The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A common prejudice is expressed in the maxim: Human evolution moves forward in regular succession, the unfolding of historical events makes no leaps. This is connected with another prejudice; for we are also told that Nature makes no leaps. This is repeated over and over again; but it is untrue both for Nature and for History. We never see Nature making mighty progress without leaps. Her progress is not gradual; on the contrary, small processes are followed by important results, and the most important of all result from leaps. Many cases could be enumerated in which Nature advances in such a way, that we can observe a transition of forms into their exact opposite.

In History this is particularly important, because there we have two significant occurences, which gradually prepared, but then ebbed away, only to make their eventual advance in a forward leap:

1. The founding of the free cities at the beginning of the Middle Ages.
2. The great inventions and discoveries at the end of the Middle Ages.

History moves very quickly forward at the change from the 11th to the 12th century. New forms of society evolve from old ones. From the fact that many men left their homes, to settle in the cities, sprang up—throughout Germany, France, England, Scotland, and as far as Russia and Italy—cities with new conditions of life, new organisations, laws and constitutions. At the end of the Middle Ages we find the great discoveries, the voyages to India, America, etc., and the world-wide invention of printing. All this shows us what a radical change has been affected through the birth of the new spirit of Science—through Copernicus.

Two incisions were made by this; and if we are to study the Middle Ages thoughtfully, these two occurances must be place in the right light. They appear as leaps, but such an event is gradually prepared, until with the force of an avalanche it breaks forth, and rushes forward in a flood. If we pursue them step by step, it will become clear that these two events had been prepared in the life of the Germani. We shall see through what circumstances it was that such great power was given to the Franks, such influence over the configuration of European relationships. For this purpose we must understand the character of that race, the necessary metamorphosis of industrial relationships, and the powerful penetration of Christianity in the 4th century. These two things indicate the alteration in the life of the Germani. They condition the evolution of the Middle Ages. It would be useless to follow all the wanderings of the Germani, to see how Odoacer dethroned the last West Roman Emperor, how the Goths were driven out of Italy by the Emperor Justinian, how the Longobards seized possession of Northern Italy—we see the same circumstances enacted over and over again.

In the southern regions, where the Gemani found political and industrial conditions already firmly established, the idiosyncrasies of their own tribes disappeared; they lost all significance. We hear nothing more of the Goths, Gepidae, etc., they have vanished, even to their names. In contrast to this, the Franks had arrived at free, not yet fixed, condition, where serious appropriation was as yet non-existent, and through this political configuration, the Franks became the ruling race.

Now we must see how these developed in the empire of the Franks, that which we call the Merovingian kingdom. It was actually nothing but many small kingdoms, formed in the most natural way. The Merovingians remained as victors, after they had overcome the others who were originally their equals. All these kingdoms had been formed in the following way: some little tribe wandered in, subjugated the inhabitants and divided the land in such a way that all the members received small or large properties. Thus all dominion was based on land ownership. The most powerful received the largest domain. For the tilling of these properties, a great number of people were employed, some taken from the inhabitants, but part were prisoners of war, made into workers. Simply through this difference between the ownership of less of more land, were power relationships developed. The largest landowner was the king. His power was based on his property—that is the characteristic trait. Out of these powerful relationships, the relationships of rights were formed, and it is interesting to observe how this came about. Certainly we find among the Germanic tribes, laws founded on customs evolved in ancient times, before we have any knowledge of them. Among the smaller tribes all the people assembled to administer justice; later, the members of the tribe only came together on March 1st, to take counsel about their concerns. But now the great landowner was not responsible to the others for what he did on his own property. True, we find a conservative clinging to the old prescriptive laws among the different tribes. We find them preserved for long periods among the Saxons, Thuringians and Frisians, also among the Cheruscans, whose tribe kept them longer than has been generally believed. It was different where large landowning had developed, because the proprietor, absolute in his own domain, became also irresponsible. This irresponsibility gave rise to a new legal position, in which the jurisdiction of power, the authority of the police, was exercised. If another man committed an offence, he was called to account for it; if the irresponsible one did it, the same offence was looked upon as lawful. What was illegal among those without power, was legal among the powerful. They were able to change might into right.

Now, in this way the Franks could farther extend their power, and, especially in the northeast, could conquer great territories. At a time when war followed war, the less powerful were dependent on the protection of the mightier. Thus arose the fief and vassal system, which called forth a selection of powerful men. Then an arrangement for transferring certain rights by means of contracts sprang up.

The great landed property, the king's estate, required special legal conditions, which could be transferred to others by the king or the owner. Together with the land, the jurisdiction and the police authority would be transferred. King's law and the law of the small vassal came into being. As the result of this innovation we see the development of a powerful official class, not on a basis of stipend, but of land owning. Such justiciaries were the highest judges. In the beginning, when they still had to take into consideration the rights of powerful tribes, they were bound to respect ancient laws. Gradually, however, their position became that of an absolute judicature, so that, in course of time, side by side with the kingdom, there was formed in France a kind of official aristocracy which grew to be a rival of the kingship.

Thus in the 6th century, a rivalry developed between the sovereign and the new nobility, and this attained the greatest significance.

The original governing race, which sprang from the Merovingians, the large land owners, was succeeded by the Carlovingians who had originally belonged to the official aristocracy. They had been mayors of the palace to the ruling race, which had been overthrown by the rivalry of the aristocratic officials. Essentially, therefore, it was the possession of large property that was the basis of power relations; and the strongest moral current of the church, had to initiate its rule in this roundabout way through the large land owner.

It was the characteristic feature of the Frankish Church that, to begin with, it represented nothing but a number of large land owners; we see the rise of bishoprics and abbacies, and of vassals who placed themselves under the protection of the Church, in order to receive fiefs from it. Thus, side by side with the large, worldly land owners, clerical proprietors also arose. This is the reason why we see so little depth, and why the spiritual element which we find in Christianity is essentially due to foreign influence. It was not the Frankish race, but men of the British Isles who succeeded in creating those mighty currents which then flowed out eastwards. In the British Isles, many learned men and pious monks were deeply engaged in work. Real work was being done, as we may see, in particular, by the resumption of Platonism and its alliance with Christianity. We see mysticism, dogmatism, but also enthusiasm and pathos, issuing from here. From here come the first missionaries: Columba, Gallus and Winfried-Boniface, the converter of the Germans. And because these first missionaries had nothing in their mind but the spiritual side of Christianity they were not inclined to conform to the conditions of the Frankish tribes. Theirs was the healing virtue, and they found, especially through Boniface, their chief influence exercised among the East Germani. For this reason, Rome acquired an increasing influence at this time in the empire of the Franks. Two heterogenous elements combined together: the rugged force of the Germani and the spiritual strength of Christianity. They fitted in to each other in such a way that it seems wonderful how these tribes submitted to Christianity, and how Christianity itself modified its nature, to adapt itself to the Germani. These missionaries worked differently from the Frankish kings, who spread Christianity by force of arms. It was not forced into their souls as something alien; their places of worship and sacred customs were preserved; their practices and personalities so respected that old institutions were made use of to diffuse the new content. It is interesting to notice how what is old becomes the garment, what is new becomes the soul. From the Saxon tribe we possess an account of the Life of Jesus: all the details concerning the figure of Jesus were clothed in Germanic dress. Jesus appears as a German duke; his intercourse with the disciples resembles a tribal assembly. This is how the life of Jesus is presented in Heiland.

Ancient heroes were transformed into saints; ancient festivals and ritual customs became Christian. Much of what appears today as exclusively Christian was transferred at that time from heathen customs. In the Frankish empire, on the contrary, we see in ecclesiastical Christianity a means of consolidating power; a Frankish code of law begins with an invocation to “Christ, Who loves the Franks above all other peoples.” In the days when the British missionaries represented the moral influence of Christianity, the influence of the Roman Church also increased considerably. The Frankish kings sought alliance with the papacy. The Longobards had seized possession of Italy, and harassed the bishop of Rome, in particular. They were Aryan Christians. That was why the Roman bishop turned first to the Franks for help, at the same time tendering his influence to the Franks. So the Frankish king became the protector of the pope; and the pope anointed the king. Hence the Frankish kings derived their exalted position, their dignity, from this consecration by the pope. It was an enhancement of what the Franks saw in Christianity. All this took place in the west, in the 7th centure. This alliance between the papacy and the Frankish authority, formed a gradual preparation for the subsequent rule of Charlemagne. Thus we see the accomplishment of important spiritual and social changes. This alone, however, would not have led to an event which proved to be of the greatest importance, a material revolution: the founding of cities. For something was lacking in the Frankish Christian culture, although it had efficiency, intellect and depth.

That which we call Science, purely external Science, did not exist for them. We have followed a merely material and moral movement. What Science there was among them had remained at the same level as at their first contact with Christianity. And just as the Frankish tribes took no interest in the improvement of their simple agriculture, and never thought of developing it economically, similarly the Church only sought to build up its moral influence. Primitive tillage offered no special difficulties, such as, in Egypt, have led to the evolution of physics, geometry and technical science. Everything here was simpler, more primitive; thus the financial trading, which was already in use, gave place again to barter.

So European culture needed a new stimulus, and cannot be understood without taking this stimulus into account. Out of Asia, form the far East, whence Christianity once came, came now this new culture, from the Arabs. The religion founded there by Mahomet is, in its content, simpler than Christianity. The spiritual content of Mohammedanism is, essentially, based on simple monotheistic ideas confined to a divine fundamental Being, whose nature and form is not closely investigated, but to whose will men surrender, because they have faith. Hence this religion produces proud confidence in this will, a confidence which leads to fatalism, to a complete self-surrender. This is how it became possible for these tribes to extend Arabian rule, in a few generations, over Syria, Mesopotamia and North Africa, as far as to the realm of the Visigoths in Spain, so that, as early as the turn of the 7th to the 8th century, Moorish rulers were established there, and implanted their own culture in place of that of the Visigoths.

Thus something quite new, of an entirely different nature, flowed into European culture. The spirit of Arabism culture was not filled with dogma concerning angels and demons, etc., but precisely with that which was lacking in the Christian Germanic tribes namely, with external science. Here we find all such sciences—medicine, chemistry, mathematical thinking—well developed. The practical spirit brought over from Asia to Spain found employment now in seafaring, etc. It was brought over at a moment when an unscientific spirit had established its kingdom there The Moorish cities became centers of serious scientific work; we see here a culture which cannot fail to be admired by all who know it. Humboldt says of it: “This depth, this intensity, this exactitude of knowledge is unexampled in the history of culture.” The Moorish intellectuals had width of outlook and depth of thought; and not only did they, like the Germani, embrace Greek science, they developed it farther. Aristotle also contiuned to live among them, but with the Arabs, it was the true Aristotle who was honoured, with a wide outlook, as the father of Science. It is interesting to see how the Alexandrine culture, started in Greece, continued its existence here, and with this we tough upon one of the most remarkable currents in the human mind. The Arabs laid the foundations of Objective Science. From them, this flowed, in the first place, into the Anglo-Saxon monasteries in England and Ireland, where the old energetic Celtic blood now dwelt. It is strange to see what active intercourse had been introduced between them and Spain, and how, where profundity of mind and capacity to think were present, Science revived through the medium of the Arabs.

And it is a remarkable phenomenon that the Arabs who, to begin with, took possession of the whole of Spain, were soon outwardly conquered by the Franks under Charles Martel a the Battle of Poiters in 732. By this victory the physical strength of the Franks overcame the physical strength of the Moors. But the spiritual strength of the Arabs remained invincible; and just as, once, Greek culture rose triumphant in Rome, so Arab culture conquered the West, in opposition to the victorious Germani. Now, when the science which was needed to extend the horizon of trade and world intercourse, when city culture, arose, we see that it was Arab influence which made themselves felt here. Quite new elements flowing in sought to adapt themselves to the old.

We see expressed by Walther von der Vogelweide the perplexity which may assail anyone who follows, with an open mind, the conflicting currents of the Middle Ages. The poet saw how the Germanic tribes were striving for power, and how an opposing current was flowing from Christianity. That which flowed through the Middle Ages was transmuted by Walther von der Vogelweide into feeling, in the following sorrowful description:

No answer came into my mind
How men might come by these three things,
So that no man need to perish.
Two are honour and worldly goods;
These often do each other harm
The third, the chiefest of them all,
Is simply pleasing God. I longed to have them in one shrine
Alas, that that can never be!
For worldly goods and honour
Dwell not, within one human heart,
Together with the grace of God.
Hindrances are everywhere,
Faithlessness sets endless snares,
Haughty force lays all men low.
Thus Peace and Right are done to death.
Never will the Three find refuge
Till these two are healed and well.

We shall see shortly how difficult it was for the man of the Middle Ages to combine these three things in their heart, and how these three gave rise to the great struggles which rent that age asunder

If you take up one of the ordinary school books, or any other of the usual presentations of the Middle Ages, dealing with the period of which we are now going to speak—the 8th or 9th century—you will find that the personality of Charlemagne (768–814) occupies an inordinate space in it. Following the feats and triumphal marches of Charlemagne in this way, you will hardly understand what it was that actually made the significance of this epoch. All this was only an external expression of much deeper events in the Middle Ages, events which will appear as the converging of many significant factors. In order to study these factors, we must mention certain things which we have already touched upon, and which will throw light on this subject.

If you remember the description of European conditions after the folk migrations, when, after these occurrences, the Germanic tribes came to rest in different places, you will think of the way these races brought their ancient institutions, their manners and customs, with them into their new homes, and developed them there. And we see that they preserved their own peculiar character, a kind of social order, consisting in the distribution of private and common property. There were little social assemblies, which formed their original organisation: village communities, then, later, hundreds and cantons; and in all these, what could be common property was so: forest, meadow, water, etc. And only what a single individual could cultivate was assigned to the private family and became hereditary; all the rest remained common property.

Now we have seen that the leaders of such tribes received much larger territories at the conquest, and that on this account certain positions of mastery sprang up, especially in Gaul, where much land was still to be reclaimed. For the working of these domains, it was partly members of the former population, partly the Roman colonists or prisoners of war, who were taken. In this way, certain legal conditions grew up. The large landowner was not responsible to others for what he did on his own property; he could not be brought to book for any orders that he gave. Hence he could rescind for his own estate, any legal prescription or police regulation. So, in the Frankish Empire, we meet with no united monarchy; what was called the Empire of the Merovingians was nothing more than such a large landed estate. The Merovingians were one of the families which possessed much land; according to civil law—through the struggle for existence—their rule extended farther and farther. New territories were constantly added to it. The large landowner was not such a king as we have been accustomed to in the 13th, 14th, yes, even in the 16th century; but private government gradually became legal rule.

He transferred certain parts of his domain, and with them his rights; to others with less land; that was called being “under exemption"; this judicial authority had grown out of the irresponsible position in such circumstances. In return, this type of landowner must pay tribute, and do military service for the king in time of war. In the expansion of such proprietary relationships, the Merovingian stock as conquerors took precedence of all others, so that we must retain the formula: the ancient Frankish Empire progressed through purely private legal conditions.

Again the transition from the Merovingian to the Carlovingian stock, from which Charles Martel descended, took place in the same way, out of the same conditions. The Carlovingians were originally stewards of the domains of the Merovingians; but they gradually became so influential that Pepin the Short succeeded in putting the imbecile Childeric into a monastery, and, with the help of the pope, in deposing him. From him was descended his successor, Charlemagne. In a cursory survey we can only touch upon the external events; for, indeed, they have no further significance. Charlemagne made war on the neighbouring German tribes and extended his control in certain directions. Even this empire, however, cannot be called a State. He waged lengthy wars against the Saxons, who clung to the ancient village organisation, the old manners and customs, the old Germanic faith, with great tenacity. Victory was won after wearisome wars, fought with extraordinary ferocity on both sides.

Among such tribes as the Saxons, one personality in particular would stand out, and would then become a leader. One of these was Widukind, a duke with great possessions and a strong military retinue, whose courage withstood the most violent opposition. He had to be subdued with the greatest cruelty, and then submitted to the rule of Charlemagne. What did the rule amount to? It amounted to this: if the authority of Charlemagne had been withdrawn, nothing special would have happened. Those tribesmen who in their thousands had been obliged to submit to baptism, would have gone on living in the same way as before.

It was the form Charlemagne had given the Church which established his powerful position. Through the power of the Church these territories were subdued. Bishoprics and monasteries were founded, the large properties formerly possessed by the Saxons were distributed. The cultivation of these was in the hands of the bishops and abbots; thus the Church undertook what had formerly been done by secular landholders protected by “exemption,” namely, judiciary authority. If the Saxons did not acquiesce, they were coerced by fresh inroads of Charlemagne. Thus the same things went on as in western France: the smaller landowners could not carry on alone, hence they gave what they had to the monasteries and bishoprics, to receive it again under feudal tenure.

The one condition was, then, that the large properties should belong to the Church, as in the newly established bishoprics of Paderborn, Merseburg and Erfurt, which were cultivated for the bishop by the conquered tribes. But even those who still had their own possessions held them as fiefs and had to pay ever-increasing taxes to the bishoprics and abbeys. This was how the rule of Charlemagne was established: with the help of the great influence obtained by the Church whose suzerain he was, his position of authority was achieved.

Charles extended his authority in other regions, just as he was extending it here. In Bavaria he succeeded in breaking the power of Duke Tassilo and sending him to a monastery, so that he might bring Bavaria under his own dominion. The Bavarians had allied themselves with the Avars, a people who may be called the successors of the Huns. Charles was victorious in this struggle and fortified a strip of land as a boundary against the Avars, the original Avarian limit of the land which to-day is Austria. In the same way he had protected himself also against the Danes.

Like Pepin he fought in Italy against the Longobards, who were harassing the pope; again he was victorious, and established his authority there. He experienced too against the Moors in Spain, and almost everywhere he was the victor. We see Frankish rule established over the whole of the European world of those days; it merely contained the germ of the future State.

In these newly won regions, Counts were inaugurated, who exercised justiciary authority. In the places where Charlemagne alternatively held his court—fortified places called Palatinates—were the Counts Palatine, mostly large landowners, who received certain tribute from the surrounding districts. It was not only tribute from the land and soil, however, which fell to their share; they also received revenues from the administration of justice. If a murder were committed, the public tribunal was convened by the Count Palatine. A relative, or someone who was closely connected with the victim, brought the indictment. At that time certain compensation could be paid for murder, a recognised sum, differing in value for a free man and an unfree, paid partly to the family of the murdered man, partly to the justiciary of the canton, and partly to the king's central fund. Those who looked after communal concerns—actually only such as concerned taxes and defense—were the land-graves, who travelled from one district to another, ambassadors with no special function.

Under these conditions, the divergence between the new nobility of landowners and the serfs became more and more marked, and also between the landowners and those freemen who were indeed personally still free, but had fallen into a condition of servile dependence, because they had to pay heavy tribute and to render compulsory military service. These conditions grew more and more critical; secular and ecclesiastical property became increasingly extensive; and soon we see the populace in bitter dependence, and already we meet with small conspiracies—revolts—foreshadowing what we know as the Peasant Wars. We can understand that, in the meantime, material culture developed more and more productively. Many Germanic tribes had had no concern with agriculture before the folk migrations, but had earned their living by cattle raising; now they were developing agriculture more and more; especially were they cultivating oats and barley, but also wheat, leeks, etc. These were the essential things which were important in that older civilisation. There was, as yet, no actual handicraft; it was only evolving under the surface; weaving, dyeing, etc. were mostly carried on by the women at home. The arts of the goldsmith and the smith were the first crafts to be cultivated. Still less important was trade.

Actual cities were developed from the 10th century onwards, and therewith a historical event began to take shape. But what sprang up with these cities, namely trade, had at that time no importance; at its best it was only a trade in valuables from the East, carried on by Israelite merchants. Trade usages hardly existed, although Charlemagne had already had coins minted. Nearly everything was barter, in which cattle, weapons, and such things were exchanged.

This is how we must picture the material culture of these regions; and now we shall understand why the spiritual culture also was bound to assume a certain definite form. Nothing of what we picture as spiritual culture existed in these regions, either among the freemen or the serfs. Hunting, war, agriculture, were the occupations of the landowners; princes, dukes, kings, even poets, unless they were ecclesiastics, could seldom read and write. Wolfram von Eschenbach had to dictate his poems to a clergyman and let him read them aloud to him; Hartmann von der Aue boasts, as a special attribute, that he can read books. In all that secular culture catered for, there was no question of reading and writing. Only in enclosed monasteries were Art and Science studied. All other students were directed to what was offered them in the teaching and preaching of the clergy. And that brought about their dependence on the clergy and the monks; it gave the Church its authority.

When we read descriptions today of what is called “the dark Middle Ages”—persecution of heretics, trials of witches, and so on—we must be clear that these conditions only began with the 13th century. In the older times nothing of this kind existed. The Church had no more authority than the secular large landowners. Either the Church went hand-in-hand with the secular authority, and was only a branch of it, or it was endeavouring to cultivate theology and the science of Christianity.

Until the current of spiritual influence came from the Arabs, all spiritual concerns were fostered only in the monasteries; the activities of the monks were completely unknown to the world outside. All that was known outside the monasteries was the preaching, and a kind of spiritual instruction given in the primitive schools.

The authority of the Church was enhanced by the fact that it was the clergy themselves who carried out all the arrangements for promoting knowledge. The monks were the architects; it was they who adorned the churches with statues, they who copied the works of classical, too, the emperor's chancellors, were, for the most part, monks.

One form of culture which was fostered in the monasteries was Scholasticism. A later was Mysticism. This scholasticism, which flourished until the middle of the 14th century, endeavoured—at least at one juncture—to inculcate a severely disciplined way of thinking. There were severe examinations to undergo; nobody could make progress in absolutely logical discipline of thinking without hard tests; only those who could really think logically, were able to take part in the spiritual life. Today that is not considered. But actually it was because of this training in consistent logic that when the Moorish-Arabian culture came to Europe, this science found disciplined thinking there already. The forms of thought with which Science works today were already there; there are very few arrangements of ideas, which are not derived from thence.

The concepts with which the Science—still operate today, such as subject and object, were established at that time. A training of thought, such as does not appear elsewhere in world history, was developed. The keen thinker of today owes that which flows in the veins of his intellect to the training fostered between the 5th and 14th centuries. Now some may feel it to be unjust that the masses at that time had nothing of all this; but the course of world history is not directed by justice of injustice, it follows the universal law of cause and effect. Thus we see here two definite currents flowing side by side: 1. Outside, material culture, absolutely without science; 2. A finely chiseled culture, confined to a few within the Church. Yet the culture of the cities was based on this strict scholastic way of thinking. The men who carried through the great revolution were ecclesiastics: Copernicus was a prebendary, Giordano Bruno was a Dominican friar. Their education and that of many others, their formal schooling, was rooted in this spirit of the Church. They were not powerful men, but simple monks, who, indeed, often suffered under the oppression of those in power.

Nor was it bishops and rich abbots, but on the contrary, poor monks, living in obscurity, who propagated the spread of Science. The Church, having allied itself with external powers, was obliged to materialise itself; it had to secularise its teachings and its whole character. Very long ago, up to the 12th century, nothing was held more solemn, more sublime, by the Christians, than the Lord's Supper. It was regarded as a sacrifice of grateful remembrance, a symbol of the intensifying of Christianity. Then came the secularisation, the lack of understanding for such exalted spiritual facts, especially as regards the festivals.

In the 9th century there lived in the land of the Franks, at the court of Charles the Bald, Scotus Erigena, a very distinguished Irish monk, in whose book De Divisioni Naturae we find a rich store of profound intellectual thought—though, indeed, not what the 20th century understands as Science. Erigena had to fight against hostile criticism in the Church. He defended the old doctrine that the Lord's Supper represented the symbolism of the highest Sacrifice. Another, materialistic, interpretation existed, and was supported in Rome, namely, that the bread and wine was actually transformed into flesh and blood. This dogma of the Lord's Supper originated under the influence of this continuous materialisation, but it only became official in the 13th century.

Scotus Erigena had to take refuge in England, and at the instigation of the pope, was murdered in his own monastary by the fraternity of monks. These struggles took place, not within the Church, but through the interpenetration of secular influence. You see that spiritual life was confined to a few, and was closed to the masses, upon whom lay an ever-increasing pressure, both from the secular and the spiritual side. In this way discontent continued to grow. It could not be otherwise than that dissatisfaction should increase among these people of divided loyalties. In country, on the farms, new causes of discontent kept cropping up. No wonder that the small towns, such as those already established on the Rhine and the Danube, should continually grow larger and form themselves anew from the influx of those who could no longer get on in the country. The fundamental cause of this reorganisation of conditions was the people's thirst for freedom.

It was a purely natural motive which gave rise to the culture of the cities. Spiritual culture remained undisturbed for the time being; many cities developed round the bishoprics and monasteries. From the city-culture rose all that constituted trade and industry in the Middle Ages, and afterwards brought about quite different relationships.

The need to develop the full life of the human personality, was the cause of the founding of the cities. It was a long step on the path of freedom; as, indeed, according to the words of Hegel, history signifies the education of the human race towards freedom.

And if we follow the history of the Middle Ages farther, we shall see that this founding of the city-culture represented, not an insignificant, but a very important step on the path of freedom.

The history of the Middle Ages is specially important for human study, because it deals with an epoch which we are able to investigate from its simple origin up to the rise of what we call “States.” And, moreover, we have here an interweaving of many factors. In simple circumstances, a complete form of culture, such as Christianity is, was living a full life. Out of a condition of barbarism, we see developing more and more the blossom of medieval culture—what we know as “discoveries.”

To those races, thrown confusedly together on the path of folk migrations, we see arriving by a complicated, roundabout way that which today we term “Science.” The Middle Ages had come into a great heritage. Yet, of what we have learnt to know of Greek culture, nothing has remained but a few traditions, seen through the spectacles of Christian conceptions. On the other hand, a very great inheritance has remained from the days of the Roman Empire, with its government and administration of justice, showing a serried unity such as had never before appeared in world history, nor is to be found elsewhere in the Middle Ages. It is only in the new age, otherwise so proud of its freedom, that we meet with such an expansion of the authority of the State. This, allied with that other idealistic culture movement by which the Roman Empire had gradually been penetrated and absorbed, came to people who know nothing of any such education and who, moreover, had been uprooted by the folk migrations. All these tribes—Goths, Heruleans, Longobards, Franks, Saxons, etc.—were in quite a different position from the Romans; they had remained completely at the stage of childhood.

They led a kind of Nature-life, confined to hunting and waging war, without settled law or justice. A great transition now took place in the relationship and conceptions of these tribes, who lived together in small groups.

What held these separate tribes together? The memory of some ancestor, who had given the tribe its name—the memory of mighty generations which had distinguished themselves in ancient wars or at the conquest of new land, handing down to the tribe the titles of count, prince and duke.

The transition was expressed in a liking for communal ground. Men began to attach more value to community of land ownership than to blood relationship.

Instead of tribal membership, appeared what we call the village community. The whole of material life was based on land and soil. There was still neither trade nor industry; all that was necessary in that line was looked after by the women, young people and slaves. The majority of the population knew nothing beyond agriculture and frequent military expeditions. They had no notion of what we call culture today, no idea of what we look upon as the first essentials: reading and writing. It is reckoned as a special merit of Charlemagne's that in his old age he took the trouble to learn to read and write. All the education there was in the conquered districts lay in the hands of the Roman population. From it sprang the civil service; hence the influence of the Roman conception of justice. Thus it was in the western regions; it was different in the east. There, in the districts which form the Germany of today, the original Germanic character had kept itself free from these influences. The unbroken strength of the Thuringian and Saxon tribes was something with which everyone had to reckon on, in the Middle Ages.

The only thing which brought education to them was Christianity. Yet the actual Sciences—such as Mathematics, Natural Science, etc.—were not included in it. To have added moral, ethical concepts was the merit of Christianity. Especially among the Frankish tribes, the influence of the clergy, particularly of the immigrant Celtic monks, was very strong. Among these tribes, which had been led by favourable circumstances into a free land, where, in regions still to a large extent uncultivated, they could develop their own particular character—we can best see how this metamorphosis was accomplished. The metamorphosis of small communities to larger ones came about here. Counts and princes conquered more and more territories and enfeoffed to small proprietors, parts of their property. By this means, the power of the large landowner extended farther and farther. A kind of jurisdiction and constitution arose out of this transfer of relationships belonging originally to purely civil law. What the Irish and Scottish monks originally instigated was a religious zeal, a holy inspiration, to work for the salvation of mankind. All that was changed. The Franks could only think of Christianity as a means to obtaining power. Charlemagne, in particular, made use of the Church to increase his dominion. Any bishop instituted by him was generally chosen as a tool for his government. In the beginning the Church was led only by those who were zealous for the faith, those who were genuinely convinced; later, under the influence of external authority, the Church itself sought to obtain power relationships. Thus the bishop was first a ministering member of the Church, later himself a ruler and landowner. It is thus we see the Middle Ages at about the time of Charlemagne. But we cannot speak of an empire of Charlemagne, as we speak of empires today. The ownership of large territories made it possible to transfer landed property. New territory was conquered and produced new transfers. Thus, the justiciaries of the court came into existence. Instead of the old canton tribunals, court tribunals arose, with the imperial counts, or—if they were appointed by bishops—provosts.

In the meantime, there were still always independent tribes, who clung to their old dukes, their self-chosen justiciaries.

So was it still at the death of Charlemagne, and so it remained under his son, Louis the Pious. This we see from his relations with his three sons, Lothair, Pepin and Louis. He divided his empire among the three, as if it were a private property, and when he had another son, by a second marriage, and was about to alter the division, his elder sons rose against him, conquered him at the battle of Lügenfeld and compelled him to abdicate, so that their property should not be reduced. This gives us clear insight into what mattered most in such a State. We see, too, what a false picture is given in the histories dealing with this period. The fighting which took place was for purely private rights, and though the actual populace was, of course, disturbed and harassed by the military expeditions and massing of troops, yet, for the progress of mankind, all these struggles in the post-Carlovingian epoch, were really of no significance.

That, however, which had real significance was the opposition that had developed between the empire of the Franks and the empire which comprised Germany and Austria. In the Western Empire a struggle had gradually arisen between the secular nobility and the ruling ecclesiastical power. The educated clergy supplied what had formerly been provided by those who were left from the Roman population: the higher court officials, the clerks of the law courts, etc. These all possessed a quite uniform education, issuing from the monasteries. Side by side with the educated clergy were the uneducated masses, who were entirely dependent on these cultured ecclesiastics. The whole education of those days proceeded from what was taught in the monastery schools. Christian theology embraced a septuple of sciences, three lower and four higher.

Thus we see, outside, on the land, a race entirely engaged in war and agriculture; whereas in churches, schools and offices, that which sprang from the monastery schools, the sciences were taught. The three lower ones were: Grammar, Logic and Dialectics. Grammar was the science of speech, Logic of thinking—and they have persisted in the same form, since they were taught, from Greece, in the monasteries of the Middle Ages up to the 19th century; whereas now they are considered superfluous. Next to Logic came Dialectics, which has completely disappeared from the scientific curriculum of today. Medieval education was based on Dialectics, which everyone who hoped to achieve anything in intellectual life had to learn and master. Dialectics is the art of defending a truth against an attack, according to the correct rules. In order to do this, the laws of reason had to be known. Sophism could not be emplolyed when it was a question of permanently defending a truth; it was not the age of newspapers, where reasons which were valid today, are not accepted tomorrow.

From Dialectics springs what we may call the scientific and scholarly conscience; and that everyone should have, who wishes to join in scientific work. Not everything can be defended in a rational way; hence the great importance of this training, to be able to make conscientious distinctions. Later, however, this teaching degenerated, so that, towards the end of the Middle Ages, it might happen that someone might volunteer to defend any truth, for 24 hours long, against the attacks of assembled professors, students and layman from Paris.

Those who aspired to the vocation of judge were trained by Dialectics—not so much the presidents of the law courts as those who drew up the verdicts.

When, at the beginning of Faust, Goethe makes him say:

“True, I've more with than all your solemn fools,
Priests, doctors, scribes, magisters of the schools. ”

he is characterising the dignities and offices to which, in these days, a man might attain through a scientific education. A “Doctor” was one who could make independent use of his knowledge. A “Master” had the right to teach in the universities. “Clerks” were all those who were engaged in civil service, whether in a high or low position. “Parsons” were all clergymen. The word Pfaffe (parson) was not in those days a term of contempt, but an honorary title. Thus, as late as the 14th century, Meister Eckhardt calls Plato the great Greek “Pfaffe.”

The four higher sciences were: Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Music.

Geometry is the science of space. Arithmetic is a higher form of counting. Astronomy, too, represented more of less what we understand by it today. Music was not the same as that which we call music today.

Music was the science of harmony of the spheres. It was believed that the whole universe stood in harmonious relationship to its individual constituents. All these relationships, expressed in figures, men sought to discover. As also, indeed, colours, notes, etc. are based on certain numbers. In music they sought clarity concerning the laws of harmony, of rhythmic relationships; the concord of cosmic laws was taught.

Thus I have tried to give you an idea of the activities of the class which ruled on account of its education. More and more did this education gain the upper hand in the western realm which we now call France. It was different in Germany. There the tribes had remained independent; they had retained their simple customs, had preserved their freedom to a large extent. The seamy side of these primitive relationships, however, was that here the clergy were uneducated, and allowed themselves to be used as a means to power in the hands of the dukes and emperors.

The dominion of the western empire remained with the Carlovingians. Yet the rulers of this house were never of much value. Eventually the inefficiency of these Carlovingian rulers became especially clear when the Normans—the warlike pirates from the north—harassed the land. These Normans forced their way into the country from the mouths of the rivers Elbe and Weser, plundering the coasts everywhere, especially in France, where they took possession of the northern regions, and pressed forward as far as Paris. At that time Charles III was reigning; he himself proved utterly incapable of undertaking anything against the Normans. Hence it was easy for an unknown Austrian duke, Arnulf of Cairinthia, to put an end to the Carlovingian rule and to usurp the government himself. At first he enjoyed great respect, since he had succeeded in conquering the Normans. But the jealousy among the princes was so great that Arnulf was obliged to appeal to the Church and to conclude an alliance with it. He had to make an expedition into Italy, and in general to submit to ecclesiastical authority at many points. The consequence was that, after his death, the Church, as we shall see, made use of its power. It was not a secular prince or count, but the Archbishop of Mainz, who became the guardian of his son, Louis the Child. In this way the Archbishop assumed all the privliges of government, and henceforth we see the foundations laid for the rule of the Church, which was no longer merely exploited by the secular rulers, but was more and more united in the exercise of secular government and secular jurisdiction. The result of this was that the struggle between secular and ecclesiastical power relaxed, and this introduced that important period of history—the struggle between the Emperor and the Pope. Conventional historical descriptions, which picture these two powers as quite distinct from each other are incorrect. They were only rivals in the fight for external authority, but they were equal powers working in the same direction. We are only dealing with a quarrel between a Church grown secular, and a secular power. We see power expanding in two directions; and as a third, we see the rise of the “free cities,” spreading over the whole of Europe.

A week ago, we studied the contrast between what is today France, on the one hand, and Austria and Germany on the other, as it had developed in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries.

We saw that the Western Empire was distinguished by the traces left of the old Roman culture; and that the Church had soon acquired authority by itself becoming the owner of large tracts of land. So it came to a struggle between the secular nobility and the ambitious Church. The Church had been endowed, especially by Charlemagne, with immense stretches of landed property, so that it became the confederate of the secular rulers, because it was brought into feudal relationships both with those beneath and those above it.

Those who were defeated had come into feudal relationship with the conquerors; the nobles developed into vassals of the king, and thus the kingdom grew stronger and stronger. The Western Empire was continually concerned with the opposition between the vassals and the Church. It was different in the Eastern Empire. Here the old feelings of independence, the sentiment of freedom still persisted, so that the tribal dukes would not consent to enter into a situation of dependence. Thus the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries were filled with continual efforts of the so-called kings—who were indeed elected, but actually were only kings to their own tribes—to bring the dukes of the other tribes into dependence on themselves.

History tells of many struggles of this kind. The Carlovingians were succeeded, after the Frankish Conrad, by a Saxon dynasty, and much is told of the deeds of Henry I, Otto I, II & III and Henry II, as well as of the subsequent Frankish kings, Conrad II and Henry III, IV &V. These kings who, in the Eastern Empire, were elected, had, nevertheless, no say in the constitution or legislation of the tribes. Thus, it is much more important to know what the empire actually signified at that time, than to form an accurate picture of the individual battles.

There were very large dukedoms, which had arisen in the way described. During the original migrations into these regions, some individuals had acquired large properties, and had become more and more powerful; smaller owners became dependent on them, and were obliged to surrender their property as fiefs, and then to pay tribute.

Thus, the tribal dukes gradually absorbed the small properties, and by giving others some part of their large property on feudal tenure, secured for themselves the right to have a recognised number of fighting men at their disposal, and to paid a definite sum.

Thus, through the absorption of the smaller properties by the greater, the Saxon, Frankish, Swabian, Bavarian and other dukedoms came into existence. Gradually, too, the jurisdiction of the cantonal law court was transferred to the so-called high court of justice, which had been thrust upon the vassals and peasants by the dukes. The Church, according to its regulations, must exercise its jurisdiction through provosts. Even the king was nothing but a large landowner. He had vassals, fighting men whom he had forced into his service; moreover he had acquired demesnes, and with them he had established his authority in various places. The relationship of the duke to the king was also only that of a vassal, because he paid a fixed tribute to the court. Jurisdiction was a ducal concern. Only in the frontier region against the Magyars, Wends and Danes, was jurisdiction exercised by the margraves and counts-palatine. There were no large States with central administration and uniform armies. Hence arose the eternal wars of kings against rebellious dukes who did not wish to furnish tribute. Then it gradually became necessary for the Church to make a move.

It was consistent with piety to insist upon the Church paying its dues to the king. It was Otto I, in particular who in all piety, in all ecclesiastical orthodoxy, obliged the Church to render this tribute. The bishops were compelled to do as other vassals did. Church property was divided into two parts, of which one was tilled by the serfs for the bishops, on whom they became completely dependent. Another district remained in less definite relationship; there the peasants had to attend to the fields for the king, in the name of the bishop.

Because of new enemies, the emperors saw themselves forced into a closer relationship with the Church. Powerful enemies threatened Central Europe. The Normans gave up their incursions, after having again and again harassed the tribes, and eventually been conquered by Arnulf of Carinthia at the battle of Tours. They had acquired Brittany for themselves.

Then, from the east, Finnish-Ugrian tribes made inroads, and the invasions of these Magyars caused indescribable terror. Old accounts tell of the horrible brutality of their victorious campaign. The merit of having driven them back is generally ascribed to Henry I and Otto I. To a certain extent this is correct. But the incursions of the Magyars were not to be compared with the declaration and conduct of later wars.

The Magyars invaded at a moment when the dukes were specially rebellious, and Henry I had to begin by asking for a truce in order to create for himself at least some kind of united army. This closing of the ranks was only affected in the department of military affairs, by urgent need.

We have seen how jurisdiction gradually passed over to the land owners, the dukes and kings. Increasingly undignified relationships were formed. A number of people, who had formerly been free peasants had to surrender all they possessed, to come under the sway of the large landowners. Then they were employed not only in agriculture, but as messengers, craftsmen, and on military service. A kind of trade was growing up, especially as a result of the enhanced productivity of the soil, which was constantly increasing, thanks to the employment of so many workmen. At the same time, a definite class of artisans was developing. Hitherto there had been nothing of the kind. As already mentioned, the necessary work in the house was attended to by slaves and women. The only handicrafts had been those of the smith and the goldsmith. But now, through these developments, a new class of artisans and tradesmen was being formed. In places where there were suitable markets, fortified settlements were established all over Europe. Hither came the discontented among those who were unfairly treated, so that the congestion became greater and greater. This trait of the time forced the king to rely on the cities for support.

Calvary was needed against the Magyar horsemen. This cavalry formed the basis of the class of knights which arose during this period. All these must be combined together to obtain a true picture of the course things were taking at that time. This is more important than a detailed appreciation of those battles.

In the fighting on the marshes in 933, among the copper mines in 955, the Magyars were defeated, and suffered such terrible discomfiture that their appetite for more invasions really failed. They founded an empire for themselves in the vicinity of the Danube, in what is today Hungary. At that time the emperors were obliged to rely on the Church; Christianity was politically exploited. The Magyars were converted to Christianity especially by the bishopric of Passau. TO understand what was passing in the souls of men in those days, we must not reckon with later conceptions. There dwelt in the hearts of the people an intensive faith, religious feeling enhanced to sentimental enthusiasm. They listened to the clergy in all matters and were content to be led by them in all their concerns. The dukes and kings favoured this kind of servility. From Charlemagne onward, they had depended on this lordship over souls.

Thus, the clergy became the best and strongest counsellors, and crept into the hearts and souls of the people.

Moreover, it happened that at that time a very strong influence was exercised through the Arabs, not only, as described above, from scientific sources, there were also literary influences, which gave the soul of the Middle Ages a new character. A great accumulation of sagas, fairy tales, legends, sentiments and pictures were implanted in the folk-soul; and this soul-influence transmitted from the East to Europe, was so intensive that we see the originally rough soul of the Germanic peoples assuming milder manners. Moreover their piety became permeated by an element of great importance, namely, the cult of the Virgin Mary, and the altered position of women which arose from it. He who does not appreciate this, knows nothing of the history of the Middle Ages. He shuts his eyes to such facts as that the great mass of the people were often seized with epidemic fear. Fear of this king seized the people about the year 1000 (during the reign of the Emperor Otto III. 983–1002), which was to bring about the end of the world. This great event, to be prepared for by penitential exercises and pilgrimages, stirred the whole of Germany. The Emperor Otto III himself undertook a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Adelbert of Prussia. All this resulted from the folk-soul of the time. He who does not understand this, fails also to understand the rise of the later Crusades. Here also material causes have been sought for the movement, but he who sees it in that light only, is talking beside the point.

The secularism of the bishops and abbots could not remain without reaction, without opposition, and so we can understand the strong movement towards reform which emanated from Cluny. The influence of the Cluniacs was immensely powerful; that it was possible to enforce the “Truce of God” was proof of this.

At a time when there was nowhere a uniformly governed empire, we can estimate what it meant for the endeavours of the Cluny monks to succeed in so limiting the law of might for some days of the week—from Friday to Monday—that during this interval no feuds were fought out. It must be remembered that, at that time, there was still no proper administration of justice; the law of might had full sway. The harsh struggle between the German emperors and the popes was carried out, not merely from selfish interests, but also, on the part of the Church, from fanaticism. The pope felt himself to be the representative of Christ, as well as lord of the secular domain—as if the empire of Christ gave him also secular authority.

Pope Gregory VII, who forced the Emperor Henry IV to the Canoses submission, was originally a Cluny monk, and had acquired his fanaticism there. It was a tendency of the papacy to declare: Just as there are two rulers in the solar system—the Sun and the Moon—so also in human life; the Pope is the Sun, the King is the Moon, receiving his light only from the Church. This opinion found acceptance and was recognised as legitimate even by the great poet Dante, who, in connection with the allocation of authority, characterised the supremacy of the clerical over the secular powers as right and proper. Now, this contest between emperor and pope had reached such dimensions, because in the meanwhile a certain unifying process had been going on. The different dukedoms had been soldered together by external authority. The dukes now saw themselves obliged to render military service and definite tribute to the emperor. All the following countries: Italy, Burgundy, Lorraine, France, Austria and Hungary, Saxony and Poland stood, for a time, in feudal relationship to the German crown.

Thus in the 11th century a certain unity had been established. This increased the power of the Church. At the death of Henty III, it was not secular princes who were appointed guardians of the young king, but the Archbishops, Hanno of Cologne, and later, Adalbert of Bremen.

The permeation of the folk-soul with religious sentiment had led to a blind belief in authority. Now Rome's chance had come. A clever policy was introduced from Rome. The clergy must be detached from all secular interests, so as to have only the one thing before their eyes: preaching and the control of the people. For this purpose, the clergymen must be made completely independent. Thus in the 11th century, celibacy of the clergy became involved with the world through self-chosen blood-ties, would lose his independence and be unable to give such untrammeled service.

This gave the clergy and the popes a tendency towards the development of an inflexible will: only one thing before their eyes—the authority of the Church. So it came about that, with the possession of the bishoprics, the Church could demand a say in the government. Formerly, secular princes had possession of every bishopric which was vacant. Now the decision was to depend on spiritual interests alone; and authority was enhanced, because all appointments were in the hands of the Church. From this arose the quarrel about Investiture, to which Henry IV would not consent, and which led to his submission at Canossa.

All this was comprised in the contest between secular and spiritual power. We saw, in the case of Clovis, that the God of the Christians was his God, because he led the armies to victory; and now we see how the Church itself is acquiring authority. This must be understood, if we are to grasp the new conditions which brought about the Crusades.

We have seen, in connection with the Franks, what had become of the tribes that had been forced from their dwellings by the folk migrations. We saw how Christianity had become authoritative in all circumstances of life, how monasteries and bishoprics had become the central point of the new settlements, and that it was not in spiritual matters alone that the monks were the leaders of the people; they instructed them also in the cultivation of various fruits, were themselves the builders of the churches, and so on.

The cities were content to establish themselves around the bishoprics, and everywhere we see powerful influence of the Church.

We see the influence of the Moors entering into Science and Literature. Through the Crusades, we shall learn to know another influence of very great importance; it likewise came from the East. It was through these influences that the great inventions and discoveries were made. For over there in China and the East, many things were well-known of which the West had no idea: the manufacture of paper, silk-weaving, the use of gunpowder, etc. Thus, on these lines the first impulse was given to the great inventions.

So from two sides we have seen mighty impulses exercising their influence on mediaeval humanity. Keep this in mind together with the founding of the cities, and you will feel that a century was dawning which would give a powerful impetus to evolution. To follow this in the right way, it is not enough merely to absorb it into you understanding. No one really understands the events who tries to grasp them with his understanding only, and not with feeling, who cannot enter into the subtleties of the fold-soul and grasp what is carried on and accomplished within it. To him, the words of Faust apply:

"And what the spirit of the times men call,
Is merely their own spirit after all
Wherein, distorted oft, the times are glass's."

(Ana Swanwick's translation.)

We are now half-way through the Middle Ages, with the 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th centuries before us. This period is important, full of significance, because in it we can study the rise of the great empires. In studying antiquity, too, we learnt of great State-dominions, but they lie so far behind us that a true, historical judgment is difficult. In the Middle Ages, however, we see what is called “empire,” evolving from apparently insignificant causes. For, if an empire is something which has a communal army, a constitution, and courts of justice—there was no such thing in Germany. As late as the 13th and 14th centuries, these regions were still divided into separate, individual territories.

Not until the reign of Henry III (1039–1056), did something occur which was instrumental in uniting the State territories; for this emperor succeeded in combining the individual tribal dukes into a kind of imperial official department. Before, they had taken their supreme position from the special characteristics of the tribe; now they had become Ministers of State—liegemen of the emperor. Gradually an equalisation of the lower vassals took place who, from freemen, became, with the Ministers, liegemen of the emperor. In process of time, they formed what is called the lower nobility, out of which the ranks of knighthood were recruited, the class which played so important a part in the Crusades. Already in the reign of Henry IV, the knights were playing a considerable part.

When Gregory VII excommunicated Henry IV, only some of the German princes stood by the emperor; others were under the influence of the pope and elected different rival kings. That fighting was not important; but what is important is that, through these various conflicts, the class of knights acquired special significance. Continual feuds and wars prevailed; brutality continued to increase. The peasant class suffered much from the pillaging expeditions. The last free peasants could no longer hold out, and were swallowed up by the lords and dukes, and these again by the kings. And from this unedifying process we see arise what we know as “empire.”

In this connection there was no difference between secular and spiritual princes; but the difference was great between the secularised clergy and those in the monasteries. The clergy governed by the bishops were mostly uneducated, unable to read and write, and of boorish manners. They made profit out of their feudal tenants. The bishops busied themselves with the administration of their property and were as uneducated as the knights or peasants: nothing of what we may call culture existed. Thus the political situation made it possible to consolidate the Church ever more and more, from Rome.

It was different in the monasteries. Here much work was done, by the men and women. Profound learning was to be met with here; all education of those days proceeded entirely from the monasteries. In this matter they did not allow themselves to be made dependent on the political power of Rome, which was based on the secular ascendency of the clergy. That which emanated from Rome can be judged in quite different ways. A certain struggle had to be carried on against the brutality, against the club law, of the German tribes. Zeal for spiritual assets, the desire to spread the authority of mediaeval thought over the whole world, was what Rome wished for. The more excellent will, at any rate, came from Rome, and not from the German princes. In this sense we must grasp what Gregory VII wanted, when he demanded the celibate state, and what Nicolas II felt, when he could not endure the claim of the secular princes to exercise influence on the appointments to bishoprics: it was an opposition to the growing savagery of the German territories. Thus the wars of Henry IV against the Saxons were not only almost as bloody as the earlier wars of Charlemagne against the same race, but they were waged with a quite exceptional disregard of loyalty and good faith.

Through all these wars, the welfare of the people was more and more disorganised. Out of the storms of the times there arose a deeply religious trait, which became exaggerated to the sentimental emotionalism that I described to you in connection with the year 1000. This religious emotionalism drove the populace to constant pilgrimages to the East.

Originally the Christian religion knew nothing of clinging to any kind of dogma. It depended on the content of ideas, not on the external wording. You have seen in how free a way the Christian idea was developed in Heiland, and how, for his own countrymen, the poet transposed the life of Christ into Old Saxon conditions. He conceived the externals quite freely; they could take place in Germany, just as well as in Palestine.

Under conditions becoming more and more externalised, the outward form of faith had become a vital question for the Church. It could no longer be left to the discretion of the tribes.

As a counterpart of political power, dogma also became firm and rigid.

The princes attempted to make use of the secular power of the Church in their own interests; the episcopal sees were filled by younger brothers, who seemed, either physically of mentally, to be unfit for anything else. Quite gradually conditions altered, and the old epoch merged into the new.

And now appeared the Crusades, which we can understand psychologically from the mood that prevailed in the Middle Ages. As a result of the existing religious emotionalism, it was easy for the pope—through his own agents, such as Peter of Amiens and others—to spur men on to the Crusades. Added to this, a great number of people were now completely destitute. So it was not onl religious motives which contributed to the crusading zeal. More and more freemen had become vassals; others had been obliged to leave their property, and had become vagrants, possessing nothing but what they stood up in.

Among these wanderers, who came from all classed—even from the nobility—there were a great many with nothing to do, who were ready for any enterprise—including the Crusades.

So, we come to understand that a large number of factors were at work: religious emotionalism, rigid dogma and material oppression. How powerfully these causes worked, we see from the fact that the first Crusaded took place, half a million people travelled to the East. The first external impulse was given by the ill-treatment of the numerous pilgrims at the hands of the Saracens. Still, there were deeper causes underlying it.

Men were subjecting themselves to a rigid dogma; and those who do not understand how, in those days, men clung with heart and soul to religion, know nothing of the Middle Ages. A sermon had a kindling influence on the people, if it struck the right chord. Many thought to find salvation through joining the Crusade; others hoped to obtain forgiveness of their sins. Our modern point of view can give us no true picture of this mediaeval phenomenon; here we have to do with many intangible causes.

It is not the causes, but the effects, of the Crusades, which are of special significance. One of these effects became visible very soon, namely a much more intimate exchange between the different countries.

Hitherto, Germany in general had remained almost unknown to the Romance countries; now they were brought close to one another by comradship in arms. Moorish science, too, found a real entrance in this way. Formerly there had been Chairs in the Universities only in Spain, Italy and France; it was not until after the Crusades that they were established in Germany. Now, for the first time the influence of true Science spread from the East. Until now, this had been a completely closed book; and great cultural treasures were preserved in the writings of Greek classical authors. Actually, it was through contact with the East that Science first originated.

The indeterminate influence of religious emotionalism had assumed a definite form; it had become what is called Mediaeval Science. I should like to give you some description of this Science.

In the first place, it developed two ways of thinking, ways which became noticeable in the scientific life of the Middle Ages. The Scholastic mode of thought split into two currents: Realism and Nominalism. It is an apparently abstract subject, but for the Middle Ages, and even for later times, this conflict acquired a deep significance—a theological, as well as a secular, significance.

Scientists are divided into these two camps. Nominalists means those who believed in names; Realists are those who believe in actuality. Realists, in the sense of the Middle Ages, were those who believed in the reality of thought, in a real meaning, to the universe. They assumed that the world has a meaning and did not come into being by chance. From the standpoint of materialism this may seem a foolish point of view; but one who does not regard this thought as an empty flight of fancy, must admit that the idea of a cosmic law, which men seek and find within themselves, has significance also for the world.

The Nominalists were those who did not believe that thoughts are anything real, who saw therein only names given at random, things of no significance. All those who think to see, in what human thinking achieves, mere blind fortuity—those like Kent, and Schopenhauer, who conceives the world as idea—form an outgrowth from mediaeval nominalism.

These currents divided the army of monks into two camps. It is noteworthy that in such weighty matters, the Church exercises no compulsion, and, so far as learning is concerned, calmly affirms that the question may be raised whether the divine Trinity is not also only a name—and that consequently nothing is real. Nevertheless, you see from this the wide freedom of the mediaeval Church. Not until the end of this period do the persecutions of heretics begin; and it is significant that the first inquisitor in Germany, Conrad of Marburg, was assassinated by the populace. It was then that beliefs began to be persecuted. This is an important change of front. How free ecclesiastical thinking had been before, you can see from the great teacher and thinker, Albertus Magnus (1193–1280). He was a man conspicuous for learning, delving deeply into every kind of science; he had mastered ecclesiastical scholarship, Arabian knowledge, natural history and physics. The people regarded him as a magician. Learning and popular superstition exploited by the secularises clergy, jostled each other severely.

Now the cities come to the fore. Here we see the rise of a powerful citizen class. Manufactures flourish, and guilds are formed. NO longer need the artisan stop beneath the oppression of the lords of the manor, as the serfs were wont to do. Soon kings and princes form alliances with the mediaeval cities.

The Emperor Frederic Barbarosa fought for years with the cities of North Italy. A strong feeling of freedom and a sense of definite personal value developed among the citizens. Thus, on the one hand, we see, in the country, religious conviction together with increasing external oppression; and, in the towns, a free citizenship. The citizens were bound, it is true, by a strictly regulated guild organisation; yet that in itself contributed to the freedom of the cities, whereas life in the country was witherin away under club law and brutality. After the Crusades the knights lapsed into an empty court life, leading nowhere. They occupied themselves with feuds, tournaments and passages of arms; their manners became more and more rough. As time went on, the pursuit of love, in particular, assumed most ridiculous forms. Knights who could write poems composed odes to their lady loves; others paid court to them in different ways. Great ignorance was combined with this court life. The men were almost all uneducated; the woman had to be able to read and write. The women occupied a peculiar position; on the one hand, they were idolised; on the other, they were enslaved. A kind of barbarism prevailed, and unbridled life, wherein the ravishing of women was included in the customs of hospitality.

Meanwhile, that which was later called culture, was growing up in the cities. What was happening there, was bound to happen; for new contingencies arise, wherever it is possible to construct in freedom. Real spiritual progress takes place when the industrial life is not cramped. Not that spiritual progress springs from material progress, but true spiritual progress is found where industrial life is not oppressed and confined.

Thus, at this epoch, a rich cultural life made its appearance in the cities; nearly all that has come to us in works of art, in architecture and discoveries, we owe to this period of city culture. It was from such a rich Italian city culture that Dante rose. In Germany, too, we find important intellectual achievements under this influence. True, the first notable poets, such as Wolfram von Eshenbach, Gottfried von Stassburg, etc., were knights; but without the restraint offered by the cities, these achievements would not have been possible. At the same time, when the breath of freedom was blowing in the cities, University life also sprang up. At first, when a German wished to find higher knowledge, he had to go to Italy, France, etc. Now there arose in Germany itself, the first Universities: Prague (1348), Vienna (1365), Heidelberg (1386). Freedom dispersed the mediaeval gloom.

The secularised clergy were entangled, like the princes, in wars of self-interest; and the Church had assumed this characteristic. Following the course of these developments, one realises that the new spiritual current, German mysticism, could only arise in this way—in stark opposition to the secularised clergy. This movement spread particularly along the Rhine, in Cologne, Strassburg and South Germany. To it belonged men like Eckhardt, Tauler, Suso, etc. They had made themselves independent of the Roman clergy, and were therefore declared heretics; life was made difficult for them in every way. A spiritual trait runs through their writings. They had withdrawn into their human heart, in order to come to a clear understanding of themselves. These independent monks spoke to the heart of the people in an extraordinarily edifying way, in a language unintelligible today, unless one reads the writings of a Master Eckhardt or Tauler. The beauty of the language was implanted in it by mysticism, and the contemporary translations far excelled the later ones in beauty of language. This development of the German language was sharply interrupted by Luther, who produced the German Bible in the most pedantic philistine idiom of the period, out of which the modern High German has grown. All this took place in opposition to the clergy. What was wished for at that time has, in many departments, not yet been reached. It es always asserted that Luther's translation of the Bible represented something unprecedented, but you see that far greater heights had been reached before.

We are nearing the time of the Renaissance. The consolidation of relationships, which had been achieved, consisted essentially in ever larger territories coming under the authority of the ruling princes. Also, a considerable part of the mediaeval freedom of the cities was absorbed into the constitution of the great States. Much is said nowadays of the despotism which prevailed at that time. Freedom has, of course, its seamy side; and it is not freedom if a man's freewill is limited by the freewill of others.

In the middle of this mediaeval period, there was opposition in the Universities to the arbitrariness of those in secular power, just as, later, perhaps Fichte alone voiced it. The documents of the mediaeval Universities preserve for us the words of the free spirits of those days. Today, not only the secular government, but Science, too, is State-controlled.

I have sketched this epoch without allotting light and shade, according to the catchwords of the present day. I tried to dwell on the points where real progress was made. If we wish to be free, we must have a heart for those who have striven for freedom before us. We must understand that other ages, too, produced men who set store by freedom.

History is the story of man's evolution to freedom; and in order to understand it we must study the culminating points of all freedom.

The object about which I will talk here is certainly one in which all people are interested. Who could say that he is not interested in the question of immortality with all his thoughts? We need only to realise that the human being thinking of death feels a horror. Even the few people who are weary of life and look for rest in death cannot get through this horror completely. One has tried to answer this question in the most different way. Remember, however, that nobody can speak about anything impartially in which he is interested. Will he be able to speak then impartially about this question which is of the deepest interest for his whole life? And, besides, you must take something else into consideration: how much does depend on it for the culture. The development of our whole culture depends on it how this question is answered. The standpoint of somebody to the cultural questions is quite different if he believes in the eternal of the human being.

One hears saying that it was wrong to give the human being this hope of a next world. The poor man would be put off until the next world and would be thereby prevented from creating a better life here. Others say that only in this way existence can generally be endured. If with such a matter the wishes of the human beings are considered so strongly, all the reasons are looked out for it. It would have mattered a little to the human being to prove that two times two are not four if his happiness had depended on this proof. Because the human being could not omit to let his wishes have a say in this question of immortality, it had to be put over and over again. Because the subjective feeling of happiness is involved in this question.

However, just this fact has made this question so suspicious to the modern natural sciences. And rightly so! Just the most significant men of this science expressed themselves against the immortality of the human being. Ludwig Feuerbach says: “one thought immortality first and then proved it.” Thus he suggests that the human being tried to find arguments because he wishes them. David Friedrich Strauss and recently Ernst Haeckel in his World Riddles express themselves in a similar way. If now I had to say something that violates the modern natural sciences, I would not be able to speak about this question. But just the admiration of Haeckel’s great achievements in his fields and for Haeckel as one of the most monumental spirits of the present time lets me take a stand in his sense against his conclusions. Today, something else than fighting against the natural sciences is my object.

Theosophy is not against the natural sciences, but goes with them. But, besides, it does not stop. It does not believe that we have gone so wonderfully far only in the 19th century; while during all centuries before unreason and superstition would have held sway, now truth has been brought to light only by the science of our time. If truth stood on such weak feet, one could have little confidence. However, we know that truth formed the core in the teachings of wisdom of Buddha, of the Jewish priests et cetera. It is the task of theosophy to search for this core in all different theories. But it also does not spare the science of the 19th century. Because this is in such a way, we are certainly allowed to deal with the question also from the standpoint of science. It can form the basis that way from which we start if we search for the eternal in the human being.

Feuerbach is certainly right with his remark quoted before if he turns against the method of the science of the last fourteen centuries. However, he is wrong concerning the wisdom of former times. Because the way to guide the human being to the cognition of truth in the ancient schools of wisdom was totally different. Only during the later centuries of Christianity the faith was demanded to which then the scholars produced the proofs. That was not the case in the mysteries of antiquity. That wisdom which was not disseminated just like that, which remained a possession of few people, which was delivered to the initiate by instructions of the priests in holy temple sites, had another avenue to lead their pupils to truth. They kept the knowledge secret to those who were not prepared. One would have regarded it as profaned if one had informed anybody without selection. One only regarded somebody as worthy who had developed his cultural life by means of long exercise to understand the truth in higher sense.

One tells in the traditions of Judaism that when once a rabbi pronounced something of the secret knowledge his listeners reproached him: “O old man, had you been quiet! What have you done! You bewilder the people.”—One saw a big threat betraying the mysteries if they were in everybody’s mouth and would be desecrated and distorted that way. Only in holy shyness one approached them. The probation was strict which the pupils of the mysteries had to go through. Our time can hardly imagine the severe probations which were imposed on the pupil. We find with the Pythagoreans that the pupils called themselves listeners. For years they are only silent listeners, and it is according to the spirit of this time that this silence extended up to five years. They are silent in this time. Silence, that is in this case: renunciation of any discussion, of any criticism. Today where the principle applies: “test everything and keep the best”—where everybody believes to be able to judge about everything where with the help of journalism everybody forms his judgment quickly also about that which he does not understand at all, one has no notion of that which one demanded from a pupil at that time. Every judgment should be quiet; one had to make oneself able only to take up everything in oneself. If anybody passes sentence without this precondition, starts practicing criticism, he rebels against any additional instruction. Somebody who understands something of it knows that he has to learn for years only and to let a long period pass. Today one does not want to believe this. But only somebody who has understood the matters internally gets to a correct judgment of his own.

At that time, it was not the task to teach faith to anybody by lessons; one led him up to the nature of the things. The spiritual eye was given him to behold; if he wanted, he could test it. Above all, the lessons were purifying ones; the purifying virtues were required from the pupil. He had to take off the sympathies and antipathies of the everyday life which are only justified there. Every personal wish had to be eradicated before. Nobody was introduced to the lessons who had also not taken off the wish of continual existence of his soul. That is why the sentence of Feuerbach does not hold good to this time. No, at first the confidence in the profane immortality was eradicated in the pupils, before they could progress to the higher problems. If you see it that way, you understand why the modern natural sciences turn against the teaching of immortality with a certain right. However, only so far.

David Friedrich Strauss says that the appearance would be contradictory to the idea of immortality. Now, a lot is contradictory to the appearance what an approved scientific truth is. As long as one judged the movement of the earth and the sun according to the appearance, one got no correct judgment about that. One recognised them correctly when one did no longer trust to the eye only. Perhaps, just the appearance is not at all this to which we have to keep in this question.

We have to realise: is it the eternal in the human being what we see being passed on or transforming itself? Or do we find it outside? The single flower blossoms and passes, but only that remains and lasts which leaves its stamp on every flower of the genus again. Just as little we find the eternal outside in the history of the states. What once constituted the external forms of the state has passed, what presented itself as a leading idea has remained.

Let us test how transient and eternal come to the fore in nature. You know that all substances of your bodies were not in you seven or eight years ago. What formed my body eight years ago is scattered in the world and has to fulfil quite different tasks. Nevertheless, I stand before you, the same which I was. If now you ask: what has remained of that which made an impression on the eye?—Nothing. That has remained what you do not see and what makes the human being a human being. What does remain of human facilities, of the states? The individuals who created them disappeared, the state has remained. Thus you see that we are wrong if we take the eye for the essential part which only sees the changes, while the essential part is the eternal. It is the task of the spiritual to understand this eternal. What I was fulfils other tasks. Also the substances which today form my body do not remain the same; they enter other connections and are that which constitutes my physical body today. The spiritual holds it together. If we retain this thought, we recognise the eternal in the human being.

In a different way the eternal appears in the animal realm, plant realm, and mineral realm. But also there we can look at the permanent. If we crush a crystal to powder, for example cooking salt, dissolve it in water and allow it to crystallise again, the parts take on their characteristic shape again. The creative power being inherent in them was the permanent; it has remained like a germ to awake to new work if the cause is given to it. We also see from the plant countless seeds originating, from which new plants arise if they are sowed to the fields. The whole creative power rested invisibly in the seed. This force was able to wake the plants to new life.

This goes up through the animal and human realms. Also the human figure comes from a tiny cell. However, it does not lead us to that which we call human immortality. Nevertheless, if we look closer, we also find something similar. Life develops from life; the invisible stream goes through. However, nobody is probably content with the immortality of the type. The principle of humanness goes in it from generation to generation. But it is only one of the ways to preserve the permanent. There are still other types where the interplay comes to the fore. We take an example from the plant realm to illustrate this.

Hungarian wheat which was brought to Moravia and sown there becomes soon similar to the indigenous one there. The law of adaptation comes into force here. Now it also keeps the once acquired qualities in future. We see how something new happens: the concept of development. The complete world of organisms is subordinate to this law. An idea of development forms the basis after which the imperfect living beings transform themselves to more perfect ones. They change their external constitutions; they receive other organs, so that that which remains preserved develops progressively.

You see that we come to a new kind of the permanent. If the naturalist explains a form of life today, he does not give himself the answer of the naturalists of the 18th century who said: there are as many types of living beings as God created once.—This was an easy answer. Everything that had originated was brought to life by a creation miracle. The natural sciences of the 19th century freed us in their area of the concept of the miracle. The physical forms owe their origin to the development. Today we understand how the animals transformed themselves up to the monkey to higher forms of life. If we consider the different animal forms as temporal sequence, we recognise that they were not created as those, but came into being developing apart. However, we see even more.

The flowers of some plants possibly experience such substantial changes that one would not believe that they belong to the same type. Nature simply makes jumps, and thus it also lets arise one type from the other under given circumstances. But in every type something remains that reminds of the preceding type; we understand them only apart, not from themselves, but from their ancestors. If one pursues the temporal development of the types, one understands what stands in space before us. We see the development through millions of years and know that in millions of years everything looks differently again. The substances are exchanged perpetually; they change perpetually. In thousands of years the monkey developed from the marsupial. But something remains that connects the monkey with the marsupial. It is the same that holds the human being together. It is the invisible principle that we saw as something permanent in ourselves which was active millennia ago and works on among us even today. The external resemblance of the organisms corresponds to the principle of heredity.

Now, however, we also see how the shapes of the living beings are not only hereditary, but also change. We say: something is inherited, something changes; there is something transient and something remains preserved in the change of times.

You know that the human being corresponds to the physical qualities of his ancestors. Figure, face, temperament, also passions go back to the ancestors. I owe the movement of the hand to an ancestor. Thus the law of heredity projects from the plant and animal realms into the human world. Can this law be applied now in the same way also to all fields of the human world? We must search for own laws in every field. Would Haeckel have done his great discoveries in biology, would he have limited himself to examine the brains of the different animals only chemically?

The great laws exist everywhere, but in every field in own way. Transfer this question to the human life, to the field in which the human beings particularly believe in miracles still today. Everybody knows today that the monkeys developed from more imperfect forms of life. However, people have an exceptional belief in miracles concerning the human soul. We see different human souls; we know that it is impossible to explain the soul by means of physical heredity. Who may explain, for example, the genius of Michelangelo from his ancestors? Who may explain his head form, his figure? Who may get good explanations from the pictures of his ancestors? What points in them to the genius of Michelangelo? This does not only apply to the genius, it applies to all human beings in the same way even if one chooses the genius to prove clearly that his qualities are not to be owed to the physical heredity. Goethe himself felt in such a way speaking in the famous verses for what he has to thank his parents:

From the father I got the stature
And the serious way of life,
From mummy I got my cheerful nature
And the desire of telling stories.

These are, even the gift of telling stories, basically external qualities. However, he could not derive his genius from father or mother; otherwise one would have to sense this also in the parents. We may have to thank our parents for temperament, inclinations, and passions. We cannot search for that which is the most essential of the human being which makes him his real individuality with his bodily ancestors. Our natural sciences only know the external qualities of the human being and try to investigate them. Thus they come to the belief in miracles of the human soul. They investigate the constitution of the human brain. Are they able to explain the human soul from the physical constitution of the brain et cetera? Is that the reason why Goethe’s soul is a miracle? Our aesthetics wanted to regard this point of view as the only correct one which one is allowed to take concerning the genius, and think that the genius would lose all magic by explaining. But we cannot be content with this view.

Let us try to explain the nature of the soul in the same way as we investigated the botanical and animal species; that is to explain how the soul develops from lower to higher levels. Goethe’s soul stems also from an ancestor like his physical body. How did anybody want to explain, otherwise, the difference between Goethe’s soul and that of a savage? Every human soul leads back to its ancestors from which it develops. And it will have successors who come into being from it. However, this advancement of souls does not coincide with the law of physical heredity. Every soul is the forefather of later soul successors. We will understand that the law of heredity which holds sway in space cannot be applied to the soul in the same way.

However, the lower principles last beside the higher ones. The chemical-physical laws which hold sway in space determine the external organism. Also we are spun in a web with our bodies in this life. Being in the middle of the organic development, we are subject to the same laws like animal and plant. Regardless of that, the law of the psychic refining takes place. Thus Goethe’s soul must have been there once in another form and has developed from this soul form, regardless of the external form, as the seed develops to another type, depending on the law of transformation. However, like the plant has something remaining which outlasts the transformation, also that which remained preserved in the soul has entered into a germinating state, like the grain in the top soil to appear in a new form, when the conditions have come. This is the teaching of reincarnation. Now we understand the naturalists better.

How should that remain which was not there once? But what is the remaining preserved? We cannot consider that which constitutes the personality of the human being like his temperament, his passions, as the remaining preserved; only the actually individual which was before its physical appearance and remains preserved, hence, also after death. The human soul moves into the body and leaves it again to create a new body after the time of maturity again and to enter in it. What has descended from physical causes passes with our personality at death; we have to look at that for which we cannot find physical causes as the effect of a former past. The permanent part of the human being is his soul which works from the deepest inside and survives all changes.

The human being is a citizen of eternity because he carries something eternal in himself. The human mind feeds itself from the eternal laws of the universe, and only thereby the human being is able to understand the eternal laws of nature. He would only recognise the transient in the world if he were not himself a remaining preserved one. That remains from that which we are today which we incorporate into our imperishable being. The plants are transformed under given conditions. Also the soul has adapted itself; it has taken up a lot in itself and has improved itself. We carry into another incarnation what we experience as something eternal. However, if the soul enters a body for the first time, it resembles a blank sheet, and we transfer on it what we do and take up in ourselves. As true as the law of physical heredity holds sway in nature, as true the law of mental heredity holds sway in the spiritual realm. And as little the physical laws apply to the spiritual realm, as little the laws of physical heredity holds sway over the continued existence of the soul. The old sages, who did not demand belief, before they had founded it by knowledge, were fully aware of this fact.

How is the relationship of the soul in its present condition to its former condition?—This question, which could suggest itself upon you, I would like to answer to you in the following way. The souls are in perpetual development. Differences thereby arise between the single souls. A higher individuality can only develop if it experiences many incarnations. In the usual state of consciousness the human beings have no memory of the former conditions of their souls, but because this memory is not yet attained. The possibility of that is given. Nevertheless, Haeckel speaks of a kind of unaware memory which goes through the world of the organisms and without which some natural phenomena were inexplicable. Hence, this memory is only a question of development. The human being thinks consciously and acts accordingly, while the monkey acts unconsciously. As he has risen gradually from the condition of consciousness of the monkey to conscious thinking, in the same way he remembers the former incarnations later with progressive perfection of his consciousness. As well as Buddha says of himself: I look back at countless incarnations , it is true that in future every human being has the memory of a number of former incarnations if this ego-consciousness has developed with every individual human being, as well as it is sure that it exists with single advancers already today. Becoming more perfect in the course of time, more and more human beings will have this ability.

This is the concept of immortality as the theosophist understands it. This concept is new and old at the same time. Once those have taught that way who did not want to teach faith only but knowledge. We do not want to believe and then to prove, but we want to make the human beings able to search for the proofs independently and to find them. Only somebody who wants to co-operate in the development of his soul attains it. He walks from life to life to perfection, because neither the soul came into being at birth nor it disappears at death.

One of the objections which are often made against this view is that it makes the human being unable to cope with life. Let me still go into it with some words. No, theosophy does not make unable to cope with life, but more capable, just because we know what the permanent and what the transient is. Of course, somebody who thinks that the body is a dress which the soul only puts on and takes off again as it is sometimes said becomes unable to cope with life. But this is a wrong picture which should be used by no researcher. The body is not a dress, but a tool for the soul. A tool the soul uses to work with it in the world. And he who knows the permanent and invigorates it in himself uses the tool better than somebody who only knows the transient. He strives for invigorating the eternal in himself by means of constant activity. He carries this activity over to another life, and he becomes more and more capable. This picture lets the thought disappear to nothing that the human being becomes unfit to cope with life because of knowledge. We are able to work even in a more competent and more permanent way if we recognise that we work not only for this one short life but for all future times.

The strength which arises from this consciousness of eternity I may express using the words which Lessing put on the end of his significant treatise about The Education of the Human Race: “is not the whole eternity mine?”

Somebody who speaks today about the nature of the soul exposes himself to misunderstandings and attacks from two sides. Above all, the theosophist, who speaks from his standpoint, from the standpoint of knowledge and cognition, is attacked by the official science, on the other hand, also by the adherents of the various confessions.

Today science wants to know little about the soul, the psyche, even that science which carries psyche in its name, psychology. Even the psychologists would like to refrain completely from that which one calls, actually, the soul. That is why one could stamp the catchword: psychology without soul.—The soul is said to be something questionable, something uncertain that one simply investigates, for example, the appearance of different mental pictures like one also investigates a physical process; but one wants to know nothing about the soul itself. The modern natural sciences can impossibly assume anything like a soul. They say that the human mental pictures are also subject to the physical laws like all other phenomena in nature, the human being is nothing else than a higher disposed natural product. Therefore, we should not ask what the soul is. In doing so, one refers to Goethe’s word:

According to eternal,
Iron, great laws
We all must complete
Our existence’s circle.

Like a rolling stone moves, the human being has to develop according to the eternal laws. On the other side, the religions are against it, which rest on tradition and revelation.

Theosophy is neither an adversary of religion nor of science. It wants to attain truth like the researchers by knowledge, and it does not deny the basic truth of the religions.

This basic truth is often little understood by those who represent the religions. Original, eternal truth forms the basis of all religions. The religions existing today developed from it. Then, however, later ingredients overgrew them. They lost their deeper truth. The core of truth lies behind them. However, science has not yet advanced so far that it has ascended from the matter to the spirit. It is not yet so far that it investigates the spiritual with the same enthusiasm as it investigates the natural phenomena. Science finds its core of truth in future. So, this higher truth of religion got lost, and science has not yet found it. Today, theosophy stands between them. It falls back on the past, on the lost, and it tries to investigate in the future what has not yet been found. In return, it is attacked by both sides. The habits and the external customs of today are different from those of former times, but in spite of the frequently praised tolerance of our modern time one still tries to intimidate those who represent an uncomfortable opinion. Somebody who speaks of the soul today, like the naturalist speaks of the external facts, is no longer burnt, indeed, but also methods are found to burden and to suppress him.

Nevertheless, we get a certain consolation looking at the future if we judge the present-day relations by the events of the past. When in the 17th century the Italian researcher Redi put up the assertion that the lower living beings do not simply arise from something lifeless, he only just escaped the destiny of Giordano Bruno. At that time, one was of the view in general that the lower living beings developed from inorganic substances. The view of Redi is generally valid today, and somebody, who denies the sentence: nothing living comes from the non-living would be regarded as being backward.

In general, Virchow’s sentence is valid: only life from life.—However, the sentence: soul only from soul does not yet find belief even today. But as knowledge has advanced to the insight that life can only originate from life, science takes over the sentence: no soul comes from something without soul.—Then one also looks down at the limited science of our days as it happens today in regard to the opinion of Redi’s contemporaries. We stand with regard to the soul on the same standpoint as the scientists of the 17th century with regard to life. According to the present-day view the spiritual is said to develop from life only; the soul is said to come from the animal being just like that. With compassionate smile one will look down at this view in later times as one smiles today at the view that life comes from something without life. The soul did not grow up from the very basis of the mere life; the soul arose from something spiritual. As life only seizes the form of the animal to present itself, the soul once touched the animal form to spread out. Our knowledge is woven into the current of the external reality, and in doing so we forget what should occupy us mostly. The soul is endlessly close to us. We ourselves are it. If we look into ourselves, we see the soul. This is hard to understand for the human beings. Our observation is directed predominantly to that which is outside us. But should that be closer to us than that which we are ourselves?

The human beings realise the external research today, they are strange to themselves. Why do the human beings understand the truth of the external research so easily and ignore what is the next to them? Nevertheless, the soul is closer and more familiar to them. Any natural phenomenon has only to take the way through the senses. These change and often fake the picture. The colour-blind sees the colours in a different way than they are real. And apart from such exceptional phenomena, we know that all eyes are different; not two human beings see the colours in the identical nuances. According to the eye of the seeing human being, to the ear of the hearing one, the impressions are different. But we ourselves are our souls; we are able to look for it at every moment. It is peculiar that on this knowledge the influence of a great poet is based, namely: how much closer do our souls touch us than everything that is outside us. Tolstoy’s emotionalism is based on this knowledge stupefying him. From this view he goes into battle against culture, fashions, and moods.

We do not see our soul only because we have not got used to considering it in its own figure. Today our confidence in the material is invigorated, whereas our ways of thinking have become dull for the soul. Even those who do not adhere to religions make themselves comfortable with researching. Goethe is quoted with preference to their justification. One should think only as little as possible and do research. “Feeling is everything; name is but sound and smoke.” With these words by Goethe one wants to disprove the reasons of the soul researchers. Everybody should find everything in his feeling; one believes to remain preserved in a lack of clarity, disregarding the reasons. One seems to take a kind of lyrical approach for the most suitable concerning the soul. Because everybody is so near to the soul, he believes to be able to understand everything out of feeling.

Should these really be Goethe’s own views which he allows to pronounce Faust in these words? The dramatist must have the right to let his persons speak out of the situation. If these words which Faust uses towards the childish Gretchen were his creed, why Goethe would let Faust explore all wisdom of the world? “Have now, oh! Philosophy” et cetera. It would be a strange denial of his researching, of his doubtfulness. If we wanted to resign ourselves with nothing else than unclear feelings concerning the soul, would we not resemble to a painter who offers no clear outlines, no copy of that in his picture what he has seen outside, but would be content to express his feeling only? No, the soul cannot be explained by uncertain feeling. Theosophy wants to announce real scientific wisdom and turns just as little exclusively to the feeling as science does it if it explains electricity. Not wallowing in feelings theosophy tries to further the cognition of the soul. No, it turns to frank striving for knowledge. The own soul leads somebody, who tries to investigate it, to those who sat at the feet of the Masters.

Since the Theosophical Society was founded in 1875, it has nurtured real science of the soul. It wants to teach the human beings to behold the soul. Today everybody wants to talk about soul and mind without having taken care seriously to recognise them. Everybody likes to disregard the difficulties which bar his way, therefore, the most dilettantish attempts spread. Theosophy wants to help those who thirst for mental wisdom, and wants to do psychology as seriously as one investigates nature scientifically. These are the difficulties which oppose the soul researcher today where everybody who has not studied them is not allowed to talk about natural sciences; however, everybody is allowed to talk about the soul who has not investigated it.

Of course, the method of investigating is different. The scientist works with physical apparatuses. Using them, he penetrates deeper and deeper into the secrets of nature. The word applies to the soul research that the secrets can be disclosed neither with levers nor with screws. The more the field of observation extends, the more natural sciences can progress. These observations only require the usual healthy human reason. But what the researcher uses of reason in the laboratory is not substantially different from that which is also necessary in business or technology, it is only a little more intricate; however, it is no other procedure.

The spiritual truth deals not only with the healthy human mind; it turns to other forces which rest in the depth of the human soul. It requires a development of the cognitive faculties. The possibility of this development always existed. The origin of all religions goes back to them. Everything that Buddha, that Confucius, that all the great founders of the different religions taught goes back to this deeper spiritual truth. At the moment when the human race was there in such a way as it still exists, the soul was there also, and it could be investigated developing the cognitive faculties.

It was less necessary to extend knowledge than to develop the internal cognition to behold what rests in the soul. In the fields of the external sciences everybody depends on the time in which he lives. Aristotle, the great scholar of antiquity, could not do some scientific observations in the 4th century B. C. which are possible only today with the help of modern natural sciences. But the soul was there always as something complete, and today one stands more distant to this knowledge only than our ancestors in the dim antiquity because one does not want to investigate the own soul. The Theosophical Society is there to develop this good will. Doing this it does nothing new. This has happened at all times. But as it is easier to investigate what presents itself us physically, soul and mind are also more difficult to recognise and not so easily accessible and to everybody violent. But already in grey antiquity the human beings have observed this multi-formity, this composite character of the soul.

What is the soul? As long as we believe that the soul is something that only lives in the body and leaves it then again, we cannot get knowledge of the soul. No, it is something that is active in us and lives and penetrates all performances of the body. It lives in the movement, in the breathing, in the digestion. But it is not steady in all our activities.

We have arisen from a small cell, like the plant arises from the seed. And like the plant builds itself from the organic forces, from the germ, the human being also develops from organic forces, from the small gametes. He forms the organs of his body as the plant forms its leaves and flowers, and the growth of the human being is the same as that of the plant. Therefore, the old researchers also attributed a soul to the plant. They spoke of the plant soul. They found that the human beings have this activity of building the organs in common with all plants. What builds up all the organs in the human being is something that corresponds to the plant soul. They called it the vegetative soul and regarded the human being as related to nature, to everything organic. The first that forms the human being is something plant-like, hence, one considered the plant soul as the first level of the soul. It created the human organism. It built our body with its limbs, eyes, ears, and muscles, it built our whole body. We resemble the plant concerning growth and structure of our body like every organic being.

If we only had the plant soul, we would not advance beyond the only organic life. But we possess the ability of percipience, of feeling. We suffer pain if we pierce one of our limbs with a needle, while the plant remains untouched if a leaf is pierced. That points to the second level of the soul, to the animal soul. It gives us the abilities of sensing, desiring and moving, what we share with the whole animal realm and call it, therefore, animal soul.

That is why we get the possibility to grow not only like the plants, but to become the mirror of the whole universe. The vegetative soul induces us to take up the substances which form the organism, the animal soul moves us to take up the subordinated soul-life. The sentient life is based on desire and pain. As our vegetative soul could not develop organs if there were not substances around us in the world, also the animal soul can scoop the feeling, the desire only from the world of desires, of the impulses around us. Like without the driving force of the germ no plant could develop from its seed, just as little an animal-like being could originate if it could not fill its organs with impressions if it could not fill his life with desire and pain. Our vegetative soul constructs the organic body from the material world. From the world of desires, the world of kama or the kamaloka, the animal soul takes up the materials of desire in it. If the body were lacking the ability to take up desires in it, then desire and pain would stay away from the plant soul forever. Nothing originates from nothing.

The human being has the soul of desires in common with the animal. The naturalists are right to ascribe the lower soul qualities also to the animal. It concerns, however, a difference of the level. The miraculous facilities of the bee state and the ant state, the dens of the beavers whose regular arrangement corresponds to intricate mathematical calculations prove it. But also in other way the soul increases in the animal up to something similar to the human reason. Technical skills as the human being practices them consciously can be aroused particularly with our pets by training. However, a big distance is present; there is only a dim sensing with the lowest animals, the most developed animals have something like reason to a high degree.

Now this third level of the human soul-life forms the intellectual soul. We would get stuck in the animal realm if we only had an animal soul as we would not advance beyond the plant if we had a vegetative soul only. That is why the following question is so important: does the human being not really differ from the higher animals? Is there no difference?

Somebody, who puts this question to himself and checks it unreservedly, finds that the mind of the human being, nevertheless, towers all animals. If the Pythagoreans wanted to prove the higher soul of the human beings, they emphasised that only the ability of counting would be given to them. Even if anything similar is found with certain animals, the immense difference comes clearly to the fore between animal and human being, because we deal with an original ability of the human soul organs, whereas it is training with the animal.

Because the human being can count, he differs from the animal, but also because he advances beyond the animal and the immediate need. No animal advances beyond the immediate need of the temporal and the transient. No animal rises to the real and true, beyond the immediate sensory truth. The sentence that two times two is four must apply at any rate, may the transient truth of the senses lose their validity under other circumstances. May beings live on the planet Mars of which kind ever, may they hear the tone by means of their ears differently, may they perceive colours differently, all thinking beings on all planets must equally accept the correctness of the calculation two times two is four. What the human being gains from his soul, is valid for all times. It was valid for millions of years and will be valid in millions of years because it is descended from the imperishable.

Thus the imperishable part in us which makes us citizens of eternity rests in our transient part, in the animal-like part. As the animal soul is built from the substances of kama, the higher mind soul builds itself from the spiritual realm.

Nothing comes into being from nothing. Aristotle, the master of those who had knowledge who was, however, no initiate, arrives at the concept of miracle where he speaks of the spiritual. He constructs the body strictly lawfully from nature, but he lets the soul come into being every time anew by a miracle of the creator. The soul is a creation from nothing for Aristotle. A new creation is every soul also for the exoteric Christianity of the later centuries. However, we do not want to assume the perpetual miracle of soul creation. Like the origin of the vegetative soul has resulted from the plant, that of the animal soul from the world of the instinctual life, the mind soul has to come into being—unless nothing has to originate from nothing—from the spiritual of the world. We are led to the spirit, to the soul of the universe as Giordano Bruno expresses it in his works: by the organic forces of the universe and the soul forces of the universe.

Why do we all have a particular soul? Why does every soul have its particular qualities? Science explains the particular qualities of the animals by means of natural development of a species from a species. But every animal species still carries qualities in itself which point to its origin from other animal species.

The spiritual soul can develop only from something individual-spiritual. Just nobody would think that a lion originated directly from the cosmic forces of the universe, as absurd it would be to suppose that the individual soul developed from the general spiritual contents of the universe, from the spiritual reservoirs of the universe. Theosophy stands there on the ground which just corresponds to a scientific view. As sciences let a species develop from a species theosophy lets a soul develop from a soul. It also lets the higher arise from subordinated.

The single soul develops from the universal soul like the animal formed from the general animal principle. According to the soul principle a soul comes into being from a soul. Every soul is a result of a soul and is again cause of a soul. The soul which itself is eternal rises from the eternal origin. Theosophy goes back to the so-called third human race with whose appearance the higher soul element could come to the fore as an impact in the organic. One calls this human race the Lemurian one. Prior to this, the soul element was in the animal. For also the animal world comes from the soul element. It has only taken hold of the animal to fulfil its functions. From there it works from soul to soul.

Hence, education means to develop what rests as an individual in the human being. The first principle of education is to wake this higher soul element resting in every human being. With the animals the single animal coincides with the concept of the genus; a tiger is on a par with the other tiger in any essential part. However, one is not justified to regard a human being as of the same kind as the other human being. The soul of every human being differs from that of the other human being. In order to arouse the soul element in the human being, the art of education must also be different for any individual human being. Because the awakening of the soul forces was the beginning of any education, higher beings had to be there when that third human race rose to spiritual life. The soul did not develop from wildness, from ignorance. Millions of years ago, when the human beings rose from the only impulsive condition, it did not happen by itself, but by the great teachers helping this human race.

There must also be great teachers who tower above humankind surrounding them, who draw them up to a higher point of view. Also today there are teachers who tower above the present knowledge who reproduce the soul germ. I discuss in an additional talk where these teachers come from. One has known about these leaders of humankind at all times. One of the most excellent philosophers, Schelling, who himself was no theosophist, speaks in one of his often misunderstood works also of them.

These great teachers who can give information about the spiritual who are experts of the soul element whose wisdom is of etheric kind, is a mental cognition, they have supported and led humankind. The Theosophical Society wants to lead the human beings again to these soul researchers. In their middle are these who can give information about the nature of the soul. They cannot come to the fore in the world, they cannot say: accept our truth, because the human beings would not understand their language. The great truth is hidden to most people. The task of the Theosophical Society is to lead the human beings to the sources of wisdom. We have these goals in luminous clearness before us.

Our era has advanced so delightfully far that it denies the existence of the own soul. The task of our movement is to give back this era the confidence in itself and in the eternal and imperishable in us, in the divine core of our being.

The theosophist does not dare so easily to speak about the knowledge of the primary source of all matters. Theosophy should be the way to be able to seize, finally, this concept with our mental faculty; it should show us the way which would lead us to get clearness, as far as it is to be got, about this idea. This way is long and leads through some stations, and we are not allowed to pass any single station only, but on every station we have to stop and learn.

Not only the starting point, but also the keystone is important. If we have this in mind, we have to go a little into the nature of theosophical life to see which views theosophy has on the concept of God. Theosophy is—as it is striven for since 1875 in the society founded by Mrs. Blavatsky—something different from that which one calls western science, which our western civilisation and its scholarship strives for in the external life. The way how the western knowledge is gained differs basically from the theosophical wisdom.

Theosophical wisdom is very old, as old as the human race, and somebody who becomes engrossed in the evolution of the human being gets to know more about the starting point of the human being than that which our history of civilisation of the last decades has believed in such a thoughtless way that the human beings started from a lack of culture and from ignorance. We shall see how it is in reality if we become engrossed in the life of primeval times. There we see that the development of human mind started from a strong spiritual strength of beholding that in the beginning of the human development real divine wisdom existed everywhere. Who studies the old religions receives the light of this wisdom. Now our time, according to the sense of our life, gives the theosophist a renewal of this cultural life which flows through the whole humankind.

Our western cultural life is based on our mind first of all. It is based on the one-sided mental strength. If you go through our whole civilisation in the West, you find our great discoveries and inventions, our sciences and what they have contributed to the clarification of the riddle of the world. You find thinking, sensible thinking, observation with the senses et cetera. In this manner the western mind spreads out its knowledge to all directions. It investigates the cosmic space with the help of instruments, with the telescope and penetrates with the microscope into the world of the smallest bodies. It connects everything with the mind. Our western knowledge thereby spreads in all directions. We know more and more about our surroundings, but we never get to a deepening of our knowledge, namely penetrating of the matters. That is why it may not surprise us if the western science does not cope with the concept of God. We must get to the spring of existence, to the spiritual being. They cannot be connected and perceived by the senses; they must be perceived in a different way.

Those who know that there is another way than the western one try to attain wisdom in quite a different way. Go back to the wisdom of Egyptian priests, back to the Greek mysteries, back to India, go back to all these religions and world views and you find that those who looked for wisdom did this in quite a different way than the European scholarship. It was a self-education, a self-development what was searched for by the pupils of wisdom above all.

They searched for self-education through honest struggle of the human soul, and tried to gain higher wisdom. From the start they were convinced that the human being, as he is born in the world, is determined for advancement, for higher development. They were convinced that the human being is not perfect that he cannot attain the top level of perfection immediately in one single life that a development of the human being and his soul capacities have to take place, like with the plant whose root remains even if leaves and flowers dry up. It is similar if we are going to have to take the self-education in our own hands correctly which produces flowers and fruit in the life on earth if we work on it seriously.

The pupil strove for wisdom that way. He looked for a guide for himself. This gave him clues how he could develop his astral organs by an appropriate way of life. Then he developed upward step by step. His soul became able to behold farther and farther, it became more and more sensitive for the primary sources of existence. On every new level he attained new insights. With every level he approached the being whose concept we have to discuss today. He realised that he did not understand God using his intellect. That is why he tried to advance above all. He was convinced that in the whole nature and also in the human soul the God being is to be found. This God being never is anything ready and finished; it is as developing factor in all living beings, in all things. We ourselves are this God being.

We are not the whole, but we are droplets of the same quality, of the same essence. Deeply below us in concealed abysses and bottoms, which are not on the surface of the day, there is our real divine nature. We have to search for it and to get it up. Then we also get up a little bit what hovers about our usual existence, and then we also get up in ourselves what is divine in us. Each of us is as it were a beam of divinity or, we say, a reflection of divinity. If we imagine the divinity as the sun, each of us is like a reflection of the sun in the drop of water. As well as the drop of water reflects the sun completely, every human being is a true, real reflection of the divine being. The God being rests in us, only we know nothing about it; we must get it out of ourselves. We must only approach it. Goethe says: he cannot understand how somebody would want to immediately reach the divinity. We must approach it more and more. Self-development leads us gradually to the understanding of the primary foundation of life.

If we develop this way, we exercise nothing else than theosophical life. Everything that spiritual science teaches and recommends living, all great laws which it makes clear to us and which its students who want to co-operate really make it the living truth in them. They get to know the teaching of reincarnation and karma, the law of destiny, of the intermediate beings, of the primary source of all being which controls the whole universe. This is the internal world which we call the astral one and the mental one, the world of buddhi and the world of atma. We experience something of all those worlds, and what we experience of those worlds is the steps to wisdom which lead us to the loftiest. If we try to climb up these steps, it is a long way. Only those who have arrived at the highest summit of human development are able to see once that they have an inkling of the size of that concept which we want to discuss today as intimation.

Hence, the shyness with which theosophy speaks about the concept of God. The theosophist speaks about these concepts possibly in the same attitude as a Hindu speaks of Brahma. If you ask him: what is Brahma?—Then he maybe mentions to you: Mahadeva, Vishnu and Brahma. Brahma is one of the divine beings or rather an expression of the divine being. But behind all that something different rests for the Hindu. Behind all beings to which he ascribes the origin of the world something rests that he calls Brahma or Brahman. Brahman is neuter. If you ask him what is behind the beings of which he speaks, he says nothing about it.

He says nothing about it, because one cannot speak about it any more. Everything that the human being is able to say in this direction is hints, hints in that perspective at whose end the divine being is for us.—That also leads to the motto of our Theosophical Society. Perhaps, you know this motto. It expresses nothing else than what I tried to outline now with some words. This motto is normally translated with the words: no religion is higher than truth.—We want to see how far the whole theosophical striving goes in that direction.—What do we know about the human striving? Human knowledge has to make every effort to penetrate the secrets of existence and to find the primary sources of life with the help of the different philosophies and world views.

Let us have a look at the different religions. Apparently they are contradictory to each other; however, they are contradictory only if one looks at them cursorily. If we consider them deeper, they are connected. Indeed, they do not have the same contents: Christianity, Hinduism, Zarathustrism, and natural sciences do not have the same contents, too. Nevertheless—all these different world views show nothing else than attempts of the human mind to approach the primary source of all being. On different ways you can get to the summit of a mountain. From different points of view a region looks different, and thus the original truth also looks different from different points of view.

We all are different from each other. The one has this; the other has that character, this or that mental development. However, we all also belong to a people, a race, and an age. It was always this way. But because we belong to a people, a race, and an age and have characters, we have a sum of different sensations and feelings with the human beings. They form the different languages in which the human beings put questions to themselves and communicate about the riddles of life. The Greek could not form the same mental pictures as the modern human being because the look was totally different by which he saw the world. Thus the theosophist sees different aspects, different kinds of wisdom everywhere. If we look for the reason of it, we see that we have a concealed original wisdom, which reveals itself time and again and which is identical with the divine wisdom.

What have the human beings formed in the course of time, and what will they always form? They form opinions. We deal with opinions. The one opinion is different from the other; the one stands above the other. We have the obligation to ascend to higher and higher opinions. But we have to realise that we must go far beyond the sea of opinions. Truth itself is still hidden in the opinions at the moment, it is still covered, and it still appears in different forms and aspects. However, we are allowed to absolutely have these opinions if we take the right point of view on the opinions and truth.

We are never allowed to believe to understand truth—which Goethe regards as identical with the divine—with our limited abilities. We may never dare to believe that an end of thinking is possible. If we are aware of that, we feel something that goes beyond it, and then we have something of that which theosophy calls wisdom-filled modesty in the higher sense of the word. The theosophist comes out of himself with his sensations and his thinking. He says to himself: I must have opinions, because I am only a human being, and it is my spiritual obligation to form thoughts and concepts of the riddles of existence; but I have something in myself that cannot be brought in a restricted concept; I have something in myself that is more than thinking that goes beyond thinking: this is life.

This life is the divine life which flows through all things which also flows through me.—It is that which helps us along, that which we can never encompass. We will never be able to encompass it. If, however, we admit that we will have reached something higher in distant future, we have to admit also that we have other opinions in distant future which are higher than those we have now. But you cannot have the lively life which is in us in different way. You cannot have this in a different way; for this life is the divine life which leads to the higher thoughts which still come to us which we also have once. If we have this sensation of the concepts—especially of the concepts of the divine nature, then we say to ourselves: truth is identical with divinity, the divine lives in my veins. It lives in all things and it also lives in me.—If we think this thought in ourselves, it is divine, but it is not God himself and cannot enclose God. There we must say to ourselves: beyond any human opinion, beyond any temporal or national opinion the original truth goes which reveals itself to you which we must feel and which we must look for ambitiously. But no human opinion is higher to us than this living sensation for the unfathomable wisdom and divinity which expresses itself in that which I told now. We may be convinced that we are enclosed in the divinity that God works in us if we are living beings. This is the sense of the theosophical motto: No human opinion stands higher than the living sensation of the divine wisdom which always changes and never shows itself as a whole.—Then we may also not wonder if we look at the matter in such a way that Goethe's saying is right:

Somebody is as his God is;
Therefore, God is mocked so often.

Indeed, we human beings can form no other concept of the divine being as such which is adjusted to our respective capacities. But if we have a look at the matter in such a way as we have just looked at it, we have to say: however, we are also justified to form a suitable concept of the divine. Only one thing is necessary, and this is: having the good will not to stop there. It would be presumptuous to believe that we have reached the original wisdom. It is also presumptuous by science if it believes to have now explained the concept of God. In this regard our present civilisation is really once again on one of those low points on which humankind is sometimes.

Our present civilisation is somewhat presumptuous concerning the concept of God as you know. Just those who want to have a new Bible, a so-called story of natural creation were often presumptuous so that they could not advance. There is a writing by David Friedrich Strauss with the title Old and New Faith which appeared in 1872 and supports the opinion that it is a new Bible compared to the old Bible and that that which comes from sciences is true. For they undermine the Bible in such a way that these concepts must be thrown away.

Believe me that these are the best who are set on such a mania today that they are the best who think in good confidence that we reach the very basis of existence spreading the human knowledge that we come from matter and energy. What is this materialistic belief in God which meets us there? These are often excellent personalities who have advanced so far that they say: matter is our God.

These whirling atoms which attract and push off themselves mutually should cause what constitutes our own soul. What is the materialistic belief in God? It is atheism! This can be compared with a religious level which exists, otherwise, in the world which we can find, however, only correctly if we have the typical concepts of the materialistic new faith. It is dead matter and dead energy the materialist offers and adores. Let us look back at the times of ancient Hellenism and not take the deep mystery religions, but the national religion of the Greeks. Their gods were human, were idealised human beings.

If we go back to other levels of existence, we find there that the human beings adored animals that plants were symbols of the divine to them. But these all were living beings. These were higher levels than that which the completely savages had who walked towards a stone block and adored it as animated. The stone block differs in nothing from that which is energy and matter. As incredible it sounds, the materialists stand on the level of such fetish adorers. They say, of course, that they do not adore energy and matter at all. If they say this, we reply to them: you have no correct concept of what the fetish adorer feels to his fetish. The fetish adorers are not yet able to rise to a higher idea of God. Their culture does not allow it to them. It is a legitimate opinion for them to adore an image they make for themselves. Of this opinion are today not only the savages but also the materialists. Somebody, who is today a scientific fetish adorer, who makes the image of matter and energy to himself and adores it, is to blame for something. He could see by virtue of the cultural level achieved by us if he only wanted it, on what a low level he has stopped.

As we are today surrounded by this virtually paralysing idea of God, we say to ourselves: this is a reason why we speak of the idea of God.—Hence, I may point to a book. One says it is a great merit of Feuerbach, the philosopher, that he represented a so-called “fantastic” God. Feuerbach published a book in 1841 and took the view that we should turn round the sentence: God created the human being according to his image—and say: the human beings created God according to their image.—We have to realise the fact that the wishes and needs of the human being are in such a way that he likes to see something above himself. Then his imagination creates an image of him. The gods become images of the human being.—With it Feuerbach, one says, expressed a lofty wisdom.

If we go back to the times of the ancient Hellenism, back to the Egyptians et cetera, again and again the human beings formed ideas of the gods in such a way as they were themselves. Thus they could also form bull and lion images of gods. If the human beings were similar to bulls in their souls, then the bulls became their gods. The gods became similar to bulls. If people were similar to lions, the lions and lion-like images became their gods. This is no new wisdom. It is a wisdom which spreads in our time only again.

However, is it then not true that really the human being creates his gods to himself? Is it not true that our opinions about the gods arise from our own chests? Is it not true that—if we look around in the world—we do not see the divine with the eyes, with our senses? Somebody who wants to look with the senses and understand with his mind speaks that way as for example Du Bois-Reymond, the great physiologist: I would believe in a ruler of the universe if I could prove him; if I could prove him like the human brain. Then, however, I would be able to prove nerve strands also outside in the world, as well as I can prove nerve strands in the human body. In the outside world, as Du Bois-Reymond and the younger ones want it, we cannot find the divine. Their opinions are created from their own chests like Feuerbach says.

But one can also say: what speaks in the human soul if this human soul forms thoughts and opinions?—We know that we ourselves are parts of this divine being; we know that God lives in us. We know that we human beings are the last member of all things that surround us in the physical world, so to speak, the noblest and most perfect beings within this world. Have we not to say that the human being, in so far as he forms himself physically, forms himself according to God as the most perfect being? Who does not agree with Goethe as he expressed his opinion with the nice words:

“If the healthy nature of the human being works as a whole if he feels being in the world like in a great, nice, worthy and valued whole if the harmonious pleasure grants a pure, free delight to him: then the universe if it could feel would rejoice because it would have reached its purpose and would admire the summit of its own evolution and being.”

The human being forms thoughts; the thoughts stream from the human breast. But what speaks out of the human breast? God himself speaks out of it—if the human being is only inclined to hear this inner voice unselfishly, not to let drown it by his interests and inclinations of the everyday life. It is this: indeed, it is a human voice, but God’s voice is in the human voice. That is why it does not come as a surprise if we have different aspects, different views about the old divine wisdom in the human voice. A higher spiritual modesty is that which must penetrate the theosophist if he wants to obtain this concept of God. Above all, he has to realise that life is a continual study that he never closes with an opinion; that everything is developing. Also the human soul is developing. Then it turns out that there are souls of lower and higher levels. There are also souls which have not yet far advanced in their idea of God, and on the other side there are souls which have advanced beyond the ordinary for a long time and have acquired lofty world concepts and also lofty concepts of God.

European and American knowledge regards itself as wise and elated that nothing outstrips it. Everybody believes that he has the sum of all wisdom. Somebody who adheres to oriental or to theosophical wisdom is completely different. He says to himself: everyday you can overtake what you have achieved if you continue the way. Everything you have achieved is your inner possession. But you are not allowed to rest; you must go on and hear to the voice in nature and in your own breast.

Nothing is as perishable for the western culture as our criticism getting out of hand. Because it is never prepared from the point of view that one has to develop that one is never allowed to have a closed judgment about a matter. The theosophist will never have this. He says to himself with boldness and courage what he has recognised as true: I arouse the same sensation in everybody, who wants to hear me, that I long for higher levels and higher summits of existence and wisdom.—The theosophist talks to himself that way. We never reach the end of soul development; we never have a closed world. We look for the way which leads us to knowledge beyond our senses to the higher worlds which gives us a right sensation above all. Even if each of us were an advanced being, we would have to look deeper and deeper into the world, to recognise the sources of life deeper than we are able today standing within the western life and feeling. We should behave as advanced human beings. That is why it is also so difficult to fulfil the wisdom which flows to us from advanced beings who have already developed to a higher level than the everyday person. These are beings who have to say a lot to us. We must have a sensation of grandeur; then we learn to listen.

In this attitude theosophy wants to build up a spiritual current and to bring up a centre of humankind which believes honestly and really that the human soul is a product of development. If the worm which lived at that time had said millions of years ago: I have arrived at the summit of existence, then the worm could not have developed to the fish, the fish not to the mammal, not to the monkey and not to the human being. Unconsciously they have believed that they have to go beyond it that they have to grow up to higher and higher levels. They believed a little bit in that which takes up their being and that is the strength of their development. We human beings cannot really feel against nature. We should feel with nature. What nature has unconsciously as strength of development in itself which we should become more and more aware of, this consciousness should be the strength of our development. We have to realise that we must develop beyond ourselves. Just as outside in the animal realm the imperfect mammal lives beside the perfect one, as the one lagged behind as it were on a lower level, the other reached a higher level earlier and lives beside the lower one, just the same also applies to the human beings. In humankind the different human beings live side by side on different levels of development.

We have to admit that our concept of God is a petty one compared to that which a lofty being has. We have also to admit that our present-day concept of God is pettier compared to that which humankind will have in millions of years if it has developed further. Therefore, we have to move the concept of God in an infinite perspective and to carry it as life in ourselves. The theosophical concept of God distinguishes from all other that we have to approach it that we have to take care for it. We deny none of these concepts. We realise that they all are justified according to the human abilities. But we also realise that none of them is exhaustive. We realise that we cannot join those who sow discord between the different opinions. The different religions have to be side by side and not against each other.

And now what do we call the concept of God? It is not pan-theism, not a pan-theistic concept, not an anthropomorphic concept, not an outlined concept. We do not adore this or that God, we adore Brahman behind Brahma whom the Hindu reveres who is more sensitive of the matters about which he remains silent. We realise that we can experience this God Being in life. We cannot imagine it, but it lives in us as life. This is not knowledge of God, not science of God; theosophy is also not theology. Theosophy wants to find the way; it is the search for God.

A German philosopher said only short but striking words concerning this matter. Schelling said: can one prove the existence of existence?—The different proofs of the existence of God cannot be guides to God; they deliver an imagination of God at most. A real proof is only necessary if a matter has to be reached by our concept. God lives in our actions, in our words. It cannot be a matter of proving the existence of God but of gaining opinions of it only and of taking care that they become more and more perfect. It is that which it concerns, and the Theosophical Society has set it as its goal to collaborate on it.

Those who represent the theological point of view have no sensation, no inkling which sensations pointed the way in this regard in past times. I would like to remind you of a spirit of the 15th century who set the tone and was actually theosophist even then, theosophist completely in our sense. He was a Catholic cardinal. I would like to remind of the sensitive theosophist Nicholas of Cusa because he can be an ideal for the modern theosophists. He expressed that in all religions a core is contained that they are different aspects of an original religion that they should be reconciled that they should be deepened. One should search for truth in them, but not claim to be able to grasp the original truth immediately.

Cusanus tries to get the concept of God clear in his mind in a profound way. If you understand this view of Cusanus, you get an idea of the fact that Christianity had significant, deep spirits also in the Middle Ages, spirits of a type that one cannot have any concept of them using our ideas. Thus Cusanus says—and also still some other predecessors: we have our concepts, our thoughts. Where come all our human ideas from? From our surroundings we have experienced. What we have experienced, however, is only a small part of the infinite. If we go to the highest concept and take the concept of being: is this not also a human concept? Where we have the concept of being from? We live in the world. It makes an impression on our senses of touch, on our eyes. We say of that which we see or hear: it is. We attribute the being to it. “A thing is” means basically as much as: I have seen it.—“Being” (German: sein) has the same root as “seeing” (sehen). If we say: God is, we attribute an idea to God which we have got only from our experience. We say nothing other than: God has a quality which we have perceived in different things. Therefore, Cusanus expressed a word which is deeply characteristic. He says: not the being has to be attributed to God, but the super-being.

This is not an idea which we can get with our senses. That is why the sensation of the infinite also lives in Cusanus. It is deeply affecting if this cardinal says: I have studied theology in my whole life, have also pursued the sciences of the world and have also understood them—as far as they are to be recognised with reason. But then I noticed in myself, and thereby I have got to know: in the human soul a self lives which is woken more and more by the human soul.—You read that with Cusanus. The meaning of that which he says goes far beyond that which we think and conceive today.

As necessary as it is that we come to clear and sharply outlined concepts of all that which we experience in the world, it is also necessary that we are aware at every moment concerning the concept of God that our sensation must go beyond everything that we perceive with the reason and with the senses. Then we realise that we should not recognise God but search for Him. Then we see more and more the way of the knowledge of God and develop to this. If God is not closed life, but living life, we wait, until the methods of theosophy have developed higher spiritual forces in us. God rules not only in this world, but also in those worlds which only somebody can behold whose spiritual eye is opened for all those worlds of which theosophy speaks. It speaks of seven levels of the human consciousness. It knows that human development means: not stopping at the physical level of consciousness, but ascending to higher and higher levels.

Somebody, who does this, experiences a subordinated concept of it at first. Nevertheless, we are never allowed to despair, but have to realise that we are justified to form higher and higher opinions of the God being that it is, however, presumptuous to believe that one day an opinion exhausts the object. We have to realise that we must have the right sensations and feelings in ourselves, then our feeling becomes devout again, then we become reverent again. We have lost reverence because of our European thoughts. We have to wake reverence and devotion anew. What could arouse our reverence more than that which exists as a divine being, as a primary source of existence! If we learn to develop devotion again, our soul is warmed up and set aglow by something totally different, namely by that which flows through the universe as blood of life. This becomes a part of our being.

Spinoza speaks about that, too. Spinoza developed concepts of the divinity in his Ethics, and he closes his Ethics with a literary hymn on the divinity. He closes them in this sense: only that human being has got to freedom, only that human being also creates a deep feeling, a feeling, which allows the divinity to flow into him, whose knowledge combines in love. Amor dei intellectualis—recognising love for God, that is: the love for God resting in the knowledge of the spirit is God’s love. This is not a concept, not a restricted idea, but living life.

That is why our concept of God is not a science of God, but we let flow everything we can experience as science together into a lively feeling, into a feeling of the divine. The word theosophy should not be translated as “wisdom of God,” but as “divine wisdom” or even better: the search for a way to God, the search for a perpetually increasing apotheosis. “Search for wisdom,” that is it.

Those who exerted themselves and advanced to higher levels of existence stood always on this ground more or less. Among others also Goethe who was much more theosophist than one normally suspects who is, above all, the theosophical poet of the Germans. He can be understood completely when he is illuminated with the light of theosophy. Among many other truths which rest covertly in Goethe's works the motto of theosophy can also be found there. At a prominent place, Goethe expressed: no religion is higher than truth.—Goethe was deeply convinced of that.

As well as any existence is formed also our thoughts are formed. As any formed being is an allegory, our ideas of God are also allegories of God—but never the divine itself. Concerning the transient concept of God and the image of the imperishable Goethe’s word is correct:

It will be nothing strange to many among you that one can find if the word theosophy is pronounced nothing else than a smile with many of our contemporaries. Also it is not unknown to many that just those who demand scholarship or, we say, philosophical education in the present look at theosophy as something that one must call a dilettantish activity, a fantastic belief. One can find in particular in the circles of scholars that the theosophist is regarded as a type of fantastic dreamer who bears witness to his peculiar image worlds because he has never made the acquaintance with the bases of knowledge. You find particularly in the circles which consider themselves as the scientific ones that they presuppose easily that the theosophist is basically without any philosophical education, and even if he has also acquired it or speaks of it, it is a dilettantish, a picked up matter.

These talks should not deal with theosophy directly. There are enough others. It should be a discussion with the western philosophical education, a discussion how the scientific world behaves to theosophy, and how it could behave, actually. They should disprove the prejudice, as if the theosophist is an uneducated, dilettantish person with regard to science. Who has not heard often enough that philosophers of the most different schools—and there are enough philosopher schools—state that mysticism is an unclear view filled with all kinds of allegories and feeling elements, and that theosophy has not achieved a strictly methodical thinking? If it did this, it would see that it walks on nebulous ways. It would see that mysticism could root only in the heads of eccentric people. This is a well-known prejudice.

However, I do not want to begin with a reprimand. Not because it would not correspond to the theosophical conviction, but because I do not consider theosophy as anything dilettantish from my own philosophical education and speak, nevertheless, out of the depths of its conviction. I can understand absolutely that somebody who has taken up the western philosophy in himself and has the whole scientific equipment has it hard to see something else in theosophy than what is just known. For somebody who comes today from philosophy and science it is much more difficult really to familiarise himself with theosophy, than for that who approaches theosophy with a naive human mind, with a natural, maybe religious feeling and with a need to solve certain riddles of life. Because this western philosophy puts so many obstacles to its students, offers them so many judgments which seem to be contradictory to theosophy that it makes it apparently impossible to get involved with theosophy.

Indeed, it is true that the theosophical literature shows little of that which resembles a discussion with our contemporary science and which one could call philosophical. Therefore, I have resolved to hold a series of talks on it. They should be an epistemological basis of theosophy. You will get to know the concepts of the contemporary philosophy and its contents. If you look at this in a real, true and deep sense, you see—but you must really wait till the end—the basis of the theosophical knowledge following from this western philosophy. This should not happen juggling with expert dialectic concepts, but it should happen, as far as I am able to do it in some talks, with any equipment which the knowledge of our contemporaries provides us; it should happen with everything available to give something that can be experienced of a higher world view also to those who do not want to know it.

What I have to explain would not have been possible in another age to explain in the same way. But it has been necessary to look around, maybe just in our time, at Kant, Locke, Schopenhauer or at other writers of the present, we say at Eduard von Hartmann and his disciple Arthur Drews, or the brilliant theorist of knowledge Volkelt or Otto Liebmann, or at the somewhat journalistic, but not less strictly rational Eucken. Who has looked around there who has familiarised himself with this or that of the shadings which the philosophical-scientific views of the present and the latest past took on understands and conceives—this is my innermost conviction—that a real, true understanding of this philosophical development does not lead away from theosophy, but to theosophy. Just somebody who has argued thoroughly with the philosophical doctrines has to come to theosophy.

I would not need to deliver this speech unless the whole thinking of our time were influenced just by a philosopher. One says that the great mental achievement of Immanuel Kant gave philosophy a scientific basis. One says that what he performed to the definition of the knowledge problem is something steadfast. You hear that anybody who has not tackled Kant has no right to have a say in philosophy. You may examine the different currents: Herbart, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, from Schopenhauer up to Eduard von Hartmann—in all these lines of thought only somebody can find the way who orientates himself to Kant. After different matters were striven for in the philosophy of the 19th century, the calling resounds from Zeller in the middle of the seventies, from Liebmann, then from Friedrich Albert Lange: back to Kant!—The lecturers of philosophy are of the opinion that everybody has to orientate himself to Kant, and only somebody who does this can have a say in philosophy.

Kant dominated the philosophy of the 19th century and of the present. However, he caused something else than he himself wanted. He expressed it with the words: he believes to have accomplished a similar action like Copernicus. Copernicus turned around the whole astronomical world view. He removed the earth from the centre and made another body, the sun, to the centre which was once imagined to be movable. However, Kant makes the human being with his cognitive faculties the centre of the physical world view. He really turns around the whole physical world view. It is the opinion of most philosophers of the 19th century that one has to turn around. You can understand this philosophy only if you understand it from its preconditions. One can understand what has flowed from Kant’s philosophy only if one understands it from its bases. Who understands how Kant came to his conviction that we can never recognise the things “by themselves,” because all things we recognise are only phenomena who understands this can also understand the development of the philosophy of the 19th century, he also understands the objections which can be made against theosophy, and also how he has to behave to them.

You know that theosophy rests on a higher experience. The theosophist says that the source of his knowledge is an experience which reaches beyond the sensory experience. You can see that it has the same validity as that of the senses that what the theosophist tells about astral worlds et cetera is as real as the things which we perceive with our senses round us as sensory experience. What the theosophist believes to have as his source of knowledge is a higher experience. If you read Leadbeater’s Astralebene (Astral Plane), you think that the things are as real in the astral world as the cabs and horses in the streets of London. It should be said how real this world is for somebody who knows them. The philosopher of the present argues immediately: yes, but you are mistaken, because you believe that this is a true reality. Has the philosophy of the 19th century not proved to you that our experience is nothing but our idea, and that also the starry heaven is nothing else than our idea in us?—He considers this as the most certain knowledge which there can only be. Eduard von Hartmann considers it as the most natural truth that this is my idea, and that one cannot know what it is also. If you believe that you can call experience “real,” then you are a naive realist. Can you decide anything generally about the value experience has facing the world in this way? This is the great result to which Kantianism has come that the world surrounding us must be our idea.

How did Kant’s world view come to this? It came from the philosophy of the predecessors. At that time when Kant was still young, the philosophy of Christian Wolff had the mastery over all schools. It distinguished the so-called knowledge of experience which we acquire by the sensory impressions and that which comes from pure reason. According to him, we can get to know something of the things of the everyday life only by experience, and from pure reason we have things which are the objects of the highest knowledge. These things are the human souls, the free will of the human being, the questions which refer to immortality and to the divine being.

The so-called empiric sciences deal with that which is offered in natural history, in physics, in history et cetera. How does the astronomer get his knowledge? He directs his eyes to the stars; he finds the laws which are commensurate with the observations. We learn this while opening our senses to the outside world. Nobody can say that this is drawn from mere reason. The human being knows this because he sees it. This is an empiric knowledge which we take up from life, from the experience in ourselves, not caring whether we order them in a scientific system or not; it is knowledge of experience. Nobody can describe a lion from his very reason. However, Wolff supposes that one can draw that which one is from pure reason. Wolff supposes that we have a psychology from pure reason, also that the soul must have free will that it must have reason et cetera. Hence, Wolff calls the sciences which deal with the higher capacities of the soul rational psychology. The question whether the world has a beginning and an end is a question which one should decide only from pure reason. He calls this question an object of rational cosmology. Nobody can decide on the usefulness of the world from experience; nobody can investigate it by observation. These are nothing but questions of the rational cosmology. Then there is a science of God, of a divine plan. This is a science which is also drawn from reason. This is the so-called rational theology, it belongs to metaphysics.

Kant grew up in a time when philosophy was taught in this sense. You find him in his first writings as an adherent of Wolff’s philosophy. You find him convinced that there is a rational psychology, a rational theology et cetera. He gives a proof which he calls the only possible proof of the existence of God. Then he got to know a philosophical current which had a stupefying effect on him. He got to know the philosophy of David Hume. He said that it waked up him from his dogmatic slumber.—What does this philosophy offer? Hume says the following: we see that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. We have seen this many days. We also know that all people have seen sunrises and sunsets that they have experienced the same, and we get used to believing that this must take place forever.

Now another example: we see that the solar heat falls on a stone. We think that it is the solar heat which warms up the stone. What do we see? We perceive solar heat first and then the warmed up stone. What do we perceive there? Only that one fact follows the other. If we experience that the sunbeams warm up the stone, then we have already formed the judgment that the solar heat is the cause that the stone becomes warm. That is why Hume says: there is nothing at all that shows us more than a sequence of facts. We get used to the belief that there a causal relationship exists. But this belief is only a habituation and everything that the human being thinks of causal concepts exists only in that experience. The human being sees a ball pushing the other, he sees that a movement takes place through it, and then he gets used to saying that lawfulness exists in it. In truth we deal with no real insight.

What is the human being considered from the knowledge of pure reason? This is nothing else—Hume says—than a summary of facts. We have to connect the facts of the world. This corresponds to the human way of thinking, to the tendency of the human thinking. We have no right to go beyond this thinking. We are not allowed to say that it is something in the things which has given them lawfulness. We can only say that the things and events flow past us. But the things “in themselves” do not show such a connection.

How can we speak now of the fact that something manifests itself to us in the things that goes beyond experience? How can we speak of a connection in experience that is due to a divine being, that goes beyond experience if we are not inclined to turn to anything other than to the ways of thinking?

This view had the effect on Kant that it waked up him from dogmatic slumber. He asks: can there be something that goes beyond experience? Which knowledge does experience deliver to us? Does it give us sure knowledge? Of course, Kant denied this question immediately. He says: even if you have seen the sun rise hundred thousand times, you cannot infer from it that it also rises tomorrow again. It could also be different. If you inferred only from experience, it could also turn out once that experience convinces you of something different. Experience can never give sure, necessary knowledge.

I know from experience that the sun warms up the stone. However, I am not allowed to state that it has to warm up it. If all our knowledge comes from experience, it can never exceed the condition of uncertainty; then there can be no necessary empiric knowledge. Now Kant tries to find out this matter. He looks for a way out. He had made himself used through his whole youth to believe in knowledge. He could be convinced by Hume’s philosophy that there is nothing sure. Is anywhere anything where one can speak of sure, necessary knowledge? However—he says—there are sure judgments. These are the mathematical judgments. Is the mathematical judgment similar to the judgment: in the morning the sun rises and sets in the evening?

I have the judgment that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. If I have given the proof with one single triangle, it suffices for all triangles. I see from the nature of the proof that it applies to all possible cases. This is the peculiar of mathematical proofs. For everybody it is clear that these must also apply to the inhabitants of Jupiter and Mars if they generally have triangles that also there the sum of the angles of a triangle must be 180 degrees. And then: never can be two times two anything else than four. This is always true. Hence, we have a proof that there is knowledge which is absolutely sure. The question cannot be: do we have such knowledge? But we must think about the possibility of such judgments.

Now there comes the big question of Kant: how are such absolutely necessary judgments possible? How is mathematical knowledge possible?—Kant now calls those judgments and knowledge which are drawn from experience judgments and knowledge a posteriori. The judgment: the sum of angles of a triangle is 180 degrees; however, is a judgment which precedes all experience, a judgment a priori. I can simply imagine a triangle and give the proof, and if I see a triangle which I have not yet experienced, I can say that it must have a sum of angles of 180 degrees. Any higher knowledge depends on it that I can make judgments from pure reason.

How are such judgments a priori possible? We have seen that such a judgment: the sum of angles of a triangle is equal 180 degrees, applies to any triangles. Experience has to submit to my judgment. If I draw an ellipse and look out into space, I find that a planet describes such an ellipse. The planet follows my judgment formed in pure knowledge. I approach the experience with my purely in the ideal formed judgment. Have I drawn this judgment from experience?—Kant continues asking. There is no doubt, forming such purely ideal judgments, that we have, actually, no reality of experience.

The ellipse, the triangle—they have no reality of experience, but reality submits to such knowledge. If I want to have true reality, I must approach experience. If, however, I know which laws work in it, then I have knowledge before all experience. The law of the ellipse does not come from experience. I myself build it in my mind. Thus a passage begins with Kant with the sentence: “Even if all our knowledge starts from experience, nevertheless, not everything does arise from experience.” I put what I have as knowledge into experience. The human mind is made in such a way that everything of its experience corresponds only to the laws which it has. The human mind is made in such a way that it must develop these laws inevitably. If it moves up to experience, then experience has to submit to these laws.

An example: Imagine that you wear blue glasses. You see everything in blue light; the objects appear to you in blue light. However the things outdoors may be made, this concerns me nothing at all provisionally. At the moment when the laws which my mind develops spread out over the whole world of experience the whole world of experience must fit into it. It is not right that the judgment: two times two is four is taken from experience. It is the condition of my mind that two times two must give always four. My mind is in such a way that the three angles of a triangle are always 180 degrees. Thus Kant justifies the laws out of the human being himself. The sun warms up the stone. Every effect has a cause. This is a law of the mind. If the world is a chaos, I push the lawfulness of my mind toward it. I conceive the world like a string of pearls. I am that who makes the world a knowledge mechanism.—You also see how Kant was induced to find such a particular method of knowledge. As long as the human mind is organised in such a way as it is organised as long everything must submit to this organisation, even if reality changes overnight. For me it could not change if the laws of my mind are the same. The world may be as it wants; we recognise it in such a way as it must appear to us according to the laws of our mind.

Now you see which sense it has, if one says: Kant turned the whole theory of knowledge, the whole epistemology. One assumed before that the human being reads everything from nature. Now, however, he lets the human mind give the laws to nature. He lets everything circle around the human mind like Copernicus let the earth circle around the sun.

Then, however, there is something else that shows that the human being can never go beyond experience. Indeed, it appears as a contradiction, but you will see that it corresponds to Kant’s philosophy. Kant shows that the concepts are empty. Two times two is four is an empty judgment if not peas or beans are filled into it. Any effect has a cause—is a purely formal judgment if it is not filled with particular contents of experience. The judgments are formed before in me to be applied to the observation of the world. “Observations without concepts are blind—concepts without observations are empty.” We can think millions of ellipses; they correspond to no reality if we do not see them in the planetary motion. We have to verify everything by experience. We can gain judgments a priori, but we are allowed to apply them only if they correspond to experience.

God, freedom and immortality are matters about which we can ponder ever so long about which we can get knowledge by no experience. Therefore, it is in vain to find out anything with our reason. The concepts a priori are only valid as far as our experience reaches. Indeed we have a science a priori which only says to us how experience has to be until experience is there. We can catch as it were experience like in a web, but we cannot find out how the law of experience has to be. About the “thing-in-itself” we know nothing, and because God, freedom and immortality must have their origin in the “thing-in-itself,” we can find out nothing about them. We see the things not as they are, but in such a way as we must see them according to our organisation.

With it Kant founded the critical idealism and overcame the naive realism. What submits to causality is not the “thing-in-itself.” What submits to my eye or my ear has to make an impression on my eye, on my ear at first. This is the perception, the sensations. These are the effects of any “thing-in-itself,” of things which are absolutely unknown to me. These produce a lot of effects, and I order them in a lawful world. I form an organism of sensations. But I cannot know what is behind them. It is nothing else than the lawfulness which my mind has put into the sensations. What is behind the sensation, I can know nothing about it. Hence, the world which surrounds me is only subjective. It is only that which I myself build up.

The development of physiology in the 19th century agreed apparently completely with Kant. Take the important knowledge of the great physiologist Johannes Müller. He has put up the law of the specific nerve energy. It consists in the fact that any organ answers in its way. If you let light into the eye, you have a beam of light; if you bump against the eye, you will likewise have a light sensation. Müller concludes that it does not depend on the things outside, but on my eye what I perceive. The eye answers to a process unknown to me with the colour quality, we say: blue. Blue is nowhere outdoors in space. A process has an effect on us, and it produces the sensation “blue.” What you believe that it stands before you, is nothing else than the effect of some unknown processes on a sense. The whole physiology of the 19th century confirmed this law of the specific nerve energy apparently. Kant’s idea seems to be thereby supported.

One can call this world view illusionism in the full sense of the word. Nobody knows anything about what has an effect outside, what produces his sensations. From himself he spins his whole world of experience and builds up it according to the laws of his mind. Nothing else can approach him, as long as his organisation is made in such a way as it is. This is Kant’s doctrine motivated by physiology. Kant calls it critical idealism. This is also that which Schopenhauer develops in his philosophy: people believe that the whole starry heaven and the sun surround them. However, this is only your own mental picture. You create the whole world.—And Eduard von Hartmann says: This is the most certain truth which there can be. No power would be able one day to shake this sentence.—Thus the western philosophy says. It has never pondered how experience basically comes about.

Somebody is only able to stick to realism who knows how experiences come about and then he comes to the true critical idealism. The view of Kant is the transcendental idealism, that is he knows nothing about a true reality, nothing of a “thing-in-itself,” but only of an image world. He says basically: I must refer my image world to something unknown.—This view should be regarded as something steadfast.

Is this transcendental idealism really steadfast? Is the “thing-in-itself” unrecognisable?—If this held true, then could not be spoken of a higher experience at all. If the “thing-in-itself” were only an illusion, we could not speak of any higher beings. Hence, this is also an objection which is raised against theosophy: you have higher beings of which you speak.

We see next time how these views must be deepened.

With the remark that the present, in particular the German philosophy and its epistemology makes it difficult to its supporters to find access to the theosophical world view I have started these talks before eight days, and I added that I try to outline this theory of knowledge, this present philosophical world view and to show how somebody with an absolutely serious conscience in this direction finds it hard to be a theosophist.

On the whole, the theories of knowledge which developed from Kantianism are excellent and absolutely correct. However, one cannot understand from their point of view how the human being can find out anything about beings, generally about real beings which are different from him. The consideration of Kantianism has shown us that this view comes to the result in the end that everything that we have round ourselves is appearance, is only our mental picture. What we have round ourselves is no reality, but it is controlled by the laws which we ourselves prescribe to our surroundings. I said: as we must see with coloured glasses the whole world in this colour nuance, in the same way the human being must see the world—after Kant’s view—coloured as he sees them according to his organisation no matter how it may be in the external reality. That is why we are not allowed to speak of a “thing-in-itself,” but only of the quite subjective world of appearance. If this is the case, everything that surrounds me—the table, the chairs et cetera, is an image of my mind; because they all are there for me only, in so far as I perceive them, in so far as I give form to these perceptions according to the law of my own mind, prescribe the laws to them.

I cannot state whether still anything exists except for my perception of the table and the chairs. This is basically the result of Kant’s philosophy in the end. This is not compatible, of course, with the fact that we can penetrate into the true nature of the things. Theosophy is inseparable from the view that we can penetrate not only into the physical existence of the things, but also into the spiritual of the things; that we have knowledge not only of that which surrounds us physically, but that we can also have experiences of that which is purely spiritual.

I want to show you how a vigorous book of the world view which is called “theosophy” today represents that which became Kantianism later. I read up a passage of the book that was written a short time before Kantianism was founded. It appeared in 1766. It is a book which—we can say it absolutely that way—could be written by a theosophist. The view is represented in it that the human being has not only a relationship to the physical world surrounding him, but that it would be proved scientifically one day that the human being belongs also to a spiritual world, and that also the way of being together with it could be scientifically proved. Something is well demonstrated that one could assume that it is proved more or less or that it is proved in future: “I do not know where or when that the human soul is in relation to others that they have effect on each other and receive impressions from each other. The human being is not aware of that, however, as long as everything is good.” Then another passage: “Indeed, it does not matter whichever ideas of the other world we have, and, hence, any thinking about spirit does not penetrate to a state of spirit at all ...” and so on.

The human being with his average mental capacity cannot realise the spirit; but it is said that one can assume such a common life with a spiritual world. With such a view Kant’s epistemology is not compatible. He who wrote the foundation of this view is Immanuel Kant himself. That means that we have to register a reversal in Kant himself. Because he writes this in 1766, and fourteen years later he founds that theory of knowledge which makes it impossible to find the way to theosophy. Our modern philosophy is based on Kantianism. It has taken on different forms, those from Herbart and Schopenhauer to Otto Liebmann and Johannes Volkelt and Friedrich Albert Lange. We find more or less Kantian coloured epistemology everywhere according to which we deal only with phenomena, with our subjective world of perception, so that we cannot penetrate to the being, to the root of the “thing-in-itself.”

At first I would like to bring forward to you everything that developed in the course of the 19th century, and what we can call the modified epistemology of Kant. I would like to demonstrate how the current epistemology developed which looks with a certain arrogance at somebody who believes that one can know something. I want to show how somebody forms a basic epistemological view whose kind of view is based on Kant. Everything that science has brought seems to verify the Kantian epistemology. It seems to be so firm that one cannot escape from it. Today we want to roll up it and next time we want to see how one can find the way with it.

First of all physics seems to teach us everywhere that that is no reality the naive human being believes that it is reality. Let us take the tone. You know that the oscillation of the air is there outside our organ, outside our ear which hears the tone. What takes place outside us is an oscillation of the air particles. Only because this oscillation comes to our ear and sets the eardrum swinging the movement continues to the brain. There we perceive what we call tone and sound. The whole world would be silent and toneless; only because the external movement of our ear is taken up by the ear, and that which is only an oscillation is transformed; we experience what we feel as a sound world. Thus the epistemologist can easily say: tone is only what exists in you, and if you imagine it without this, nothing but moved air is there.

The same applies to the colours and the light of the external world. The physicist has the view that colour is an oscillation of the ether which fulfils the whole universe. Just as the air is set swinging by the sound and nothing else than the movement of the air exists if we hear a sound, light is only an oscillatory movement of the ether. The ether oscillations are a little bit different from those of the air. The ether oscillates vertically to the direction of the propagation of the waves. This is made clear by experimenting physics. If we have the colour sensation “red,” we have to do it with a sensation. Then we must ask ourselves: what is there if no feeling eye exists?—It should be nothing else of the colours in space than oscillatory ether. The colour quality is removed from the world if the feeling eye is removed from the world.

What you see as red is 392 to 454 trillions oscillations, with violet 751 to 757 trillions oscillations. This is inconceivably fast. Physics of the 19th century transformed any light sensation and colour sensation into oscillations of the ether. If no eye were there, the whole colour world would not exist. Everything would be pitch-dark. One could not talk about colour quality in the outer space. This goes so far that Helmholtz said: we have the sensations of colour and light, of sound and tone in ourselves. This is not even like that which takes place without us. We are even not allowed to use an image of that which takes place without us.—What we know as a colour quality of red is not similar to about 420 trillions oscillations per second. Therefore, Helmholtz means: what really exists in our consciousness is not an image but a mere sign.

Physics has maintained that space and time exist as I perceive them. The physicist imagines that a movement in space takes place if I have a colour sensation. It is the same with the time image if I have the sensation red and the sensation violet. Both are subjective processes in me. They follow each other in time. The oscillations follow each other outside. Physics does not go so far as Kant. Whether the “things-in-themselves” are space-filled whether they are in space or follow each other in time, we cannot know—in terms of Kant; but we know only: we are organised this and that way, and, therefore, something—may it be spatial or not—has to take on spatial form. We spread out this form over that. For physics the oscillatory movement has to take place in space, it has to take a certain time ... The ether oscillates, we say, 480 trillions times per second. This includes the images of space and time already. The physicist assumes space and time being without us. However, the rest is only a mental picture, is subjective. You can read in physical works that for somebody who has realised what happens in the outside world nothing exists than oscillatory air, than oscillatory ether. Physics seems to have contributed that everything that we have exists only within our consciousness and except this nothing exists.

The second that the science of the 19th century can present to us is the reasons which physiology delivers. The great physiologist Johannes Müller found the law of the specific nerve energy. According to this law any organ reacts with a particular sensation. If you push the eye, you can perceive a gleam of light; if electricity penetrates it, also. The eye answers to any influence from without in such a way as it just corresponds to it. It has the strength from within to answer with light and colour. If light and ether penetrate, the eye answers with light and colour sensations.

Physiology still delivers additional building stones to prove what the subjective view has put up. Imagine that we have a sensation of touch. The naive human being imagines that he perceives the object. But what does he perceive really? The epistemologist asks. What is before me is nothing else than a combination of the smallest particles, of molecules. They are in movement. Every particle is in such movement which cannot be perceived by the senses because the oscillations are too small. Basically it is nothing else than the movement only which I can perceive, because the particle is not able to creep into me. What is it if you put the hand on the body? The hand carries out a movement. This continues down to the nerve and the nerve transforms it into a sensation: in heat and cold, in softy and hard. Also in the outside world movements are included, and if my sense of touch is concerned, the organ transforms it into heat or cold, into softness or hardness.

We cannot even perceive what happens between the body and us, because the outer skin layer is insensible. If the epidermis is without a nerve, it can never feel anything. The epidermis is always between the thing and the body. The stimulus has an effect from a relatively far distance through the epidermis. Only what is excited in your nerve can be perceived. The outer body remains completely without the movement process. You are separated from the thing, and what you really feel is produced within the epidermis. Everything that can really penetrate into your consciousness happens in the area of the body, so that it is still separated from the epidermis. We would have to say after this physiological consideration that we get in nothing of that which takes place in the outside world, but that it is merely processes within our nerves which continue in the brain which excite us by quite unknown external processes. We can never reach beyond our epidermis. You are in your skin and perceive nothing else than what happens within it.

Let us go over to another sense, to the eye, from the physical to the physiological. You see that the oscillations propagate; they have to penetrate our body first. The eye consists of a skin, the cornea, first of all. Behind this is the lens and behind the lens the vitreous body. There the light has to go through. Then it arrives at the rear of the eye which is lined with the retina. If you removed the retina, the eye would never transform anything into light. If you see forms of objects, the rays have to penetrate into your eye first, and within the eye a small retina picture is outlined. This is the last that the sensation can cause. What is before the retina is insensible; we have no real perception of it. We can only perceive the picture on the retina. One imagines that there chemical changes of the visual purple take place. The effect of the outer object has to pass the lens and the vitreous body, then it causes a chemical change in the retina, and this becomes a sensation. Then the eye puts the picture again outwardly, surrounds itself with the stimuli which it has received, and puts them again around in the world without us. What takes place in our eye is not that which forms the stimulus, but a chemical process. The physiologists always deliver new reasons for the epistemologists. Apparently we have to agree with Schopenhauer completely if he says: the starry heaven is created by us. It is a reinterpretation of the stimuli. We can know nothing about the “thing-in-itself.”

You see that this epistemology limits the human being merely to the things, we say to the mental pictures which his consciousness creates. He is enclosed in his consciousness. He can suppose—if he wants—that anything exists in the world which makes impression on him. In any case nothing can penetrate into him. Everything that he feels is made by him. We cannot even know from anything that takes place in the periphery. Take the stimulus in the visual purple. It has to be directed to the nerve, and this has to be transformed anyhow into the real sensation, so that the whole world which surrounds us would be nothing else than what we would have created from our inside.

These are the physiological proofs which induce us to say that this is that way. However, there are also people who ask now why we can assume other human beings besides us whom we, nevertheless, recognise only from the impressions which we receive from them. If a human being stands before me, I have only oscillations as stimuli and then an image of my own consciousness. It is only a presupposition that except for the consciousness picture something similar to the human being exists. Thus the modern epistemology supports its view that the outer content of experience is merely of subjective nature. It says: what is perceived is exclusively the content of the own consciousness, is a change of this content of consciousness. Whether there are things-in-themselves, is beyond our experience. The world is a subjective appearance to me which is built up from my sensations consciously or unconsciously. Whether there are also other worlds, is beyond the field of my experience.

When I said: it is beyond the field of experience whether there is another world, it also beyond the field of experience whether there are still other human beings with other consciousnesses, because nothing of a consciousness of the other human beings can get into the human being. Nothing of the world of images of another human being and nothing of the consciousness of another human being can come into my consciousness. Those who have joined Kant’s epistemology have this view.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte also joined this view in his youth. He thought Kant’s theory thoroughly. There may be no nicer description of that than those which Fichte gave in his writing On the Determination of the Human Being (1800). He says in it: “nowhere anything permanent exists, not without me not within me, but there is only a continuous transformation. I nowhere know any being, and also not my own. There is no being.—I myself do not know at all, and I am not. Images are there: they are the only things that exist, and they know about themselves in the way of images—images which pass without anything existing that they pass; which are connected with images to images. Images which do not contain anything, without any significance and purpose. I myself am one of these images; yes, I myself am not this, but only a confused image of the images.”
Indeed—if you stick to the view that you deal in your subjective opinion only with the things of your own consciousness, then you must get inevitably to the view that you do not know more about yourselves than about the outside world. If you go over to the image of the own ego, then you do not have more of it than of the outside world. Keep this thought in mind in its full significance, then it becomes clear to you that the outside world dissolves in a sum of hallucinations, and that also the inside world is nothing else than a creation of subjective dreams fitted together. You can imagine already from the outside, I would like to say, from the corporeality that also you yourselves like the outside world are nothing else than dream images or illusions if you interpret the view correctly.

Look at your hand which transforms your movements to sensations of touch. This hand is nothing else than a creation of my subjective consciousness, and my whole body and what is in me is also a creation of my subjective consciousness. Or I take my brain: if I could investigate under the microscope how the sensation came into being in the brain, I would have nothing before myself than an object which I have to transform again to an image in my consciousness.

The idea of the ego is also an image; it is generated like any other. Dreams pass me, illusions pass me—this is the world view of illusionism which appears inevitably as the last consequence of Kantianism. Kant wanted to overcome the old dogmatic philosophy; he wanted to overcome what has been brought forward by Wolff and his school. He considered this as a sum of figments.

These were the proofs of freedom, of the will, of the immortality of the soul and of God’s existence which Kant exposed concerning their probative value as figments. What does he give as proofs? He proved that we can know nothing about a “thing-in-itself” that that which we have is only contents of consciousness that, however, God must be “something-in-itself.” Thus we cannot necessarily prove the existence of God according to Kant. Our reason, our mind is only applicable to that which is given in the perception. They are only there to prescribe laws of perception and, hence, the matters: God—soul—will—are completely outside our rational knowledge. Reason has a limit, and it is not able to overcome it.

In the preface of the second edition of Critique of Pure Reason he says at a passage: “I had to cancel knowledge to make room for faith.” He wanted this basically. He wanted to limit knowledge to sense-perception, and he wanted to achieve everything that goes beyond reason in other way. He wanted to achieve it on the way of moral faith. Hence, he said: in no way science can arrive at the objective existence of the things one day. But we find one thing in ourselves: the categorical imperative which appears with an unconditional obligation in us.—Kant calls it a divine voice. It is beyond the things, it is accompanied by unconditional moral necessity. From here Kant ascends to regain that for faith which he annihilates for knowledge. Because the categorical imperative deals with nothing that is caused by any sensory effect, but appears in us, something must exist that causes the senses as well as the categorical imperative, and appears if all duties of the categorical imperative are fulfilled. This would be blessedness. But no one can find the bridge between both. Because he cannot find it, a divine being has to build it. In doing so, we come to a concept of God which we can never find with the senses.

A harmony between the sensory world and the world of moral reason must be produced. Even if one did enough in a life as it were, nevertheless, we must not believe that the earthly life generally suffices. The human life goes beyond the earthly life because the categorical imperative demands it. That is why we have to assume a divine world order. How could the human being follow a divine world order, the categorical imperative, if he did not have freedom?—Kant annihilated knowledge that way to get to the higher things of the spirit by means of faith. We must believe! He tries to bring in on the way of the practical reason again what he has thrown out of the theoretical reason.

Those views which have no connection apparently to Kant’s philosophy are also completely based on this philosophy. Also a philosopher who had great influence—also in pedagogy: Herbart. He had developed an own view from Kant’s critique of reason: if we look at the world, we find contradictions there. Let us have a look at the own ego. Today it has these mental pictures, yesterday it had others, tomorrow it will have others again. What is this ego? It meets us and is fulfilled with a particular image world. At another moment it meets us with another image world. We have there a development, many qualities, and, nevertheless, it should be a thing. It is one and many. Any thing is a contradiction. Herbart says that only contradictions exist everywhere in the world. Above all we must reproach ourselves with the sentence that the contradiction cannot be the true being. Now from it Herbart deduces the task of his philosophy. He says: we have to remove the contradictions; we have to construct a world without contradiction to us. The world of experiences is an unreal one, a contradictory one. He sees the true sense, the true being in transforming the contradictory world to a world without contradictions. Herbart says: we find the way to the “thing-in-itself,” while we see the contradictions, and if we get them out of us, we penetrate to the true being, to true reality.—However, he also has this in common with Kant that that which surrounds us in the outside world is mere illusion. Also he tried in other way to support what should be valuable for the human being.

We come now, so to speak, to the heart of the matter. Nevertheless, we must keep in mind that any moral action makes only sense if there is reality in the world. What is any moral action if we live in a world of appearance? You can never be convinced that that which you do constitutes something real. Then any striving for morality and all your goals are floating in the air. There Fichte was admirably consistent. Later he changed his view and got to pure theosophy. With perception we can never know about the world—he says—anything else than dreams of these dreams. But something drives us to want the good. This lets us look into this big world of dreams like in a flash. He sees the realisation of the moral law in the world of dreams. The demands of the moral law should justify what reason cannot teach.—And Herbart says: because any perception is full of contradictions, we can never come to norms of our moral actions. Hence, there must be norms of our moral actions which are relieved of any judgment by mind and reason. Moral perfection, goodwill, inner freedom, they are independent of the activity of reason. Because everything is appearance in our world, we must have something in which we are relieved of reflection.

This is the first phase of the development of the 19th century: the transformation of truth to a world of dreams. The idealism of dreams was the only possible result of thinking about being and wanted to make the foundation of a moral world view independent of all knowledge and cognition. It wanted to limit knowledge to get room for faith. Therefore, the German philosophy has broken with the ancient traditions of those world views which we call theosophy. Anybody who calls himself theosophist could have never accepted this dualism, this separation of moral and the world of dreams. It was for him always a unity, from the lowest quantum of energy up to the highest spiritual reality. Because as well as that which the animal accomplishes in desire and listlessness is only relatively different from that which arises from the highest point of the cultural life out of the purest motives, that is only relatively different everywhere which happens below from that which happens on top. Kant left this uniform way to complete knowledge and world view while he split the world in a recognisable but apparent world and in a second world which has a quite different origin, in the world of morality. In doing so, he clouded the look of many people. Anybody who cannot find access to theosophy suffers from the aftermath of Kant’s philosophy.

In the end, you will see how theosophy emerges from a true theory of knowledge; however, it was necessary before that I have demonstrated the apparently firm construction of science. Science seems to have proved irrefutably that there are only the oscillations of the ether if we feel green or blue that we sense tone by the aerial oscillations. The contents of the next lecture will show how it is in reality.