striven after—for without wisdom beings cannot exist—but that love is something yet greater; that the might and the power with which the world is architected is something great without which the world cannot exist—but that love is something yet greater. And he has a right feeling for the Christ-Impulse, who can feel this higher nature of Love over against Power and Strength and Wisdom. As human spiritual individualities, above all things we must strive after wisdom, for wisdom is one of the divine impulses of the world. And that we must strive after wisdom, that wisdom must be the sacred treasure that brings us forward—it is this that was intended to be shown in the first scene of The Soul's Probation, that we must not let wisdom fall away, that we must cherish it, in order to ascend through wisdom on the ladder of human evolution. But everywhere where wisdom is, there is a twofold thing: wisdom of the Gods and wisdom of the Luciferic powers. The being who strives after wisdom must inevitably come near to the antagonists of the Gods, to the throng of the Light-Bearer, the army of Lucifer. Therefore there is no divine all-wisdom, for wisdom is always confronted with an opponent—with Lucifer.

And power and might! Through wisdom the world is conceived, through wisdom it is seen, it is illumined; through power and might the world is fashioned and built. Everything that comes about, comes about through the power and the might that is in the beings and we should be shutting ourselves out from the world if we did not seek our share in the power and might of the world. We see this mighty power in the world when the lightning flashes through the clouds; we perceive it when the thunder rolls or when the rain pours down from heavenly spaces into the earth to fertilise. it, or when the rays of the sun stream down to conjure forth the seedlings of plants slumbering in the earth. In the forces of nature that work down on to the earth we see this power working blessing as sunshine, as forces in rain and clouds; but, on the other hand, we must see this power and might in volcanoes, for instance, which seem to rise up and rebel against the earth itself—heavenly force pitted against heavenly force. And we look into the world, and we know: if we would ourselves be beings of the world-all, then something of them must work in us; we must have our share in power and in might. Through them we stand within the world: Divine and Ahrimanic powers live and pulsate through us. The all-power is not ‘all-powerful,’ for always it has its antagonist Ahriman against itself.

Between them—between Power and Wisdom—stands Love; and if it is the true love we feel that alone is ‘Divine.’ We can speak of the ‘all-power,’ of ‘all-strength,’ as of an ideal; but over against them stand Ahriman. We can speak of ‘all-wisdom’ as of an ideal; but over against it stands the force of Lucifer. But to say ‘all-love’ seems absurd; for if we love rightly it is capable of no increase. Wisdom can be small—it can be augmented. Power can be small; it can be augmented. Therefore all-wisdom and all-power can stand as ideals. But cosmic love—we feel that it does not allow of the conception of all-love; for love is something unique.

As the Jesus-Child is placed before us in St. Luke’s Gospel, so do we feel it as the personification of love; the personification of love between wisdom or all-wisdom and all-power. And we really feel it like this, just because it is a child. Only it is intensified because in addition to all that a child has at any time, this Child has the quality of forlornness: it is cast out into a lonely comer. The magic building of man—we see it already laid out in the organism of the child. Wherever in the wide world-all we turn our gaze, there is nothing that comes into being through so much wisdom as this magic building, which appears before our eyes—even unspoiled as yet—in the childlike organism. And just as it appears in the child—that which is all-wisdom in the physical body, the same thing also appears in the etheric body, where the wisdom of cosmic powers is expressed; and so in the astral body and in the ego. Like wisdom that has made an extract of itself—so does the child lie there. And if it is thrown out into a comer of mankind, like the Child Jesus, then we feel that separated there lies a picture of perfection, concentrated world-wisdom.

But all-power too appears personified to us, when we look on the child as it is described in St. John’s Gospel. How shall we feel how the all-power is expressed in relation to the body of the child, the being of the child? We must make present in our souls the whole force of that which divine powers and forces of nature can achieve. Think of the might of the forces and powers of nature near to the earth when the elements are storming; transplant yourself into the powers of nature that hold sway, surging and welling up and down in the earth; think of all the brewing of world-powers and world-forces, of the clash of the good forces with the Ahrimanic forces; the whirling and raging of it all. And now imagine all this storming and raging of the elements to be held away from a tiny spot in the world, in order that at that tiny spot the magic building of the child’s body may lie—in order to set apart a tiny body; for the child’s body must be protected. Were it exposed for a moment to the violence of the powers of nature, it would be swept away I Then you may feel how it is immersed in the all-power. And now you may realise the feeling that can pass through the human soul when it gazes with simple heart on that which is expressed by St. Luke’s Gospel. If one approached this ‘concentrated wisdom’ of the child with the greatest human wisdom—mockery and foolishness this wisdom! For it can never be so great as was the wisdom that was used in order that the child-body might lie before us. The highest wisdom remains foolishness and must stand abashed before the childlike body and pay homage to heavenly wisdom; but it knows that it cannot reach it. Mockery is this wisdom; it must feel itself rejected in its own foolishness.

No, with wisdom we cannot approach that which is placed before us as the Jesus-Being in St. Luke’s Gospel. Can we approach it with power?

We cannot approach it with power. For the use of ‘power’ can only have a meaning where a contrary power comes into play. But the child meets us—whether we would use much or little power—with its powerlessness and mocks our power in its powerlessness! For it would be meaningless to approach the child with power, since it meets us with nothing but its powerlessness.

That is the wonderful thing—that the Christ-Impulse, being placed before us in its preparation in the Child Jesus, meets us in St. Luke’s Gospel just in this way, that—be we ever so wise—we cannot approach it with our wisdom; no more can we approach it with our power. Of all that at other times connects us with the world—nothing can approach the Child Jesus, as St. Luke’s Gospel describes it—neither wisdom, nor power—but love. To bring love towards the child-being, unlimited love—that is the one thing possible. The power of love, and the justification and signification of love and love alone—that it is that we can feel so deeply when we let the contents of St. Luke’s Gospel work on our soul.

We live in the world, and we may not scorn any of the impulses of the world. It would be a denial of our humanity and a betrayal of the Gods for us not to strive after wisdom; every day and every hour of the year is well applied, in which we realise it as our human duty to strive after wisdom. And so does every day and every hour of the year compel us to become aware that we are placed in the world and that we are a play of the forces and powers of the world—of the all-power that pulsates through the world. But there is one moment in which we may forget this, in which we may remember what St. Luke’s Gospel places before us, when we think of the Child that is yet more filled with wisdom and yet more powerless than other people’s children and before whom the highest love appears in its full justification, before whom wisdom must stand still and power must stand still.

So we can feel the significance of the fact that it is just this Christ-Child, received by the simple shepherds, which is placed before us as the third aspect of the Christ-Impulse; beside the Spirit-Kingly aspect and the great Cosmic aspect, the Childlike aspect. The Spirit-Kingly aspect meets us in such a way that we are reminded of the highest wisdom, and that the ideal of highest wisdom is placed before us. The cosmic aspect meets us, and we know that through it the whole direction of earthly evolution is re-formed. Highest power through the cosmic Impulse is revealed to us—highest power so great that it conquers even death. And that which must be added to wisdom and power as a third thing, and must sink into our souls as something transcending the other two, is set before us as that from which man’s evolution on earth, on the physical plane, proceeds. And it has sufficed to bring home to humanity, through the ever-returning picture of Jesus’ birth at Christmas, the whole significance of love in the world and in human evolution. Thus, as it is in the Christmas ‘night of initiation’ that the birth of the Jesus-Child is put before us, it is in the same night as it comes round again and again that there can be born in our souls, contemplating the birth of the Jesus-Child, the understanding of genuine, true love that resounds above all. And if at Christmas an understanding of the feeling of love is rightly awakened in us, if we celebrate this birth of Christ—the awakening of love—then from the moment in which we experience it there can radiate that which we need for the remaining hours and days of the year, that it may flow through and bless the wisdom that it is ours to strive after in every hour and in every day of the year.

It was especially through the emphasising of this love-impulse that, already in Roman times, Christianity brought into human evolution the feeling that something can be found in human souls, through which they can come near each other—not by touching what the world gives to men, but that which human souls have through themselves. There was always the need of having such an approaching together of man in love. But what had become of this feeling in Rome, at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place? It had become the Saturnalia. In the days of December, beginning from the seventeenth, the Saturnalia took place, in which all differences of rank and standing were suspended. Then man met man; high and low ceased to be; every one said ‘thou’ to the other. That which originated from the outer world was swept away, but for fun and merriment the children were given ‘Saturnalia presents,’ which then developed into our Christmas presents. Thus ancient Rome had been driven to take refuge in fun, in joking, in order to transcend the ordinary social distinctions.

Into the midst of all this, there entered about that time the new principle, wherein men do not call forth joking and merriment, but the highest in their souls—the spiritual. Thus did the feeling of equality from man to man enter Christianity in the time when in Rome it had assumed the merrymaking form of the Saturnalia, and this also testifies to us of the aspect of love, of general human love which can exist between man and man if we grasp man in his deepest being. Thus, for example, we grasp him in his deepest being, when at Christmas Eve the child awaits the coming of the Christmas child or the Christmas angel. How does the child wait at Christmas Eve? It awaits the coming of the Christmas child or angel, knowing: He is coming not from human lands, he comes from the spiritual world I It is a kind of understanding of the spiritual world, in which the child shows itself to be like the grown-up people. For they too know the same thing that the child knows—that the Christ-Impulse came into earthly evolution from higher worlds. So it is not only the Child of St. Luke s Gospel that comes before our souls at Christmas, but that which Christmas shall bring near to man’s heart comes near to every child’s soul in the loveliest way, and unites childlike understanding with grown-up understanding. All that a child can feel, from the moment when it begins to be able to think at all—that is the one pole. And the other pole is that which we can feel in our highest spiritual concerns, if we remain faithful to the impulse which was mentioned at the beginning of this evening’s thoughts, the impulse whereby we awaken the will to the spiritual light after which we strive in our now to be founded Anthroposophical Society. For there, too, it is our will that that which is to come into human evolution shall be borne by something which comes into us from spiritual realms as an impulse. And just as the child feels towards the angel of Christmas who brings it its Christmas presents—it feels itself, in its childlike way, connected with the spiritual—so may we feel ourselves connected with the spiritual gift that we long for on Christmas night as the impulse which can bring us the high ideal for which we strive. And if in this circle we feel ourselves united in such love as can stream in from a right understanding of the ‘night of initiation,’ then we shall be able to attain that which is to be attained through the Anthroposophical Society—our anthroposophical ideal. We shall attain that which is to be attained in united work, if a ray of that man-to- man love can take hold of us, of which we can learn when we give ourselves in the right way to the Christmas thought.

Thus those of our dear friends who are united with us to-night may have a kind of excellence of feeling. Though they may not be sitting here or there under the Christmas-tree in the way that is customary in this cycle of time, our dear friends are yet sitting under the Christmas-tree. And all of you who are spending this ‘initiation night’ with us under the Christmas-tree: try to awaken in your souls something of the feeling that can come over us when we feel why it is that we are here together—that we may already learn to realise in our souls those impulses of love which must once in distant and yet more distant future come nearer and nearer, when the Christ-Impulse, of which our Christmas has reminded us so well, takes hold on human evolution with ever greater and greater power, greater and greater understanding. For it will only take hold, if souls be found who understand it in its full significance. But in this realm, ‘understanding’ cannot be without love—the fairest thing in human evolution, to which we give birth in our souls just on this evening and night when we transfuse our hearts with that spiritual picture of the Jesus- Child, cast out by the rest of mankind, thrown into a comer, born in a stable. Such is the picture of Him that is given to us—as though he comes into human evolution from outside, and is received by the simplest in spirit, the poor shepherds. If to-day we seek to give birth to the love-impulse that can pour into our souls from this picture, then it will have the force to promote that which we would and should achieve, to assist in the tasks that we have set ourselves in the realm of Anthroposophy, and that karma has pointed out to us as deep and right tasks in the realm of Anthroposophy.

Let us take this with us from this evening’s thoughts on the Christmas initiation night, saying that we have come together in order to take out with us the impulse of love, not only for a short time, but for all our striving that we have set before us, inasmuch as we can understand it through the spirit of our anthroposophical view of the world.

The remembrance of this Christmas Festival will be strongly imprinted on the souls of many, for a sharper mental contrast can scarcely be imagined than that which arises, when we lift our souls to the voices which sounded to the shepherds, presenting an eternal truth for all human progress of the post-Christian times:

‘Divine revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill,’

when we raise our souls to the ‘peace upon earth to men’ and then look at the facts of the present day which we find outspread over a great part of the civilised world.

By reason of this contrast, this Christmas Festival will be a permanent token in the memories and hearts of men upon the earth. For certainly, if we preserve that which we must always preserve within the fields of our occult thought, if we preserve our uprightness of heart and our inner sincerity of soul, we cannot celebrate this Christmas Festival with the same feeling with which we have celebrated others; for it must stimulate us to more profound reflection, must stimulate us very specially to that which arises from our occult deepening as ideas for the future of humanity—to that which can lead human hearts to the ages which will be so different from our own.

In the course of years we have registered much within our souls, which can indicate to us the sort of soul-condition which such ages will bring. Let us ask ourselves, what is that, of which we must feel that it is still so much needed at the present time? If we call up before the eyes of our soul that which has frequently formed the centre of our consideration, we shall see that within the depths of the human soul a true knowledge is wanting of that which drew into the world upon the day which we celebrate every year in this wintry Christmas.

The whole significance, the whole profundity, of that which took place in the time which we call to remembrance in this Christmas Festival, is truly not expressed unavailingly, but profoundly and significantly, in the passage which humanity of earth has accepted from affection, one might say, the passage which runs thus:

‘Divine revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill,’

The simplest things are often to the human heart the most difficult of comprehension, and simple as this verse sounds, we do well if we make it ever clearer to ourselves that all the future ages of the earth existence will be able to understand this verse more and more profoundly, to enter more and more deeply into the significance of these important words.

It is not without reason that out of all the secret history of the appearing of Jesus upon the earth, the Festival of Christmas has become the most popular—nothing has become more popular than the entrance of the Jesus-child into earth life. For with this we have the possibility of placing before the souls of men something which is received lovingly even by the heart of a little child, in so far as he is able to receive external sense impressions, even though perhaps not yet from words, and yet at the same time it is something which sinks deeply into the depths of those human souls through which the gentlest and yet at the same time the strongest love flows warmly.

Truly the humanity upon earth is not yet advanced beyond a childish comprehension of the Mysteries of Christ Jesus, and epoch after epoch will still have to elapse ere human souls again acquire those forces, by means of which they will be able to absorb the complete magnitude of the beginning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus on this occasion may no Christmas consideration as in other years be brought before your souls, but something which may show us how much we are wanting in that depth which is necessary in order to let the Mystery of Golgotha flash up rightly within our souls.

In the course of the last few years we have often spoken of the fact that on occult grounds we really have to celebrate the birth of not only one Jesus child but of two, and it may be said that because through the observations of Spiritual Science this mystery of the two Jesus children has been revealed, a faint beginning has been made to a new comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Only slowly and gradually could this Mystery of Golgotha grip the minds of men. How it has been absorbed into human minds can be brought before our souls when, for example, we glance at the fact that, to a certain extent, that which Christian humanity has gained in the idea of the Christmas child had to struggle through from East to West, by making its way through other versions of a Divine Mediator between the highest Divine-spiritual Beings and the human soul.

We have often considered the fact that, running parallel with the stream of Christian life from East to West, another stream of revelation flowed from the North, over the Black Sea, along the Danube, upwards to the Rhine, to Western Europe. The worship which we know as the worship of Mithras disappeared in the early centimes of the Christian era. But in the first centuries of the Christian era it had gripped as many hearts in Europe as had Christianity itself, and impressed itself deeply and extended in the regions of central and Eastern Europe. To those who followed this worship, Mithras appeared just as sublime and great a Divine Mediator descending from spiritual heights into earth existence, as the Christ appeared to the Christians. In the same way we hear of the entrance of Mithras into earth existence in the Winter Holy-night, the shortest day! In the same way we hear that he was born secretly in a cave, that shepherds were the first to hear his Song of Praise: in the same way was Sunday dedicated to him in contradistinction to the other more ancient feast days. And if we ask what is the characteristic feature in the descent of this Mithras-figure, we must say as follows: Mithras was not represented as was the Christ within Jesus. When an image, a symbolical representation, was formed of him, it was known that it was only a symbolical representation. The true Mithras was only to be seen by those who had the faculty of clairvoyance. Certainly he was represented as a mediator between man and the spiritual Hierarchies, but he was not represented as having been incarnated in a human child. He was represented in such a way that when he descended to the earth, in his true being he was only visible to the Initiates, to those who had clairvoyant vision. The idea did not exist in the Mithras worship that that spiritual Being, who was represented as a mediator between the Spiritual Hierarchies and the souls of men, was incarnated in an earthly body as a child. For the worship of Mithras depended upon the fact that the ancient primitive clairvoyance was still in existence in a large number of human beings.

If we investigate the path of worship of Mithras from East to West, we find that amongst the people who were worshippers of Mithras a large number were those who could see in those intermediate conditions between waking and sleeping, when the soul lives not in dreams, but in spiritual reality. These could see in such intermediate conditions the descent of Mithras from aeon to aeon, from stage to stage, from the spiritual world down to the earth. Many could see and bear witness that such a Mediator had arisen for man, a Mediator in the spiritual worlds.

That which lived as the cult of Mithras was an externalisation of the more or less symbolical representation seen by the seer. What is it really that we meet with in this worship of Mithras? Our whole understanding of the Cosmos makes it impossible to believe that the Christ has only been known since the Mystery of Golgotha. The Initiates and their pupils also knew Him in the pre-Christian times as that Spirit Who was to come. The Initiates always pointed again and again to Him Whom they saw as the Sun-spirit descending from the heights, Who was approaching the earth in order to take up His abode within it. They designated Him as the One Who was to be, the One Who was to come. They knew Him in spirit and saw Him descending.

Then the Mystery of Golgotha took place. We know what it signifies. We know that through this Mystery of Golgotha that Spirit through Whom the earth has gained its meaning drew into a human body. We know that since then this Spirit is connected with the Earth and we know how man is to develop in order, in no very distant future, to see again in spirit the Christ Who through the Mystery of Golgotha united His Own Life with the life of the earth I humanity. We are expressing nothing figurative when we say that That Which the ancient Initiates saw in the various Sanctuaries of the Spiritual is since then to be recognised as pressing through, streaming through, pulsating through, living through the earth-life.

But the clairvoyant perception had to be lost more and more, and with it the power to look up into the spiritual spheres to behold the Christ, Who had now descended to the earth. For now those who could not perceive clairvoyantly could see that He was permeated with divine love, that He was That Which they were always to possess as the highest treasure of the earth-man. Thus men were to feel fully that they had to receive within their earthly habitation the great gift of cosmic Love, the Christ, sent by the God Who is called the Father-God; they were to learn to know Him fully as the Being Who henceforth was to remain connected with the ages as the meaning of the earth evolution; they were to learn to know Him fully in His life, from the first respiration as a Child to the spiritual deed of Christ on Golgotha which can be revealed to the hearts of men.

In the course of later times, it has been possible for us to fill this gap by means of the Fifth Gospel, which has been added to the other Gospels, as in our age it was destined for us to know every step of this Divine Life upon earth yet more minutely. And thus because men were, as it were, to become familiar with Christ Jesus as with a brother, as with One Who from love of man has drawn out of the wide spiritual realms into the narrow valley of earth, because men were to learn to know Him in the most familiar, most intimate knowledge, therefore had the powers of perception and love in the human mind to be gathered together in order to perceive intuitively in a purely human-divine manner, I might say, that which was enacted among men as the beginning of a new age, the Christian age.

For this end the power of man had to be concentrated upon the life of Christ Jesus: for a time it had to be diverted from the vision upwards into the spiritual spheres by means of That Which had drawn into the Child of Bethlehem, Which had descended from cosmic heights. But to-day, we are living in a time in which the vision must again be extended, in which human progress and human evolution must again dominate evolution if the Christ, as descending from divine spiritual heights, is to remain what He is in the life of the earth.

The worship of Mithras was a last powerful remembrance of the Christ Who had not yet reached the earth but was descending. For humanity was destined to receive the Christ ever more into the soul in such a way that even the smallest child could receive Him; in such a way that with it there came a closing of the spiritual vision with regard to the spiritual world, that vision by means of which we know that the Christ is a Cosmic Being, by means of which we know what importance He has for the valley of the earth.

Slowly and gradually the worship of Mithras flowed away, owing to the fact that Christ could appear to man as a Cosmic Being. The worship of Mithras was an echo of the old clairvoyant perception.

Then we see how, with the gradual flowing away, the clairvoyant perception also diminished, how even for those who still had the clairvoyant perception of the old sort, a flowing away of the clairvoyant capacities began, and how, with this flowing away, the possibility also ceased of perceiving the Christ completely in His true nature. He was perceived in His true nature when He was perceived not only in His earthly activity, but in His heavenly glory. The possibility gradually diminished, disappeared, of seeing Him in His heavenly glory beside His earthly existence. We see that it again appeared in a weakened form, in spite of the greatness of the teaching in other respects, in the founder of Manicheism. The Manu pointed to Jesus, but it was not an indication which was suited to simple, primitive, believing minds, because in this spirit which founded Manicheism the ancient clairvoyance still existed.

Yet there was nothing in it which could be counted as an opposition with regard to the comprehension of Christianity. Christ Jesus was for the Manu a Being Who had not taken on earthly corporality but had lived in a phantom body, as it were, in an etheric body upon the earth.

Now we see that with regard to the comprehension of the appearing of Christ Jesus a struggle began. Why was this? There was a striving to look upwards, as it were, to see how the Being of Christ descended. They were not, however, yet capable of seeing how the descending Being actually took up His abode in human flesh. A struggle of soul was inevitable before this complete comprehension was possible.

Again we see the teachings of the Manichees extending from East to West, a teaching which still looked up towards the Divine Spirit Who was descending, looked towards everything which the old conception of the world possessed, looked towards the permeation of the world not merely with the physical Being which presented itself to the human sense existence, but also with the Being which with the movements of the stars pervades the Cosmos.

The linking of human fate, of human life, with cosmic life, this pervaded the soul of the Manichee, this was deeply rooted within him, shunning the evil, which rules in human life in common with the activity of the good God. Deeply, deeply did Manicheism look into the riddle of evil. But this riddle of evil at the same time can only appear before the human soul when we are able to grasp it in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, when we penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha with the riddle of evil in Manicheism.

Truly those who were called upon to yield their souls in the deepest, most intense manner, to the Mystery of Golgotha, have contended with that which shone into more modern times from the residue of the ancient clairvoyant perception. We need only think of one great leader of the West, St. Augustine. Before he struggled through to the Christianity of Paul he was given up to the teaching of the Manichees. A yet greater impression was made upon him when he was able to perceive how from aeon to aeon the Being of the divine spiritual mediator descended from divine spiritual spheres. This spiritual vision also illumined for Augustine in the first period of his struggle the perception of how the Christ had taken up His abode upon the earth in a fleshly body, and how with Him the riddle of evil was solved.

It is striking to see how Augustine conversed with the celebrated Bishop Faustus of the Manichees, and only because this Bishop was not able to make the requisite impression upon Augustine, he turned away from Manicheism and towards the Christianity of Paul. Here we see the flow and ebb of that which we can call the perception of the super-earthly Christ as He was before the Mystery of Golgotha. And in the main, only with the raising of the new age of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch did that completely disappear which was the residue of the old clairvoyant perception.

This old clairvoyant perception knew the heavenly Christ. Even in the beginning of Christianity He could be felt, but to see how He descended was only possible for the old clairvoyant perception. Deeply, deeply, must it affect us when we perceive how in the first age of the spreading of Christianity those who had drawn their perception from the old clairvoyance wished to picture the Christ; how in order to perceive the Christ they looked not merely towards Bethlehem but into the spheres of heaven, in order to see how He descended from thence to bring salvation to men.

We know that besides the worship of Mithras, and besides Manicheism, there existed in the West the Gnosis which wished to connect the old clairvoyant perception of the great Sun-Spirit, Who descended from the divine sphere, with the perception of the course of earthly life of Christ Jesus. And then it is striking to see how the human mind wished to concentrate itself ever more upon the earthly connections of Christ Jesus. It is striking to see how this simple human mind which can find nothing simple enough to represent it, is afraid of the greatness of the feeling which had to be experienced with regard to the lofty conception of the old Gnosis. The early Christians were afraid of these lofty conceptions. Up to our own age the fear strikes those who come into touch with spiritual knowledge that it is easy for the mind to come into confusion if it raises itself into the ages in which it could be seen that Christ descended from the loftiest heights in order to be able to dwell in a human body.

That which the Gnostics were able to say regarding the heavenly Christ beside the earthly Christ affects us very deeply and I should like to say that our soul-vision of the earthly life of Christ Jesus will in no way be blunted if, through Spiritual Science, it is shown the way to the new clairvoyance in order to find the Christ as He descended from the heights of heaven. Here we have a verse evidently of Gnostic origin:

‘Behold, O Father, how, distant from Thy Breath, this being upon earth
Wanders, the target and victim of all ill.
Lo, ill, perplexed, it flies the deadly chaos—how can it find its way?
Therefore send me, O Father,
Descending, victory to bring,
I traverse all the aeons,
Teaching all sacred knowledge;
Thus may God’s image be manifested,
And thus to you I give
The deeply hidden knowledge of the sacred way:
“Gnosis” it is called for you.’

We feel that the new Spiritual Science must again lead us into these things in order that we, in our conceptions, may be able to weave round the Christ- Event the spiritual Aura which for good reasons, as we have often emphasised and had to mention again to-day, was for a time lost to humanity. We must do it slowly and gradually: we must, to a certain extent, try to express that which Spiritual Science is able to reveal to us in such a way that the human mind, which to-day is far from the science of spiritual knowledge, may be able to grasp it.

And so we have endeavoured to express the whole anthroposophical wisdom concerning the Christ-Event, and especially concerning the Christmas night and its connection with the human mind, in simple words which are here presented to you:

In the eyes of the soul reflected
In the light of the cosmic hope,
In the human heart to the spirit exalted wisdom speaks:
The eternal love of the Father
To the earth has sent His Son
Who, filled with grace, on the human path sheddeth the light of heaven.

It is to be hoped that a time will come for earthly evolution in which more, much more can be expressed, and in far, far clearer words, regarding the Mystery of Golgotha, simple words in which for the whole world can be expressed that which Spiritual Science has to say to humanity regarding the Mystery of Golgotha.

We see how, up to the end of the fourth post-Atlantean period, even up to the beginning of the fifth, the old clairvoyant perception ebbed away in such a maimer that the last remains which were still left to man fell into disrepute. We see this downfall, as I might call it, embodied in that form which appeared in Europe and spread much further than is thought during the ebb of the fourth post-Atlantean period, in the figure of the popular adventurer (for he was an adventurer), who was still able to exhibit the last sign of clairvoyant perception—“Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior, Magus Secundus, philosophus philosophorus, fons necromanticorum, chiromanticus, agromanticus, pyromanticus, in hydra arte secundus.” So ran the complete title of that Faust who lived in the sixteenth century as a representative of the moribund clairvoyance, that Faust who still had a vision into the spiritual worlds, even though the vision was chaotic. But it no longer happens in modern times that when the human soul is passive in certain conditions it can see spiritually, as in ancient times. For it can only see what is material and can acquire that which the intellect can combine out of the material. The whole tragedy of the final spiritual vision is brought to expression in the primitive communications regarding Faustus junior. By giving himself such a title we can perceive that he is, as it were, the final offshoot of those who were able to see into the spheres through which the Christ descended. He called himself Faustus junior, in allusion to the Manichee Bishop Faustus.

We know that he knew all about the Bishop Faustus for whom Augustine had longed, for the writings of Augustine were never so widely spread in Europe as at the time in which the writings of Faust junior appeared. And he called himself Magus Secundus, referring to the Magus Primus, the Simon Magus of old, who for those who were yet able to see, represented one whose vision towered up into the spheres of heaven, and of whom they stood in awe who were only desirous of concentrating within themselves the heavenly power.

Faustus alluded to him. And he alluded to yet another of whom we know through our observations of Spiritual Science that his vision unfolded in order to see into spiritual spheres. He called himself Pythagoras Secundus as the successor of that Pythagoras who was called Primus in this art.

We see the last glimmering evening-glow of that which existed as the ancient clairvoyance and we see how incomprehensible this ancient clairvoyance already was to men. Indeed that was actually realised which has been represented so strikingly to us in the legend of Faust, that Augustine longed for Faustus senior and that he became acquainted with the teaching of Faustus senior through an old man, a doctor. In the same way, carried forward into different circumstances, Faustus junior encounters us in the popular legend, and the old man again appears here, warning him: but he had already made his compact. He entrusted to Dr. Wagner his inheritance. When in surveying the ages and that which arose therein as conceptions of a spiritual world we see the age of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch approaching, we have to say: That is the legacy entrusted to Dr. Wagner. The question is how such a legacy can be administered. In the case of Faust, it is still a seeing into the spiritual worlds; in the case of this Dr. Wagner it is what can be described by saying that a man digs greedily for treasure and rejoices if he finds a glow-worm.

Such is the materialistic conception of the world of our modern times. It is no wonder that in this materialistic conception of the world the whole view of the heavenly Christ was lost, so that to-day people are afraid of the expansion of that picture upon which the earth-forces up till the present should have been concentrated. For we also know that the earth-humanity would have to lose, completely lose, all comprehension of this, if through a new spiritual view it were not able to weave a new aura round the touching picture of the Christ-child and His growth through thirty-three earth years. Spiritual Science will be called upon, as those souls who seriously apply themselves to Spiritual Science will perceive, again to quicken the vision of human minds for the heavenly Christ beside the earthly Christ. Then will the Christ be known for all the future earth-ages in such a way that He can never be lost to the progress and the salvation of mankind.

When wisdom shall again press upwards into the heights where, in the divine spheres, the fire of love bums, then will the human soul certainly not lose all that is wonderful, all that presses into the profoundest life-springs of men, all that human knowledge can know regarding Christ Jesus. And infinitely much will be acquired in addition: there will be acquired that which must be acquired if the evolution of humanity is to advance as it should.

The fresh springs of a new spiritual knowledge have already been opened; nevertheless, that which we are able to say to-day is truly such that we celebrate it at this time still in the symbol of the Christmas Festival. Deep, deep humility overcomes him who rightly experiences that which is to-day our occult knowledge. For we can only very dimly sense that which Spiritual Science will become for humanity in future days. For that which we are able to know of it to-day is in the same relation to that which in the days to come, when many, many ages have passed away, will be presented to humanity as that of the little Christmas child to the full-grown Christ Jesus. To-day in our newly-arisen Spiritual Science we have truly still the child. Hence the Christmas Festival is rightly our festival, and we perceive that, with regard to what can hold sway in the evolution of the earth as human light, we are to-day living in the profoundly dark winter night. Also with regard to our present-day knowledge we are actually standing before what is revealed in the profound wintry darkness of the earth evolution, just as once the shepherds stood before the Christ-child which was first revealed to them. With regard to the comprehension of Christ Jesus we can feel to-day exactly as did the shepherds at that time. We can so truly implore the springs of spiritual life which can ever more and more flow to mankind, implore them that indeed they may more and more bring to pass the Divine Revelation in the spiritual heights and through this revelation give to the human minds that peace which is in truth good for them. Then this Christmas Festival appears to us as a token. We still know little of that which the world will have as Spiritual Science in the days to come. We dimly sense what is to come, we dimly sense it in profound humility. But if we allow that little truly to enter our hearts, how does it appear to us then?

Let us cast a glance over present-day Europe—how the peoples think of one another, how each one seeks to lay the guilt of what is taking place upon the others. If the true anthroposophical conception is really impressed on our minds, then we shall understand the guilt which is now sought for by one people in the other, by one nation in the other. Truly, the guilt belongs to someone who is really and truly international, who guides his steps from nation to nation. But he is only spoken of in the circle of those into whose hearts a little Spiritual Science has penetrated. There we speak of Ahriman, the truly international being, who in conjunction with Lucifer is the truly guilty one. We do not find him if we turn our glance always to others, but if we seek the way to knowledge through self-knowledge. There, below in the chaotic depths, he goes; we feel him, this Ahriman. We shall learn to know him rightly and to know him in connection with that which the Mystery of Golgotha can be to us, namely, the proclamation of the revelation of wisdom and of peace in the heights and depths of the valley of the earth. Then only do we perceive what the whole fire of the Love is which can ray forth from the Mystery of Golgotha, which knows none of the limits which are set between the nations of the earth.

Much is contained in that which as Spiritual Science stands before our souls. Yet if we look at that which had already been manifested before this our chaotic present and which has now found an expression so convulsing, so sad and so painful, then we find how very very small is that dwelling, that soul-dwelling, in which to-day must dwell the new comprehension of the Christmas child which is to come to the earth. That Christmas child had to appear to poor shepherds, had to be born in a stable, concealed from those who at that time governed the world. Is it not again the same with regard to the new comprehension of that which is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha? Is not that which appears to us to-day outside in the world far removed from this comprehension? How far removed is the world at the beginning of our age from that which was revealed to the shepherds in the words:

Divine Revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill.

Let us celebrate this Christmas Festival of the renewed Christ comprehension in our hearts and in our souls if we wish to celebrate a true Christmas Festival, let us feel, as did the shepherds, far away from that which has now gripped the world. And through that which is revealed to us, as it was to the shepherds, we realise what had to be realised at that time, the promise of a certain future. Let us build within our souls confidence in the fulfilment of this promise, confidence that that which we feel to-day as the child which we must worship (the new Christ-comprehension is this child) will grow, will live, will grow to maturity in the near future, so that in it can be embodied the Christ appearing in the etheric, just as the Christ could be embodied in the fleshly body at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us fill ourselves with the light which through the confidence in this out-pouring can shine into the deepest inner being of our souls. Let us permeate ourselves with the warmth which can flow through our minds. If we feel thus with regard to the heights in which the light of Spiritual Science appears before our souls, then alone can we be certain that it will some day fill the world.

When we thus think, we celebrate a genuine Christmas Festival even in this grave and painful time, for not only is it the profoundly dark winter night of the time of the year, but there is over the horizon of the nations the result of the Ahrimanic darkness which has been growing up since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age. And just as the announcement of the Christ could only come at first to the shepherds but then filled the world ever more and more, so will also the new comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha fill the world ever more and more, and times will come which as times of light will replace for humanity the time of winter darkness in which we are living to-day.

Thus let us feel as did the shepherds with regard to that which is still a child, with regard to the new Christ-comprehension, and let us feel that in all humility we can permeate with the new meaning the verse which is not only for ever to be preserved within the progress of the evolution of the earth, but is also to become more and more full of meaning. Let us with our minds and with heightened consciousness make ourselves one at this Christmas time with the motto so full of promise:

Divine Revelation in spiritual heights,
Peace ever and yet more peace
To all the souls of men on earth
Who have goodwill.

The Churches call the faithful together the whole year through by the sound of bells. The sound of bells indicates the times, important dates, and also those hours in which the faithful are called to church. This sound of bells, so full of meaning—this call of the hours—ceases in certain churches in these days beginning with the festival of the entombment, of the sacrificial death of Christ; and the bells begin again only with the festival of the Resurrection of that Power of whom we have spoken as the Power which bestows meaning on the Earth.

The significance of the intervening time is celebrated in the following way. The discords of wooden instruments to some extent take the place of the bells during these days in which souls are asked to remember that the Power Who bestowed meaning on earthly development has united Himself through this sacrificial death with the depths of existence. The renewed sound of the bells at the festival of the Resurrection should signify how their music is sanctified and made significant through this meaning of the Earth and how they should ring forth for the rest of the Christian year to the consciousness of the faithful.

We have, my dear friends, from various aspects sought to draw near to the meaning and being of that Power, Who through the Mystery of Golgotha has flowed into the impulses of the Earth’s evolution. You will have seen from the various lectures, that every path of the soul to this power is but one of many, which aroused the sentiments and the feelings, so that they may become worthily receptive and bring understanding for what is revealed when the name of Christ is pronounced, when the Mystery of Golgotha is mentioned. We shall endeavour to-day to choose one of these ways. But, my dear friends, this can only be one way, for it is only by studying many ways leading to the Mystery of Golgotha that we can come to an understanding of it, to an understanding appropriate in some measure to the epoch in which we are incarnated. To-day let us choose the way which shall bring before our souls how peoples who as yet knew nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha, how these European peoples were obliged to receive this Mystery of Golgotha in accordance with what they had gone through in their hearts and souls as a preparation for it.

I have already intimated in some of my former lectures how at a definite time a deep feeling for nature was associated with European evolution, a nature-feeling radically different from that which spread over the southern countries of Europe and proceeded from Christianity itself, and which was in a certain sense connected with a sort of fleeing from Nature. In these southern countries into which Christianity had spread in the Greek and Roman Culture—the conception of sin, of guilt, became bound up with what flows into men, into the human soul from nature. ‘Away from nature into the regions of spiritual life, into the regions out of which the Christ has descended in order to bring salvation to mankind, in order to bring meaning to earthly evolution; in order to make men free from what is merely natural and to direct them to what can be hallowed among men, to what can save from the sins of nature’—these are words which can to a certain extent express this first Christian nature-feeling.

The European peoples North of the Alps were inwardly inspired by quite a different feeling for nature, when they received Christianity. It was impossible for them simply to flee from nature, merely to connect nature with the conception of sin and guilt. For them, nature had grown to be far too full of meaning through long centuries for them merely to be able to flee from it. It had become for them something with which they had grown together, so that when they received Christianity they could, it is true, turn to a different world from that of nature, but they could not merely say without further ado: ‘Let us flee from nature.’ This fleeing from nature, this gazing into and striving after the regions of the spirit caused them lamentation and suffering of soul, caused them sadness, while always in the background of the glories of the heavenly kingdom they mourned over that which must be lost within the regions of nature. And when we ask the reason why such a feeling was in the depth of their soul we find it in the way in which these souls were bound to nature, in a past lying proportionately not far behind them—a past which lay a far shorter time behind them than was the case in the Eastern and Southern peoples—we find that behind them lay a quite peculiar union with nature. It was as if in their hearts, in their souls, there still lived something of all the holy feeling of comfort in their union with nature, their union too with the divine in Nature. And the sadness, the pain and the lamentation came from this, that they felt it was through an iron Cosmic necessity that that was lost which had once bound them with the holy, the divine in nature. Their feeling was not merely that nature should be charged with sin and guilt, their feeling was rather that in losing nature they had lost something of infinite value. It was not the feeling that they should turn away from nature, it was much more the sorrowful feeling that something which is holy in nature, had itself turned away from the human heart and soul. They felt that what they had formerly honoured in connexion with nature, they must now experience in a different way through raising themselves to the Mystery of Golgotha.

It was an infinitely more real, more tragic feeling which Christianity felt in these regions than in the regions south of the Alps and in the East.

We shall make clear, my dear friends, what was the meaning of that ancient nature-feeling in the best way, when we glance at what is felt, like a premonition of the Christ’s divine death of sacrifice within the European peoples. We understand this best when we look back at the significance of the death of Balder, and of his exile in the under world, in the world of Hel, in Niflheim. I have often intimated that it is difficult to-day to re-awaken in our souls all that is connected with the Balder-Myth of this particular ancient Sun god, who was revered and worshipped by the peoples of Europe. And it is indeed difficult to make this clear in an age when it is generally believed that the human soul, in which alone human development takes place, has always seen just as it sees to-day, has always had such experiences as it has to-day. We must rise, my dear friends, to the thought that the experiences possible for the soul in olden times were quite different from those which are possible in a later age, and that this is connected with the entire life of natural existence. Just picture to yourselves that man’s soul of old saw through his eyes into nature quite differently from when he looks at nature with his eyes to-day and man’s soul heard through his ears something different in olden times from what he hears to-day when he listens to nature. Let us make the transition clear by choosing a simile, which, taken at random, can still make the difference clear. To-day you look at nature with your eyes, you see the green of the plants, the blue-green of the forests, the blue of heaven, the many-coloured brightness of the carpet of flowers. Imagine that a revolution were to come into human evolution through an iron necessity in such a way that the possibility of seeing colours should cease, that the whole of nature would appear only grey upon grey, that you would look up to heaven and see another different shade of grey, as if you looked at grey meadows and were to see only different shades of grey, black and white instead of the coloured carpet of flowers. Imagine such a revolution in seeing nature, and you would have a comparison for what in fact appeared in time, when the possibility of beholding in the meadows all the manifold elementary beings which are bound up with the growing and weaving and being of nature, of the flowers and the blossoms, disappeared. At such a time through a mighty revolution in the perception of nature men could no longer look up to the stars and see in them the spiritually living planetary Spirits weaving round the stars in the ether. I have often declared that to say nature makes no jumps is one of the most untrue assertions. It is untrue, for just as there was a jump from the green leaf to the flower, so the loss of the old clairvoyance was a mighty jump in human evolution. From the old clairvoyance where elementary spirits were seen weaving and living where we to-day see only the coloured carpet of flowers, men passed over to the later sight. That was a mighty jump. And those people who constituted the population of Europe, when the Mystery of Golgotha took place in the East, had still a living feeling that an old clairvoyance of this kind had once existed, that their ancestors had lived under conditions in which they could see the beings weaving in the meadows and the forests and in the infinite expanse of the starry heavens. Now all this had vanished and died away.

They had a feeling that when in earlier days men lifted their eyes to the Moon at night, it did not simply appear in the form of the clear sickle; but this clear sickle was surrounded by living planetary spirituality which had much to reveal to the human soul. And they felt that this had vanished in the times in which they now must live.

And when the human soul asked what had happened that nature was thus deprived of the gods, that darkness extended where spiritual light had been, the leader of the people replied: ‘There was once in the world of gods, Balder, who united in himself the force of the sunlight. But Balder, on account of the hatred of the dark elements, had to transfer his dwelling place which he had extended to the horizon of men’s Earth, to Hel in the underworld. The force of vision of the old times vanished. The clear sunlight was submerged, the shining radiance of the old gods was lost, and only the dead semblance of the sunlight was reflected through the light of the Moon’s sickle. The world has become material. Nature over which men lament, over which they mourn, which they charge with the conceptions of sin and guilt, this nature appears like the mourning survivor which was once united with the divine and which sent into all souls the ray of the divine.’ And thus arose the feeling which the people had when they heard the death-song of the old Sun god Balder. He is no longer there outside perceptible to our vision; the god Balder has gone into the underworld, and for us he has left behind the nature which mourns. But where has he gone? Where is the kingdom of Hel, that realm of darkness into which Balder has withdrawn? Where is it? Our materialistic age will only be able to prepare itself for such ideas by acquiring conceptions of this nature.

Let us ask ourselves, my dear friends, what it meant in primeval times when people said, turning towards nature: ‘Balder is there’? What did it mean? It meant something really actual, something which, however, those will not understand who believe that human civilisation has been in all ages what it is to-day. When man in primeval times saw the meadows, he knew that those living elementary spirits of which I have spoken appeared to him there, he could not always see them, he could only see them at certain times. How was it then when man at certain times could see these elementary spirits? That was no mere seeing, that was not a dead reception of what was seen, but it was united with a living feeling, with a living perception. People went through the forests, they gazed at the spirits, at the elementary beings, but they did not merely see them. I might say they absorbed the essence of these spirits into their souls, they felt their breath as a spiritually psychic draught of refreshment. They felt themselves drawing into their etheric bodies the breath that came from the elementary spirits which they saw in the forest and in the meadows. ‘They make us young,’ thus could they feel, when they went out in the morning and when the lingering dawn made the elementary spirits of the forest visible. They made men young, they bestowed force upon them. And this force then lived on in them. Men took part in this rejuvenation which the spirits brought about. They took part in it. But what happened to all these rejuvenating forces? They vanished from the outer world, man could only have a sad, half-conscious connection with them. Where did they go? They worked further, but they worked to a certain extent unseen, unheard; they worked, but they worked upon human nature in such a way that man with his consciousness had no longer a part in their working. And as the time drew on when man became aware of this, he had to say to himself: ‘Within my nature, forces are at work of which formerly I not only knew that they worked in darkness upon me, but I could clearly perceive and observe the flowing of these forces from the outer world into myself.’ The god Balder has withdrawn into the kingdom of Hel, into man’s own darkness, into the subterranean depths of man’s soul. Where is Balder? The priest who had to explain the Mystery to man when he asked: ‘Where is Balder?’ had to say: ‘Balder is not in the visible world. Because you as man needed those shaping forces, those rejuvenating forces, which formerly you were able to take up half-consciously, these work now without your knowledge in your inner being, so that you perceive nothing of them through your faculty of knowledge. Because you needed these forces in your invisible being, Balder has vanished from the kingdom of the visible, has withdrawn himself to the world of your own subconscious inner nature.’ Then the feeling came over man, which we can designate with the following words: ‘Thus I as man stand in the kingdom of Hel with a part of my nature. I cannot see how the forces which shape my life out of the kingdom of Hel intervene in my psychic bodily nature; the god Balder is in the underworld, he is with Hel, he works upon me in the invisible. Vanished is the vision of Balder's kingdom of the Sun.’ That is the mood of lamentation, of sadness which must call forth suffering of soul, for that is no fortuitous egoistic human lamentation, it is the lamentation which man feels in connexion with the cosmos; it is a cosmic lamentation, a cosmic sadness, a cosmic suffering.

And now came the news that that which had thus withdrawn into the kingdom of Hel had been newly revived through another power which we can find again when we gaze deeply into our own inner being, into which the old power of Balder had vanished. Balder is in the kingdom of Hel, but the Christ has gone down into the kingdom of Hel, into the kingdom of mankind’s own subconscious human nature; there He calls Balder to life. And when man has steeped himself deeply enough in that which he has become in the course of earthly evolution, then he finds again the rejuvenating shaping forces. ‘You find again what you have lost, for the old Balder has descended into your own kingdom of darkness. The Christ has found him there, he has brought to life again that which once was yours through Balder’s power.’ Thus could the priest proclaim to the men who felt the deep secrets of the message of the Mystery of Golgotha in these regions.

And the Easter message appeared like a memory, like a sacred memory of primeval holy times, but a memory which gave new life. The people were able to say: ‘That power of the old Balder was too small to extend over the whole of human evolution. A higher power had to appear in order to give again to men what they had to lose in Balder.’ So rang out in the announcement of the Christ, the remembrance of the old Balder and of his death; so there rang out the resurrection of the ancient glory in the human soul, which had disappeared through Balder’s death; that power, which has now been newly awakened.

We must, my dear friends, approach more nearly to that which the Mystery of Golgotha is, as the meaning of earthly evolution, so that we ask ourselves: ‘With what perceptions, with what feelings did. historical humanity meet the historical Christ?’ For the point is not that we should gain an abstract idea of the nature of Christ or of the Mystery of Golgotha, but the point is that we should be able to answer the question for ourselves: ‘What can that Impulse bring to life in the deepest depth of the human sold, that Impulse which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha?’

Let us look at it, this Mystery of Golgotha and see how it is still celebrated by the different religious creeds of the old world. On Good Friday is celebrated Christ’s entombment. The bells are silent; silence is spread over the Earth. The man who lived in the centuries I have described said to himself: ‘Mute, without sound has the world become, Christ has descended into those parts of the human soul-existence and of cosmic-existence, into which Balder had to descend because his power did not suffice for the complete elevation of the human soul. There He is below, in the mysterious depths in which I myself stand, when I gaze upon the subconscious shaping forces in my own inner nature.’ The human heart can thrill mysteriously when it reflects: ‘The impulse of Golgotha has departed from this silent world. It rests below where you yourself are. Wait, wait and this impulse of Golgotha will unite with you in the spiritual worlds to which your soul may belong, if it will only descend with Balder into its own depths. It will call Balder to life in these days. And in your inner being, O man, you shall find again what has vanished and faded away with the vanishing of Balder out of the world around into your own depths. Take up, O man, the living conception of the Christ who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, Who will be able to rise again not to your external eyes, but indeed to your soul’s vision, if it becomes conscious of its inner being, which came down from the Moon, from out of the Sun—as that elementary force, that shaping force which makes the soul alive. Wait, wait till He rises again, the re-awakener of Balder. A world was once yours, in which your senses had only to be directed to nature around you and the life-giving ensouling force flowed out of the elementary part of this outer nature to meet you, without any effort of your own. A kingdom of the Spirit was woven through all natural existence, and you yourself lived, if you waited for the right moment, not only in nature bereft of Spirit; you lived in what is behind nature, of which it is only the expression; you lived in the life of nature. Now when you find no longer the spiritual in nature, you must seek it through plunging into and calling to life your own inner being with the force which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. O Nature, you were once full of expression, so full of expression that man’s real true home could be seen in your forms. Balder has taken this home with him, it is no longer there, it is in realms which your outer sight does not behold. But this ancient kingdom exists, of whose forms, surrounding nature was once the expression—this kingdom still exists. But you do not find it, when you go the way of nature only; you find it when you unite yourself with the Impulse which has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Nature is not just sinful and guilty; she is forsaken by that home which man must seek, inwardly permeated by the power of the Christ.’

And in these Christian times we could fancy, my dear friends, that some memory of the death of Balder still comes through to us, connecting itself with tho message of the Mystery of Golgotha—it seems to us as though the sound of lamentation, of sadness towards nature, as we have described it above, has only very gradually become lost and died down. Certainly in the Christian conception, the mood which looks solely up to the self-sacrificing Christ, up to the heavenly home, is also present. And in European peoples gradually the mood becomes distinct, which looks upon nature as the child on a lower level, but not as the forsaken child. But if we listen to the impression the words give (not merely in their abstract sense), at the time when in the eighth and ninth centuries the announcement of the Mystery of Golgotha had been already spread over certain regions of Europe—when we listen to the way in which it is said that we cannot find our true home in the earthly world, then we can still feel something of the old tragic mood towards nature, bereft of Balder. As we have said, we must listen not only to the words and to the abstract sense of the words, but to the way there rings through the words what is felt concerning nature and what is felt concerning a different home of the human soul than nature can now be. Something of this kind still rang out, even after Christianity had been spread abroad. That this could be perceived even after people had tried to spread Christianity in the form in which it had been received in the East, we can see from the many publications of the eighth and ninth centuries, if we only attend to the feeling in them. We have some so-called European Gospels, belonging to these times, and one of these is the ‘Gospel-Harmony,’ the so-called ‘Diatessaron’ of Otfried, a monk living in Alsace, who had learned the Mysteries of Christianity through Hrabanus Maurus, and who had then tried to transcribe into the language of his home what the Gospel meant for him, what the message of the death and resurrection of the Christ had become for him. Otfried was born in Weissenburg in Alsace. He had translated what the Gospel had become to him in his feeling, into a language which was at that time spoken in Alsace. Let us listen to one or two extracts, my dear friends, of what just in connection with our study to-day may interest us from the Christian message of this Alsatian monk in the ninth century; and let us try to hear not only the abstract sense of the words, but to hear through the words what can be felt as sorrow concerning man’s forsaken home of nature.

(Dr. Steiner here read the poem in its original language.) He then continued: Let us try to give the poem in our modern language as nearly as we can:

We sorrow and suffer want for much that was dear to us,
And bitter times are now our heritage;
In our sorrow we grieve in this land here below,
Held in bondage manifold by our sins.
Care and sorrow are here our portion;
Of all knowledge of our home bereft,
Our plaints go up, we orphans all forsaken!
Alas I thou strange land, how hard thou art,
A hard Mother ever do I find thee;
Bereft and full of care we wander.
Within me ever have I felt that nothing dear I find in thee,
I find in thee none other good, but cause for constant lamentation,
Heart full of care and pain both great and manifold.

Thus from the soul of this monk sounds forth what was felt with regard to nature.

It is to-day difficult, my dear friends, very, very difficult to recall to mind the way in which the great festivals were raised above the whole horizon of daily life in an age in which people still felt in a more living way, the memory of Balder’s death; and to realise what they welcomed—after they had experienced the sad time when they were forsaken—what they received once again from Him Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. They had first known the whole bitterness of death, when the old elementary life forces no longer blossomed forth for human sight from the regions of Earth, when the Earth in its forms seemed to fashion death only, death with which Balder had united himself. And now, when they instituted the festivals of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, up to the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, and when they represented this death which they had first learnt to know in its bitterness, they felt that it concealed the triumphant force of Life which had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, and which always should permeate those souls attuned to the sad and glorious festivals of these days, in which, according to the saying of Angelus Silesius, there should be a ‘celebration’ of the passage of the Christ through death, and of His resurrection. Infinitely more living was the power of Christ’s death and sacrifice when they were still brought into connection with the dead Balder. In the kingdom of the zEsir, looking down upon the earth from Breidablik, his stronghold, was Balder, like unto the silvery sun-moonlight, Balder in his power of giving life to the elemental nature of the Earth; into the dark depths had he gone on Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Holy Saturday night. The gaze was directed to Balder’s new kingdom of death, but with the knowledge: ‘There beneath in the kingdom of death, rests the germ which unites itself with the evolutionary impulses of the Earth, and which will bring forth a new life, when it rises again. It is that death which is experienced in the germinal force of the plants, dead in the depths of the Earth; that force which brings forth the new plants again.

Like mighty words of God had the news come to men, who had learned to comprehend death in the fate of their Balder. Three days long they could feel that that had become active which had killed Balder, and which Balder himself had not been able to conquer. On this account the feeling must be of a special kind which brings life to our souls in the silence of the world for these three days through which we are now passing. Of a special kind must this feeling be; it must express itself somewhat in this way: that for the sake of man’s further development, death must intervene in earthly evolution in a more and more intense way; that nature once radiant as Paradise must become dark and silent as death around man, but that the eternal power of life triumphant ripens in nature’s graveyard. Thus we see it during these three days. He rests beneath, the Christ, in the dark abyss of nature permeated with death. There within we follow Him, because we know that we extend with a part of our own nature into this abyss of universal being and because we know: ‘When we unite ourselves with that, which in us would otherwise be death alone, by means of the Power which has experienced the Mystery of Golgotha, only then shall we bear upwards that part of us which extends beneath into the abyss of the universal death of nature.’ So we step down into the depths and know that we must differentiate our feelings; that we are not acting rightly if we do not distinguish between the different feelings for certain days. Rather should we learn to recognise: Now is the time when the soul must unite itself with that which it can learn concerning death, concerning the death which made it necessary, which from an iron necessity brought it about, that the Christ descended to death.

We shall to-morrow direct our attention to the Mystery of Golgotha from another side; for, as we have said, many ways lead up to the summit where the deep meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha becomes gradually more and more comprehensible. It can only become comprehensible when we not merely place before us one-sidedly the triumphant Christ, but when we also place before our soul the Christ Who unites Himself with death. And what death signifies for the whole of human life, my dear friends, may become perhaps a little clearer, when we deepen ourselves in the feelings which we can experience in the Balder Myth, when we realise what Balder is, what the life-giving Sun-force is, working in the elemental world, after it has experienced death. If we still keep alive in the soul this feeling of the loss of Balder, in that we say: ‘What should we have to feel in a world yet to come when we recollect that the Gods were there once, they let us see the surrounding world in the coloured brilliancy of the senses, but now all is grey on grey.’ That would have been so, if the Christ had not come into the world. That it will not be so, the triumphant power of Christ will bring about. That which to-day men do not believe, they will some day believe: that which to-day can only work as Christ power in the human heart itself, will become actively felt, permeating the whole cosmos, namely, the earthly part of the cosmos, in so far as this cosmos gives rejuvenating, life-giving force to men. Of this we shall speak further to-morrow, my dear friends.

To-day, however, let us call before us how right it is, in regard to the feeling of the human soul in connection with the cosmic Christ, to ponder over what the Gospel says concerning the cosmic power of the Christ; when this Gospel reveals how the Christ is an universal cosmic Power, and how He commanded the winds and the waves. The people of the eighth and ninth centuries had a special feeling just for this aspect of the Christ working through the winds and the waves. They said: ‘It was Balder indeed who brought it about that we once saw the weaving and living elemental world around us in its wonderful working. Balder is dead. But Christ has the power, when we take Him up into our soul-forces, again to awaken that which was lost through Balder’s death. As Balder appeared through the winds and the waves, so the Christ also appeared in the winds and the waves. It is no abstract soul force, it is a force that works through the winds and the waves.’

If we listen attentively to the Gospel text of the ‘Heliand,’ a second Gospel poem of the ninth century, we can still hear this feeling implied if not expressed. ‘Out in nature Balder lived.’ Certainly the poet of the Heliand had long ago abolished this Balder, he had no interest in spreading with the abstract intelligence this idea among his people; he wished rather to stamp it out. But in the way in which he lays stress upon the words, in the way in which he becomes earnest when he wants to bring before us how the power of Christ works through nature, through the winds and the waves, just there it seems as if, even if he did not consciously perceive it himself, we must be conscious of the following: ‘A force has worked through the winds and waves, the power that is greater than Balder, the power that has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.’ And we also find something of this in the words in which he describes the scene where Christ stills the winds and the waves, according to the Gospel story. That makes a special impression on him. There he chooses—especially when he turns in his mystic way to the feeling the soul can have for nature’s activity, in that through Christ, nature has become divine—he chooses quite special words in which the greatness of Christ can be impressed upon the soul, through which the peculiar cosmic power of Christ can speak to the soul.‘

‘When the people saw how Christ had commanded the winds and the waves’ ... (the Heliand expresses with special warmth how the people felt towards this Christ Power, this Christ Being, this Christ personality which passed through the Mystery of Golgotha.) ‘When the people saw how Christ had commanded the winds and the waves, the people began amongst themselves to wonder and some spake with these words: “What a mighty man this is, that the winds and the waves obey His words; They both pay heed to His message!” This Child of God had delivered the people out of their distress, and had saved them. The ship sailed on—the wooden ship—the disciples and the people came to land and said: God be praised! And they glorified His, namely, God’s, magical power.’

So says this poet of the Heliand, in one of the first Gospel poems which tells of the greatness of the Christ, Who to-day lies symbolically in the depths of the realms of death.

The gatherings for the festivals give us an occasion for thinking in common of important and significant problems of the soul and of evolution. It is therefore very fitting that we on the occasion of this sorrowful festival put such thoughts before us as would occur to the individual soul either in meditation or otherwise, but which through such festivals can find a common expression.

Yesterday I pointed out how the entombment of Christ Jesus on Good Friday and the resurrection on Easter morning every year are symbols for something quite specially important both in human and cosmic evolution. These are the days in which the human soul can actually pass through, or at least can feel after, the deepest of its most essential inner experiences. The symbol for the fact that the Christ-Being, or let us say the earthly embodiment of the Christ-Being, rested for three days in the state of death is connected with the deepest mysteries of humanity. And perhaps especially today the friends here assembled should be reminded of an important mystery connected with this symbol.

When we feel in its full significance the symbolic entombment of Jesus Christ, his lying in the grave, his passing through death, when we are thus quickened by the attainments of Spiritual Science, and sink ourselves into the thought of this symbol, then we really experience something in feeling and thinking which is connected with the deepest mysteries of human nature upon Earth. When once our Building¹ is completed, my dear friends, we shall have in a particular spot, carved in wood, the victory of the Christ-Being over Ahriman on the one side, and Lucifer on the other.² The Group will represent the full significance of what has taken place in the passing of the Christ-Being through the Mystery of Golgotha in regard to the earthly relationship between Christ, Ahriman and Lucifer. And now we may say, when we let the entombment work most deeply on us with full understanding, there comes before our souls a feeling for the meaning of Christ’s battle against Ahriman and Lucifer. In order to understand this, we must bring before us something which we already know. Allusion has been frequently made to what is present in a preparatory way in the old religions—the death of the god and the resurrection of the god. It is believed that we should conclude from this that the Christ-Event is only a remodelling of the death and resurrection of Adonis. Such assertions, however, only show that an actual understanding of the Christ-Event has not been gained. For this Adonis event or other similar events wherever they are encountered are of such a kind that in them a view is given of natural existence, of life which is repeated every year, the life which is connected with the events of nature and which really belongs to natural phenomena; just as what we described yesterday as the Balder-Event is also fundamentally bound up with the phenomena of nature, with the observations which man in ancient times could make of nature. All pre-Christian religions were fundamentally religions of this kind. The nature of their worship had a connection with what could be perceived by the clairvoyant soul of old in the events of nature and their course. And the Eastern religions have not yet fundamentally got beyond this standpoint. Christianity has really passed beyond it, for Christianity is in the most eminent sense what can be called an historical religion, i.e., a religion in which the chief point is what must be understood from the whole course of human history and human evolution in the Earth-existence.

That the Earth-evolution goes through an ascending and then a descending path—we can from another point of view say men go through a descent and an ascent—and that in the midst, as has often been described, stands the Christ-Event, the Mystery of Golgotha, and that through this event history obtains its real purpose—that is the nature and the true meaning of Christianity. We must now answer the question: What is this course of history, generally speaking, which in the deeds of men, extends like a continuation of nature over the Earth? What is history really? That which happens, which is enacted through the progress of human deeds, human feelings, human thoughts—what is it really? We understand its real existence correctly when, with our soul’s vision intensified through Spiritual Science, we bring before us Christ Jesus resting in the grave on Good Friday. There the real nature of history comes before our souls.

For then we become aware, my dear friends, if only we have increased our soul’s vision through Spiritual Science, that what here on the Earth is history, will at one time be nature, on the cosmic body which will unfold itself as a new embodiment of the Earth. The history of the Earth is the preparation for nature on Jupiter. That which is the course of history presents itself in earthly existence like a prophetic announcement of what upon Jupiter will be natural phenomena. How is that?

Here upon the Earth human life in a physical embodiment passes in such a way that we are planted by birth within this physical earthly existence, that we then go through an ascending development of our physical existence up to the thirties and after that a descending development. In the beginning of this physical earthly existence stands our physical birth, and at the end, what we call physical death. The middle of human existence, about the middle of the thirties, earthly man passes by, unnoticed in his physical embodiment, and if he does not specially take part in the important inner events of his soul existence, no trace is left, at least with the self-knowledge which is present in most cases. That will be quite different when earthly humanity goes through the Jupiter existence. I shall not speak today of how the Jupiter man will enter his physical existence in a way totally different from the physical birth on Earth. I may speak of this at some other time. Man will also pass out of the Jupiter existence quite differently from physical death. But that which corresponds to the middle of life, that which for our earthly existence would fall in the middle of the thirties, that will be important and full of significance for man’s Jupiter existence. I might say that birth and death, at the beginning and end of earthly life, if they could be intermingled, would together produce something corresponding to what will occur in the middle of the Jupiter existence to humanity as it is then developed in the Jupiter world. In the middle of his Jupiter existence, man will have to go through something which you would succeed in obtaining if you could mix together earthly birth and earthly death. But they must be brought together not automatically, but in somewhat the same way as a chemical combination. When oxygen and hydrogen are mixed together, there arises something quite different from either oxygen or hydrogen. So there will be in the middle of the Jupiter existence what is actually a kind of combination of earthly death and earthly birth, but quite different from what might be made idealistically. You see life moves on from stage to stage so that we must imagine, if we wish to go into the Jupiter existence, that an event full of significance occurs to man in the middle of the Jupiter life, an event of the kind I have just characterised. The whole consciousness of man on Jupiter will be, as you know, quite different from earthly consciousness. You need only, in order to make yourselves acquainted with the different stages of human consciousness, read what has been said in the Lucifer Gnosis concerning the different stages of the development of human consciousness from Saturn to Vulcan; and you will then be able to recall that upon Jupiter a kind of higher conscious picture-sight appears, an imaginative consciousness; an imaginative consciousness representing a higher stage than the earthly consciousness. We shall attain to a consciousness the course of which will not be like earthly consciousness, but which will receive impressions from outside in quite a different way from our earthly consciousness. This consciousness will sketch from these impressions, with inner free will, pictures like imaginations somewhat in the same way as an Earth-man perceives something and then sketches it, and then makes a finished picture. So will it be in the Jupiter consciousness, only that Jupiter perception is a different thing from earthly perception; then man will himself seek picture-representations as they arise in earthly existence; then he will, as it were, form something like paintings of that which flows into him as the content of the imaginative consciousness. To attain this imaginative consciousness man will enter the Jupiter existence; and this imaginative consciousness will go through a development just as the earthly consciousness does during childhood. Then the middle of the Jupiter life will come, and in the middle of this Jupiter existence, during a period that can really be symbolised for us by three earthly days, an event of great importance for the Jupiter man will take place. There will come about in the middle of the Jupiter consciousness a short repetition—for it will only last for days—of the earthly consciousness. A feature of the Jupiter life is that the earthly consciousness will be there renewed for a short time, that man will feel himself as an earthly man in the middle of his Jupiter life. When man has gone through his imaginative Jupiter consciousness, a time will come in which he has again only his earthly consciousness, which will then bear a relationship to the Jupiter consciousness, like our present dream-consciousness to our day-consciousness. When man enters into this Jupiter earthly consciousness, into this repetition of his earthly consciousness, then it will be borne in upon him that he would like to have a kind of inner retrospect, a kind of survey of all that he has attained as Earthman, of all that he has won for himself throughout the whole of his past. We shall, as mentioned, only have an earthly consciousness for a short time during our Jupiter life, but during this earthly consciousness we shall feel the need of having an intense retrospective consciousness of our whole human past. The renewal of earthly consciousness will take place for this purpose. And when we look back we shall feel that we must put to ourselves the question: What have you then attained during your whole past? What have you reached through having become an earthly man? This question we must ask ourselves. Just as we eat and sleep upon earth, so shall we be obliged during this renewal of earthly consciousness to ask ourselves: What have you attained from the fact that you became man? We must sum up the result of our whole earthly existence. And because we put this question, because we sum up this result, there will come before the soul in a mighty Jupiter dream vision what we have actually attained. But this Jupiter dream will have as great a reality as all our actual earthly perceptions; it will not come before us as a dream-picture, but it will have all the reality which an earthly human being has who stands before us. And this Being who will then meet us, as the answer to the question which we have had to ask ourselves—do you know who this Being will be? It will be Lucifer, and Lucifer will say: ‘Recognise now that you belong to me through all that you have become in your past.’ And we shall know as surely as when an earthly human being recognises another when he meets him in physical perception—we shall know that it is Lucifer, and that we have worked for him through all that we have wished to become as men. And then we shall recognise the whole meaning and power of Christ, then we shall recognise that we are not capable ourselves of forming any other decision than that of following Lucifer. Only from the fact that the Christ Being appears in the history of the Earth in memory, only in this way shall we know that this Christ Being has entered earthly evolution. We shall know that this Christ Being had gifts for us, which are now coming to realisation during the Jupiter existence. These gifts transform us into real Jupiter beings, and only through them shall we be capable of taking not the path of Lucifer, but the path of the genuinely developing Cosmos. For what will Lucifer want from us? He will say to us: ‘The condition which you are now going through—this repetition of earthly consciousness—has a great significance for you.’

Upon Jupiter it is different from what it is on the Earth. On the Earth, after we have reached the middle of the thirties, in the second half of our life, we act in much the same way in regard to many things as we did earlier. We eat and drink in order to maintain our physical life after the thirty-fifth year just as we did before it. On Jupiter that will be quite different. Upon Jupiter we shall not indeed need to eat and drink in the same way as we have to do in a body on the Earth, but with the Jupiter body belonging to us, we shall be connected in a similar way with the activities of the Jupiter physical world, as we are through eating and drinking with the activities of earthly physical existence. We shall on Jupiter, from the moment of life which we shall have reached, when the earthly consciousness has been renewed, no longer be able to stand in the same relation to our Jupiter surroundings as before. We shall no longer fit into our surroundings. I can make the following comparison: It will be as if upon earth we should in our thirty-fifth year reach such a condition of our stomach, of our organs, that we could no longer breathe the earthly air, that we could no longer bear earthly nourishment. Imagine how it would be if we, in our thirty-fifth year, had to go through such a development of our bodies that though our inner souls would still be perfectly capable of spending years upon Earth, our bodies would be incapable of enduring anything at all which grew upon the Earth. It will be like this on Jupiter, my dear friends—naturally the conditions are different, but it will be similar; we shall no longer be able to be in direct physical touch with Jupiter in the second half of our life there. That will then be emphatically a law of nature on Jupiter. But through the power of this natural law, Lucifer will be able to lead our souls, which will then be still perfectly capable of life, but which will not be able to maintain their bodies for the Jupiter existence—Lucifer will be able to lead our souls with him, unless the Christ can show us that He has amassed treasures in us, in the first half of our life on Jupiter, treasures which now maintain us through the second half of our Jupiter-existence. Upon Jupiter the Christ will not manifest outwardly merely this ethical character which He manifests during earthly existence, but He will be the inner nourisher for the second half of man’s life on Jupiter, and the nourishment will be at the same time of moral significance. He will be able to set us free from Lucifer because He has amassed treasures of nourishment in the first half of life in the Jupiter existence; in this way alone can He set us free from Lucifer. If that did not happen, if Christ could not set us free from Lucifer upon Jupiter, Lucifer would take our souls with him. Our bodies, which would then have no possibility of entering into relation with the Jupiter physical world, would fall away from us, and Lucifer would point out to us: ‘See, I take your soul, but your body falls away from you into the treasure-house of Ahriman. Ahriman will now have that, it will live further with him.’

Everything will depend upon how our souls in this retrospect, when the earthly consciousness is re-established, can remember the way in which they filled themselves with the Mystery of Golgotha, with the understanding that the Christ Being has entered into human evolution, into the historical evolution of earthly existence. For consider the frightful condition of the Jupiter human soul, which of necessity must hold this retrospect and must say to itself: ‘I have during my time on Earth denied the Christ. I have not wanted to know anything of Christ. I have refused to instruct myself at the right time concerning that Being Who as the Christ, entered into earthly evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. I can remember nothing that happened on Earth through the Christ.’ If souls can exist in whom all remembrance of the Christ shall be blotted out during the Jupiter existence, because during the earthly life they had never permitted themselves to be penetrated with understanding for the Christ Event, then the dreadful Day of Judgment would come for these souls, that Christ docs not take them with Him in the Jupiter existence in order to nourish and to foster them in the second half of life on Jupiter, but that He points them away with the one hand to where Ahriman takes the remains of the Jupiter physical matter, and with the other hand He points to where Lucifer leads the souls on his path. And if we, with the understanding which Spiritual Science can give us of the Mystery of Golgotha, approach the symbol of Jesus lying in the tomb, if we do not see in it simply an external symbol, but if we unite with this symbol all that we can know concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, and if we have already gained some capacity for seeing that of which Spiritual Science speaks, then there will come before the soul what I have now related to you as a vision of humanity’s future on Jupiter.

In the old places of Initiation the disciples had to seek under the leadership of their Initiates what we have called in the old Mysteries ‘The vision of the Sun at midnight.’ We see the Sun by day physically. The Initiates saw the Sun at midnight through the Earth, though for physical sight the Earth is not transparent. And when they thus saw the Sun at midnight through the Earth, they did not see its physical existence, but instead they saw inscribed on the Sun the Mystery of the Christ, the Sun Spirit. The disciples of the old Initiates saw the Mystery of the Christ, the Sun Spirit, in advance. Theirs was a higher natural sight, a becoming clairvoyant within nature. What the Easter Symbol can represent for us is a becoming clairvoyant within the historical life of earthly humanity, a becoming clairvoyant in this way, that we see how from the fact that we have become free Earth-men, we have actually concluded the agreement with Lucifer and Ahriman, and that the Christ alone can free us from this agreement. What seeing the Sun at midnight meant for the disciples of the old Initiation can for Christians become reverence and adoration in regard to the Good Friday and Holy Saturday Mystery. We have, my dear friends, every reason to concentrate in these days upon the inner tragedy, the justifiable sadness of the deepest inner being of human nature. We could never have become free beings, if we had not entered into such a relationship with Lucifer and Ahriman, as that which is implied in our description of today, if we had not become capable of going the Lucifer way and the Ahriman way. Man can indeed in these days call up before his consciousness the tragic element from the depths of his nature, whilst he says: ‘My freedom would never have come about without the possibility of following Lucifer and Ahriman.’ And this consciousness can rise in him, when he looks at the symbol of the Christ lying in the tomb, Who through that which He accomplished with His deed cancels what had to take place for the sake of human freedom.

The fact that man has not only reason for rejoicing, but also for mourning over his nature, ought to echo through his soul in the days devoted to the solemn remembrance of the entombment. There remain many days of the year on which man can think more of what he has become from the fact that the Earth evolution has not been forsaken, that the Christ, as the Risen Christ, has come to Earth. But that which made this Mystery of Golgotha necessary, that which can live as cosmic mourning in the human soul, all this must discharge itself in these days. And when we have gained a feeling for that which is bound up with the human soul from its history, then in these days we cannot but be sad concerning human evolution—we should rather say, these are days in which we ought to be sad concerning this human development.

And if the feeling is living, then the black garments are justified, which we choose for these days; while red can be the colour that can meet our eyes again, when the days of mourning are over, mourning concerning that which as a deep tragedy is connected with human nature. It would have been altogether unbecoming from the standpoint of Christian art, if yesterday and today red had been predominant. These things too we must learn, but when we have learnt them, we shall feel how outer forms have their deep significance, and are essentially connected with what we can call the union of the human soul with the events of the Cosmos. Is this not expressed, in the fixing of the time of this Easter Festival itself? The time of the Easter Festival is fixed in a cosmic way; the first Sunday after the full moon which follows the beginning of spring, the 21st of March. There above in heaven shall the sign be, according to which the Easter Festival is fixed. A barbaric science has demanded in recent years that Easter should fall every year on the same day. If that is realised, we shall best see how far people wish to depart from a really spiritual life, which cannot be developed without man’s being aware how his soul lives not merely in what is in circulation upon Earth in the receipt and expenditure of money. For in all matters in which this receipt and expenditure of money is the outer symbol, doubtless the fixing of Easter Day would be a convenient thing. But for that which flows into the human soul out of the life of the cosmos, it would be deadening if that barbaric science should triumph, which would fix Easter Sunday and Easter Monday always on the same day of the year, and we should no longer look to the cosmos in order to fix these days.

In such details, we see how humanity is sailing into Ahrimanic materialism. We must have men who through their knowledge of Spiritual Science will for the future have absolute certainty in such matters.

You know, assuredly either from the original which is already much spoiled, or from reproductions and engravings, Michelangelo’s powerful work in the Sistine Chapel in Rome—the ‘Last Judgment.’ When you look at the composition of this work representing the judgment of the world, what must you say—now when you have drawn nearer to Spiritual Science—what is really the picture of the judgment of the world? As I said before, if he who is endowed with the insight Spiritual Science can give, takes his stand before the symbol of the Christ lying in the tomb during Good Friday and Holy Saturday, he will, when he has brought it before his mind’s eye, have before his soul the vision of the Jupiter human beings and the Jupiter existence already described. If he has not brought this vision to sight, nevertheless the thought, which is as legitimate at a certain stage as the sight, will be possible to him.

And imagine, that an artist endowed with all the art of modern painting should be influenced by the symbol of the Mystery of Golgotha, and that he wanted to answer the question pictorially: What appears to me when I turn my eyes away from the symbol of Christ Jesus lying in the tomb? By what I have won through it, let me deepen my gaze into the inner soul, and see what appears to me. The Christ appears to me in his Jupiter splendour, in his future glory, chaining Ahriman by the fetters of Light in the nether world, so that he cannot reach man, and vanquishing Lucifer so that he cannot lead the human soul along his path.

Thus it appears when adapted to what the human soul can mako its own through Spiritual Science. All that can now appear to the human soul in this way, clothed itself for ourselves in earlier incarnations, in the picture of the ‘Last Judgment,’ as Michelangelo painted it upon the wall of the Sistine Chapel. That is only a prophetic glimpse; the correct vision is the one I have just described to you. People who have been taught only through Christian feeling, but not yet through Spiritual Science, have seen what can be discerned in the Good Friday Mystery in the form in which Michelangelo painted in the ‘Last Judgment.’ We, however, live in a time of transition, and the most advanced souls can themselves be the most conscious, even if they have not yet taken up Spiritual Science, of how man in the present time lives in a time of transition, in which we must say: The children of men have lost the understanding for the way in which people saw the ‘Last Judgment,’ as a result of the Good Friday Mystery. But a new understanding must arise, an understanding which will be won through Spiritual Science, as we have described it today, an understanding with which we too are celebrating here at this time the Festival of the Entombment of the Christ Jesus.

I have often spoken in this place of much that Hermann Grimm has so beautifully described. He has in his life of Michelangelo spoken at length concerning the ‘Last Judgment.’ Grimm was unlike the average learned man who describes everything objectively (I emphasise this), for after having made researches into a subject, he entered with the soul, with perception and feeling, fully into the results. Because of this, when he had completed his beautiful treatment of the‘Last Judgment’ in his Life of Michelangelo, he adds the following. ‘It is difficult,’ he says, ‘if not impossible to speak about such matters...’ He meant about what the ‘Last Judgment’ signifies for the human soul. In the time of Michelangelo it was not yet difficult to speak about this, above all not in painting, for Michelangelo has spoken of it in his fresco. And those who at that time were initiated into the mysteries of religion have been able to speak of these things. It has only become difficult through the further evolution of time. Hermann Grimm says: ‘It is difficult, if not impossible to speak about such matters. Our feeling of them lives in a depth which it is not possible to illumine with clear light. We do not yet venture to hold entirely as shadows the pictures which are handed down to us as sacred legacies...’ He says: ‘We do not yet venture in our time to say that what a Michelangelo thought of as really in connection with the life of the human soul and has depicted upon a canvas,—we do not yet dare to say of this, that it is a mere fantasy.’ Deeper spirits like Hermann Grimm do not yet dare. Others who are built more after the type of Ludwig Feuerbach or David Friedrich Strauss may dare to say: ‘That is fantastical,’ or, if they want to express it in a more beautiful modern way, they say: ‘That is a fantasy,’ but they mean that it is fantastical, when they speak of Michelangelo’s works. But other deeper spirits do not yet venture to say this. Hermann Grimm continues: ‘Assuredly we do not yet dare to hold entirely as shadows the pictures which have been handed down to us as sacred legacies. But as I think of the course of spiritual development I feel that these representations must become ever fainter and fainter, and something different must appear in their place which has value as a symbol of the Eternal.’

Hermann Grimm sees that something new must appear, but he seeks in vain in modern civilisation for what is within his reach for this new illumination. And I may say his words have a tragic note: He says: ‘Without symbols, be they visible pictures or thoughts, we cannot rest, however clear it is to us that everything symbolical is only an image, and meaningless indeed for him who contributes nothing to it from his own soul.Thus, as the ‘Last Judgment’ confronts us on the wall of the Sistine chapel, it is no longer an image for us, but a memorial of a fanciful soul-life of a past age, of a strange people, whose thoughts are no longer ours.’

That is a confession in sincerity from the human soul itself, which this spirit had to make, who cannot remain satisfied with saying that we can go on living into all the future, even when we have lost what once came before the soul when it felt the Good Friday Mystery. These are the worlds of a spirit who perceives the old is past, who has insight into the present and who looks around as it were, in vain for something which can take the place of the old. Such a spirit passed through the gate of death, with the following thought: ‘Where, O where, thou soul, thou human soul, who once didst steep thyself in the vision of the Crucified One lying in the tomb, who once didst plunge deeply into thy most holy secrets in the cosmos—where, thou human soul, dost thou find new thoughts and feelings concerning this Mystery? Where dost thou find something which fills thee again when thou dost gaze upon the Crucified One lying in the grave, when thou dost gaze upon the Good Friday Mystery? Where, thou human soul, dost thou find this?’—with these thoughts such a spirit sped through the gate of death.

Now you will comprehend why I said here in this place a few days ago: There are souls who have passed through the gate of death, and who have received a new feeling for what man actually is, when our friend Christian Morgenstern joined their band, and, permeated by the consciousness of the new conception of Christ, bore up the new thoughts concerning the Christevolution and its connection with mankind’s evolution, into the spiritual worlds. The souls who longed after these new thoughts, because they had only been able to carry through their own gate of death thoughts which were meaningless, or picture thoughts of a former age grown pale, these souls found in our friend the comrade who enlightens them. Thus is it after death, even if superficial people can believe that man, when he passes through the gate of death, at once commands a view of all mysteries. He does not do so, for as through the embryonic life man is made ready for life outside the mother’s body, so must man be made ready here in his earthly body for the life between death and a new birth. And for the souls who passed through the gate of death without having received thoughts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, Christian Morgenstern is a revealer who had come to the spiritual world illumined by what the new Christ announcements can mean for the soul.

Let us in all veneration fill ourselves with such thoughts in these days. Let us take them up in their concreteness, as they enter into our souls in connection with our own Society. And let us seek to understand them in these days which bring closer to our souls the Festivals of Good Friday and Holy Saturday so full of mystery. May they give us the power to understand such things ever more deeply. Let us use what this holy, this tragically holy day may be for us, in order to let the feelings called forth by such an occasion, influence us in the right way, illumining the deepest abyss of all our human existence, as it develops on the earth, and also on those heavenly bodies which will be the re-embodiments of our Earth. Let us seek to allow the Easter image to be in a deep, in a very deep sense indeed, an image, a picture of what is bound up from all eternity with the nature of the human soul and therefore with our own self-knowledge.

• 1. This refers to the Johannes Building, or Goetheanum, at Dornach, Switzerland, later destroyed by fire on New Year’s Eve, 1922. But this wooden statue was saved.
• 2. This group had not been placed in the Goetheanum when the fire took place, and it has therefore escaped destruction.

During this Easter-Tide, a stately procession of events has been passing before our spiritual vision.¹ Amongst these events there have been those which represented the struggles of a soul. This soul, of its own free will, was about to pass through the Portals of Death, but, at the last moment, it was recalled to this mortal existence by the Easter message.

It seems to me that of all the impressions which the great poem Faust is likely to make upon the mind, the impression created by this episode will be the deepest and the most lasting.

And now—that is to say, today, after the transformation of the scenery, representing the world and its evolution, (N.B. At the words: ‘Christ has arisen,’ the black scenery is changed to red)—now, consider, what your souls have assimilated from this view into the hidden meaning of Faust. Consider this in connection with what I said yesterday, when I spoke of that true vision which must appear before the soul of man, as it approaches the symbolical representation of Christ Jesus at rest in the sepulchre. You will remember that we saw yesterday, that according to the extent a man is connected in his earthly evolution with the Luciferic or the Ahrimanic. world, so in a corresponding measure will his spiritual insight or his spiritual sensations be quickened.

We must consider that in Faust we meet at once with a soul which from the very first confesses that it is steeped in Ahrimanic wisdom and experience. In watching this soul, we see it tear itself away from its bondage in Ahrimanic wisdom and—from our spiritual level we may dare to express it thus—fly to the spring of Life, whose source is in Christ. What a tremendous movement in the history of a human soul is this, which is here presented to our spiritual vision! Let us pause and contemplate this human soul with all the powers of our spiritual understanding. There it lies before us with all the knowledge which it has assimilated during its investigation of the outward material world and its connections. There it lies before us, with all the knowledge and experience which it has been able to gain, to grasp by means of those instruments which the investigator of external nature uses in his endeavour to penetrate her secrets .... And to what goal has this soul arrived? To what has it attained with all its investigations with various instruments and also by means of the phial which contains the juices, which in this earthly life ‘do drunken make without delay.’ (Latham). We feel already that the Ahrimanic being is ruling at the side of the Faust-Soul, and we also feel how inseparable this Ahrimanic being is from earthly death. Does it not seem as if this human soul, so steeped in Ahrimanic knowledge, hesitates before the consequences of its Ahrimanic perception? And it is this perception and these consequences, which Ahriman is able to bestow upon mortal man, which find expression in the words:

‘Now hail, thrice hail, incomparable phial!
With reverent hand I bid thee to the trial.
In thee I honour human wit and skill.
Compendium of kindly, slumberous juices,
Essence compact of deadly, delicate uses,
Show now a favour at the master’s will!
I see thee, all the pain sinks into slumber;
I grasp thee, all the strife ceases to cumber;
The spirit’s flood ebbs with slow pulse away.
It draws me to the Deep, resistless streaming,
Full at my feet the glassy sea lies gleaming,
On to new shores, woos me the newer day.’¹

And this soul has already the vision of arrival upon the other shore, where perhaps it may find that which, as it is forced to believe, it cannot find on this earth through its Ahrimanic bondage. Already the soul sees itself sinking gently downwards to the other shore.

‘A flaming car floats down on wafting pinions
Hither to me. Ready to cleave am I
On pathways new, the ethereal dominions,
Borne to new spheres of pure activity.
That life divine, that bliss of God-like being,
Dar’st thou, but now a worm, make it thy goal?
Aye, thou hast but to turn thy face from seeing
The Earth’s sweet sun, with dauntless soul!
Be bold to wrench the brazen gates asunder,
Past which no mortal but is fain to slink!
’Tis time by deeds to show that e’en not under
The majesty of Gods, Man’s dignity need shrink.
To face yon gloomy cavern never tremble,
Where fancy dooms herself but self-bred torments to,
And though all Hell its flames assemble
About the narrow mouth, press boldly through;
Blench not, but blithely let the step be taken,
Were it with jeopardy, ne’er from the Naught to waken!’

And having grasped the other Ahrimanic instrument he is ready to make his way over into those regions of which he has learned in the Ahrimanic school, that he will never have any knowledge, so long as he is imprisoned in the physical body.

From this frame of mind the soul is suddenly snatched away by the sound of the Easter bells and the voices of the Easter choir. And Faust’s soul once more assumes the physical body, so that now it may seek in the secret meaning of physical life for that which, as a result of its search while in the physical body, it must take with it through the Portals of Death, so that it may carry it above into those spiritual regions where it will be needed for the soul’s further development.

What you have heard today from the first part of Goethe’s Faust, as well as much that belongs both to this part and to this scene, appeared in Goethe’s Faust, when it was first published in completed form in 1808. But Faust, a Fragment, by Goethe, had already appeared as early as 1790. This Fragment, however, was without the Gretchen scene, also without the scene we have been considering today,—the one containing the episode of such vast importance for Faust’s soul. In 1790 Goethe published his Fragment again without the Easter scene and without the monologue, which probes into the innermost secrets of the human soul on earth. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, it was discovered how much Goethe had completed in 1780 and even in 1770, also what he had completed in 1790. This was published under the insipid title of The Original Faust. In this Original Faust, of course, we do not find the Easter scene. We say ‘of course’ advisedly.—Why is the Easter scene not there? My dear friends! Goethe was the child of his time. In order to be able to depict the effect of the Christ-Impulse upon the soul of Faust, from his own standpoint and according to the essential quality of his own soul, it was necessary for him to reach maturity. And up to 1790 Goethe had not reached maturity. About 1790 that expansion of Goethe’s soul took place, which is reflected in the well-known Fairy-tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. This was written during that period of time extending from the first publication of Faust without the Easter scene, to the Second publication of Faust, which included it. An infinitely profound expansion of Goethe’s soul took place owing to the experience which he has related in the Fairy-tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. And not until he had undergone this experience, could Goethe understand how he should allow the Easter Resurrection scene to influence the soul of Faust.

Now, having gained an insight into this Faust soul itself, let us go to the opening lines of Goethe’s Faust which coincide fairly closely with the sequence of Goethe’s revelations about himself. We know that:

‘I have studied, alas I Philosophy,
And Jurisprudence, and Medicine too,
And, saddest of all, Theology,
With ardent labour, through and through I
And here I stick, as wise, poor fool,
As when my steps first turned to school.
Master they style me, nay, Doctor, forsooth,
And nigh ten years, o’er rough and smooth,
And up and down, and acrook and across,
I lead my pupils by the nose,
And know that in truth we can know—naught!’

Thus he had been a professor for ten years! We will take it for granted that he had followed the regular course necessary for a professorship. In this case he would have become a professor at the age of thirty. From his thirtieth year onward, he had been dragging his pupils by the nose around after him. Now recollect what I said yesterday.

Between the age of thirty and forty man will be faced with the Image of the Jupiter Existence, when the temptation of which I spoke yesterday will rise up before him. And a vision, a prophetic vision of that temptation passes before everyone, as they stand before the Christ lying in the sepulchre. Is it not this vision which is represented in the drama of Faust? Do we not see plainly, that he is standing before the Easter Mystery? And has he not reached the late thirties as regards age? May we not take it for granted that something is stirring amongst his perceptions and that something, a kind of foreshadowing of the Jupiter experiences with Lucifer and Ahriman which come to all who are brought face to face with the Easter Mystery.

In Goethe’s time, it was impossible to represent this as it can be represented today. But Goethe could represent the feelings which the Easter Mystery awakened in his heart, and these were the feelings which were stirring in the soul of Faust. And when Mephisto-Ahriman approaches him, does it not seem as if Faust realised how completely his soul is forfeited to the Ahrimanic powers? As if he must save himself from something? Yes I But from what? What is it from which he must save himself? May we not say that this was Goethe’s own experience? That after he had attained to maturity in body and soul, he had let work upon him the Faust-mood of his youth and in so doing, as far as it was possible in his times, Goethe had undergone the Easter experience as we recognise it today. Hence, the necessity for the insertion of the Easter scene into his Faust. By the insertion of the Easter scene between 1790 and 1800, Faust was transposed into the Christ-Consciousness.

What years were those which Faust had to endure? Which years were those from which he shrank so terribly that he was ready of his own accord to seize the phial? Those years which mark the second, that is, the descending, half of human life. That part of life when, as we have seen, man, as he is confronted with the vision of the Jupiter Existence, becomes aware that later, on Jupiter, he must carry with him the food that Christ can give him. Otherwise, he will have to suffer hunger during the second half of his life. What is it that Faust seeks? Nourishment for his soul during the second half of his life. We all seek for that as a matter of fact. Ever since the time when the Mystery of Golgotha disappeared from our earthly evolution, we have all been seeking it. For that which upon Jupiter will take a physico-psychic form, exists already in the depths of our souls and we must all share to some extent in this Faust-experience. We need a strength which we cannot obtain by those means which give us freedom only while we are mortals, and which afterwards lead us to Lucifer or Ahriman. It is the Christ-force, the Christ-strength, my dear friends! The Christ-strength which Christ Himself possessed, after he had passed through the Gates of Death. But Christ did not pass the second half of earthly life in the physical body. Christ came down and passed a part of the first half of human life in the physical body, but not the second part. Why did he not do this? Because this force which must be expended by man during the second half of his earthly existence, was to circulate into the earthly aura, so that all mankind might be able to find it in themselves during their earthly evolution. Through the Easter Mystery arises that which we require for the pilgrimage of our soul, our whole life long.

And now, mark the deep significance of this in Goethe’s Faust. Faust had acquired—and Goethe knew by what means, for he published Faust, the first time, without the Easter scene—had acquired all that can be learnt from a compact with Lucifer and Ahriman, all that makes it possible to liberate the soul. But he who has fathomed the depths of his own soul sees clearly that he can no longer live by them. In order to live any longer he requires something else. And Goethe having arrived at maturity was in a position to show, that what Faust needed was the Impulse of the Easter-Mystery. Does not the Easter-Mystery in all its profundity come before us as we note this alteration made by Goethe in his Faust, after he had attained maturity? The Easter-scene could not have found a place in the first edition of Faust in 1790, because at that time Goethe did not yet understand it.

How did the idea of this poetic drama arise in young Goethe’s mind, by means of which we have been led into such immeasurable depths? We know that Goethe as a young man was deeply impressed both by the puppet play of Faust, where the fate of Faust was merely enacted by dolls, and also by the popular drama of Doctor Faust. The latter, though quite a play for the people, sank deeply into Goethe’s soul. And in Goethe’s soul the question arose at once, ‘What is the meaning of this Faust’? This Faust must represent struggling humanity in general. The man, who by his struggles can probe into all the hidden paths of the life of the human soul, and who must find the way above into the clear heights of the spirit. That a secret path must be travelled by the human soul, the young Goethe was certain. For what Faust’s soul experiences, at the sight of the various signs, is nothing else, in fact, but a meditation—a meditation which in the end leads him to a vision of the Earth spirit ranging over and permeating the earth. The answer to the meditation is contained in the words:

‘In floods of being, in action’s storm,
Up and down I wave! '
To and fro I flee,
Birth and the grave,
An infinite sea,
A changeful weaving,
An ardent living;
The ringing loom of Time is my care,
And I weave God’s living garment there.’

Meditation and contra-meditation! This carries Faust at once into the very depths of life. But what about the way out? How is he to escape to the spiritual heights?

My dear friends, when we consider the greatness of Goethe’s conception of the struggling man—Faust—which owed its origin to the puppet play and to the popular drama, and then consider the form which this powerful conception took, after Goethe had realised the Easter Mystery in the depths of his own soul, the question arises: How much did Goethe contribute to Faust during his own life?

Again, when we consider the powerful conception aroused in Goethe’s mind through the influence of the Faust-impulse, the question arises: How has this conception been treated from the artistic and poetical point of view? Considering what I have said before, it will be helpful for our purpose to understand Faust from this standpoint also.

In 1790, Goethe published A Fragment, which ends approximately with the Cathedral Scene. But the scene which makes Faust so wonderful for us today was not there. Goethe composed it later and added it when he was in Rome. In 1787, he added the scene which is now called ‘The Witches' kitchen.’ From time to time he added different scenes to the original manuscript which was written over and corrected so much that by the time the later scenes were added, it was described by himself as a ‘dog-eared, time-stained manuscript.’ When Schiller at the end of the eighteenth century urged Goethe to take up Faust once more and finish it, Goethe replied, that after having left the old monster Faust for so long, it would be difficult for him to take up the threads of it again and finish it in a consistent manner. Goethe was afraid to insert into Faust, which represented himself, as he was and as he appeared to be up to 1790, the experiences he had undergone after he had reached maturity.

And now let us consider this first part of Faust in general. Is it not a work which, as a close study shows, has been woven together out of material collected at various periods of time? If we do not adhere too closely to traditional criticism, we shall see in Faust the most powerful conception of isolated human nature that has ever been given to the world. At the same time we must confess that from the artistic and poetical point of view Faust lacks unity, that it is throughout an inharmonious work. That everywhere there are gaps and chasms into which much might be inserted which is not there. Considered artistically, it is not even really finished. It is not, in fact, an artistically complete work. The great genius of Goethe could only gradually complete, in a fragmentary manner, the events which were passing in his own soul. And much as we must admire, the intense beauty of many of the scenes, just as little can we conceal from ourselves (that is, if we are impartial, and do not rely solely upon the traditional judgment passed by literature and history) that Faust as it stands is not in itself a harmonious work of art, but that it is patchy in many places and full of gaps and chasms, as a whole. Why is this, my dear friends? Why is this? Goethe, in advanced old age had once more undertaken to finish the second part of Faust. Isolated scenes for this were already completed, and these he incorporated with the Faust of his extreme old age. For example, the whole classical-romantic phantasmagoria, the Helena Interlude, was completed in 1799-1800, and many parts were written earlier still. Further, there is no ground whatever for saying, as some historians of literature say, that no one can ever understand Faust; or, to quote the words of a man who was by no means foolish, but, on the contrary, extremely clever, that ‘Faust is a bungling performance patched together by an old man in his dotage.’ It is not that, by any means. On the other hand, it is a work the scope of which was so tremendous that even the profound and long experience of life of Goethe himself was not sufficient to carry it out. Everyone may have his own opinion about even the very greatest in this world. Yes! Their own opinion. But why is this so? In a course of lectures given at the Hague, I pointed out that Faust is by no means anything new in the history of the world. Faust, as he existed in the popular drama which Goethe saw, and as he existed in the puppet play, represented a man descending into the very depths of spiritual experience in order that he might rise to the heights of knowledge. This representation was so realistic that it moved the greatest poet of modern times to invoke the aid of the Easter-Mystery in order to save the man’s soul.

The Faust of the popular drama was taken almost directly from real life. He is taken from Doctor George Faustus, a vagrant scholar who lived in the second half of the Middle Ages. This we learn from Tritheim von Sponheim and other celebrated men who had met him and who even had a certain respect for him—the respect commanded by a striking personality endowed with intellectual knowledge and some spiritual power. And it was not without reason that this Doctor Faust was so styled. I quote his titles below: ‘Master Georgius Sabellicus, the younger Faustus, Second Magician, the well-head of Necromancers, astrologer, cheiromancer, agromancer, pyromancer, the second in the hydric art.’

Thus he styled himself . At that time it was the custom to bear as many titles as possible, and a long list of similar high-sounding appellations might be compiled, from those borne by Giordano Bruno and many other famous spirits of the Middle Ages. If today we find it extraordinary that learned men like Tritheim von Sponheim and others, who were aware of the existence of the real Faust, should have believed that he was in communication with the demon-world and the secret earth forces, and that through them he could work wonders, we must recollect that even in Luther’s time such phenomena were not considered anything very extraordinary. We know, indeed, that Luther himself wrestled with the devil. We know that all this sort of thing, with its visions and marvellous tales, formed an important part of the life of those times. But there was a feeling in all this which contributed to fix the figure of Faust in the popular consciousness. I say ‘feeling’; not a ‘conception,’ not ‘an idea.’ The feeling that natural science is advancing, natural science which brings the Ahrimanic part of true activity before the human soul. And from that arose the feeling that Faust is, and, in fact, always was, a personality who is in league with the Ahrimanic Powers. Simultaneously the secret threads are seen by which Faust is bound to the Ahrimanic Powers, and the fate of Faust was seen to be inevitable after his surrender to these powers. It was felt and acknowledged that Lucifer and Ahriman were inseparably connected with the whole evolution of the human soul. So much remained from the ancient clairvoyance and clairvoyant experience. The figure of Faust was connected with the feeling of man’s dependence upon the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers. At this time this perception was already disappearing in the twilight, and such matters had already become confused and indistinct. Still the feeling arose that struggling humanity with all its endeavours and trials and in all the dangers to which its soul is exposed might be adequately represented in the figure of Faust. But the exact nature of the relationship of struggling humanity with Ahriman and Lucifer was no longer understood. Little by little that knowledge had vanished. Hence the wild confusion, which meets us as we take up the Faust Book of the Middle Ages. Here all the experiences and adventures which this popular hero is supposed to have gone through, are jumbled up in the greatest confusion with all lands of adventures and experiences with which the human soul could meet during its struggles on earth: besides all possible and impossible demons, elementary spirits as well as Lucifer and Ahriman. Truly, a grotesque hash or ragout!

When Lucifer and Ahriman could no longer be visualised, after they had been dismembered and ground into a pulp with all the elementary spirits of nature, the figure of Doctor Faustus was introduced into the mixture, namely, this popular Book of Faust. The keen insight and wide sympathies of Goethe enabled him to recognise the greatness of the root idea of this horrible mixture. He rescued it from the depths and brought it up to meet the fight of the Easter-Mystery.

It is really most interesting to notice how from time to time Lucifer and Ahriman are cut up and made into these ragouts. If we look back and seek for the prototype of Faust in olden times, we shall find it in the popular books of the age, which were in the hands of everybody; and they all dealt with such matters.

Augustine was a great favourite at the time when this book was patched, cobbled, glued together, which seems more as if it had been compiled by a bookseller whose one idea was to make as fat a book as possible, than written by a literary man or an author. But whoever he was he must have known his Augustine, that is to say, the biography of Augustine.

Now the whole development of Augustine appears to us very remarkable. At first he cannot understand what the essence of Christianity is. Then, by degrees, he works his way through the secret antagonism to Christianity which develops with the evolution of his soul, and turns first to see what the Manichean doctrine has to teach him. From one of the most important men of the Manichean sect, Augustine hears about the Manichean Bishop Faustus. And we can almost guess now who the Faust senior was, as distinguished from that other Faust, who, as I mentioned just now, styled himself Faust Junior. This is he whom Augustine once came across in ancient times and who as Faustus, Bishop of the Manicheans, preserved something of the earlier Manichean doctrine. And what was this? It was that which has since been devoured by Ahriman, so that mankind no longer understands the way in which man is connected with his soul, with the whole cosmos, with all the impulses from the stars. We may say that the girdle of knowledge leading to cosmic enlightenment, which shows how man was born out of the cosmos, which knowledge man must have if he would understand the Easter Mystery, was already sundered in the time of the Manichean Bishop Faustus. And it was possible for the compiler of the Horn-Book of Doctor Faustus to make Faust, the prisoner of Ahriman, arise out of the figure described by Augustine as the Manichean Bishop, Doctor Faustus. But as all these matters had become so confused, he did not understand that Ahriman was the adversary. We see traces of Ahrimanic danger glimmering through the plot of the popular drama, but they are very faint. It arouses, however, a distinct feeling that Faust is the representative of struggling humanity and that he is threatened with danger from the Ahrimanic powers.

And there was much in the figure of Faust as he was portrayed until the time of Goethe, which was borrowed from that Manichean Bishop, Faustus Senior. Many chapters of the ‘Faust Book’ appear to have been copied, very badly, it is true, directly from the book in which Augustine describes his own development and his meeting with the Bishop Faustus. So we can prove clearly that the Ahrimanic features in Faust spring from this source, and also that when the ‘Faust Book’ came to be written down, only the last faint impulse was left to imprint the Ahrimanic elements in human nature upon the figure of Faust.

And now what about the Luciferic element? How have the Luciferic elements been dismembered in those bits of the ragout, which were then cooked up in the hash of elementary spirits, with bits of Lucifer and bits of Ahriman, as I said before? Yes, we shall have to hunt if we wish to discover Faust’s connection with Lucifer. And we must also seek in history. For this we need not travel very far, only to Basle, where we can halt and find out how Lucifer has been dismembered for the ragout. It is related that Erasmus of Rotterdam met Faust at Basle. They wished to have a meal in the College, but they could not find the food they wanted. Then suddenly it occurred to Erasmus what he would like to have and he told Faust, who sat next to him and was going to dine with him. But they could not get what they wanted. Then the Faustsaga relates that Faust suddenly produced strange birds on the table, no one knew from whence, for they were unobtainable in the Basle Market—cooked, baked and ready to eat. Here we have a scene between Erasmus of Rotterdam and Faust, in which Faust has power to set before Erasmus birds which could not be bought either in Basle or the neighbourhood at that time. What does this mean? As it stands in the saga it is incomprehensible, one must say utterly incomprehensible. But if we go further and seek amongst the writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam, the matter becomes more comprehensible. Erasmus himself tells us that in Paris he made the acquaintance of a certain Doctor Faustus Andrelinus. This Faustus Andrelinus was not only an extraordinarily learned man, but an extraordinarily sensuous man. Erasmus soon became well acquainted with this Faust, but had no liking for the sensuous side of his character. However, he speaks of a meal which the two had together. Now, certainly, two learned gentlemen of that time such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Faustus Andrelinus would neither of them set before the other such a bird and in such a manner as Faustus is supposed to have put before Erasmus in Basle; we cannot entertain such an idea for a moment. It is probable that the tale has arisen from some kind of joke exchanged by the two during the meal. But we can see a little behind these joking words if we recollect that Faust—this time it really is Faust—had declared that he did not like what had been set before him and he would like to satisfy himself by eating strange birds and rabbits. Yes! Strange birds and young rabbits. Erasmus at once had the idea that this must have some hidden meaning. He behaved in exactly the same way as some theosophists do who meditate on the meaning of things and believe everything must have a meaning. Erasmus thought to himself: Might he not mean flies and ants? Now, he will forego the young rabbits, but the birds must really be flies, and these he particularly wished to partake of. Now we see daylight. Now the birds, through an astral change, have become flies. And in Goethe we find the figure of Mephisto as the god of flies. It only needs the presence of the spirit who rules these beings to bring them by magic to the place. And so we have found the connecting link between the incomprehensible Legend of Basle with the wonderful birds and the flies who came simply from the devil. And we need not be surprised that the devil should set flies before his guests. If we follow Erasmus a little further to his stay in Paris, we shall see more clearly the kind of soul possessed by Faustus Andrelinus. In Paris, Erasmus was not very willing to fall in with the views of this Faustus Andrelinus. However, he then had to go to London. From there he writes that he, Erasmus—can you believe it that he has now learnt how to behave in a salon, whereas before he had the manners of a rough peasant—that now he has learnt to bow and even how to move about upon the polished floors of the Court. And, yes!—Erasmus himself writes—that he is living in an atmosphere in which everyone kisses their neighbour on meeting and at parting. We see from this time that he wishes to please his Paris friend. He writes: ‘Come over here, and if the gout detains you, fly over in your magic car, through the air. That is one of your elements.’ Here is a reference to the Luciferic tendencies of Faust’s soul.

In Goethe’s account we meet the Luciferic influence and its temptations in the betrayal of Gretchen. Lucifer has now become so faint among the influences which surround Faust, that we are obliged to make these kind of literary investigations if we wish to prove the connection between the Faust in Paris and Lucifer. But in the Horn-Book of Faust we see clearly Faust as he stands—with Lucifer and Ahriman beside him—although showing faintly through the confusion of that time, all jumbled together into a ragout. Need we be surprised to find in the popular play and in the drama and even in Marlowe’s Faust a remnant of the original intuition belonging to those times, when by means of an atavistic clairvoyance, the connection of humanity with Lucifer and Ahriman was recognised? But all that had become confused and in the literary productions of which I have spoken was always represented in a confused manner. Goethe indeed perceived the profound connection, but then what was there that he could not do? He could not, however, separate Lucifer from Ahriman. He welded them into the mongrel being, Mephisto, of whom we cannot rightly say whether he be the devil, or Ahriman, or the real Mephisto, for Goethe has invested him with some of the Luciferic qualities. Goethe takes the ragout, so to speak, he perceives that both Ahriman and Lucifer reign there, but he cannot as yet tear them apart, he combines them both in what—from an occult standpoint—is the impossible figure of Mephisto, who is a cross between Lucifer and Ahriman. The time of which Goethe caught a glimpse when he became acquainted with the book of Faust, may be termed the last aftermath of the ancient cognisance of Lucifer and Ahriman. And Goethe’s Faust is the early dawn of a knowledge, not yet above the horizon, of Ahriman and Lucifer. It is dim and confused in the figure of Mephisto, who is a combination of Lucifer and Ahriman.

But already the need had arisen of showing how mankind may profit by what was poured into the earth-aura, when the Christ-Being passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, if man will permit this to work upon his soul. The Easter Mystery itself in Goethe’s Faust appears to us as the beginning of a new era in the spiritual life of humanity. About this work, in spite of the masterly way in which the theme is handled, there is always a feeling of confusion, something of that dim, misty, morning twilight, which we see below us, if we climb a mountain to see the sun rise earlier than we should have done had we remained below.

If we allow the Faust of Goethe to work upon our minds, we shall feel how one of the greatest of men, through his endeavours to revive the ancient knowledge, turns his soul to the Easter Mystery. And if we let it work on our souls in the right sense, my dear friends, we shall feel what takes place in the heart of a really great man, when that man’s heart is moved by the Easter Mystery—as was that of Goethe himself. We shall see also that in this early perception by Goethe of the Easter Mystery there is something which also demonstrates that after the red dawn into which the first faint, clear rays of the Easter Mystery are already streaming, the Sun of a new spiritual experience will rise. The human soul itself will arise from the grave of the darkened perception into which it had to descend.

In the course of its evolution the human soul will itself experience the Easter Mystery, the resurrection of the Christ-Impulse which lies buried in the deep underworld of its being, if it unites itself with the force gained by a contemplation of the Christ-Easter-Mystery.

Let us thus realise Goethe’s appeal; and after we have meditated on the tragedy of the Easter Mystery let us transform it into an appeal for a corresponding resurrection of spiritual experience in the hearts and souls of men, in the future. May the hearts and souls of men receive the deep Mysteries of Easter with joy I Yes, after the realisation of this, the greatest of all tragedies, may they experience with holy joy the glories of the resurrection of Christ in the depths of their own being.

May you, my dear friends, through these words which I have permitted myself to speak to you today, experience something of this perception in your souls, that the reason you are here, the reason why we are gathered together around our Bau,² dedicated as it is to spiritual investigation, is that you may thus, through the strength drawn into your souls, carry away into the future something of the Resurrection-Impulse that has appeared so plainly to us in the Easter Mystery, and towards which, as we have seen, the greatest minds of the past pressed so eagerly.

• 1. These lectures were given in connection with scenes from Goethe’s Faust, demonstrated in Eurhythmy.
• 1. The quotations from Faust in these lectures are (unless otherwise stated) taken from Latham’s translation.
• 2. The Johannes building or Goetheanum, at Dornach, Switzerland, then in course of erection, but later destroyed by fire.

The lecture today has been preceded by the representation of the Easter scene in Faust (the lecture was preceded by the Eurhythmic representation), that scene in which the Earth-Spirit appears to Faust. A week ago we were considering some features in Faust which are of the gravest importance for those who desire to draw nearer to the laws and life of the universe, in the light of Spiritual Science. My reason for taking this poetical creation of Goethe’s as the subject of my lectures (both on Easter Sunday and today) is not merely to give an explanation of Goethe’s Faust. It is because, while studying the series of artistic representations which pass before us in Faust, our minds are able to follow the evolution of the Faust-soul in the spiritual world, and can, so to speak, share in its experiences on the spiritual plane. The nature of our reflections upon this poetical creation will depend upon the extent to which we are able to view Faust from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

As a matter of fact, Faust is the expression of Goethe’s own endeavour to penetrate into the spiritual world. But it is also an expression of that important turning-point in the history of modern times, when the great mind of Goethe strove to enter that same world into which we are striving to enter today by means of our Spiritual Science.

We were able to show in the last lecture that Goethe lived at a time in which it really was not yet possible to find the true path leading into the spiritual world, in a clear, consistent way. We were able to show that such truths as the true meaning of Lucifer and Ahriman only floated before Goethe’s mind as indistinct conceptions; a confused perception, as it were, of the spiritual world. And we were able to prove that both Lucifer and Ahriman were welded together in Mephistopheles. Also that in Mephistopheles Goethe had only a nebulous image before him, a figure which he could not clearly visualise in a spiritually-scientific manner. From this endeavour of Goethe’s, expressed as it is in Faust, we can realise with what earnestness, with what intense conscientiousness, with what a sense of responsibility, we should follow up every clue presented to us by Spiritual Science.

When a master-mind such as this meets with such tremendous difficulties in its endeavour to reach that goal towards which so many are striving today, we can certainly learn a great deal by the study of Goethe’s quest and Goethe’s warfare.

I wish that all students of the phenomena of Spiritual Science, even those who are only beginners, would study this document, and go through Goethe’s Faust over and over again. It is a document of the early dawn of Spiritual Science, before the Sun rose upon the first endeavours of that Science.

In my last lecture I showed how the riper knowledge of Goethe’s maturity was required to rescue his soul from the critical situation into which it had wandered in his youth. Goethe’s soul could not be satisfied with what could be conceived of the Universe by the brain and intellect alone. And what swirled and raged in his soul, in his endeavour to reach that fundamental spiritual basis of life, he put into the form of the striving Faust; who, however, is not a portrait of Goethe himself, though he represents, in an artistic setting, certain features in Goethe’s own struggle and certain sides of Goethe’s life. The scene with the appearance of the Earth-Spirit belongs to the earliest part of Faust. It is one of the scenes which Goethe wrote first of all.

In my last lecture I spoke of Faust in such a way that, should I be misunderstood (as I so often am), people might go away and say that I had described Faust as being incomplete as a work of art; that I had, in fact, criticised Faust very severely. And anybody who was particularly ingenious might say that I was a turn-coat in my views on Goethe; that at one time I was a great admirer of Goethe, but that I had now proved myself to be one of his detractors. Well, my dear friends, it should not be necessary for me to explain that I do not honour Goethe one whit less than ever I did, nor that he is still to me the greatest mind of modern times. But, however much a great personality may command our respect, this fact should never make us blind worshippers of his authority. We must always preserve a clear perception of what we ourselves believe to be the truth.

Faust has been put together—one might say patched together—at different times. And one might say that when Goethe wrote the earliest parts of Faust in 1770, he was really not capable of writing the later parts. It was necessary that before doing so he should arrive at maturity, that he should progress from an ardent desire to reach the spiritual worlds, to what we must term his ‘comprehension of Christianity.’ Goethe required all the mature experience of his riper years, so to manipulate his artistic conception, that Faust, the investigator of the spiritual world, is brought to a comprehension of the Easter Mystery, and receives back his life through the remembrance of it. This Faust actually takes up the Gospels and begins to translate the Gospel of St. John. We hear many people today say that they do not require Spiritual Science to resuscitate for them the inner truths of Christianity; that this Spiritual Science is quite unnecessary, because Christianity can always be understood by the truths proclaimed by every priest from his pulpit, and that faith alone, faith in Christianity, is of any avail... Well, compare such an attitude with the attitude of Goethe. Goethe, one of the very greatest minds, took years before he was sufficiently mature to understand the truths of Christianity. Now we can form an idea of the monstrous conceit, the terrible darkness in which mankind is imprisoned. Especially those, who babbling confusedly and conceitedly of the simplicity of their minds, waive aside that which they do not require—the substance of Spiritual Science—for which, according to their own ideas, they have no use.

In the scene of the Earth-Spirit we see how Goethe was occupied during his youth, in his thirties and during the last twenty years of his life. We gather from this Earth-Spirit scene and from the Faust monologue which precedes it, that Goethe had steeped himself in so-called occult-mystical literature. We see how he endeavoured by means of the knowledge gained from this literature, by meditation, by meditative exercises, to discover the spiritual world.

In the scene which we have witnessed today, we see Faust absorbed in meditation, by means of which he hopes to soar to the spiritual worlds. He discovered this meditation in an ancient occult mystical book, by one Nostradamus. In this book the author maintains that by use of this meditation a man can attain to a knowledge of the spiritual worlds. Let us endeavour to picture to ourselves the world into which Faust—and therefore Goethe also—desired to penetrate. Now when the human soul has been enabled to strengthen its inner power to such an extent that the soul and spirit are liberated from the human shell, free, that is, from the instrument of the physical body; when the soul has, to a certain extent, escaped from the physical body with all the powers of which the body is barely conscious during its usual, everyday life—then, when this occurs, a spiritual thread reaches out from the physical body: or, rather, not so much from the physical body enclosed in its limited physical form as from the physical life within it, with which man is still spiritually connected by means of this thread or ray going back from him to the physical life. In the life between death and rebirth a ray or stream of this spiritual life runs back through time and connects with our earthly experiences. There are descriptions of this in other lectures.

How will this physical existence affect the human soul, when it has escaped from the conditions of the instrument of the physical body? For the man who has escaped from the conditions of physical existence, his whole physical experience becomes, so to speak, an organ of the soul. All his physical experiences become, as it were, eyes and ears. The whole individual will become a sense-organ, a spiritual sense-organ—an organ, so to speak, of the whole earth, which looks out into cosmic space. In order that our eyes may perceive physical objects, we must be outside them; the eyes must be imbedded as a kind of independent organism enclosed in the socket which encircles it with its walls of bone. In the same way the ear must be shut off also. Again the whole physical apparatus of the brain is enclosed in the skull and shut off from the rest of the human body. The physical experiences of man must also be shut off, so that they become receptacles, sense-instruments, so to speak; so that the whole physical life of man becomes, in a sense, either an eye or an ear, by means of which the man who is outside his physical experiences can gaze out into the whole universe.

Now what is now experienced may be described as follows:—A man is suddenly plunged into the world described in my book Theosophy as the Soul World. This is the world into which man first enters when he passes through the experience of living with his now independent soul outside the body, and sees his own physical life as exterior to himself. In my course of lectures (Vienna, April, 1914) I described how man, even during his life between death. and a new birth, is in possession of a spiritual sense-organ which he derives from his previous earthly life and by means of which he is able to perceive the rest of the universe. That is to say, by having lived an earthly life, he is able to perceive the rest of the universe. We are able to find our friends in that world for a long time after death, until they move on to another world, which can even by Initiates only be reached by a later evolutionary condition of the soul. In this world into which we move on, many things will present themselves to the observer. It is only possible to relate isolated experiences about this world; and these must be collected from the various lectures which characterise this supersensible world. Above all, what strikes the soul most when it is freed from the body and passes on to a new world is that the stars seem to fade away. The soul now experiences an elemental world. It now moves with the currents of air, it is one with the warmth which suffuses the earth, it streams out with the rays of light. When the soul streams out with the light, it is no longer able to perceive exterior objects by means of that light. Therefore it seems to this soul that the sun and stars are extinguished and that the Moon with its fight has disappeared. The soul no longer leads an external existence, it has become part of the elemental world. And at the same time it becomes part of that life which is termed the root-force of historical events—the historical becoming. In this world it becomes possible to see what history brings to the life of mankind. By means of a further meditative evolution the soul can rise to a still higher experience. In this state not only will its own existence be a spiritual and psychic sense-organ, but the whole Earth becomes its sense-organ. Paradoxically, it may be said—only you must not misunderstand me—that now the human soul must pass on to an experience in which it becomes fused with that essence which contains the whole world within it. As before, during our earthly life, our eyes were set in our body, and as then we were accustomed to see with our eyes and hear with our ears, so now, by means of the whole Earth and its existence, we are able to view the entire universe. We then become aware, that all the teaching of the Natural Scientists about the Sun and stars is nothing but a materialistic dream. In the world previous to this state, the stars were already extinguished, and the Sun and the Moon had already disappeared. Now, however, we become aware that where we supposed the Sun to be, there is really a community of spirits. That wherever we thought we saw stars, there are, in reality, spiritual worlds.

And as we look back upon our earthly existence we become aware that the teaching of the Natural Scientists is only a fantastic, materialistic dream. For what appeared to us as the stars or the Sun, is really in the spiritual world the seat of a spiritual community, in the same way as the Earth is the seat of a human community. But just as from a distant star it would not be possible to see any physical bodies, only the souls of men, just as little can one say that anything can interest us up there in the sphere of the stars which is not of a spiritual or soul nature. But what we do see may be described as the vapour of the earth atmosphere, which collides with what it meets. The physical eye cannot perceive what the star really is, it only sees the vapour which the Earth itself sheds out into the cosmic space. All that appears to us as the starry heavens is nothing but what is woven by the Earth itself out of its own substance, though that, certainly, is etheric substance. It is a curtain which the Earth draws before the reality beyond. When, however, the soul extends its life into this world, it learns that these imaginary material stars of which the Natural Scientists speak do not exist; that these stars are living beings, communities of living beings, which move to and fro soaring backwards and forwards in cosmic space, handing down gifts from the upper spheres to the lower, and again passing up gifts above from below.

Into the Whole how all things weave,
One in another work and live!
What heavenly forces up and down are ranging,
The golden buckets interchanging...

Forces, but now in the sense in which we speak of the primal forces,

With wafted benison winging,
From heaven through the Earth are springing,
All through the All harmonious ringing!

When this is read in its spiritual meaning, we have approximately that world into which the soul’s life now extends.

Now, my dear friends, let us try and ascertain how far Faust, at the time in which he is represented to us, had shared in the experiences which I have just been describing. He had opened an old book, written by one who had described an ancient perception by means of symbols, and had given the sign of the macrocosm. But Faust is naturally not in a position to transport himself with his soul into those spheres, where the wisdoms unfold their great occurrences in the universe. Faust is not in a position to soar so high. He only sees the symbol inscribed by one who had visited these regions—the symbol of the macrocosm. But a dream, a dim presentiment is aroused, that this symbol means something. Just suppose you had never heard anything about Spiritual Science and that the symbol lay before you, arousing a feeling that once someone had seen something that you also wanted to see. There you have the situation of Faust’s soul. Next imagine that something in these symbols which are really the signs of the Zodiac, the signs of the elements, the signs of the planets, stirs some chord in your imagination so deeply, that involuntarily the words, ‘A glorious pageant,’ fall from your lips. This, however, brings you back to earth, for now you perceive that the symbols in the book are mere imagination. Alas! ‘A pageant merely.’

So, after all, it is only an imaginary pageant, and you are brought down to earth. The symbol has not led you any further. On the contrary, it has thrown you back, for it has aroused the feeling that it is indeed the spirit world that lies before you, but nowhere can you find an entrance.

Thou boundless Nature, where shall I grasp thee clearly?
Where you, ye breasts, founts of all life that fail not,
At which both Heaven and Earth are nursed?
For you the withered breast doth thirst.

What else is this but the feeling of incorporation? Incorporation with the elements, with light, with air, with the subordinate world I Faust had penetrated into the spiritual world, but has now fallen back into that world which I have already described, as the nearest supersensible world:—the world of light and air-existence. This is clearly indicated in the lines:

Ye well, ye slake, I faint, yet ye avail not.

Faust has sunk back into himself again. Back from the spiritual into the elemental world. But, as yet, he is not in a position to recognise even this. Then in search for help, he opens the book and there sees the symbol of the Earth-Spirit. This sign was also transcribed by one who had known this nether-world, the elemental world, as his own. Faust now feels himself there too. He has a sort of sensation of having entered it.

How otherwise upon me works this sign!

Why? Faust feels its influence, because he has turned aside from the light of the senses and experiences something of existence in this world.

It is of this he speaks when he says:

My powers I feel already higher.

That is, what is experienced when one lives in the Warmth and Light:

I glow, as if with new-made wine.

Imagine yourself experiencing the warmth in your soul, that you live and move in the world as part of the waves of heat:

Full-steeled to tread the world I feel my mettle.

One really seems to move in and to form part of the elements. As I said before, the earth-life becomes an organ of sense; just as formerly the eye and the ear perceived and heard in themselves, so now one feels the Earth to be the sense-organ of the soul.

To whirl round the world with the storm,¹

when the soul is one with the waves of the air.

Clouds gather overhead
The moon withdraws her light.

No wonder! I have already described how the stars and Moon are extinguished, and why. For Faust the light disappears, because he becomes part of the light itself.

Vapours arise! Red lightnings quiver
About my head!

This is now inward perception.

A shudder
Down-wafted from the vaulted gloom
Lays hold on me I
Spirit conjured, that hovering near me art,
Unveil thyself!
Ah! What a spasm racks my heart!
To novel emotions
All my senses are stirred with storm like the ocean’s.

Note how life in the elements is expressed here.

I feel thee draw my heart, with might unmeasured!
Thou must! Thou must! Though life stand on the hazard!

And now in the course of his meditation Faust pronounces the invocation ascribed to the sign of the Earth-Spirit. It is a meditative, suggestive mantram, and really leads to the sight of the Master of the spirits, into whose dominion we pass, when we enter the elemental world. But we note at once that Faust is not ready for this world—he feels, above all, that he is not prepared for this world. What is lacking? Self-knowledge! He must gain self-knowledge, which is truly the deepest knowledge of the world of which we form a part. The knowledge which must be gained if we would swim and move and travel and have our being in the elemental world. But of that which is individual in this world Faust has no cognisance.

This spirit-talk between Faust and the Earth-Spirit is very characteristic of the stage of maturity reached by Goethe at the time when he wrote this scene, which represents his own tremendous endeavours to penetrate the spiritual world.

Spirit: Who calls to me?

Faust shrinks back from the sound at once. Naturally, it is quite unlike anything that can be heard with the physical ears. It is not that the sound comes from a long way oS, but that the aspirant to spiritual heights must have become part of sound itself. So that sound there is something quite different from what it is heard upon this Earth. Totally different. It is the same with vision. Man no longer sees by means of the light, but having become incorporated with it he streams out with it. Everything appears quite different. Faust had desired to become a super-man. That is to say, he desired to enter the spiritual world. But now this spiritual world fills him with terror. By this meeting with the Earth-Spirit, Eaust realises that to gain entrance into the spiritual world he must become a very different being from what he was before, as man; that it is not possible to enter these worlds encumbered with the natural powers, sensations and passions. And, as he fell back the first time from the higher spiritual worlds into the elemental worlds, so now he falls back from the elemental world into his own perceptions, because he has still remained the same ego he was before. He had not developed a fitness for this elemental world into which the meditation ending in the incantation to the Earth-Spirit had introduced him. For one moment he had caught a glimpse of the beings who inhabit this world and of their nature. But the spirit says to him:—

Where art thou, Faust, whose clamour filled mine ear,
Thou, that didst press amain into my sphere?

I have already pointed out that this voice sounded from the sub-consciousness—that these words were spoken by that subconscious Faust whom the external Faust himself did not really know.

Say, is it thou, that by my breath surrounded,
In all Life’s utmost deeps confounded,

This ‘Thou’ stands for the ordinary Faust, while the striving, struggling Faust was the loftier individuality of Faust.

A timorous, writhing worm!

But the opposition in Faust is aroused. He determines to enter that world for which he is unfit.

Creature of Flame, thou shalt not daunt me!
'Tis I, 'tis Faust, thy peer I vaunt me!

Now he can hear how the spirits of the elemental world, into which he, Faust, has transferred himself, five in the history of mankind: how they live in what the races and civilisations accomplish on the earth: how they live in it all. And the secret of the Elemental World is spoken by the Earth-Spirit. He never speaks of ‘being,’ but only of ‘becoming,’ of the happenings.

Spirit: In floods of being, in actions storm,
Up and down I wave,
To and fro I flee,
Birth and the grave,
An infinite sea,
A changeful weaving,
An ardent living;
The ringing loom of Time is my care,
And I weave God’s living garment there.

Not in space or in time! (See the Hague lectures entitled “The Effect of Occult Development on the Bodies and Self of Man.”) This is the spirit that lives through history, so much Faust realises:—

Thou busy Spirit, that rangest unconfined
Round the wide world, how near I feel to thee.

Thou that rangest unconfined round the wide world! Thou who art the spirit belonging to the spirits of time! How near I feel to thee! So he says in his presumption. Then the spirit speaks through words of thunder as Faust describes them a little further on. Lake thunder indeed they strike upon his soul and dash him back to the ordinary earth in which he dwells, because he is not yet mature enough. Self-knowledge must be gained and then in the extended self become one with the universe, he must seek the spiritual world. As yet he cannot find it, hence the thunder tones of the Earth Spirit.

Thou'rt like the Spirit thou graspest with thy mind,
Thou’rt not like me!

Who then is this spirit whom Faust cannot understand? What spirit can Faust understand? He, made in the image of the Godhead, who cannot understand the Earth Spirit! How then can he proceed further in self-knowledge? What, then, is this human spirit like, whom Faust can understand?

(This Spirit here enters in dressing-gown and night-cap. The second Faust: Wagner!)

This, then, is the spirit whom thou canst comprehend! Wagner. Him thou canst understand! Thou hast attained no higher than this: for all else that lives in thee is nought but obstinacy and passion.

Faust has advanced a step upon the road to self-knowledge. This is what is so peculiar in Goethe’s Faust, and it demonstrates the fine artistic perception of the master. The whole dramatic setting is, in fact, an illustration of the steps to self-knowledge.

As Mephistopheles illustrated one stage of self-knowledge gained by Faust, so also does the figure of Wagner. Wagner is really Faust himself. It would be perfectly correct if on the stage Faust were to be represented in accordance with this idea, and if the figure of Wagner in night-attire, from whom Faust recoils, were to be made to resemble Faust; if Wagner, in fact, were represented as a duplicate of Faust. Then people would understand at once why Wagner enters at this moment; what Wagner expresses is in reality what Faust has already grasped. Everything else that he has said has merely been empty rhetoric.

Faust believed that he could arrive at the deepest spiritual truths by reciting empty phrases, the real meaning of which he has never experienced in his soul. Now he acquires a piece of self-knowledge. Wagner speaks truth. Faust has never expressed the true innermost experiences of his soul. He has only been ‘reciting,’ ‘spouting.’

‘Pardon—I heard your voice declaiming!’

‘Aye, marry, if your preacher be an actor,
As that from time to time well happen may.’

This scorn, this pride comes from the Luciferic influence in Faust. For if Faust were not so blinded by Lucifer, he would express the same sentiments as Wagner does, that is, if he could bring himself to confess what he is honestly capable of grasping with his understanding. The other is a faint foreshadowing of what Faust hopes to attain. But in this conversation with himself—for that is what it really is—Faust nevertheless makes a step forward. We do make a step forward in life, my dear friends, when we thus meet ourselves in others. We do not like to confess to ourselves that we possess certain characteristics, but when we see these in other people, we find it easier to study them. By this means, by the consideration of our own characteristics in the personality of another, we gain self-knowledge; even as Faust did in the personality of Wagner. Faust, however, had not yet advanced sufficiently to be able to say when Wagner had left him, ‘Yes! Truly that am I myself.’ If he had attained to complete mental illumination he would have said, ‘I am only a Wagner! Wagner is reflected in my brain!’

‘How is the head by hope not all forsaken,
That ever cleaves to stalest stuff, and when
With greedy hand he digs for treasures, then
Is overjoyed, if earth-worms he hath taken!’

For up to the present Faust has done nothing except seek for spirits, in the manner already described. In this encounter with Wagner, Faust acquires self-knowledge. Who was it that sent Wagner to Faust? It was the Earth- Spirit that sent him.

‘Thou’rt like the Spirit thou graspest with thy mind,
Thou’rt not like me!’

So now Faust is to see the spirit he resembles. He does not resemble the Earth-Spirit, the Lord of the World; but for once he shall see one of the figures which make up his personality. ‘There! Behold Wagner! This Wagner dwells in thee!’

But there is more in Faust than Wagner alone, there is also the Luciferic element, which strives against Wagner, viz., against Faust himself. Besides these there is yet another element.

If we look into the earliest edition of Faust, we find that the scenes immediately following that in which the Earth-Spirit appears, are missing. When the first edition appeared, the missing scenes were not written. Goethe was not ready to write them. The early edition ran thus: Conversation with Wagner, the students, Mephistopheles. Faust is sitting among his students and into this circle Mephistopheles enters. Goethe did not in reality know whether Mephistopheles was really Lucifer or Ahriman. If he had been acquainted with Spiritual Science he would have made Lucifer appear then.

In Mephistopheles we have the other spirit sent by the Earth-Spirit to Faust. The Earth-Spirit has already sent Wagner, now he sends Mephistopheles, or, as we should say, Lucifer. Little by little Faust must learn what is really within him. The Earth Spirit sends to him Mephistopheles. ‘Behold! Another of the spirits whom thou canst comprehend. Try to understand the Luciferic element within thyself, instead of presuming all at once the Earth Spirit!’

That Goethe was uncertain about the matter appears from four lines in the original manuscript, which were omitted in the later edition. They occur in the original manuscript of 1775, after the scene in which Mephistopheles has shown Gretchen to Faust, and in which Faust is burning to make her acquaintance. There they stand, these four lines in the original manuscript, but they were omitted from the Fragment published in 1790.

After Faust has commanded Mephistopheles, who is really Lucifer—for Goethe confuses the two—to procure the jewels, he departs. And Mephistopheles, left alone, says, in the old manuscript,

‘You’d think he were a Prince’s son!
Had Lucifer a dozen such,
It would remunerate him much.
In the end his commission’s always won.’²

There it stands. There Mephistopheles gives himself the name of Lucifer. As I said before, these lines were omitted in the later editions. And what was the task which Goethe set himself, when in his mature old age he endeavoured to give expression to his real self in his Faust? Has task was, to show how man might attain to self-knowledge. In this first scene, which Goethe wrote in his youth, we see foreshadowed what we can read so clearly now and which is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and, its Attainment as the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold. Here wo see how man discovers little by little the various elements of which he is composed and how they are distributed. This is shadowed forth in Faust. He discovers himself in Wagner and in Mephisto-Lucifer. By degrees he learns to know himself in his different parts, first as Wagner, then as Lucifer-Mephisto. But, as I said before, Goethe had to wait for maturity before he could fully understand, as far as it was possible for him to do so at the time in which he lived, the tremendous import of the Christ Impulse for humanity. Thus we see it was not till he was advanced in years that he endeavoured to finish the work he had begun as a young man. This early work described Faust’s struggles, up to the point when he meets himself face to face in the various reflections of himself which are presented to him, amongst which is the Luciferic reflection of himself. When Goethe had reached maturity he finished this work by bringing Faust into touch with the Impulse poured out by Christ into the aura of earthly evolution. The Christian symbols are then introduced. Therefore, in Faust we see a document, which relates how Goethe himself was brought to Christianity by occultism, that is to say, to the Christ-Impulse. And it shows that we too, today, are proceeding further along that selfsame road upon which Goethe, in his time, first struck out as a pioneer. In Goethe’s time it was only possible to attain to a foreshadowing of this. today, the time has come when it is possible for man by means of Spiritual Science to enter those spiritual regions, the goal towards which Goethe’s lifelong struggles were directed. today, Faust must be understood in a different way from that in which even Goethe himself understood it. Yes, the world progresses, my dear friends, and if we do not fully realise that fact, then we do not regard the world seriously enough. Such experiences as these, showing how man is composed of various parts, when he faces himself in his true being and in his Luciferic nature, such experiences always make for progress, however slight. When we have made some slight progress, as we can do by meditation, we must not think that we are in a position to command a view of the whole spiritual world. We can only advance by very slow degrees. There are two natures in Faust—the Wagner nature and that other—the nature which is always pressing forward. Goethe has worked this point out very beautifully in the revision which he made in his mature years. As soon as Faust had been led to Christianity, Goethe felt that he must show the working of the Wagner nature in him. That is why Faust and Wagner take that walk together on Easter Day. It is the struggle going on in Faust’s soul which is here dramatically represented to us under the guise of two distinct persons. The higher man in Faust strives to rise: the Wagner-nature holds him back. A spark of comprehension of the spiritual world has been enkindled in Faust, therefore, when the Poodle meets him he perceives more than the actual material Poodle. It is really something like a soul-force speaking in Faust in the conversation with Wagner:

‘Faust: Dost thou see yon black dog, ranging through shoot and stubble?

Wagner: I saw bim long ago; he struck me not !’ the least.

Faust: (the higher nature) Look at him narrowly! What mak’st thou of the beast?

Wagner-nature: A poodle, who like any poodle breathing, casts for the scent, strayed from his master’s heels.’

These words of Wagner are, in fact, objections or pretexts which Faust, in reality, is making to himself. Behind the visible, Faust is beginning to perceive the invisible. He has already become aware of its existence. It is a perception created by experiences, a spark from the spiritual world which has descended into him. And here we see how honest Goethe is and how loyal to his artistic principles; only we must understand him aright. Faust now feels the Luciferic in himself. As you know, the Luciferic is connected with stubbornness, with secret egoism. Faust takes this Luciferic attribute with him even when his very soul is permeated by the Christ Impulse. It is this Luciferic attribute in Faust which causes the Gospel of St. John which he wishes to translate, to appear to him as incomplete.

To the man who understands, the Goethe commentators appear almost comic. They certainly follow him, even going so far as to attribute to the author himself the sayings he divides among his various characters. Faust does not yet understand the Gospel-Text. Otherwise he would have remained satisfied with the words, ‘In the Beginning was the Word.’ He hesitates, because he does not understand them. To the professors it seemed as if Faust did understand these words; but this is not the case. Faust does not understand them as yet. He can well perceive the ‘Might,’ the ‘Deed;’and he gauges the Gospel from the standpoint of his own rational understanding. This method now produces the exactly opposite effect; before, Faust was thrust back into the sensuous world, now, he is raised up into the spiritual world. In this case, his limitations have proved of use to him. When he writes ‘Thought’ and ‘Might’ and ‘Deed,’ he is raised up into the spiritual world, because there is then a spark of spiritual force in Faust’s soul. The spirits then appear, and Mephistopheles appears once more as the messenger from the Earth-Spirit... Mephistopheles, that shadowy figure, a combination of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Thus you see that in the endeavour of Faust to penetrate into the spiritual worlds we must recognise the struggle of Goethe himself,—and at the present time there is much for us to learn from this. Very much. My special task, both in this lecture and the last (the one delivered on Easter Sunday), has been to press home to you the fact, that a mind imbued with the desire to penetrate the hidden depths, finds it a hard matter to approach the Christ-Impulse, if that mind, fettered by its pride and arrogance, rests on its own strength alone, and will not accept what Spiritual Science is able to offer it. On the other hand, I wished to show in the example of Faust the might of that which entered the world with the Christ-Impulse. The time will come when men will learn to understand more and more perfectly the inner nature of the Christ-Impulse, by the help of Spiritual Science. The fact remains, that centuries after it was poured into the earthly evolution of man, something else appears in this human evolution that cannot be properly understood by man. But as soon as he begins to understand this something aright, by this very understanding ho will be brought to a deeper realisation of the Christ-Event. This is an illustration of what the Christ-Impulse really is, an illustration afforded by the history of the world for the earthly evolution of mankind.

As you know, six hundred years after the Christ-Impulse entered the evolution of mankind, a Prophet arose in a certain community, who at first rejected and denied the existence of all that the outpouring of the Christ-Impulse brought into human evolution. I refer to Mahomet. We really must not fall into the superstitions of the nineteenth century, those superstitions which explained, from the rationalistic standpoint, matters which can only be explained from the spiritual standpoint. To earnest students of Spiritual Science the words of a particularly learned man, when speaking of Mahomet, must indeed seem laughable. He speaks thus: Yes! He declared that angels came to him in the form of doves, and whispered into his ear. What they told him he transcribed later as the Koran!—But Mahomet, said the learned man, was an impostor. He had put into his ears a few grains of which doves are especially fond. Then the doves flew to him, and after having taken the grains they flew away again!—This was the sort of explanation given both within and without Christendom in the very learned nineteenth century.

The time will come when we shall really laugh at such explanations, although they may be fully able to satisfy the materialist. But we must take Mahomet more seriously. We must realise that what was working in his soul was indeed a relationship with the spiritual world, such as Goethe strove to discover for his Faust. But what did Mahomet feel? What did he discover? I am only able to touch upon this today, another time I will describe it in detail. What did Mahomet discover? Well! As you know, Mahomet strove after a world for which he had an expression, which is contained in the one word—‘God.’ The world to him was a Monon, a monotheistic expression of God. This world naturally contained nothing of the essence of Christianity. But Mahomet, all the same, did see into the spiritual world. He entered into that elemental world of which I spoke just now. He promised his followers that they too should enter this spiritual world after passing through the Gate of Death. But he could only describe to them that spiritual world which he himself had learnt to see. What kind of spiritual world is this of Mahomet? It is the Luciferic world which Mahomet describes to his followers as the goal to which they should strive to attain, and which appears to him to be Paradise. And if we come down from the abstract to the concrete, and consider the essence of the Islamic endeavour to reach the spiritual world, we shall recognise what Spiritual Science also proclaims. But this spiritual world of Mahomet is that over which Lucifer has dominion. This Luciferic world has been misinterpreted as Paradise, as that world towards which all human endeavour should be directed.

It must indeed make a deep impression upon our minds when we study the historical evolution of the world in the light of this important phenomenon. It must cause us to reflect deeply when we realise, as we proceed on our spiritual way, that a great Prophet appeared and promulgated the error that the Luciferic world was identical with Paradise. I do not wish such an idea to enter your minds as being merely an abstract truth. The effect of that upon the soul might be really shattering, if one dwelt upon it too much.

But now, my dear friends, what steps must the Mahometan take to enter his spiritual world? It would be interesting to count the numbers of those present today who have read all through the Koran I For it is no easy matter to read the whole Koran, with its endless repetitions, and its style, so wearisome to the Western mind. But there are Mahometans, who have read the Koran from beginning to end, no less than seventy thousand times! That means that the inspired word has been so impressed upon the soul that it becomes a living reality! If we Christians have nothing to learn from the contents of this religion, we can at least learn that the inner life of this community, marred as it is by spiritual error, is yet very different from ours, with all our spiritual enlightenment! The most a European does, is to read his Faust. When he has forgotten it he reads it again. Again he forgets it and reads it once more. But the individual who has read Faust even a hundred times would indeed be hard to find. This is quite easy to understand when we consider the Western methods of education up to the present time. For how would it be possible to read everything that has been printed by Western civilisation seventy thousand times? That is quite comprehensible. But we can learn one lesson. It is one thing simply to become acquainted with something important for the soul’s progress: but it is quite another thing to five with it and by constant repetition to make it part of oneself. This latter is an experience that must be understood and an understanding of this cannot be gained by following the methods of thought pursued by our Western nations. But we ought to ponder over these questions. Words such as have been spoken in these lectures have not been spoken merely for the sake of talking, but to arouse you to contemplation and reflection, to increase the sense of our responsibility to ourselves and to the world, in relation to the potential and inevitable future of Spiritual Science.

In many respects we are living in a difficult age. All the terrible outer events which surround us at the present day are but the outer signs of our whole difficult age. It is a mistake to regard this awful time as a disease, in the same way as we refer to any ordinary illness. For sickness is often a process of healing. The real disease has preceded the outward physical manifestation of sickness. So it is with this cataclysm of misery (the War) which is sweeping over the world. It was preceded by something unhealthy, and humanity has yet to fathom much lower depths than it has any desire even to perceive.

Oh, my dear friends! What a load of grief must weigh down the souls of those who contemplate our present time and its tasks! And when they consider the small amount of understanding which so many people bring to bear upon those tasks, the anguish of the soul becomes well-nigh intolerable! When we consider the opinions of men of today—how they think!—how they feel!—their attitude!—and when we remember that it is these thoughts, these feelings, this attitude which will crystallise into outward expression; and when we see how little men have already learnt from outward experience; when we contemplate all these things, truly the soul is filled with an immeasurable sorrow, which must often and often recur!

Can we really foretell the future? To take our most recent experiences: What has humanity learnt during these last few months of trial? Compare man’s opinions today with what they were eight months ago. What is the result? We find the same errors of judgment. The same outlook. Where men, eight months ago, believed themselves to be in the right, now, today, eight months later, after all these awful experiences, they still believe themselves to be in the right. They even assert that these terrible events have taken place with the express purpose of proving that they were right. I can never express the infinite pain with which one observes the lack of discrimination in mankind, the failure to perceive that this time should be considered as a time of probation, a time for gaining knowledge. But one may hope that at least those who come within the influence of Spiritual Science may learn something from these experiences if they will consider them in connection with a study of Faust.

Again and again would I impress upon the minds of all anthroposophical students, that intense earnestness and a pure and holy desire for truth must be inseparable from all anthroposophical studies. Any motive other than the honest desire for truth, in such a movement as ours, will take its revenge. Anything of which it is possible to say: ‘Pardon me, I heard you declaiming’ must be sternly repressed and striven against.

My dear friends! Is it not strange when we see the traditional Wagner upon the stage, to hear learned men, contemporary rationalists and philosophers jeering loudly at the conception of the true Wagner, instead of striking their breasts and recognising themselves in Wagner. The real Wagner reigns everywhere. He sits in the Master’s chair and in the laboratory. A great truth would be proclaimed in our scientific and philosophic literature if the greater number of authors would choose the pseudonym of ‘Wagner.’ For Wagner is the real author of all our contemporary philosophies.

I greatly fear that in the ranks of Spiritual Science, my dear friends, there are indeed many who have ample cause to smite the breast and by a stern self-examination to lay bare the secrets of their souls, so that they may discover how much of what they find there is mere ‘spouting’ and how much is reality and a pure desire for truth!

With this note of warning addressed to your hearts and to the innermost forces of your souls, I will close these observations, the continuation of which, owing to my enforced absence, will have to be postponed for some little time.

• 1. This is the literal rendering of the German in the passage.
• 2. Translation by E. K.

It is hardly possible this year, to give a Whitsuntide lecture in the true sense of the word. Let us consider the essential character of Whitsuntide as depicted in that document of Christianity, the New Testament. We shall find that the outstanding feature of that Whitsun Festival was the pouring forth of the Spirit upon certain men called the Apostles. As a result of this outpouring of the Spirit, (so we learn from the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles), men assembled together at that Whitsuntide, ten days after the so-called Ascension, all speaking the most varied languages, and understanding each one for himself the news proclaimed to him so thoroughly, that the language sounded quite familiar to him, although it is expressly stated that each man could only speak his mother tongue. Thus the pouring forth of the Spirit at Whitsuntide appears as the outpouring of the Spirit of Love, Concord and Harmony upon all those who, assembled together from every comer of the earth, all spoke different languages. Or perhaps in order to catch the exact purport of the Bible words it would be better to express it thus: The message of the Whitsuntide revelation was so in tune with the human heart that each man could understand it, although he knew no other language than his own.

But this year, in nearly every case, the exact opposite of this is taking place in the world around us at this Whitsuntide. If only an interpretation might be vouchsafed, that we might know the meaning of this Whitsun revelation! We only need to reflect, that the world nineteen centuries after this Whitsun revelation has understood this Whitsun revelation in such a way, that this present Whitsuntide sees thirty-four nations speaking different languages, at war with one another, and therefore, in a sense, in complete contradiction to the spirit of the Whitsuntide Feast. Perhaps this question of language shows, at least to a certain extent, how the spirit of understanding has passed away from mankind, how that first Whitsun revelation has not as yet spread over the whole earth in a sufficiently penetrating and convincing manner, how it has not yet seized upon the souls of men. Perhaps that is the reason why it is now necessary that that revelation should speak to the souls of men under a new form, should speak more clearly, more urgently than it has done as yet, so that for the future its true meaning may be understood aright.

So then this year in the light of our Whitsuntide considerations, let us take up a more universal standpoint, a point of view which from a certain side will bring us nearer to the new Whitsuntide revelation, by this I mean Spiritual Science. For we must regard what we have learnt during those lectures as a "Whitsuntide revelation to humanity; we must accept Spiritual Science as a Whitsuntide revelation.

Let us consider now what wo know of the Mystery of Golgotha and allow this knowledge to sink deeply into our souls. What is the essential part of the Mystery of Golgotha? It is this. That a Spiritual Being who, as we know, belonged to the cosmic spheres, descended and underwent earthly fate and earthly life in a physical human body; that the Christ Being lived for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. By that three years’ experience in tho body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ Being has, since the Mystery of Golgotha, been united with what we call the Earth-Spirit, with what we term the Earth- Aura. Thus the whole of our earthly evolution is divided into two epochs of evolution. There was the period before the Mystery of Golgotha, during which the Christ Spirit could only be faintly perceived when man through initiation rose above the earthly sphere so that he no longer perceived what lies within the earthly sphere alone, but also that in which the Earth did not as yet participate, though predestined for a distant future. The other period is the time after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Since the Mystery of Golgotha we know that man with his spiritual nature does not need to leave the Earth, but that he can remain within the earthly sphere and participate within the earthly sphere in the Impulse of the Christ Being.

We must clear the ground a little here. It is true that through the ages up to our own time, a portion of humanity has always been aware that the Christ-Impulse had united itself to the Earth-existence. A great change has taken place in the universal human consciousness, especially of those people who have felt something of the Christ-Impulse. The soul was filled with the belief that Christ is with man and that the human soul can unite itself with Christ, that the human mind can participate during its Earth-existence with that which is impregnated with the living Christ-Impulse. But a comprehension of what the Christ-Impulse means in the universal Earth-existence in the evolution of humanity can only be brought home to the human soul by Spiritual Science. For this the knowledge is necessary of how this Christ-Impulse works in the human soul, so that two spiritual impulses may in a sense be made to balance one another.

This is represented by the group which will be placed at the east end of tho Goetheanum. There you will see the Representative of humanity, the Representative of man, in so far as he is capable of experiencing the profoundest, that which a man does experience when the Christ-Impulse is a living reality in his soul. The principal figure in the group at the east of the building may be called the Christ, yet it may also be called the Representative of the innermost soul of man in general. This Spirit, Who speaks through a human body, is seen in connection with two other spiritual Beings, Lucifer and Ahriman. In a standing position, the Representative of humanity expresses His connection with Lucifer and Ahriman. Everything about this figure must be characteristic. Above all, when this figure is erected later on, you will be able to notice that the gesture of the left hand which is raised, and the gesture of the right hand which is lowered, are very noteworthy. You will understand these gestures when you see that Lucifer is falling from the rocks above, towards the summit of which the Representative of humanity raises his left arm—Lucifer falls, because he has broken his wings.¹

Now it is easy to believe that his wings are broken by the force which flows from the arm of the Representative of man. It seems as though this force streamed out towards Lucifer and broke his wings. That, however, would be a false interpretation. And I hope we shall succeed in making such a false interpretation of the plastic representation impossible. For the point is, not that Lucifer’s wings are broken by something that streams forth from the Christ-permeated man, but that Lucifer experienced something within himself when he felt the presence of the Christ, which led to his breaking his wings. Because he cannot bear the Christ-Impulse, the Christ-strength, he breaks his own wings. This is an incident which has been caused not by a conflict between Christ and Lucifer, but it is an incident in the inner life of Lucifer himself, something which Lucifer himself must experience; and there must not be a moment’s doubt as to the fact that it would be impossible for Christ to feel either hatred or animosity against Lucifer—Christ is the Christ. He only fills the world-existence with equanimity, He joins battle with no might in the world; but when the might of Lucifer comes near His Presence, might must join battle with itself. Therefore, the raised left hand does not work aggressively, neither does the left side of the countenance with its strange expression, but it is a token that in the cosmic connections Christ has something to do with Lucifer. It has, however, nothing of the nature of a battle about it. The battle only originates in the soul of Lucifer himself, he breaks his own wings, they are not broken by Christ.

It is the same thing with Ahriman, who cowers in a hole in the rocks beneath the Christ-Man on the right, where the earth is driven upwards, where the material, is, as it were, driven into man, but cannot gain further strength and is crippled because the Christ-power is near.

Again, the Christ-strength which pulses and flows through the arm into the hand, betrays no hatred towards Ahriman, rather does Ahriman cripple himself and by means of what is passing, that which lies hidden in his soul—the gold in the veins of the earth—draws round him like chains so that he makes himself fetters of the earth-gold and forges them on to himself. He is not fettered by Christ; he forges fetters for himself, as soon as he experiences the nearness of Christ.

These are the original relations between the Beings, given in brief outline, and these must be realised before the Christ-Impulse can be truly comprehended by the human soul.

A very simple comparison will make the Christ-Impulse clear in an abstract way. Take a pendulum. The pendulum swings to one side and swings back again as far as it can of its own weight, and then again swings back towards the opposite side as far as it can, till it meets a point which we may designate as a balancing point. This point would be a dead point, a resting point, if the pendulum did not swing towards the opposite side. Life is a pendulum, because it swings backwards and forwards towards both sides and has a resting place in the middle.

It is thus that we must think of the earthly evolution since Golgotha. The pendulum swings out towards one side, the Luciferic side. Then again towards the other side—the Ahrimanic side. And the balancing point in the middle is Christ.

That the importance of this fact must be grasped, can be proved from a notable historical event. We all admire the picture painted by Michelangelo, called ‘The Last Judgment.’ You know it from reproductions of the original, which is preserved in the Sistine Chapel. In this picture we see the Christ, painted with consummate master-skill, Christ triumphant, judging men; sending some to hell to meet the wicked spirits,—others, the righteous, to heaven. If we study the face of this Christ, we see anger there—earthly anger—and if we have assimilated Spiritual Science, if we have really welded its contents with love into our own souls, we are forced to exclaim today—notwithstanding our admiration of the marvellous creation of Michelangelo—‘That is no Christ, for Christ does not judge men! They pass judgment upon themselves,—as in the case of Lucifer and Ahriman—they experience the results of their own deeds, not the result of any conflict carried on against them by Christ.’

In the days when Michelangelo created his Christ, the time had not arrived for the recognition of Christ in His full perfection. Men were still groping in the twilight, so to speak. They attributed to Christ qualities which we today know must be assigned to Lucifer or Ahriman. Thus, we today can understand why people have found something Luciferic or Ahrimanic in the Christ of Michelangelo. For Christ as there represented is not free from these attributes, whereas the true Christ is entirely without them.

At the stage of advancement in spiritual knowledge to which mankind had attained in those days, it was not possible to produce a picture of Christ which should portray a true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For, in the time of Michelangelo, the relationship existing between the Christ and Lucifer and Ahriman was not yet made known. Let us pause here and let this fact sink into our minds. Let us try and realise its full significance.

How often in our meetings have I emphasised the point that it shews a false perception to turn to Lucifer and say ‘I must fly from him,’ or to turn to Ahriman and say ‘I must fly from him.’ This attitude only means making terms with weakness. It would be forbidding the pendulum to swing backwards and forwards, wishing it to remain at rest for ever. We cannot escape the cosmic forces—by which I mean Lucifer and Ahriman—but we can adjust our position with regard to them. This we shall only be able to do when we understand the Christ-Impulse aright, when we recognise in the Christ Being the guide who will adjust our position with regard to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, which must some day be world-powers.

Now let us consider what it is that Lucifer brings into the life of man. Lucifer brings sensation, passion. and everything connected with the life of the feelings and of the heart. How dry, insipid and abstract life would be without the pulsation of keen sensation and intense feeling. Let us glance at the evolution of history. What a power passion, ‘noble passion,’ as it is often termed (and rightly so), has been in history. What influence feeling and sensation have had. Nevertheless, we cannot foster feeling or sensation without entering the sphere of Lucifer. Therefore, we must never enter this sphere without the guidance of the Christ-Impulse.

On the other hand we see how necessary it is, especially in these modern times, to understand more and more about the world, to cultivate science, to obtain the mastery over the external forces of nature and of all that exists within them. In these domains Ahriman is ruler. We should indeed remain stupid and dull if we could escape from the Ahrimanic element. There should be no question of avoiding the Ahrimanic element, but on the contrary, of entering the sphere over which Ahriman reigns, under the guidance of the Christ-Impulse. We must not endeavour slothfully to find the resting-place, but must strive to share in the living movement of the world’s pendulum; only we must be careful while moving with it that we take no step without the guidance of the Christ-Impulse. Knowledge of Christ is not possible until the relationship which exists between the Christ-Impulse and the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces is clearly understood by the human soul. This revelation of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence in the world is one of the tasks which the Spiritual Scientific movement must undertake, for it is aware that the Christ-Impulse is the foundation upon which it must take its stand. That is why you find nothing about the Ahrimanic and Luciferic elements in the non-Christian theosophical teaching; but they were bound to appear as soon as the Spiritual Scientific Movement began seriously and earnestly to reckon with the Christ-Impulse.

I think that it is, indeed, extraordinarily important for the human soul to feel that Spiritual Science has the task laid upon it of bringing something really new into the human consciousness; something so new that by means of it we are able to compare it with such a great human creation as that of the Christ in ‘The Last Judgment’ of Michelangelo. The knowledge which is coming to us from Spiritual Science must appear as the new Whitsuntide revelation, in the true sense of the words.

At Easter we saw how one of the greatest masters of modern times, Goethe, endeavoured to bring his Faust, the representative of humanity, into relationship with the Christ-Impulse. And we saw that Goethe in his youth was not able to do this; that only in his mature old age did he succeed. Thus, as we study the spiritual life through all its multifarious stages up to the present day, it appears to us as a struggle, an unceasing struggle. It really makes one extremely humble when one considers how the master minds of humanity have striven to gain some idea, some conception of the true significance of the Christ-Impulse. It is borne in upon us how very humble we should be in our human endeavour to obtain a knowledge of the Christ-Impulse.

As we have seen, Goethe made a great point of bringing the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements, which are always working around man, into contact with Faust, his representative of humanity. And we have also seen that Goethe confused the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements with one another in his figure of Mephistopheles, so that it is difficult to distinguish the one from the other therein. As we showed in the Easter Lectures, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements are confused and intermingled with one another in Mephistopheles, because at that time true understanding was as yet impossible for Goethe. Goethe had, in fact, during the whole of his life, been aware of the struggle going on within him to arrive at some understanding of the relationship of man to Lucifer and Ahriman. When Schiller asked him, at the end of the eighteenth century, to continue his Faust, Goethe reconsidered what he had written in his youth from the standpoint of his maturity and pronounced this work which he had put together at different times to be a hybrid—half-animal, half-man—thus it was that Faust appeared to him. He called his Faust, ‘a barbaric composition,’ in order to indicate the difficulty in going on with it. Here we have Goethe’s opinion of his own work! Goethe, who must have certainly known, better than his critics, said the Faust was a hybrid—half an animal, half a man—a barbaric composition 1

What I endeavoured to convey to you at Easter, which might very easily have been misunderstood, only leads back to the opinion of Goethe himself about his own work. Nevertheless, many learned men consider Faust to be a finished work of art, one which cannot be surpassed. This was not Goethe’s own opinion, neither can we accept it. Although we recognise in Faust a work of the very highest order, we must not evade the truth that the drama of Faust fails in its fundamental conception owing to Goethe’s mistake in confusing the personalities of Lucifer and Ahriman and blending them together into his figure of Mephistopheles.

But in spite of all this confusion Goethe was dimly aware that both Lucifer and Ahriman must appear. Only he mixed the two together and called the result Mephistopheles. Thus, in some of the scenes in Faust, Lucifer appears as Lucifer, whilst in others he appears as Mephistopheles or Ahriman. But Goethe was quite clear about one thing, viz:—that there is something that takes place in man under the influence of both Lucifer and Ahriman, of both Lucifer and Mephistopheles.

Let us consider the end of the first part of Goethe’s Faust. How does it end? Faust has loaded his soul with the blackest guilt imaginable; he has the life of a fellow-being upon his conscience. He has betrayed a fellow-creature. Here is sin indeed against himself and against a fellow-being!... The first part of Faust ends with the words, ‘Hither to me,’ pronounced by Mephistopheles, while at the same time a voice, appearing to come from heaven, cries faintly ‘Henry! Henry 1’ This ending to the first part of Faust tells us where Faust has arrived. He has fallen into the power of Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles has secured him. About that there is no possible doubt.

And now we come to the second part of Faust. The second part opens with a pleasing scene. ‘Faust is discovered lying on flowery turf, weary, restless, seeking sleep.’ Spirits appear; and from their songs we gather that it is spring time. Nature is in her most beautiful mood, even as she is today. To understand this mood we only need to go out of doors at this time of year. Nature at Whitsuntide! The Whitsuntide atmosphere I This Whitsuntide atmosphere works its effect upon Faust. And after a while he rises and continues his life-journey.

A certain scholar has drawn a conclusion from this incident, for which there is certainly something to be said, although it is philistine and pedantic. The scholar puts it thus: ‘If you have a heavy load of guilt upon your soul, as was the case with Faust after his treatment of Gretchen, retire to a pleasant spot, lie down on the flowery turf, make some mountain excursions, and your soul vail then be healed and ready for fresh deeds.’ Speaking from the realistic, Ahrimanic point of view, there is certainly something to be said for this conclusion drawn by this scholar—Rieger—for, really, to all those who hold the purely materialistic view so popular at the present day, the second part of Faust must be unendurable after the first part in which Faust is depicted as having loaded his soul with such a terrible burden of sin. Unfortunately this, the greatest epic of humanity, is not taken literally enough, for Faust is the greatest epic of humanity in so far as it concerns the human personality. If it were only taken literally people would know that ‘Hither to me,’ is true... Mephistopheles has got hold of Faust. Because of this, Faust is lying on flowery turf, restless, seeking sleep. We must not imagine that Faust is freed from the powers of hell at the beginning of Part II. But Goethe strove after true spiritual knowledge. How very near Goethe was to spiritual knowledge we gather from a sentence in a letter written by him to his friend, the musician, Zelter. A most remarkable sentence! Goethe wrote, ‘Consider that with each breath that we draw, an etheric stream of life permeates our whole being, so that for very joy we can scarcely remember our sorrow.’

With each breath that we draw, an etheric stream of life does indeed permeate our inner being—that means nothing less than that Goethe knew all about man’s etheric body. But in his day he naturally only spoke about this to his own circle of friends.

First let us be quite clear as to Goethe’s position with regard to human nature in general. He studied this human nature and said: this human nature is capable of sin, for something exists within it which is subject to Mephistophelian influence, something appertaining to Mephistopheles. When Goethe studied the human beings who belonged to this sphere, he also became aware that something exists in human nature which can never fall under this influence, something which will be protected from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic influence. This it is with which the second part of Faust deals; this something in human nature, which can be protected from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers. The man Faust, who was capable of sin, who had allowed himself to be led by Mephistopheles into the most trivial and commonplace pleasures of life, the man Faust who had betrayed Gretchen—had become a sinner. In our language we should say: this Faust would have to wait for the next reincarnation.

But there is a something in human nature which is a man’s higher self, and remains in communication with the spiritual powers of the world. The spiritual world-powers draw near to this eternal part in Faust. We must not think in a realistic way of Faust, as we see him at the beginning of Part II, simply as Faust become an older man. He really represents the higher self in Faust. His outward form is unchanged. But this outward form is now representative of that ‘something’ in Faust which could not fall into sin. This ‘something’ in Faust which could not fall into sin, now enters into relationship with the servants of the Earth-spirit.

From his youth upwards Goethe had been intensely anxious to be able to form some conception of human sin, of the evil in the world, and of what it is that floats over all, holding the balance against sin and evil. Thus Goethe, as he was to a certain extent forced to deliver up the one nature in Faust into the power of Mephistopheles (‘Hither to me’ ), ventured to turn to the other nature in Faust. We must be careful to make no mistake at this point. In the beginning of Part II the Faust who speaks is not the Faust whom wo met in Part I. It is another Faust, a second nature, who only outwardly bears the form of Faust, and who can participate in the spiritual which permeates our external world. Into that form, however, something must enter which has no immediate connection with the outward physical body of Faust, for the physical body retains, of course, so long as we remain in the same incarnation, all signs of the sins into which we have fallen. Perfect communion with the higher self can only be obtained by that within us which can make itself free of the physical body. Thus Faust has to undergo that transformation which we may term, ‘the transmutation of sin into higher knowledge.’ His sins he will have to carry with him into his next incarnation. In this earthly incarnation his guilt is the source of a higher knowledge which is opened to him, a more exact knowledge of life. Thus, the possibility of his higher self entering into connection with the spiritual forces which weave and interweave and permeate the world, opens out before Faust, notwithstanding that he bears on his soul a terrible load of guilt.

The higher self of Faust gets into communication with a spirit of the Earth-Aura. Goethe wished to convey at the same time, that the highest in man can never be seized by Mephistopheles (or, as we should say, by Lucifer-Ahriman). The highest is protected; it must be able to enter other spheres. Goethe meant it to be taken literally that this higher self in Faust could now communicate with the spiritual beings in the elemental world. We shall see to-morrow or the next day how this coincides with what I said in my Easter lectures. Now let us consider what relationship exists between these spiritual beings, which are under the leadership of the Air-spirit (for such is Ariel) and may thus be designated in general as Air-spirits—and the external events of nature. Let us see how they reveal themselves as a different order of spiritual beings from that of the self which in the super-earthly nature is not exposed to the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman.

‘When the spring-tide shower of blossom
Flutters down all men upon;
When on mortals from earth’s bosom
Smiles the fields’ green benison.’

Thus, when nature buds and blossoms in the Whitsuntide springtime, the elemental spirits come forth. Seen externally they are small; but as spirits they are great, for they are higher than that part of the human heart which may turn to the good or to the bad.

‘Elves great-souled though small of stature
Haste to help where help they can;
Good or evil be his nature...’

This is left for the next reincarnation, it does not concern the spirits.

‘Good or evil be his nature
Pity they the luckless man.’

They are only concerned with the higher self which is aloof from what takes place in karma or incarnation. But these spirits can only act in their own element, in which the being of man dwells only when his soul and spirit have left the external covering of the body. And now Goethe describes the duties of these elves in their spiritual greatness.

‘Ye round this head in airy wheel that hover,
In noble elfin-guise yourselves discover.
Soothe ye the bosom’s unrelenting strife,
Withdraw the bitter darts of self-upbraiding,
Purge ye his soul from horror of past life.’

This cannot happen to the Faust who is under the sway of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence. This purgation means, ‘Bring forth the higher self of Faust. Let it be there alone.’ And now it would seem as if Faust who is out of the body goes through something like an Initiation.

‘Four watches night hath’

From six o’clock in the evening till six o’clock in the morning the elves perform their task, bringing the soul, during the time between falling asleep and waiting. into communication with the spiritual forces which weave and interweave throughout the earthly existence.

‘Pause not—let each with kindly deeds be rife.’

each, that is, of the four watches which the soul experiences from the time of falling asleep till the time of awakening.

‘And first, lay ye his head on the cool pillow,
Bathe him in dew from Lethe’s waters drawn.
Soon will the cramp-racked limbs be lithe as willow
If new refreshed he sleep to meet the dawn.’

When he has accepted what the World-Spirit offers to him, when this spirit has penetrated to that part of Faust’s being where the higher self remains intact:

‘Fulfil the fairest elfin-rite
Give him again to the holy light.’

What occurs externally between his falling asleep and his awakening are real events, similar to an Initiation. And now we sec what takes place in the three periods: from six to nine; from nine to twelve; from twelve to three; from three to six. First we have the watch from six to nine o’clock.

‘When soft breezes swell, and vagrant
Haunt the green-embosomed lawn,
Twilight sheds its spices fragrant,
Sinks its mist like curtains drawn,
Breathes sweet peace, his heart composes
Like a child’s that rests from play,
On his eyes so weary, closes
Soft the portals of the day.’

The soul has gone. It is separated from the body. The second watch.

‘Now the Night more deeply darkles,
Linketh holy star to star.
Mighty torches, tiny sparkles
Glimmer near and gleam afar.
Glassed within the lake they glimmer
Gleam in Night’s unclouded round;
Throned aloft the Moon’s full shimmer
Seals the bliss of peace profound.’

Here we have a survey of the Harmony of the Spheres, the wisdom of the spheres, the great lights, the tiny sparks of light and the secrets of the Moon. All that we study in Spiritual Science about the secrets of the spheres is welded into the higher soul of Faust.

The third watch of sleep:

‘Now the hours are spent and over,
Weal and woe are swept away.
Dream of health! Thou wilt recover!
Trust the gleam of new-born day!
Vales grow green, and swell like pillows
Hill to shady rest to woo,
And in swaying silver billows
Waves the com the harvest to.’

This, as we have already said, is inwardly connected with the manifestations of Nature. Read my course of lectures on The Effect of Occult Development on the Bodies and Self of Man, given at the Hague, wherein it is shown that the human soul, when it rises out of the body, becomes one with the life and movement of outer existence. But this also points to the growth going on in the soul of Faust:

‘And in swaying silver billows
Waves the com [the soul of Faust] the harvest to.’

You will remember I have already told you that during sleep, man has the desire to return to the body.

Then comes the last watch of the night:
‘Wish on wish wouldst compass crowded,
Lift thine eyes to yon bright steep!’
The Sun can now be faintly perceived.
‘Only softly art thou shrouded
Cast away the shell of sleep!’

This is a very important line! A great poet does not make use of empty phraseology. What does ‘Cast away the shell of sleep’ mean? To the ordinary sleeper, sleep is not a shell; but it is a shell to those to whom the time between falling asleep and awakening is a time for the reception of the secrets of the universe.

‘Falter not! Thine heart embolden,
When the throng faint-hearted flees;
Nought is from the brave with-holden
Who is wise and swift to seize.’

And now the tremendous tumult which heralds the approach of the Sun reminds us of what Goethe wrote about this music of the Sun in the ‘Prologue in Heaven,’ in the first part of Faust.

‘The Sun with many a sister-sphere
Still sings the rival psalm of wonder,
And still his fore-ordained career
Accomplishes with sound of thunder.
The sight sustains the angels’ prime,
Though none may spell the mystic story:
Thy Works unspeakably sublime,
Live on, in all their primal glory.’

When the Sun rises and its light floods the physical plane, the soul, when it is out of the body, hears the approach of the Sun as the music of the spheres, as a special element in the music of the spheres. The spirits hear it, of course. Man cannot hear it, because he must hear through his physical ears. He is embodied in the physical plane and when the Sun reaches the physical plane the time has come for man to be awake. Then the spirits must retire. The words spoken by Ariel, the spirit of the air, to his servants, indicate the approach of the music of the spheres. The spirits can hear it. The man who is outside his body can hear it. Faust therefore hears this approach of the music of the spheres. After that he returns into his body. Then Ariel has to disappear. Ariel instructs his servants what they have to do: they have to disappear from the physical plane. For if the Sun, which they only know as the Sun of sound, were to strike them with his light, they would become deaf. The light would make them deaf, whereas they can hear the Sun of sound—in whoso tones, indeed, they live—without injury.

‘Hark! The Hours in storm are winging,
And, to spirit-ears loud-ringing,
Now the new-born day is springing;
Rocky portals clang asunder,
Phoebus’ wheels roll forth in thunder,
What a tumult brings the light!
Loud the trump of dawn hath sounded,
Eye is dazzled, ear astounded,
The Unheard no ear may smite.
Slip ye to your silent palace,
Deep within the flow’ret's chalice,
In the cliffs and 'neath the leaf!
If it reach you, ye are deaf!’

So the elves disappear. Faust returns to his body. But the guilty Faust has now become unconscious. He stands before us no longer. He has sunk down into the depths of Faust’s subconsciousness, where he will be preserved till the next incarnation. The Faust who had just passed through the experience of being in touch with the whole spiritual cosmos, must now make clear to himself the connection between his experience during the four watches of his sleep-life and his present perception of the world. He now lives in his body as the higher self.

Now, a man who, after sleeping all night without going through Faust’s experience, were to exclaim on awakening in the morning, ‘Thou Earth, through this night too hast stood unshaken!’ would be a fool; for no man expects the Earth to be anything else but ‘unshaken’ during the night. But if a man experiences what Faust experienced as his Initiation with the Earth-Spirits, then he has indeed experienced something which, as one can well believe, will have changed the whole earth for him. He will have become a new man. Or rather a new man will have been unveiled in him. ‘Oh I Earth! Thou wert unchanging throughout this night—in spite of what I have experienced’. To him the world appears quite new, because it is now revealed to a new man.

‘Life’s pulses newly quickened now awaken,
Softly to greet the ethereal twilight leaping;
Thou Earth through this night too hast stood unshaken,
And at my feet fresh breathest from thy sleeping.
Thou guides! me about with gladness, priming
My soul with stem resolve and strenuous keeping,
Onward to strive, to highest life still climbing.’

Now too, when the spirit has freed itself from that which must wait for the next incarnation!

‘Unfolded lies the world in twilight shimmer;
With thousand-throated song the woods are chiming;
The dales, wherethrough the mist-wreaths wind, lie dimmer,
Yet heavenly radiance plumbs the deeps unnumbered,
And bough and twig, new-quickened, bud and glimmer
Forth from the fragrant depths where sunk they slumbered;
Whilst hue on hue against the gloom still heightens,
Where bloom and blade with quivering pearls are cumbered
A very Paradise about me lightens !’

Here we have the man who I do not say has gone through Initiation, but in whom Initiation lives, and he has cause to see the world in a new light. He could not speak as he does if there were only left in him the man who was guilty and who during this incarnation must remain under this load of guilt.

‘Look up! The giant peaks that rise supernal
Herald the solemn hour; for them first brightens
The early radiance of the light eternal
Upon us valley-dwellers later showered. Now are the green-sunk Alpine meadows vernal
With radiance new, and new distinctness dowered,
And step-wise downward hath the splendour thriven.
He sallies forth [the sun, that is] and I mine overpowered
And aching eyes to turn away am driven.’

The higher self cannot now endure what the senses were able to endure. Faust cannot look at the Sun, for he has learnt so much that the Sun has now become something essentially different for him. Something connected with his earthly experiences now awakens within him.

‘Thus when a yearning hope, from fear and wonder
Up to the highest wish in trust hath striven,
The portals of fulfilment yawn asunder.’

What are these ‘portals of fulfilment?’ Those through which he passed during his recent sleep. But even the ordinary world seems to him now like a sea of flame, breaking forth from the eternal foundations:

‘Then burst from yonder depths where days ne’er dwindle
Excess of flame—we stand as smit with thunder.
The torch of life it was we sought to kindle,
A sea of fire, and what a fire! hath penned us.
Is't Love? Is't Hate?’

Love and hate we know already, but this experience is more than love or hate.

‘Is't Love? Is't Hate? That yonder glowing sparkle
In bliss and bale alternating tremendous
About us twines, till we the dazed beholders,
To veil our gaze in Earth’s fresh mantle wend us.’

He can no longer look at the Sun, he looks towards the waterfall which gives forth the colours of the rainbow and in which the Sun is reflected. He turns away from the Sun. He becomes a student of the world, as it appears to him like a reflection of the spiritual life. This world of which it is said, ‘All that is transient is but a parable.’

‘Nay then, the sun shall hide behind my shoulders.’

Before he had been looking towards it. He now turns to the waterfall.

‘The cataract that through the gorge does thunder
I’ll watch with growing rapture,’mid the boulders
From plunge to plunge down-rolling, rent asunder
In thousand, thousand streams, aloft that shower
Foam upon hissing foam, the depths from under.
Yet blossoms from this storm a radiant flower;
The painted rainbow bends its changeful being,

for what is united in the Sun, is here divided into seven colours.

‘Now lost in air, now limned with clearest power,
Shedding this fragrant coolness round us fleeing.
Its rays an image of man’s efforts render;
Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing
Life in the many-hued, reflected splendour!’

How greatly has Faust advanced during this night’s experience! He has advanced so far that he no longer wishes, like the Faust of Part I, to plunge into that life which flung him into sin and evil, but turns to its coloured reflection. This which appears to him as the ‘many-hued, reflected splendour’ is what we call Spiritual Science, and by means of it we shall wind gradually upward along the spiral way to reality.

The continuation of the Second Part is ‘Life in the many-hued, reflected splendour.’ It is folly to interpret this Second Part in a purely materialistic sense. We have here Faust whose higher self studies the many-hued reflections of life by means of the physical body, which he now bears with him on his journey through life, as something to be preserved in order that the higher self in him may be further developed; for that higher self alone can protect him from that which will reappear in a later incarnation.

Goethe found it very difficult to continue his Faust, after the words spoken by Mephistopheles toned forth, ‘Hither to me!’ But we see how Goethe strove to penetrate those mysteries which we today recognise as the Mysteries of Spiritual Science. We see how he approached them. And we can see in this Second Part of Faust, how, at first, Mephistopheles really has Faust in his toils, how Mephistopheles is behind all that happens at the Emperor’s Court, and how Faust, by the after-effects of Initiation working in him, gradually unloosens himself from the toils of Mephistopheles.

But there are other mysteries in this Second Part of Faust. Goethe himself said that he had introduced many secret things into the Second Part! These words of his have not been taken seriously enough. But we shall learn by degrees through Spiritual Science to take such words more seriously.

We must at least take one thing away with us from today’s lectures. Goethe endeavoured to advance beyond the First Part, to express in his Faust something of the atmosphere which is symbolically depicted there under the imagery of the Course of the Seasons.

As Whitsuntide approaches and the Spirits of the elemental world draw so near to man that it can be said of them:

‘When the Spring-tide shower of blossom
Flutters down all men upon;
When on mortals from earth’s bosom
Smiles the field’s green benison:
Elves great-souled, though small of stature,
Haste to help, where help they can.
Good or evil be his nature
Pity they the luckless man.’

That is the Whitsuntide atmosphere. The outpouring of the Spirit in the following lines, spoken by the choir, during the four watches of the sleep, from the time of falling asleep to the time of awakening.

Thus by means of Faust, we are able to demonstrate how urgent is the necessity for conveying to humanity the new Whitsuntide message which Spiritual Science has to deliver. This conception of Faust brings home to us vividly how complex are the threads which go to form the fundamental basis of human nature. In the depths of human nature something exists which is eternally opposed to the Ahrimanic and Luciferic world-powers and, in those depths, that something can be found by man, if he will place himself under the guidance of the Christ-Impulse.

Why do we speak of a ‘Threshold’? Why do we speak of a ‘Guardian of the Threshold’? Because actually, owing to the grace and wisdom of the guidance of the universe, all that works and wars and battles in our daily life was at first removed from the human soul. It is now, as it were, on the surface, beneath which elements are seething and warring and working. Even our daily experiences constitute a perpetual victory. But the victory has always to be won anew; and in the future it will only be won anew when man really knows that through which the good, wise direction of the universe has guided him; until now he has been unconscious of this. That something, which cannot be recognised in the ordinary life of the senses, but which can be experienced spiritually, must be found in the depths of the soul. It must be sought for in those depths of human consciousness where man’s essence is in touch with those world-forces which, in their spiritual greatness, transcend Good and Evil.

I have endeavoured to express this in a Whitsuntide apothegm which I have pieced together to show how man, in the secret recesses of his inmost being, possesses certain elementary powers, antagonistic to each other, and how that which exists in his consciousness is the victory over the warring elements in the depths of his soul-life.

The way in which these elements react in relation to the daily life of mankind I will speak of to-morrow or the following day. today I will close with this Whitsuntide apothegm which embodies that which is ever the vital principle of our Spiritual Science and which we have been considering today.

There, where knowledge gain'd by sense alone
Is no longer of avail,
Stands the Portal leading to life’s realities;
There do they become accessible to the soul.
The key whereby this door can be unlock'd
Is smelted by the soul that gains her strength in battle,
Battle waged in her own depths by cosmic Powers
Fighting against the powers of man,
If only that same soul herself can chase away the sleep
Which, at the very boundaries of the senses,
Enwraps the powers of knowledge in spiritual night.

• 1. Editorial Note. This group, designed and carved by Dr. Steiner, had not been placed in the Goetheanum when the fire broke out which destroyed the building.

Let us on this day in particular, turn our hearts with special devotion to those who are without on the scene of action, and who have to devote their lives and souls to the great task of the age; and let us say:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the Earth-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who have already passed through the portal of death in consequence of the severe duties demanded of them in these times, we will repeat the same words in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And may that Spirit Whom we seek in our spiritual strivings, the Spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha for the sake of the freedom and progress of humanity, the Spirit Whom we must specially bear in mind today, may He be with you in your severe tasks.

Let us call to mind the decree ringing forth from the depths of the Mystery of the Earth’s evolution.

‘Revelation of the Divine in the heights of existence and peace to men on earth who are permeated by good will.’ And as Christmas Eve approaches, we must (this year in particular) ask ourselves: ‘What are the feelings that unite us with this saying and its deep cosmic meaning?’ That deep cosmic meaning in which countless men feel the word ‘peace’ resounding, at a time when peace keeps away from a very large part of our earth. How should we think of these Christmas words at such a time?

There is one thought, which, in connection with this verdict, sounding through the world, must concern us far more deeply at this present epoch than at any other time—one thought. Nations are facing each other in enmity. Much blood has saturated our earth. We see and feel countless dead around us at this time. The atmosphere of sensation and feeling around us is interwoven with infinite sorrow. Hate and aversion are heard murmuring through the spiritual realm and might easily testify how very far removed men still are in our day from that love which He wishes to announce Whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Eve. One thought, however, arises: we think how opponents can face each other, enemy face enemy, how men can mutually bring death to one another and how they can all pass through the same Gate of Death with the thought of Christ Jesus, the Divine Light-Bringer. We recall how, in the whole earth, over which war, suffering and discord are spread abroad, these men can still be one at heart, however greatly they may otherwise be disunited, who in the depths of their hearts are united in their connection with Him Who entered the world on the day we commemorate at Christmas. We see how through all enmity, aversion and hatred, one and the same feeling may everywhere penetrate the human soul at this time: out of the blood and hatred may spring the thought of an inner union with One, with Him Who has united the hearts through something higher than anything which can ever separate mankind on earth. Thus the thought of Christ Jesus is a thought of immeasurable depth of feeling, a thought of infinite greatness uniting mankind, however disunited it may be as regards all that is going on in the world. If we grasp the thought in this way, we shall want to comprehend it still more deeply at the present time. We shall feel how much there is that can become strong and powerful within human evolution if connected with this thought—this thought which must develop in order that many things may be acquired by human hearts and souls in a different way from the present tragic method of learning them.

That He may strengthen us, That He may invigorate us,

That He may teach us all over the earth really to experience in the truest sense of the words the utterance of the Christmas Eve saying, which transcends all that separates men from one another. This it is which he who really feels himself united with Christ Jesus solemnly vows anew at Christmas time.

There is a tradition in the history of Christianity which repeatedly appears in later times and for centuries became a custom in certain Christian regions. In olden times representations of the Christian Mysteries were organised chiefly by the Christian Churches for believers in many different regions. And in the remotest times these representations began by reading, occasionally even by enacting, the story of Creation as it occurs at the beginning of the Bible. There was first shown just at Christmas time, how the Cosmic Word sounded forth from the depths of the Cosmos and how out of the Cosmic Word Creation gradually arose: how Lucifer appeared to man, and how men thereby began their earth-existence in a manner different from what was originally destined for them before the approach of Lucifer. The entire story of the temptation of Adam and Eve was brought forward, and it was then shown how man was, as it were, embodied in the Old Testament history. Then as time went on there was added that which was presented in more or less detail in the performances which evolved during the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries in the countries of Central Europe (of which we have just seen one small example). Very little now remains of the grand thought which united the beginning of the Old Testament at this Christmas Eve festival with the secret history of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only this one thing remains, that in our calendar, before the actual Christmas Day comes the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. But in olden times, for those who through deeper thinking, through deeper feeling, or through a deeper knowledge, were to grasp the Mystery of Christmas and the Mystery of Golgotha, with the help of their teachers, there was exhibited also again and again a great comprehensive thought: the thought of the Origin of the Cross. The God Who is introduced to man in the Old Testament gives to man, as represented by Adam and Eve, this commandment: ‘Ye may eat of all the fruits of the garden, but not of the tree—not of the fruits which grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Because they did eat of this they were driven from the original scene of action of their being.

But the tree—as was shown in many different ways—came by some means into the line of generations, into the original family from which proceeded the bodily covering of Christ Jesus. And it so came about that (as was shown at certain times) when Adam, the man of sin, was buried, there grew out of his grave the tree which had been removed from Paradise. Thus the following thoughts are aroused: Adam rests in his grave: the man who was led astray by Lucifer and passed through sin, rests in his grave. He has united himself with the Earth-body. But from his grave sprouts the tree which can now grow out of the earth, with which Adam’s body is united. The wood of this tree descends to the generations to which Abraham and David belong. And from the wood of this tree, which stood in Paradise and which grew forth from Adam’s grave, was made the Cross upon which Christ Jesus hung.

That is the thought which again and again was made clear by their teachers to those who had to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and its secrets from a deeper point of view. A deep meaning lies in the fact that in olden times profound thoughts were expressed in such pictures. And even at the present day this is still the case, as we shall presently see.

We have made ourselves acquainted with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha which reveals to us that the Being Who passed through the body of Jesus has poured out over the Earth and into the Earth’s aura what He was able to bring to the Earth. That which the Christ brought to the Earth is since united with the whole body of the Earth. The Earth has become quite different since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Earth-aura there lives what the Christ brought out of the heavenly heights to the Earth. If we unite this spiritually with that old picture of the tree, it shows us the whole connection from another point of view. The Luciferic principle drew into man as ho began his earthly career. Man as he now is belongs to the Earth, through his union with the Luciferic principle. He forms part of the Earth. And when we lay his body in the earth, this body is not merely that which anatomy sees, but is at the same time the outer mould of what man is in his inner being within his earthly nature. Spiritual Science makes it quite clear to us that what goes through the gates of death into the spiritual worlds is not the only part of man’s being, but that man through his whole activity, through his deeds, is united with the Earth. He is really united with the Earth as are those events which the geologists, mineralogists and zoologists, connect with the Earth. We might say that that which binds man to the Earth is at first concealed from the human individuality on going through the gates of death. But we surrender our external form in some manner to the Earth. It enters the Earth-body. It carries in itself the imprint of what the Earth has become through Lucifer’s entering the Earth evolution. That which man accomplishes on the Earth bears the Luciferic principle in it. Man brings this Luciferic principle into the Earth-aura. There springs forth and blossoms from man’s deeds and activities not only that which was originally intended for man but that which has mingled with the Luciferic principle. This is in the Earth-aura. And when we now see on the grave of the man Adam led away by Lucifer, that tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which through the Luciferic temptation has become different from what it originally was, we then see everything that man has become through forsaking his original state, when he submitted to the Luciferic temptation and brought something into the Earth’s evolution not previously determined. We see the tree grow out of what the physical body is for the Earth, that which has been stamped in its Earth form, and causes man to appear in a lower sphere on the Earth than the one originally destined for him, which would have been his if he had not succumbed to Lucifer. There grows out of the whole Earth existence of man something which has entered human evolution through the Luciferic temptation. While we seek knowledge, we seek it in another way than that originally destined for us. That however allows us to recognise that what grows out of our earthly deeds is different from what it would have been according to the original Divine decree. We form an earth existence other than the one laid down by the original Divine Will. We mingle something else with it; something else, concerning which we must form quite definite conceptions if we want to understand it.

We must form such ideas as these, if we wish to understand correctly. We must say to ourselves as follows: I am placed in the Earth evolution. What I give to the Earth evolution through my deeds bears fruit. It bears the fruit of knowledge which comes to me through my participation in the knowledge of good and evil on the Earth. This knowledge lives on in the evolution of the Earth and is present therein. When, however, I behold this knowledge it becomes in me something different from what it would have been originally, it becomes something which I must alter if the Earth’s goal and task are to be reached. I see something grow out of my Earth deeds which must become different. The tree grows up, the tree which becomes the Cross of earth existence. It becomes something to which man must acquire a new relation, for the old relation does no more than allow the tree to grow.

The tree of the Cross, that Cross that grows out of the Luciferically tainted Earth evolution, springs up out of Adam’s grave, out of the man-nature which Adam acquired after the fall. The tree of knowledge must become the stem of the Cross because man must unite himself anew with the correctly recognised tree of knowledge as it now is in order to reach the Earth’s goal and task.

Let us now ask—and here we touch a significant Mystery of Spiritual Science: How does the case stand with those principles which we have learnt to recognise as the principles of human nature? Now we all know that the highest member of human nature is the Ego. We learn to utter ‘I’ at a definite time of our childhood. We enter into relation with the Ego from the time to which in later years memory carries us back. This we know through various lectures and books upon Spiritual Science. Up to that time the Ego worked formatively upon us, up to the moment when we have a conscious relation to our Ego. The Ego is present in our childhood, it works within us, but at first only builds up our physical body. It first creates the supersensible forces in the spiritual world. After passing through conception and birth, it still works for a time—lasting for some years—on our body, until that becomes an instrument capable of consciously grasping the Ego. A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the Ego into the human bodily nature. We ask a man we meet how old he is, and he gives as his age the years which have passed since his birth. As has been said, we here touch a certain mystery of Spiritual Science that will become ever clearer and clearer in the course of the near future, but to which I shall now merely refer. What a man gives as his age at a definite time of his life, refers only to his physical body. All he tells us is that his physical body has been so many years evolving since his birth. The Ego takes no part in this evolution of the physical body but remains stationary. It is a Mystery difficult to grasp, that the Ego, from the time to which our memory carries us back, really remains stationary: it does not change with the body, but stands still. We have it always before us, because it reflects back to us our experiences. The Ego does not share our Earth journey. Only when we pass through the gates of death we have to travel back again to our birth along the path we call Kamaloka in order to meet our Ego again and take it on our further journey. Thus the Ego remains behind. The body goes forward through the years. This is difficult to understand because we cannot grasp the fact that something remains stationary in time, while time itself progresses. But this is actually the case. The Ego remains stationary, because it does not unite with what comes to man from the Earth-existence, but remains connected with those forces which we call our own in the spiritual world. There the Ego remains; it remains practically in the form in which it was bestowed on us by the Spirits of Form. The Ego is retained in the spiritual world. It must remain there, otherwise we could never, as man, fulfil our original task on Earth and attain the goal of our Earth-evolution. That which man here on Earth has undergone through his Adam-nature, of which he left an imprint in the grave when he died in Adam, that belongs to the physical body, etheric and astral body and comes from these. The Ego waits; it waits with all that belongs to it the whole time man remains on Earth, ever looking forward to the further evolution of man, beholding how man recapitulates when he has passed through the gates of death, and retraces his path. This implies that as regards our Ego we remain in a certain respect behind in the spiritual world. Man will have to become conscious of this, and humanity can only become conscious of it because at a certain time the Christ descended from those worlds to which mankind belongs, out of the spiritual worlds Christ descended, and in the body of Jesus prepared, in the twofold manner we already know, that which had to serve Him as a body on Earth.

When we understand ourselves aright, we continually look back through our whole Earth life to our childhood. There, in our childhood, precisely the spiritual part of us has remained behind. And humanity should be educated to look back on that to which the spirit from the heights can say: ‘Suffer the little children to come to Me !’ Not the man who is bound to the Earth, but the little child. Humanity should be educated to this, for the Feast of Christmas has been given to it, that Feast which has been added to the Mystery of Golgotha, which need otherwise only have been bestowed on humanity as regards the three last years of the Christ life, when the Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. It shows how Christ prepared for Himself this human body in childhood. This is what should underlie our feelings at Christmas: the knowledge of how man, through what remains behind in heavenly heights during his years of growth, has really always been united with what is now coming. In the figure of the Child man should be reminded of the Human-Divine, which he left behind in descending to Earth, but which has now again come to him. Man should be reminded by the Child of that which has again brought his child-nature to him. This was no easy task, but in the very way in which this Festival of the Cosmic Child, this Christmas Festival, was developed in Central Europe, we see the wonderful, active, sustaining force within it.

What we have seen today is only one of many Nativity Plays. There have remained from olden times a number of so-called Paradise Plays which were produced at Christmas and in which the story of Creation is enacted. In connection with the representation of today, which is merely a pastoral play, there has also remained behind the Play of the Three Kings offering their gifts. A great deal of this was recorded in numerous plays which for the most part have now disappeared.

About the middle of the eighteenth century the time begins in which they disappear in country districts. But it is wonderful to trace their existence. In West Hungary, about 1850, Karl Julius Schröer, made a collection of Christmas Plays such as-these in the neighbourhood of Pressburg. Other people made similar collections in other places. But what Schröer then discovered of the customs connected with the performance of these plays may sink deeply into our hearts. These plays were there in manuscript in certain families of the villages and were regarded as something especially sacred. With the approach of October preparations were always begun to perform this play at Christmas before the people of the place. The well-behaved youths and maidens were sought out and during this time of preparation they ceased to drink wine or alcohol. They might no longer romp and wrestle on Sundays. They had really to lead what is called a holy life. And thus a feeling prevailed that a certain moral tone of the soul was necessary in those who devoted themselves at Christmas to the performance of such plays, for they could not be performed in the quite worldly atmosphere. They were performed with all the simplicity of the villagers, but profound seriousness prevailed in the entire performance. In all the plays collected by Schröer and earlier by Weinhold and others in many different regions, there is everywhere this deep earnestness with which the Christmas Mystery was approached. But this was not always so. We need only go back two centuries further to find something else which strikes us in the highest degree as peculiar. The very manner in which these Christmas plays became part of the fife of the central European villages in which they arose and gradually evolved, shows us how powerfully the Christmas thought worked there. It was not immediately taken up in the manner just described; the people did not always approach it with holy awe, with deep earnestness, with a living feeling of the significance of the occurrence.

In many regions it was begun by erecting a manger before the side altar of some church. This was in the fourteenth or fifteenth century; but it goes back to still earlier times. A manger was erected, a stall with an ox and an ass, the Child and two figures representing Joseph and Mary. Thus at first it was attempted with simple art; later an attempt was made to bring more life into it, but on the spiritual side. That is, priests took part; one priest represented Joseph and another Mary. In earlier times they spoke their parts in the Latin tongue, for in the old churches great stress was laid on this—it was considered very important that the spectators should understand as little as possible of the matter and should only behold the external acting. But this could no longer continue to please, for there were among the spectators those who wanted to understand something of what was being enacted before them. Gradually it became customary to recite certain parts in the dialect used in the district. Finally the wish arose in people to participate, to take part in the experiences themselves. But the thing was still quite strange to them. We must remember that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was not as yet the knowledge of the Holy Mysteries, of the Mystery of Christmas, for instance, which we today regard as a matter of course. We must remember that although the people year in and year out attended Mass, and at Christmas the Midnight Mass, they did not possess the Bible, which was only there for the priests to read; they were only acquainted with a few extracts from the Holy Scripture. And it was at first really to acquaint them with what had once occurred that these things were dramatised in this fashion for them by the priests. The people first learnt to know of them in this way.

Something must now be said which I must ask you not to misunderstand, but it may be brought forward because it expresses purely historical truth. It was not that the participation in the Christmas plays proceeded from some mysterious influence or anything of that nature; what attracted the people was rather the desire to take part in what was presented before them and to draw nearer to it. At last they were permitted to share in it. Things had to be made more comprehensible to the laity. And this clearer understanding progressed step by step. At first the people understood absolutely nothing about the child lying in the manger. They had never seen such a thing as a child in a manger. Earlier when they were not allowed to understand anything, they accepted it: but now they wanted to share in it, it had to be made comprehensible to them. And so a cradle was brought and as the people passed, each one took part by rocking the child for a moment. Thus similar details were developed in which they took part. Indeed there were even districts in which all was quite serious at first, but when the child was brought, they made a tremendous uproar, everyone screaming and showing by dancing and shouting the pleasure they felt in the birth of the child. It was then received in a mood that felt a passion for movement and a desire to experience the story. But in this story lay something so great and mighty that, out of this quite profane feeling there gradually evolved that holy awe of which I have already spoken. The subject itself impressed its holiness on a performance which could not at first have been called in the least holy. Precisely in the Middle Ages the holy story of Christmas had first to conquer mankind. And it conquered the people to such an extent that in the performance of their plays, they desired to prepare their fives with this moral intensity.

What was it that thus overcame the feelings, the soul of man? It was the sight of the Child, of that which remains holy in man whilst his other three bodies unite with the Earth evolution. Even though in some districts at different times the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, yet it lay in human nature to evolve this holy regard for the child-nature, which is connected with what entered into the development of Christianity from the very beginning. And that is the consciousness of the necessity of a reunion of what remains stationary in man when he commences his Earth evolution, with what has connected itself with Earth-man, so that man gives over to the Earth the wood from which the cross must be made with which man has to form the new union. In the more remote times of Christian development in Central Europe, nothing but the conception of Easter was popularised, and only in the manner described was the conception of Christmas gradually developed. For what appears in ‘Heliand,’ for instance, was composed by various individuals, but never became popular.

The observance of Christmas grew into a popular custom as described, and it shows in a manner really startling how man acquired the thought of the union with the child-nature, that pure and noble childlike character that appeared in a new form in the Jesus-Child. When we so grasp the power of this thought that it lives in the soul as the only conception in our existence capable of uniting all men, then we have the true Christian conception. This Christ-Thought becomes mighty in us, it becomes something which must grow strong within us if the further Earth evolution is to proceed aright. Let us remember here how far removed man is in his present Earth-existence from what is really contained in the depths of the Christ-Thought.

A book by Ernst Haeckel has recently appeared called Thoughts about Life, Death, Immortality and Religion, in Connection with the World-War. Now a book by Ernst Haeckel certainly springs from a deep love of truth, certainly the deepest truth is sought for in it. The following may give some idea of what the book is intended to convey. It sets out to indicate what now transpires on the Earth, how the nations are at war with each other, living in hate, how countless deaths take place every day. All these thoughts which obtrude so painfully on mankind are mentioned by Haeckel, but naturally with the underlying thought of considering the world from his own point of view. We have said that Haeckel may, even by Spiritual Science, be considered a profound investigator. His point of view may indeed lead to other results, but leads to what can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel’s evolution. Now Haeckel forms thoughts on the world-war. He too remarks how much blood is flowing, how greatly we are encompassed by death. And he asks: ‘Can the thoughts of religion endure by the side of this? Can one anyhow believe (he asks) that some wise Providence—a kindly God—rules the world, when one sees so many dying every day through mere chance (so he says)? They do not perish from any cause attributable to a wise cosmic ordering, but through the accident of meeting a possible shell. Have these thoughts of the wisdom of Providence any meaning in the face of this? Must not just such events as these prove that man is nothing more than what external materialistic history of evolution declares and that all earth existence is fundamentally directed not by a wise Providence but by chance? In the face of this, can there be any other thought than that of resignation (continues Haeckel), of saying: ‘We give up our bodies and pass out into the thought of the cosmic all?’ But if one questions further, (though Haeckel does not put the question), if this! all’ is nothing but the play of endless atoms, has the life of man any meaning in earth-existence? As said above, Haeckel does not pursue the question, but in his Christmas book he gives the answer: ‘These very events which touch us so painfully show us that we have no right to believe that a good Providence or wise cosmic ruling or anything of the kind moves and Eves in the whole world. So we must be resigned—we must put up with things as they are!’

And this is a Christmas book! A book nobly and honourably planned. But this book is based on the remarkable prejudice that it is useless to seek for a meaning to the earth. That it is denied to humanity to seek in a spiritual way for a meaning!

If we only observe the external course of events we do not see this meaning. Then it is as Haeckel says. And at that it has to remain, that is, that this life has no meaning! That is his opinion. A purpose may not be sought. But perhaps someone else may say: The events now taking place show us, for the very reason that, if we look at them externally and point only to the fact that numberless bullets are ending the lives of men today, they appear without purpose—those very events show us that we must seek more deeply to find the purpose. We must not simply seek a purpose in that which happens on the Earth alone, when these human souls forsake the body, but we must investigate the life that now begins for them when they pass through the gate of death. In short, another man may say: ‘Just because no meaning can be found in the external, it must be sought elsewhere, in the supersensible.’ Is that anything else than to take the same thought into another—quite different—domain? Haeckel’s science may lead those who think as he does today to deny all meaning to Earth-existence. It may seem to prove, from what happens so painfully today, that the Earth-life as such has no meaning. But if we grasp it in our way—as we have often done before—then this very same science becomes a starting point for showing what deep and mighty purpose can be discovered by us in the world phenomena. For this, however, there must be the spiritual active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual. For man in the sphere of erudition does not yet understand how to let that power work on him which has so wonderfully conquered the hearts and souls that on beholding the Christmas Mystery, out of a profane comprehension, there has arisen a holy understanding. Because the learned cannot yet grasp this and cannot yet unite the Christ-Impulse with what they see in the external world, it is impossible for them to find a real true meaning in the Earth. And so we must say: The Science of which man is so proud today—and rightly so—with all its immense progress is not in itself in a position to lead man to any satisfactory philosophy. It can just as easily lead to a lack of sense and meaning as to a meaning for the Earth, just as in any other domain. Let us consider science in the later centuries, especially in the nineteenth and up to the present day—evolving so proudly all its wonderful laws, and let us look at what surrounds us today. It has all been produced by science. We no longer burn, as Goethe did, a night-light. We bum something else and illumine our rooms in a very different fashion. All that possesses our souls today, as the result of our science has arisen through the immense progress of which man is so proud, so justly proud. But how does this science work? It works beneficially when man evolves what is good. But today, just through its very perfection, it produces invincible instruments of murder. Its progress serves the cause of destruction as well as that of construction. Just as on the one side that science of which Haeckel is a follower may lead either to sense and meaning or to nonsense and lack of meaning, so, in spite of its greatness, it may serve both destruction and construction. And if it depended on science alone what was produced, then, from the same sources from which it constructs, science would bring forth ever more and more fearful instruments of destruction. Science itself has no direct impulse to bring humanity forward! If this could be realised, science would then, and then only, be valued in the right way. We should then know that in the evolution of man there must be something more than man can reach by means of science.

What is this science of ours? In reality none other than the tree growing out of Adam’s grave; and the time is drawing near when man will recognise this. The time will come when man will know that this tree must become the wood which is the Cross of humanity and which can only become a blessing when on it is crucified and properly united with it, that which lies on the further side of death, yet lives already here in man. That it is to which we look up in the Holy Christmas Eve, if we feel this Mystery of the sacred Festival aright—and that is what can be represented in childlike fashion, and yet is the cloak of the greatest Mysteries. Is it not really wonderful that in this simple way it could be brought home to people that something had appeared which, though it cannot extend beyond childhood, yet governs a man during his whole Earth-life? It is related to that to which man, as a supersensible being, belongs. Is it not wonderful that this, which is in the highest degree invisible and supersensible, could approach so near to those simple human souls through simple pictures such as these?

Indeed those who are learned will also have to follow the same path as those simple souls. There was even a time when the Child was not represented in the cradle nor in the manger, but when the sleeping child was placed upon the Cross I The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderful, profound picture, which expresses the whole thought I wished to lay before your souls today.

Cannot this thought in reality be very simply stated? Indeed it can! Let us just seek the origin of those impulses which today oppose each other so terribly in the world. Whence do they originate? Whence originates all that today is in such bitter conflict, all that makes life so difficult for humanity? It all originates in what we become in the world after the time of our earliest recollection. Let us go back beyond that time, let us go right back to the point when we are called the little children who may enter the kingdom of heaven. We do not find it then, there was then nothing in the human soul of what today is strife and hatred. In this simple way the thought can be expressed and today we must visualise spiritually that there is in the human soul an original condition rising above all human strife and disharmony.

We have often spoken of the old Mysteries, which were intended to awaken in the nature of man that which allowed him to perceive the supersensible; and we have said that the Mystery of Golgotha represents on the stage of history clearly for all mankind, the story of the supersensible Mystery. Now that which unites us with the true Christ-Thought is within us, it is really in us—to enable us to have moments in our life (this is to be taken literally not symbolically) moments when, in spite of everything we may be in the external world, we can yet make that which we have received as children alive within us, moments in which we behold man in his development between birth and death, and can feel the child-nature in ourselves.

In my public lecture on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I might have added a few words more—perhaps they might not have been thoroughly understood then, they would, however, have explained many things which dwelt in this particularly devout person. I might have said why he became such a very special person; it was because, in spite of his age, he retained more than most people of the child-nature. There is more of the child-nature in such men than in others. Men like these, men who retain more of their child-nature, keep their youth and do not grow old as do others. This is really the secret of many great men, that they can in a sense remain children—speaking relatively, of course, for they have had to lead the life of men.

The Christmas Mystery appeals to the child-nature within us. It points us to the vision of the Divine Child that is destined to take up the Christ—and to which we look up as to something over which the Christ, Who went through Golgotha for the salvation of the Earth, already hovers.

Let us be conscious of this when we give over the imprint of our higher man, our physical body, to the Earth. This is not a mere physical event, for something spiritual takes place. But this spiritual event only takes place aright because the Christ-Being, by going through the Mystery of Golgotha, has flowed into the aura of the Earth. We do not behold the entire Earth in its completeness unless we visualise also the Christ, Who, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is united with it. We may pass Him by, as we pass by anything supersensible if we are merely equipped in a materialistic sense; but we cannot pass Him by if the Earth is really to have for us a true and actual purpose. Everything rests upon our being able to awaken in ourselves that which opens our gaze to the spiritual world.

Let us make this Christmas Festival what it should be to us, a Festival which not merely serves the past—but also the future; that future which is gradually to bring forth the birth of the spiritual life for the whole of humanity. We must unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, with the prophetic premonition, that such a birth of the spiritual life in man must be accomplished, that a mighty Christmas must work to influence the future of humanity, a bringing to birth of that which in the thoughts of man gives a meaning to the Earth, that meaning which became the objective of the Earth when the Christ-Being united Himself with the Earth-aura, through the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us meditate at Christmas on the thought how from the depths of darkness light must enter human evolution. The old light of the spiritual life which was gradually dying out before Golgotha had to pass away and has now to arise anew, it must since Golgotha be born again through the consciousness in the human soul that this soul of man is connected with what the Christ had become to the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When more and more men arise who can thus grasp Christmas in the sense of Spiritual Science, it will become a force in the hearts and souls of men which has a meaning for all times, whether in such times as men give themselves over to feelings of happiness, or when they must feel sorrow and pain such as we feel today, when we think of the great misery of our time.

Concerning the vision of the spiritual which gives meaning to the Earth, it has been expressed in beautiful words which I will put before you today: (Here follows a rough translation):

That which gives mine eyes the power
To cause deformity to disappear,
To turn dark nights to radiant suns of brightness,
To turn disorder into order, and decay to life;
Life, which through the ages,
Weaves invisibly in space,
Leading me on to th' eternal sources
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good.
The source of all Delight,
In which immersed, my strivings are but vain.
Life it is, which since in Urania’s eyes I gazed,
The deep, the clear, the blue—pure flames of light
I have silently perceived and looked upon.
Since then I see those eyes in deeps profound,
The only permanent things in my existence,
They live on in me, part of my life,
And see through my beholding.

And in another small poem:

Nothing is but God, and God is naught but Life.
Thou knowest this, as I myself know too,
And yet our knowing would ne’er have power to be,
Unless t’were knowledge of the Life of God.
How fain would I devote myself to this!
But where shall it be found; if into some knowledge it doth flow,
Forthwith it is transformed into a semblance.
Commingled with Him, surrounded by His sheath,
When thou dost wake the true sheath to behold,
It is thy Self!
Let all that perishable is, decay.
Henceforth let God alone dwell in thy strivings,
Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet Eves on;
Then will the Sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.

It is true men do not always know how to understand those who lead them to a vision of the spiritual which gives a meaning to the Earth. The materialists are not alone in this. Others, who believe themselves to be no materialists because they continually repeat, ‘God, God,’ or ‘Lord, Lord,’ too often do not know what to make of these guides to the spiritual. For what could one make of a man who says:

‘Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet Eves on;
Then will the sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine

who sees Divine Life in everything? He might be reproached with holding the world away from him, with denying its existence. Such a man might be accused of denying the existence of the world. His contemporaries accused him of denying God, of being an atheist, and drove him away from the High School on that account. For the words I have just quoted were written by Johann GottEeb Fichte. He is a case in point. When there Eves on in a human soul aU through his earthly life that which dwells as an impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha and the notes of which may be heard in the Christmas Mystery, a way is then opened in which we can find that consciousness in which our own ego flows in union with the Earth-Ego. For the Earth-Ego is the Christ. In this way something is developed in man which must become greater and greater if the Earth is to achieve that evolution for which it was destined from the beginning of aU things.

And so from the spirit of our Spiritual Science we have today tried to transform the Christmas thought into an impulse; and while looking up to it from that which is now going on around us, we shall try not to behold a want of purpose in the Earth-evolution, but rather in the midst of sorrow and pain, even in strife and hatred, to see something which finally helps man a step forward.

More important than the search for the causes of what happens today is this: that we should turn our gaze to the possible effects, to those effects which we must conceive as bringing healing to mankind.

That nation or people will do the right thing which is able to fashion something healing for mankind in the future, from what springs up out of the blood-saturated Earth. But this healing can only come about when man finds his way to the spiritual worlds: when he does not forget that not only a transitory but an eternal Christmas exists, an everlasting bringing to birth of the Divine Spiritual in the physical Earth-man.

Especially today let us retain the holiness of this thought in our souls, and keep it there, even beyond the Christmas season, during the time which can be for us in its external course, a symbol of the evolution of fight. Darkness, the most intense Earth-darkness prevails at this time of the year. But we know that when the Earth lives in the deepest outer darkness, the Earth-soul experiences its light, its greatest time of growth begins.

The spiritual time of awakening coincides with Christmas and with this spiritual awakening should be united the thought of the spiritual awakening of the earth-evolution through Christ Jesus. For this reason the Christmas Festival was placed just at this particular time.

In this cosmic and at the same time earthly and moral sense let us fill our souls with the thoughts of Christmas and then, strengthened and invigorated with this moral thought, let us, as far as we can, turn our gaze on everything around us, desiring what is right for the progress of events and especially as regards the present occurrences. And as we begin at once to make active within us the strength we have been able to acquire from this Christmas Festival, let us conclude once more by turning to the Guardian Spirit of those who have to take a difficult part in the great events of the times.

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the earth-men committed to your charge,
That, united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And for those who have already passed through the gates of death while fulfilling the severe tasks given to man as a result of the great demands of our present time, let us repeat those words again in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your charge,
That united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And may the Spirit Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Spirit Who, for the progress and salvation of the Earth, has made Himself known in the Mystery of Christmas, which men will gradually learn to understand better and better, may He be with you in the severe tasks that lie before you.

Much that I should like to say regarding the spiritual world has to be hinted at pictorially, or rather half pictorially for the pictures must be taken in a real and active sense.

It is necessary to indicate pictorially such things as I desire to bring before your souls today for further meditation, because if one were not to speak symbolically but in ideas, one would have to speak at very great length. Each one of you can himself reach the depths of that of which I shall speak today, if he holds and ponders over it to a certain extent within his soul.

Every year at this season we pass from one division of time to another. This may at first appear simply a matter of convenience; but it is not so. The men who had to separate time into seasons followed by profound instinct certain great laws regulating the course of time. The festival of the passing of one year into another takes place with us in the depths of winter (naturally, I speak of our part of the world) at the time when all plants have suspended their growth, their blossoming and fruit-bearing. Only certain forest trees remain what is called evergreen through winter. The power of the Sim is then at its lowest.

We know that in all events and occurrences that take place before our senses, spiritual events are interwoven. We know that when we walk through the forest, we have not only the trees about us with their green foliage, but that in the background of existence spiritual and psychic beings are everywhere active. We are already familiar with this thought, which the clever people of our time regard as a childish superstition; we realise it as a true and actual fact.

It is absolutely clear to us that behind all the things of sense, whether they be solid or whether they be happenings which our senses perceive—are spiritual activities, and spiritual life.

Now let us, to begin with, consider what people call our lifeless inorganic Earth, the mineral kingdom of our Earth. This which is apparently lifeless substance, the mineral which to the materialist is merely lifeless, is to us not only endowed with life, but with soul and spirit, so that we speak also of a soul-and-spirit part of our so-called lifeless inorganic, purely mineral Earth. True, when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we do not in the first place see in the geological-mineral substance that which may be compared to a man’s muscles and blood, but we see only what may be compared to his bony system, namely, the solid earth; so that when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we have to think of it as connected with the whole Earth, not only with its bony system, but with water, air, ether, etc., corresponding to the muscles, blood, and so on.

The whole Earth has consciousness, a consciousness belonging to the mineral kingdom. We shall not occupy ourselves with the differences in this consciousness of the Earth in special regions during the course of the year, but we shall endeavour to evoke in our souls the conception that the whole Earth has consciousness. Let us now turn from the mineral Earth, and direct our attention to all that springs forth and sprouts on Earth, to the plant world.

Looked at in accordance with Spiritual Science, we must regard the plant world, in the first place, as an independent entity in reference to the Earth. That the whole plant world is an independent entity as regards the Earth only comes clearly before us when we consider the consciousness of these two entities or beings. We can speak of a consciousness of the whole mineral Earth, but we can equally speak of a consciousness of the whole plant world which evolves on the Earth. The laws of this consciousness are certainly entirely different from the laws of human consciousness. In speaking of plant consciousness, we must always speak of it as regards certain districts only, because it changes with different regions of the Earth.

As men we are not aware that there really is a certain parallel between our consciousness and the consciousness of the whole plant world, for we are apt to look on our waking consciousness as our complete consciousness, without taking our sleeping consciousness into consideration. To simplify our subject, we say: In the daytime when awake, our ego and astral body are within our physical body. I have, however, often remarked that this in fact refers to our blood and nervous system only, not to the remaining parts of our system. When the ego and astral body withdraw from our head, for instance, they are so much the stronger within other parts of us.

A parallel thing happens on the Earth, when on one part of it there is summer and on the other winter; this also is merely a change of consciousness. The case is the same with ourselves. We are not aware of this, however, because in man the two kinds of consciousness are not of equal clearness; they are of different strength. Night consciousness is beclouded consciousness, for us practically no consciousness at all; while day consciousness is full consciousness of our other side. In the night our lower nature wakes, while with our higher nature we sleep, and it is exactly the same with the Earth, when on the one hemisphere there is winter, on the other there is summer. On one side the consciousness is awake, on the other side it sleeps and vice versa. As I have just said, and as I have often explained, this only holds good in respect to the plant world. We know that the plant world sleeps in the height of summer when there is growth on every side; while it is outwardly unfolding its physical nature—it is asleep. But it wakes to full consciousness during the time when physically, externally, it is going through no development; then the plant world is awake. Thus we speak of all plant life on Earth as a whole; and this plant life, as a whole, has a consciousness.

When speaking of this consciousness which as a second consciousness intermingles with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, we can really say that during the height of summer in our part of the Earth the plant consciousness is asleep, and in depth of winter it is awake. At this season, however, during the time at which we now are, something further takes place.

Now I beg you to note that these two states of consciousness, that is, the general consciousness belonging to the mineral earth, and the general plant consciousness—are always distinct. They are throughout the whole year two separate beings. But these are not only two distinct Beings, for at one season they unite, so that at the present time of year, the one interpenetrates the other. At the time when one year is passing over into the other, the mineral things and events of the Earth and the whole plant world have but one consciousness, which means that these two consciousnesses interpenetrate each other.

What is the nature of the mineral consciousness of the Earth, the varieties of which (as I have said) we shall not study today as we shall those of the plant consciousness, which we realise wakes during winter time and sleeps in summer? What is the peculiar nature of this mineral consciousness, this consciousness of the great Earth-Being?

The man who is limited in his physical senses, and limited to the understanding that he considers appertains to these physical senses, can at first know nothing of this great Earth-consciousness. Spiritual Science, however, can instruct as to what this Earth-consciousness really thinks—thinks as we think of plants, animals, air, rivers, mountains, etc. Just as with our ordinary waking consciousness, we think of the things round about us, so, in like manner does the Earth think. Let us inquire today: of what does the Earth consciously think?

The Earth thinks with its consciousness the whole firmament of heaven nearest to the Earth. As we look with our eyes on trees and stones, so does the Earth consciously look into space and contemplate all that takes place in the stars. The Earth is a being that meditates on the occurrences of the stars.

Thus fundamentally the mineral consciousness contains the secret of the whole Cosmos. While we men move about on the Earth in a superficial way, thinking merely of the stones against which we knock, or of the many things which our senses reveal to us, the Earth thinks with its consciousness—through which we are passing as we move through space—of the whole Cosmos. She has indeed greater, more all-embracing thoughts than we have. In truth, it is an extraordinarily exalting thought, when we realise: ‘I am not simply passing through the air; I am moving through the thoughts of the Earth.’

Now let us again consider the other consciousness, that of the plants. These are not able to think so much as the Earth can. The thinking consciousness of the plants—not of individual plants, but of the whole united plant-world—is a much more restricted consciousness, it embraces a smaller circle of the Earth throughout the year; but this is not the case at the present season. Plant consciousness is now one with the whole consciousness of the Earth, and because the plant consciousness interpenetrates the earth-consciousness, the plant-world at New Year time, knows the secrets of the stars and applies them. Plants are thus able to unfold again in spring in accordance with the secrets of the cosmos, and can bring forth their blossoms and fruit. In this unfoldment the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained, in the way plants bring forth their leaves, blossoms and fruit.

But during the time the plants are producing their leaves, flowers and fruit, they are not able to meditate upon it. It is only at this present season they can think—now—when the plant consciousness is united with the consciousness of the whole mineral world. This is why it is said in Spiritual Science: About the season of the New Year, two cycles interpenetrate each other.

This is the main secret of all existence—that two cycles penetrate each other; then parting, continue separately their further development; again intermingle, and so on. Only think how marvellous this secret of existence is! Plant-consciousness and mineral-consciousness, two streams of evolution—progress apart through the whole year, then at the time when one year passes over into another, they unite. Again they pass through the year apart, uniting once more at the festival of the New Year. The cyclic advance of history is similar to this.

We turn from this mystic event, through which we are now passing, and which fills us with a deep feeling of holy awe in respect of the passing of one year into the other—we turn to a still deeper mystery.

We know that we are now living in that cycle in which the consciousness-soul is unfolding, that this was preceded by that of the unfolding of the rational or intellectual-soul, which was again preceded by the cycle in which the sentient soul was developed, before which again we go back to the time of development of the sentient body. This takes us back 6000 years before our Christian era, to a time when all human thought was evolved within the cycle of the sentient body—of the so-called astral body.

We have now to advance through the cycle of the spiritual or consciousness-soul, and through that of the Spirit-Self, and further still man has to develop.

The consciousness-soul (since 1923 translated by Dr. Steiner as the spiritual-soul) is principally developed at the present time because man chiefly makes use of his physical body alone as an instrument. On this account—as you know already from many lectures—this present age is the high tide of materialism. A time will come, however, when man will not only make use of his physical body, but will again learn to use his etheric body, as in earlier times he used his astral body, in the cycle of evolution when that body was the main element of consciousness.

We can therefore say: Our condition at one time on Earth was such, that our soul experienced a contact of its consciousness with the consciousness of our astral body. Just as at New Year, plant-consciousness penetrates mineral consciousness, so, thousands of years ago, did our soul intermingle with our astral body. At that time our soul was one, in its consciousness, with the astral body. The time of that type of consciousness was six thousand years before our era. When that consciousness came about man celebrated a New Year on Earth; a mighty New Year!

Just as we regard the New Year as the mingling of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, so we must realise that 6,000 years before our era a great, a mighty cosmic New Year of our Earth took place. Our Soul-consciousness then united with—passed through—the astral consciousness of our body.

What was it that then took place?

At that time when our inner soul-consciousness passed through (or intermingled with) the astral consciousness of our body—then our limited human consciousness, the consciousness which we have today, had progressed as far as the present plant-consciousness at New Year. Just as plants gaze abroad into the heavens because their consciousness has been united to the mineral consciousness of theEarth, so did man then see and perceive a wide field of wisdom six thousand years before our era, when his soul was united with his astral body at the time of the cosmic New Year.

From this time originated the knowledge which we have now lost, since the wisdom of the Gnostics has perished. The source of this knowledge must be sought in the earthly and cosmic New Year about 6,000 B.c. This was the knowledge from which Zarathustra gave forth his teaching; the knowledge, whose last great rays still illuminated the Gnostics, but of which only a few fragments remain. It is the winter of the Earth, but the Earth’s New Year to which we here look back.

If we now add four thousand years more to the years we have passed through since the founding of Christianity, we again come to a similar intermingling as that I have just indicated; to the mingling of our soul-consciousness with our astral consciousness, but at a higher stage. Man will once more experience a universal stellar consciousness. For this we endeavour to prepare ourselves through our Spiritual Science, so that there may be men ready to receive it.

We will seek to prepare for this cosmic New Year. IE we prepare for it through the keeping of the Christmas Festival, as I indicated in a recent lecture, we are preparing ourselves in the right way. If the birth of spiritual knowledge within us leads to that frame of mind which is in accord with the ‘Christmas Initiation,’ we are preparing ourselves for that new cosmic New Year on which we shall enter twelve thousand years after the previous cosmic New Year.

Twelve months pass by between one union of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, and another. Twelve thousand years pass between one cosmic New Year and another: between one intermingling of the human soul with the Astral World-Soul, and another.

So at this sacred season, we turn from the little New Year to the great cosmic New Year, from the New Year’s Eve of our year, to that for which we are preparing ourselves, by endeavouring—now in this winter tune—to behold the light, which in a normal elemental way flows into man as inhabitant of the Earth, only at the cosmic New Year.

We really only see the world in the true light, when we grasp what is around us, not only as it is presented to our senses,—as materialists do—but when we accept all that is about us in the outer world as a symbol of the great secrets of the universe.

Then when New Year draws near, it seems as if a message from spiritual worlds approaches, and unveils for us the mysteries connected with the birth of the New Year; and declares, ‘Behold, now in the depths of the dark cold winter, the consciousness of the plant world unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be to you a sign that the Earth too has its year—the great cosmic year, of which Zarathustra spoke long ago, explaining how the world passed on from one great New Year’s Eve to another; this must be understood by those who really seek to comprehend the course of human evolution.’

Zarathustra spoke of epochs of twelve thousand years. He meant the great cosmic years of which I have spoken to you today. He represented the course of human evolution as being divided into four divisions within the Earth year. This fact is deeply rooted in spiritual mysteries.

So, from a deeper understanding of our Spiritual Science, let us accept a true Christmas attitude of reverence. Let us develop within our hearts that inner warmth which comes, when in the frosty night of winter we receive the first intimation of the dawning of the Sun-Spirit on the Earth, and with it the mystery of the revolving year. The thirteen days are the days in which the plant-consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If a man is but able to place himself within the plant consciousness, he can dream of—can gain a conception of—the many mysteries which then crowd into his heart, such as did in the dream of Olaf Oesteson,¹ the description and explanation of which entered into and stirred our souls here, this time last year. When we feel such a mood of initiation, we evoke the proper feelings and the perceptions for the aims and objects of our spiritual knowledge and with such warmth of heart we shall make preparations for the new cosmic New Year. Through it we can worthily expect that day which is to usher in a New Year for the world, Thus; when in succeeding incarnations our souls experience the cosmic New Year under quite new conditions on Earth, we shall be able to pass through it as those can for whom the small New Year’s Eve (which recurs every twelve months instead of every twelve thousand years) becomes a symbol of the great New Year’s Eve of the world.

This is the secret of our existence. Everything is in great as in small, and in small as in great. The small, the yearly cycle, can only be understood aright when it becomes for us a symbol of the mighty events of the cosmos—of the vast cycle of thousands of years. The year is an image of the aeons, and the aeons are the realities of those images which we encounter in the course of a year. When we understand this yearly course aright we are filled, in this important night in which a New Year begins, with thoughts of the great cosmic mysteries. Let our endeavour be, so to attune our souls, that they may look forward to the New Year with this conscious thought: ‘I will accept the year as a symbol of the great cosmic year which contains all mysteries, through which pass and repass the Divine Beings who accompany our souls from aeon to aeon, as the lesser Gods follow the secret development of plant and mineral existence throughout the course of an Earth year.

• 1. Editorial Note: The dream of Olaf Oesteson referred to above, appears in the linotyped course of lectures entitled The Forming of Destiny and Life after Death (Lecture 6.)

It seemed well yesterday, on the last night of the year, to enter deeply into many of the secrets of existence connected with the great supersensible mysteries, such as the annual passing of one year into another—and of the great cosmic New Year’s Eve and New Year. It seemed good to enter yesterday into those things which speak to the depths of our souls, mysteries far removed from the outer world; so, at the beginning of a New Year, it may perhaps be important to let a few at least of our great and important duties be brought before our souls.

These duties are connected above all with that which is made known to us in the course of human evolution, through Spiritual Science. They are associated with the knowledge of the road humanity must travel as it advances towards its future. A man cannot recognise the duties here mentioned, if he does not, in his own way, keep an open view in many directions. We have again and again endeavoured to do this in the course of our studies. To call up a few only of such duties before our souls may perhaps be fitting at this time, at the opening of a New Year.

It is true, that in view of this material age and all that it brings in its train, we recognise that Spiritual Science must form the basis from which we can work in a higher way for the progress of mankind. It is true, that all that seems to us necessary is so enormous, so incisive—there is (to put it mildly) so much to do at the present time, that we cannot believe that with our feeble powers we should ever be in a position to do much of what has to be done. One thing at least is important, that we should connect our interest with what has to be done, that we should acquire ever more and more interest in those things of which humanity in our time has need.

As a beginning, a group of people, however small, must be interested in that of which humanity has need, and gain a clear insight into those forces which in the evolution of time have a downward tendency, those that are harmful forces. At the opening of a New Year it is specially good to turn the interest of our circle somewhat from our own personal concerns and to direct them to the great objective interests of the whole of humanity.

To do this requires, as I have said, clear insight into that which is moving along the downward path in the human evolution of today. We need only carry those very thoughts which have been ours during the last few days over into the realm of the actual, there to find many of the things of which the men of the present day have need.

Wo have seen how at a certain moment of evolution, a far-reaching wisdom was actually lost to man; how this wisdom of the Gnostics perished; and how it is now necessary to work, so that an understanding of spiritual things may again be established, though of course in accordance with the progress of the time.

During the past autumn we have considered the deeper causes of the flood tide of materialism which took place in the nineteenth century, and I have again and again emphasised that the view of Spiritual Science in regard to this flood of materialism, in no way tends to a lack of appreciation, or want of understanding of the great progress of external, material science. This has always been recognised by us. But what we must keep specially before us is this, that the great progress made in the materialistic realms of natural science during the nineteenth century and on into the present time, has been accomplished with a falling off in the power of thought—of clear, precise thinking.

This decline in the power of thinking has taken place more especially in the domain of science. There—however much people may disbelieve it—the faith in authority has never been so strong as in our day, so that want of confidence as regards the certainty of thinking has spread widely through all the realms of popular thought. We live in an age of the most careless thinking and at the same time it is an age of the blindest trust in authority. People live today entirely under the impression that they must believe in, they must recognise authority, that they must have the sanction of outside powers. They desire a warrant for this or that. For the most part men do not consider today that it is an individual concern, that they will eventually have to take up the matter for themselves I So, they go to whom ‘right and law is bequeathed like a hereditary sickness’ and accept conclusions without weighing how those conclusions were reached; for they consider it right to accept authority blindly.

A man is ill—he takes not the least trouble to learn the simplest thing about the illness. Why should he? We have recognised and certified physicians whose business it is to look after our bodies; we need not trouble in the least about them!

If information on any subject be desired, people go to those who ought to know, to the theologian, to the philosopher, to this one or to that.

Any one following up this line of thought for himself, will find that on numberless points he himself is sunk in blindest belief in authority. If he cannot find them—do not take it ill of me, if I say—that the less he finds of this belief in authority in himself, the larger the dose he must have swallowed!

But I would now like, to show how a narrow, cramped and impoverishing mode of thought has slipped even into the finest domain of spiritual life, all the world over—without distinction of nation, race or colour; that a certain element of cramped thinking is to be found where the life of spiritual culture exists in its finest form. Let us take a philosophical idea and watch how it has developed. Who is not convinced today, on the grounds of a belief in an authority which has come down to him through very many channels—who is not convinced that one cannot by any means arrive at ‘the thing in itself,’ but can only catch the outward phenomena, the impression on the senses, the impression made on the soul by the thing. Man can but arrive at the ‘results’ of things, but not at ‘the thing in itself.’ This is indeed the fundamental type of the thought of the nineteenth century. I have described the whole wretched business in that chapter in my book The Riddles of Philosophy, which is called ‘The World of Illusion.’ Anyone who studies this chapter will find a resume of the whole matter. Man can only perceive ‘effects,’ he cannot attain to ‘the thing in itself;’ this remains unknown.

The most capable thinkers of the nineteenth century, if we can speak of them as capable in this connection, are infected by this necessary ignorance regarding the ‘thing in itself.’

If we now turn to the trend of thought which is at the base of what I have just described, it presents itself thus: It is wrongly insisted on, that the eye can only reflect that which it can evoke within itself by means of its nervous or other activities. When an external impression comes, it responds to it in its own specific way. One only gets as far as the impression—not to that which causes the impression on the eye. Through his ear a man only gets as far as the impression made on the ear—not to the thing that makes the impression, and so on.

It is, therefore, only the impressions of the outer world that act on the senses of the soul. That which was at first established as regards a certain realm, that of colour, tone and the like, has now for a long time been extended to the whole thinking world—that can receive only the impression or effects of what is in the world. Is this incorrect? Certainly it is not incorrect, but the point—as has often been said—is not in the least whether a matter is correct or not, quite other things come into consideration. Is it correct that only pictures, only impressions of things, are called forth by our senses? Certainly it is correct, that cannot be doubted; but something very different is connected with this. This I will explain by means of a comparison.

If someone stands before a mirror and another person also stands there beside him, it cannot be denied that what is seen in the mirror is the image of the one man and also of the other. What is seen in the mirror is without doubt images—merely images. From this point of view all our sense perceptions are in fact mere images: for the object must first make an impression on us and our impression—the reaction as one might say—evokes consciousness. We can quite correctly compare this with the images which we see in the mirror; for the impressions are also images.

Thus in the Lange and Kant train of thought we have a quite correct assertion—that man is concerned with images and that therefore, he cannot come into touch with anything real, with any actual ‘thing in itself.’ Why is this? It is solely because man cannot think things out further than one assumption, he remains at one correct assumption. The thought is not incorrect, but as such it is frozen in—it can go no further—it is really frozen in. Just consider; The images that we see in the mirror are true images, but suppose the other person who stands beside me and looks into the mirror too, gives me a box on the ear, would I then say (as these are but images I see in the mirror) that one reflection has given the other reflection a box on the ear? The action points to something real behind the images I And so it is. When our thoughts are alive and not frozen, when they are connected with realities, we know that the Lange-Kantian hypothesis is correct, that we have everywhere to do with images; but when the images come in touch with living conditions, these living conditions reveal what first leads us to tho thing in itself. It is not so much the case here that certain gentlemen who have thus led thoughts astray, have started from a wrong hypothesis; the whole matter hangs on the fact that we have to reckon with thoughts that were frozen, with thoughts which when at last they are reached, make people say: true, true, true—and get no further. This unworthy thinking of the nineteenth century is wanting in flexibility, in vitality. It is frozen in, truly ice-bound.

Let us take another example. During the past year I have often communicated certain things to you from a celebrated thinker—Mauthner, the great critic of language. Kant occupies himself with Critique of Idea. Mauthner went further, (things that follow must always go further)—he wrote a Critique of Speech. You will remember that during the autumn I gave you examples from the Critique of Speech. Such a man has many followers at the present day. Before he took up philosophy he was a journalist. There is an old saw which says: ‘One crow does not peck out the eyes of another.’ Not only do they not peck out each other’s eyes, but the others even give eyes to the crows that are blind, especially when these are journalists! And thus this critic of language—but as I said I wish in no way to raise any question as regards the honesty of such a thinker, even as regards his solidity and depth, for I must always insist again and again that it is incorrect to say that criticism of natural or of any other science is practised here, its characteristics are only defined. So I say expressly, that Mauthner is an honourable man, ‘so are they all honourable men’—but just let us consider one process of thought which is along the lines of this Critique of Language. For example it is stated there: Human knowledge is limited. Limited—why limited according to Mauthner? Well, because all that man experiences of the world enters his soul by way of his senses. Certainly there is nothing very profound in this thought, but yet it is an undeniable fact. Everything comes to us from the outer world through the senses. But now the thought came to Mauthner that these senses are merely accidental-senses, which means that supposing that we had not our eyes and ears and other senses, we might have other senses instead, then the world around us would appear quite different. An exceedingly popular thought, especially among many philosophers of our day! So it is actually by chance that we have these particular senses, and therewith our conception of the world about us. Had we different senses we should have a different world! Accidental senses!

One of the followers of Fritz Mauthner has said roughly as follows: ‘The world is infinite; but how can man know anything of this infinite world? He can but gain impressions through his accidental senses. Through the door of these chance senses many things enter our souls and group themselves, while without, the infinite world goes on, and man can learn nothing of the laws in accordance with which it progresses. How can man believe, that what he experiences through these chance-senses of his, can have any connection with the great cosmic mysteries beyond? So speaks a follower of Mauthner, who did not, however, look upon himself as an adherent of his, but as a clever man of his day. Yes, so he said. But you can transpose this line of thought into another. I will absolutely retain the form and character of the thought, but translate it into another. I will now state this other thought.

One cannot form any idea of what such a genius as Goethe really has given to mankind, for he has no other means of expressing what he had to say to men, than by the use of twenty-two or twenty-three chance letters of our alphabet which must be grouped in accordance with their own laws and set down on paper. This goes still further. How is it possible to learn anything of the genius of Goethe, through the chance grouping of letters on paper?

Clever such a man might be who believes that because Goethe had to express his whole genius by means of twenty-three letters, A.B.C. and so on—we could learn nothing of his genius or of his ideas,—clever he might be who used such an excuse and still maintained that he had before him nothing but the twenty-three chance letters grouped in various ways! ‘Away with your explanations,’ he would say, ‘they are but fancy, I see nothing before me but letters!’ Clever, in the same way, is he who says: The world beyond is infinite, we cannot learn anything of it, for we know only what comes to us through our chance-senses. The fact is that such inaccurate thinking does not only exist in the domain of which I am speaking, where it comes very crudely into evidence, it is present everywhere. It is active in the profoundly unhappy events of the present day, for these would not be what they are if the thinking of all humanity was not permeated with what has been pointed out in a somewhat crude form.

People will never be able to take the right interest in such things, I mean the things concerned with the true efforts of man for his real progress—true effort in the sense of Spiritual Science—if they have not the will really to enter into such matters, if they have not the desire to recognise the things of which man stands in need. Objections are ever being raised from this side and from that, to the teaching of Spiritual Science, that it is only accessible to those who have clairvoyant perception of the spiritual worlds. People will not believe that this is not true, that what is required is, that by thought they should really be able to attain understanding of that which the seer is able to bring forth out of the spiritual world. It is not to be wondered at that people cannot today grasp with their thought what the seer derives from the spiritual world, when thought is built up in this way I have described. This kind of thought is ‘trumps’ and rules life in every department.

It is not because man is unable to understand with his thoughts all that Spiritual Science teaches, that it fails to be understood, but because he permits himself to be infected with the slip-shod thinking of the present day. Spiritual Science should stimulate us to intensive, courageous thinking; that is what matters: and it is well able to do this.

Of course, as long as we take Spiritual Science in such a way that we only talk about the things with which it is concerned, we shall not advance very much in the establishing of the thought for the future of humanity, which is exactly the mission of our movement to establish. When, however, we take the trouble really to understand—really to grasp the things, the matter taught—we shall certainly make progress.

Even the conceptions of Spiritual Science are affected by the careless thinking of the present day. I have explained to you how this careless thinking acts; I quoted: ‘results only do we have in the external world, so we cannot attain to the thing in itself.’ This thought is as it were immediately frozen in; people do not wish to go any further, the thought is frozen in, they no longer see that the living interchanging activity of the reflected images leads further than to the mere image-character. This method is then applied to the conceptions of Spiritual Science. Because people are fully infected by such kind of thoughts, they say: Yes, what Spiritual Science tells on page a,b,c, are facts of Spiritual Science; these facts we cannot have before us, if we have not acquired the seer’s gift. Therefore, they do not go on to think whether in their present attitude to what Spiritual Science teaches they are not making the same mistake that the whole world makes today. The worst of it is, that this fundamental failing of contemporary thought is so little recognised. It is dreadful how little it is recognised. It enters into our everyday thinking, and makes itself felt there, just as in the more advanced thinking of the philosophers and scientists. It is but seldom that people recognise what a really tremendous duty springs from an insight into this fact, how important it is to be interested in such things, how lacking in responsibility to permit our interest in them to be blunted.

The fact is now apparent, that in the course of the last century purely external sense-observation obtained and gave its tone to science; people laid the greatest value on the results of observation in the laboratory, or in the clinic, in the Zoological Gardens and the like, (the value of which observation must be recognised, as I have often remarked) but they desired to hold to these only and go no further. It is true that extraordinary progress has been made by these methods of natural science, quite extraordinary progress; but it is just through this progress that thought has become quite unreliable. Therefore it becomes a duty not to allow those persons to attain power in the world, who exercise this power from the standpoint of a purely materialistic experimental knowledge,—and it is power that such people want. At the present day we have reached the point, when all that is non-materialistic learning is to be driven out of the world by the brutal language of force which is used in materialistic erudition. It has already become a question of force. Among those who appeal most eagerly to the external powers to gain their external privileges, we have to recognise those who stand on the foundation of material science alone. Therefore, it is our duty to understand that force rules in the world. It is not enough that we should be interested only in what concerns ourselves personally, we must develop interest in the great concerns of the whole of humanity. It is true that as individuals and even as a small society we cannot do much today, but from small germs like these a beginning must be made. What is the use of people saying today that they have no faith in doctors; that they have no confidence in the system, and seek by every other means, something in which they can feel confidence? Nothing is affected by this, all that is but personal effort for their own advantage. We should be interested in establishing, alongside the material medicine of today, something in which we can have confidence. Otherwise things will get worse from day to day. This does not only mean that those who have no faith in the medical science of the day should seek out someone whom they can trust; for this would put the latter in a false position, unless he interests himself in seeing that he too should be suitably qualified to interest himself in the progress of the general condition of humanity. It is true that today and to-morrow we cannot perhaps be more than interested in the matter, but we must bear in our souls such interest for the affairs of humanity if we wish to understand in their true meaning the teaching of Spiritual Science. We still often think that we understand the great interests of humanity, because we frequently interpret our personal interests as if they were the greatest interests of mankind.

We must search deeply, within the profoundest depths of our soul, if we wish to discover in ourselves how dependent we are on the blind faith in authority of the present day—how profoundly we are dependent on it. It is our indolence, our love of ease that withholds us from being inwardly kindled, and set aflame by the great needs of humanity.

The best New Year greeting that we can inscribe in our souls is that we may be enkindled and inspired by the great interests of the progress of mankind—of the true freedom of humanity. So long as we allow ourselves to believe that he who blows his trumpet before the world must also be able to think correctly,—so long as we hold beliefs derived from the carelessly organised thinking of the present day,—we have not developed within ourselves true interests in the great universal cause of mankind.

What I have just said is in no way directed against any great man in particular; I know that when such things are said especially in a public lecture, there are many who say: Natural Science and the authorities of the day were attacked by Spiritual Science; and the like. I specially quote instances from those of whom I can say, on the other hand, that they are great authorities of the present day, that they are great men,—to show that they support things which Spiritual Science has to extirpate, root and branch. Even without being a great man, one can recognise the careless thinking of great men, which has been so greatly enhanced just because of the brilliant advance in the experimental science of the day. One example, one among many,—I choose a book written by one of the best known men of the day and which is translated into German. No one can say that greatness is unrecognised by me. I repeat, I choose a book by a celebrated man of the day, in the domain of experimental Natural Science. I look up a passage in the introduction to the second volume, which deals specially with the question of the cosmology of the day; in which the great man goes into the history of the development of cosmo-conception. It runs somewhat as follows: In the times of the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, men tried to form a picture of the world in such and such a way; then in the last four hundred years there arose the Natural Science of today, which has at last drawn the great prize, which has swept all previous ideas aside and has attained to actual truth, which now has but to be further built up.

I have often laid stress on the fact that it is not so much the individual assertions that people make, it is the Ahrimanic or Luciferic characteristics which at once lay hold on people, so that they become Ahrimanic or Luciferic. Thus at the close of this introduction we read the following, which is in the highest degree noteworthy. Take a special note of what is presented to us by one who is without doubt a great and celebrated man of the day. After remarking how grand the knowledge of Natural Science is today, he says: ‘The time of sad decline endured until the awakening of humanity at the beginning of the new age. The new age placed the art of printing at the service of learning, and contempt of experimental work disappeared from the minds of educated people. Opposition to old opinions as expressed in the writings of various investigators, advanced at first but slowly. These hindering conditions have since disappeared, and immediately the number of workers and the means of furthering Natural Science increased in rapid succession. Hence the extraordinary progress of recent years.’

There then follows the last sentence of this introduction—‘We sometimes hear it said that we live in the best of all possible worlds: there might be some objection raised to this, but we scientists at least can assert with all certainty, that we live in the best of times. And we can look forward with confidence to a still better future...’ Now follows what really is astounding! This author attaches to himself, and to his age, that which great men have discovered and thought, regarding nature and the world. Therefore he says: ‘In the firm hope that the future may be better, we can say with Goethe—the great authority on man and nature:

‘Es ist ein gross Ergötzen
Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen,
Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
Und wie wir's dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.’

[It is a great delight, to enter into the spirit of the age, to see how wise men thought before our time, and how splendidly we have advanced things.]

In all seriousness a great man closes his remarks with these words, the pronouncement of Goethe, the great authority on nature and on man; words to which Faust replies—for it is Wagner who says:

‘By your leave it is a great delight,
To enter into the spirit of the age, etc.’

But Faust answers: (and perhaps we may accept what Faust says as the thought of Goethe, the great authority on nature and on man.)

‘O yes! As far as to the stars!’

This is exactly fitted for a man who can reach as far as to the stars, thus:

‘O yes! As far as to the stars!
The ages that are past, my Friend,
Are for us a book with seven seals;
What we call the spirit of the age,
Is in fact the spirit of ourselves
In which the times are mirrored.
This is in truth, often but a wail!
Men fly from the first glance of it.
A rubbish heap, a lumber room,
At most some act or state of law
With excellent pragmatic maxims
Such as are put in puppets’ mouths!’

And so on...

Thus in 1907 wrote one of the greatest men of the day who had surely got ‘as far as to the stars,’ and who looking back on all those who had worked before him had also got so far as to make use of the saying ‘of Goethe, the great authority on man and nature.’

It is a great delight
To enter into the spirit of the age.

You smile! One could wish that this smile always might be directed against those who are capable at the present day of making such carelessness valid; for the example I have given shows that it is those who are firmly established on the ground of the scientific outlook of the day, and who are associated with progress in this domain, who are able to put forth such negligent thinking. It just proves that what is called Natural Science today by no means excludes the most superficial thinking. A man may be a thoroughly careless thinker today, and yet be held to be a great man in the realm of natural science. This has to be recognised, and in this sense we must approach it. It is a sign of our time. If this were to continue; if any one is labelled as a great man, and given out as a great authority and if people put forward what he says in this or that domain without proof, as of something of great worth—then we should never surmount the great misery of our time. I am fully convinced that countless people pass over the sentence I read out to you today, without a smile, although it shows forth in the most eminent degree, where the greatest faults of our day lie, which are bringing about the decline of the evolution of humanity.

We must see clearly where to make a beginning with those things necessary for man; and also see that in spite of the immense advance in external natural science, the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, even down to our own day, have shown themselves the worst dilettantists in regard to all questions of world-outlook. The great fault of our day is, that this is not recognised—that people do not recognise that the greatest investigators in natural science in the nineteenth century proved themselves the worst of dilettantists in the question of world-outlook, when they entirely left out that which as spirit rules in the realm of natural science. People blindly followed after these great persons, not only when they gave out the results of investigations in the laboratory, or of clinical research, but also when they asserted things regarding the secrets of the universe.

So, parallel with the popularising of science which is useful and beneficial in the highest degree, we have at the same time a deterioration as regards all questions of wide import and a heedlessness of thought which is infectious and very harmful, because it is founded on the very worst kind of dilettantism of great men.

Here are to be found the tasks with which our interests must be closely associated, even if we ourselves are not able to produce anything. We must at least look things in the face, we must see clearly that it will above all lead to far, far more unhappy times than we are at present passing through, if mankind does not realise what has been here pointed out;—if, in place of careless, inexact thinking, a clear and genuine method of thought be not established again among men. Everything can be traced back to this careless thinking. All those external, often very unhappy phenomena which we encounter would not exist if this inexact, negligent thought were not there.

It seems to me specially necessary to speak of these matters at the beginning of a New Year, for they are connected with the character and attitude of our whole task. For when we accustom ourselves to consider without prejudice the method and nature of modern thought, and see how powerful it is in all the varied conditions of life, we can then form some picture of what we have to do and of what mankind stands in need. We must in the first place overcome all tendency to slackness, all love of sloth and laziness, we must see clearly that a spiritual-scientific movement has duties other than that of merely listening to lectures or reading books.

I must continually remind you to make yourselves acquainted with the necessary ideas. It is clear to all that as a few individuals,—as a small society—we cannot do much. But our own thought must move in the right direction; we must know what is in question, we must not ourselves be exposed to the danger (to put it trivially) of succumbing to the different conceptions of the world, of those who are the great men of the day in the external sciences. Great men, but dilettante thinkers as regards questions of universal import, found numerous associations of monistic or other nature without the opposition that would arise if at least it were realised that, when such societies are founded, it is as if one said: ‘I am letting this man make a coat, because he is a celebrated cobbler!’

This is foolishness, is it not? but it is just as foolish when a great chemist or a great psychologist is accepted as an authority on a conception of the world. We cannot blame them if they claim it for themselves, for naturally they cannot know how inadequate they are; but that they are so accepted is connected with the great evils of the present day. To me it seems as if a thought for New Year’s Eve must ever be associated with our feelings; whereas it seems to me that that which faces us as the more immediate duty of the day, must be directly associated with our reflections on New Year’s Day; I thought therefore, that the tone of what has been said today might, be fitly associated with what was said yesterday.