The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Translator Unknown

Let us once more briefly set before our eyes what we tried to make clear to ourselves yesterday. We said present-day mankind, insofar as it comes into consideration as modern mankind, is passing as a whole body through something which is similar to what, in the development of individual men, can be designated as the crossing of the Threshold to the supersensible world. If, now, one discusses the development of individual men as I have done in the book How Does One Attain to Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and the booklet The Threshold of the Spiritual World, one is normally referring to the conscious ascent into supersensible life. When one speaks of the crossing of the Threshold, one also implies a quite conscious event, as we have often described it. I have already made you aware of this yesterday, that one should not strain the concepts if one is compelled to carry them over from one sphere into the other. Therefore I can only say to you mankind as a whole is now passing through something similar to a crossing of the Threshold. For I already intimated that it could come to pass, it would be altogether possible for mankind to refuse Spiritual Science. Then they would have no means of knowing anything about the fact that a process is being undergone by the whole of mankind of such a kind as is the crossing of the Threshold. After all, events take place in what has to assert itself as the crossing of the Threshold by the whole of mankind quite other than those which take place in the individual man when he enters in a conscious way on the path into the supersensible world. And I have already indicated yesterday that the essential thing for the whole of mankind in the crossing of the Threshold as it must come about in the course of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, the time of the development of the consciousness-soul, consists in the separation of the three soul-capacities so that they attain a kind of independence, as has been known to you in essence for a long time. For the whole of mankind, thinking, feeling and willing are not remaining as they now are, chaotically mixed together—as I said, I am speaking of mankind in its entirety. The life of the soul is membering itself in such a way that the whole of mankind are experiencing their thinking, their feeling and their willing more independently than hitherto. In the future, therefore, it needs the membering of the Social Organism into three spheres, which it did not hitherto require in the same way. If, then, one speaks about this threefolding of the Social Organism today, one does so from the consciousness of a necessity which is taking place in the whole of mankind according to the spiritual laws of the universe.

Now the mistake ought not to be made to wish at once to find the all-embracing, the great process in single events which are occurring here or there. Since the middle of the 15th century we have only lived through a small part of the epoch of the development of the consciousness-soul. Such an epoch extends over 2,000 years. This epoch of the development of the consciousness-soul will thus still last for a long time, and the event which one must, nevertheless, already comprehend as this passing over the Threshold of the supersensible will bring itself to being in various stages by means of various events. But I ask you not to make the mistake of, perhaps, immediately identifying only the world-catastrophe of the present-day with the "all-embracing event" of which I spoke yesterday. It would be a mistake if you were to do this. But it is no mistake if one seeks, out of great processes which embrace long periods of time, to understand the events in which one is living. For only when one understands them in this way does one find one's way in relation to single events. Therefore let us speak of something today which in a certain way belongs to the symptomatology of this development of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch after the crossing of the Threshold. The rise of the development of the consciousness soul is, you see, to be read with quite special clearness just from the culture of Middle-Europe. It has already been clearly preparing itself here since the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, and then led to certain events which we shall presently discuss, and certainly formed itself in Middle-Europe in such a way that it has quite particularly led, from then on, to the middle-European catastrophe in the present moment of human development, and must lead further into this catastrophe.

It is certainly the case that this Middle-Europe is really condemned to experience certain things, in the first place more quickly and in the second more violently, more characteristically than is the rest of Europe. One can clearly see how, since the beginning of the 15th century, something arises in Middle-Europe which introduces the period of the development of the consciousness-soul. And now one can further see, from the catastrophic events of Middle-Europe in particular, how difficult a path mankind has to pass over just in this period of the development of the consciousness-soul, what difficult struggles, what terrific blows are being endured, so that the period of the consciousness-soul can push impulses which lie in it to the surface of human development.

In this matter it can be of special importance to fix one's attention on the meaning for Middle-Europe of the point of time about the year 1200. It is assumed that about the year 1200—of course, only approximately—the Nibelung-epic was brought to completion, i.e., that poem which, in relation to the population of Middle-Europe, is very frequently compared with what the Homeric poems were for the Greek world. The Nibelung-epic manifestly important folk-destinies of a period which proceeds by a long time the age in which the poem was brought to completion, came to expression in pictorial, imaginative form. And anyone who looks into the Nibelung-epic today with an honest inner disposition, and even into what Jordan, Wagner, and others have made out of it much later, must say to himself: the sort of humanity, the being of Man which shines out of the Nibelung-epic is, basically, only barely understandable for the men of today. The Nibelung-epic points back to a time in which things were, quite clearly, altogether different in Middle-Europe, even as regards the landscape, and in which human characteristics have developed, out of the nature of the landscape, quite different from those which developed later.

If one has a clear power of perception, one cannot but get the feeling from the Nibelung-epic how the human beings spoken of in it have lived in barren regions which were covered by thick forests over wide areas. What may be called a forest-character is expressing itself in the Nibelung-epic, all that impresses itself on people who are accustomed to live in forest-covered lands. We cannot imagine that the Nibelung-epic had the same outlook as had, for example, the men of the later Germany after the year 1200, although the actual forms in the Nibelungenlied are already very much "humanized". We must imagine that these men were inwardly endowed with a soul-life quite different from that of later men. We must imagine that they had a much more instinctive, more elementary kind of feeling than had the men of later times. The light of Christianity, you see, had not yet really penetrated into the Nibelung-men. But we wish to look less at the content of this soul-life than into the formation, the fashioning of the soul-life of these men. It is clearly something more instinctive (if one does not misunderstand this word), something fiercer, more elementary, which issues from the human soul with a more primal force than happened later.

Nearly at the end of the period into which the Nibelung-epic still points, the period begins which one can call the middle-European civic period, the period of middle-European civic life. How did this develop? It came about in such a way that gradually the forests were rooted up in wide areas, that over wide districts of Middle-Europe meadows and cornfields made their appearance in places which were formerly covered by almost impenetrable forests. This brought into being middle-European city-life, in the first period of the development of the consciousness-soul. And the qualities of this European city-life certainly appeared nowhere in so characteristic a way as in this Middle-Europe, because the destinies of this city-life have already rounded themselves out in a tragic way in Middle-Europe, because in our days they are already bringing themselves to a certain conclusion, because this city-life in Middle-Europe is fundamentally at the end of its development today. It has gone through the world-catastrophe in accordance with its own characteristic disposition, and will go on in accordance with its disposition through this into the world-catastrophe to follow, and will have to undergo experiences different from those of the rest of the European bourgeoisie. The rest of the European bourgeoisie will at a later date experience certain phases of development which, in the case of the middle-European bourgeoisie, are already clearly pointing today to the final catastrophe. Thus, in the middle-European bourgeoisie, we already have a sort of destiny rounded-out in itself—the ascent in the period when wide regions which later became Germany were being transformed from forests into meadows and fields, the development from the 13th to the 20th century, and the terrible, tragic precipice in the 20th century.

This phenomenon, which has a kind of compactness here in Middle-Europe, can nowhere be studied according to its symptomatology in the same way as in this Middle-Europe. And he who wishes really to fix his attention, quite seriously, on the great impulses of human development should not be too cowardly to keep in view the characteristic, important symptoms which are expressing themselves in this. For everything else in Europe is only to be understood if one just fixes one's attention, in an unprejudiced way from the higher point of view of Spiritual Science, on this destiny which is rounded-out in itself.

But it is one-sided to speak of one culture-stream and to say: with the 13th century the later middle-European bourgeoisie arises from the Nibelung-men and becomes the bearer of this middle-European culture. It is of course true and, within these limits, right, but it is one-sided because it is only right within these limits; it is true that that disposition of soul which is here referred to as that of the middle-European bourgeoisie spread itself particularly over the middle-European states, and that middle-European civilization developed out of this bourgeoisie. This is completely true on the one side. But it is not the whole truth; it is only part of it, a part of the phenomena which have developed in that Middle-Europe which is in its death-throes today, together with many other things which have developed at the same time. The other part is that something has remained from the old forest—and Nibelung-men, that something has remained over of characteristics which have continued to live in their souls beyond the old epoch of which the Nibelung-epic tells us. The men who, if I may say so, have developed into the middle-European bourgeoisie under the sunshine of the cornfields and meadows were not the only ones who lived in Middle-Europe after the year 1200 and then on into the 20th century, but there were also other men who had retained something of the old inner wildness and primitive soul-nature of the Nibelung-men.

But if one fixes one's attention on a phenomenon like this, one should not forget that the passing of time is not without significance in the development of mankind, that the passing of time represents a reality. If anyone retains something which really belongs to an earlier age of soul-culture, he does not remain in the same disposition and corresponds to this old soul-culture, but he comes into decadence, into a decline, and loses touch with the demands of the age. He develops into a later age qualities which should have been developed as it would have come to pass in an earlier age, but in a morbid way, with the characteristic marks of decay and decadence.

As a result we saw, in the one line of development, the middle-European bourgeoisie of the new age develop itself, which I should like to call the highest of the cornfields and meadows into which the forests had been transformed: on the other line we see among this bourgeoisie in Middle-Europe men who have retained the old soul-life of the Nibelung-time, who have only adopted the new age and Christianity in an external way, and who therefore display this old Nibelung-soul-character in a decaying form. The men who now displayed this old Nibelung-character in a decaying form are the middle-European territorial princes and their dependents, the territorial princes who have now been cast from their thrones by the dozen. To this middle-European Nibelung-aftergrowth belongs the first place all that formed the human content of the House of Habsburg, but the rest of the territorial princes of Middle-Europe as well. No one understands what is now being tragically consummated who does not also know how to fix his attention on this sub-stratum below the events, on the fact that the more progressive part of the population of Middle-Europe has been ruled and administered through the centuries by that part which has retained the soul-character of the old Nibelung-men in a decadent form.

There was actually a huge contrast between the whole inner soul-structure of those whom one could call the followers of the middle-European bourgeois-system and those who sat on the kingly or princely thrones and their dependents. The soul of some King of Bavaria or Duke of Brunswick and that of a middle-German man who has received an average education are two spiritual powers altogether different from each other. These lived side by side in past centuries like two alien races, perhaps with even stronger points of difference than between two alien races.

One must have the courage to take a good look at an underlying historical fact like this. For it is just in catastrophic times that events in human development do not depend on the external events which conventional history records. What for the most part touches on human destiny and human development depends on underlying facts such as this. Only reflect that the rest of the European bourgeoisie was not concerned with this destiny, to stand in this kind of way in relation to a number of men who had retained an earlier age in their soul-life, but that this was the case only with the middle-European bourgeoisie. Take, for example, but only to make it clearer, the man who, streaming from this Middle-Europe but migrating from it, later turned into the English-speaking peoples. These had not—if I may say so—entered into the development which has been gone through in Middle-Europe. They have taken with them what was present in old times within the European, middle-European bourgeoisie, have carried it elsewhere, and have not had to fret it away in the struggle with backward Nibelung-men.

It thus comes about—I have said this to you on another occasion—that there are, in the English-speaking peoples for example, certain instincts for the development of the consciousness-soul which are completely lacking in Middle-Europe, certain instincts for political life in particular, while the mankind of Middle-Europe had to remain non-political, without politics, had no disposition at all to take part in any way in political life for they were ruled, you see, by men who had retained an earlier age.

Yet how strikingly clear does it appear to one who turns his glance to the second half of the 18th century. We there look on the spiritual blossoms of the middle-European bourgeoisie; we need only name Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, and many another to indicate the blossoms of what had been germinally developing upwards since the time of the Nibelungen. And, in the same age as the men who represent these blossoms, with their culmination in Goethe and Goetheanism, there stands, by contrast, in Frederick the Great, the most complete retention of the Nibelung-wildness in its fullest decay! Seek for a human contrast where you will, there is no other which works so tragically, when considered i n perspective, as Goethe by the side of Frederick the Great.

As for the development which followed, it remains, indeed, only to be said that the utmost absence-of-thought, the most dreadful indifference to spiritual interests, arose in the 19th century and had to continue in the 20th until Goetheanism, the greatest spiritual impulse which struck into mankind during its century, has come to be hardly noticed at all. For Goetheanism is hardly regarded at all by civilization in general. In this is expressing itself that complete absence-of-thought, that complete lack of interest and lack of attention towards human development which began in the 19th century and continued in the 20th. And the whole of the inner untruthfulness of this culture of the 19th and of beginning of the 20th century is required in order to represent the period of Frederick the Great and its impulses as characteristic of modern times. Once could really say nothing more inappropriate about Frederick the Great than what has been said about him in current historical representations.

One must also see more recent events on this substratum, not merely events of a local nature but also those which encroach deeply into international life, certainly events which, until today, have been entirely missed by mankind, who slept through them. For can there be anything more tragi-comic than when men, who are separated by cosmic distances from all that has developed in Weimar, now come together in Weimar in the farce of the present-day National Assembly? Anything more nonsensical than the gathering of this present-day assembly in Weimar is impossible to devise.

I had this in mind when I spoke a short time ago of a more rapid and also more vigorous development. today I must often think about various conversations which I had in the eighties of the last century with people who were enthusiastic for what is German, among them, for example, the man who later wrote the History of Modern Austria—Heinrich Friedjung (1854-1920), whom I recently mentioned in another connection in the lecture in the "Bernoulli" and whose strange action you find mentioned, as you may remember, in one of my printed lectures. (R.S. The Christmas Mood, Novalis as proclaimer of a Christianity to be understood spiritually).

At that time it was said that Middle-Europe in the age of Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the others who were of like mind with them had reached a high-point of the spiritual development of mankind. Friedjung and some who were in my company at that time spoke somewhat like this now it must really go on, it must ascend further. I remember very well how I said: no, that was the high-point; from then on it descends again. With our present-day age the middle-European world has brought to the surface just what it had in it in the way of subjectivity.This, then, was the characteristic appearance of Middle-Europe; after that, it went downwards, not upwards any more.

Naturally, this was at that time taken very amiss of me; it was perhaps even considered to be nonsense. I can understand quite well that much of what I had to say in my, and of what I have to say, is regarded by my contemporaries as nonsense. But this, nevertheless, is a quite characteristic phenomenon. What began about the year 1200 and had its mighty culmination in Lessing, Herder, Goethe and Schiller, is certainly present, but it cannot be understood in the framework of the national middle-European life. But the specifically middle-European culture wills no longer to be national but to be above nationality, international, an outlook which has also got to be honestly cultivated in our Spiritual Science, in contrast with all the national chauvinism of the present-day. This is going to be the characteristic phenomenon, that the true substance of what came to light about the turn of the 18th-19th centuries can be perceived and lived only by this spiritual-scientific cultural life.

Let us look back a little, and fix our attention on a certain nuance of this middle-European cultural life. For one who knows how to take history symptomatologically it still remains a very remarkable fact, pointing deeply into historical mysteries, that in 1077—thus comparatively speaking, a long time before the now Age of Consciousness—a representative of the old wildness of the Nibelung-souls (as the Salic and also the Saxon Emperors also were, Henry IV, had to do his terrible penance at Canossa before the monk of Cluny (or at least the follower of the monastic system pf Cluny), who had become a great Pope. For the great Pope Gregory, who had put Henry IV under the ban of the Church and forced him to come to Canossa, stood entirely under the influence of the Cluniac stream, that ecclesiastical current which aimed to raise up the Church to be the preponderant power in Europe. And the whole of the wildness of the old Nibelung-character expressed itself in this Henry IV, the Salic, in his relations with Pope Gregory.

And still another thing which has found its continuation in later times was already expressing itself at that time, the fact that Middle-Europe could simply do nothing except come into conflict with what had, in a round-about way, become pseudo-Christianity through Romanism, what had developed from the original Christian impulse into a Christian empire. The old Nibelung-wildness was in a certain way made subject to the Roman Empire. It was then replaced by that stream which rose over the forests of Middle-Europe which had been turned into cornfields and meadows. Basically speaking, this transformed stream which replaced the old Nibelung-outlook was in no way fitted to take in the impulses of the Roman Empire. It was really continually struggling against the type of Christianity which had become political. And while, on the one side, it brought its own nature to extension and unfolded what was in its own being, it saw itself on the other side humbled, ruled and administered by those who had retained the old Nibelung-wildness in the manner already described.

I repeat that in order to understand things like this one must be clear with oneself in a spiritual-scientific way that if something which was great in an earlier time is retained in a later time it becomes unhealthy in the later time and falls into decay. This is the characteristic thing about the contrast which exists in Middle-Europe. There is all that arose with the beginning of the 13th century after the uprooting of the old forests, all that began to sound from earth to heaven with the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide and what has run into Goetheanism. This is the one, unpolitical side, which is undergoing a completion in itself of the circle of its development but which always has beside it, without realizing the whole consequences of this fact, the old Nibelung-character on the thrones with the princely diadems—but in a state of decadence.

Middle-Europe came into the second half of the 19th century under this kind of circumstances and conditions, and went on into the 20th century, and thus entered into the phase which must now be so frequently described as characteristic of present-day Europe, as distinct from Russia. One must speak, just in these connections, about modern industrial development, of the machine-age, the rise of capitalism. These are international phenomena. If one speaks of the rise of the age of technical development, of the industrial age, of the capitalist age, one is speaking of international impulse. But these international impulses acted in a different way in every place. I should so much like to see a really unprejudiced description of what has developed in Middle-Europe from the time when Walther von der Vogelweide sang until the day when Goethe spoke the loftiest words about humanity—a humanity which no longer understands Goethe's words at all, without the dreadful scholastic judgments which have been mixed into conventional history in all spheres. I should like to see what lies in these years of development described in an unprejudiced way, to see it described quite in accordance with reality. Then it would really be possible for the untruthfulness to be removed, where it has penetrated into the hearts and souls of men in so tremendously elementary a way that even the most truthful man has to become untruthful. Then the untruthfulness will be removed, to which even a man like Goethe was impelled when he spoke about Frederick the Great, simply because the power of what held sway as a universal opinion was so strong that the most truthful man could do nothing except say the same as the others did.

Truthfulness demands something else, quite different from any blind acceptance-of-authority or the like. Therefore truthfulness is an individuality, a being which is so avoided in human development. Therefore untruthfulness calls forth as much that is tragic in human development. One would have to speak of a quite special revelation of the new age if one wished to describe, faithfully to reality and in an unprejudiced way, what lies in the development from the time in which Walther von der Vogelweide sang his songs to the time in which Goethe gave a hitherto unrevealed treasure of spiritual life to his contemporaries and to a posterity which did not understand him. But one would be impelled to call attention to the fact that something was, as it were, secretly developing for the whole of mankind on earth and that what was not secret, what one observes as world-history, was the Luciferic shaping of the old Nibelung-wildness.

Thus, from the year 1200 until the 20th century, the natural development of the Middle-Europe stood facing something Luciferic which the retained Nibelung-wildness was unfolding as soul-life in an age which had meanwhile become different. Let us consider these two streams. Let us consider the stream of which we may look for the starting-point about the year 1200, and let us set opposite to it the Luciferic element of the territorial princes. Then we shall understand the terrible Luciferic-Ahrimanic combination which was brought about, in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th, in the last phase of a Middle-Europe which is moving towards its end. I mean the combination between the Ahrimanic element of modern industrialism, with its technical development and capitalism, and that of the old territorial princely system, Junkerdom, the dependents of the old Nibelung-wildness which had fallen into decay.

It is this which has brought Middle-Europe to its ruin. This Ahrimanic-Luciferic marriage between rising industrialism (other regions of the world were gripped by this in a way different from what happened in Middle-Europe, where the old Nibelung-wildness held sway in the territorial princely system) and the political administrators of Middle-Europe, the territorial princely system, was what would not permit the unfolding of a really middle-European or German mission to come about, as was called for in my Manifesto (Manifesto to the German people and to the civilized world: Vol. 1, lecture 1). And if one is quite frankly and freely to describe what terrible symptoms of a world-historically tragic decline were present from 1914 to 1919 and will, as a result, continue to be present just in Middle-Europe, one will have to describe the co-operation—cruelly terrible for this region of Middle-Europe—of the old, decadent, Nibelung-nobility with the newly-arisen industrialists of Middle-Europe, who justified their world-historical position by no inner pretensions of the soul.

The types which have appeared in Middle-Europe in these years out of these two different circles have become the most terrible destroyers of Middle-Europe. These were the men who, in boundless haughtiness and out of what they imagined to be a practical outlook, have for years been trampling down everything which was trying in any way to foster the further consideration of what began to sing with Walther von der Vogelweide and found its finality with Goetheanism. It is no longer to be wondered at that the external world has coined the term "militarism" in order to indicate these much deeper phenomena in an inappropriately-appropriate, appropriately-inappropriate way, for the world outside Middle-Europe is not even very much more thoughtful than is the middle-European world. Understanding for the middle-European nature has nowhere been found, but it must also be said that what has developed into Goetheanism in this Middle-Europe has gone backward with giant strides since the age of Goethe.

If one speaks of the crossing of the Threshold into the supersensible world, one must always call to mind something which was always said in the old days, when men knew much from atavistic clairvoyance, about the experiences of the human soul which crosses this Threshold to the supersensible, namely "passage through the gate of death". Many a thing is going on in the whole of humanity which is announcing itself in a soul-spiritual way as a passing through the gate of soul-spiritual death. And, as I wish to say once again, all sorts of things ought to be considered not in such a way that one just immediately identifies single phenomena with the great, revolutionary impulses of world-historical development. But one must be able to drag what happens in individual instances into the light of what can come to us, spiritual-scientifically, as illumination of the great, incisive impulses of our time.

It is, to be sure, just now that something remarkable has happened just in Middle-Europe. Characteristic phenomena can be perceived. What I have often described to you as expressing the reality of the soul-life through speech is letting itself continue in this middle-European spiritual life just about the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The industrial-technical-capitalist coloring which the fashionable culture of Middle-Europe has gradually taken on is bringing it about that people are quite forgetting the earlier age up to the 12th century. Really, the Germans of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th do not know how they are Germans, or as the result of what. The events of the early age were received in a real sleep of the soul, for this had not penetrated into the consciousness of the so-called educated classes, who gradually broke with what had found its finality in Goetheanism. Nothing of the true spiritual substance which was coming up had penetrated into the consciousness of the so-called educated classes. And thus it could come about—and many similar examples could be brought forward—that serious people were inclined to take as serious drama or serious poetry the glorification of the German heroic past by a brawling fellow such as Ernst von Wildenbruch.

Ernst von Wildenbruch has dramatized much about certain emperors, kings and princes of the early days, but he has always represented only the least important family events of all, and never world-historical impulses. One therefore has the feeling in his dramas: words are sounding here like a tinny noise, nothing but beaten tins! But we have already come so far in the age of industrialism, which must work destructively just on peoples, such as the German people, with an innate talent for spirituality, that people feel the tintinnabulations of Ernst von Wildenbruch to be real poetry. Yes, we have come so far that men like Herman Grimm, who have attained to a really fine comprehension of the recent development of Art, who have brought to it a fine spiritual comprehension of a phase of human development, are filled with deep admiration as they stand before the soulless bawling of Ernst von Wildenbruch and liken this to the songs of the great poets of world-history. So far has modern mankind departed from what is an inner comprehension of true reality! And yet you know what Herman Grimm is one of the personages of the new age whom I honor most.

This, my dear friends, must be recorded if one is to describe in what an age we live. This must be stressed and described in order to understand what it is to mean that our time is, in a certain way, passing through a spiritual death in order to come to a higher stage in the development of mankind.

This lecture appeared in The Golden Blade, 1954.

From the two preceding lectures you will have realised that in finding it necessary to speak at the present time of the threefold social order, anthroposophical spiritual science is not actuated by any subjective views or aims. The purpose of the lecture yesterday was to point to impulses deeply rooted in the life of the peoples of the civilised world—the world as it is in this Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. I tried to show how, from about the year 1200 A.D. onwards, there awakened in Middle Europe an impulse leading to the growth of what may be called the civic social order, but that this civic social life of the middle classes was infiltrated by the remains of a life of soul belonging to earlier centuries—by those decadent Nibelung traits which appeared particularly among the ruling strata in the mid-European countries.

I laid special stress upon the existence of a radical contrast in mid-European life from the thirteenth until the twentieth centuries, culminating in the terrible death-throes of social life that have come upon Middle Europe. This incisive contrast was between the inner, soul-life of the widespread middle-class, and that of the descendants of the old knighthood, of the feudal overlords, of those in whom vestiges of the old Nibelung characteristics still survived. These latter were the people who really created the political life of Middle Europe, whereas the bulk of the middle class remained non-political, a-political. If one desires to be a spiritual scientist from the practical point of view, serious study must be given to this difference of soul-life between the so-called educated bourgeoisie and all those who held any kind of ruling positions in Middle Europe at that time. I spoke of this in the lecture yesterday.

We will now consider in rather greater detail why it was that the really brilliant spiritual movement which lasted from the time of Walter von der Vogelweide until that of Goetheanism, and then abruptly collapsed, failed to gain any influence over social life or to produce any thoughts which could have been fruitful in that sphere. Even Goethe, with all his power to unfold great, all-embracing ideas in many domains of life, was really only able to give a few indications—concerning which one may venture to say that even he was not quite clear about them—as to what must come into being as a new social order in civilised humanity. Fundamentally speaking, the tendency towards the threefold membering of a healthy social organism was already present in human beings, subconsciously, by the end of the eighteenth century. The demands for freedom, equality and fraternity, which can have meaning only when the threefold social order becomes reality, testified to the existence of this subconscious longing. Why did it never really come to the surface?

This is connected with the whole inherent character of mid-European spiritual life. At the end of the lecture yesterday I spoke of a strange phenomenon. I said that Hermann Grimm—for whom I have always had such high regard and whose ideas were able to shed light upon so many aspects of art and general human interest of bygone times—succumbed to the extraordinary fallacy of admiring such an out-and-out phrasemonger as Wildenbruch! In the course of years I have often mentioned an incident which listeners may have thought trivial, but which can be deeply indicative for those who study life in its symptomatological aspect. Among the many conversations I had with Hermann Grimm while I was in personal contact with him, there was one in which I spoke from my own point of view about many things that need to be understood in the spiritual sense. In telling this story I have always stressed the fact that Hermann Grimm's only response to such mention of the spiritual was to make a warding-off gesture with his hand, indicating that this was a realm he was not willing to enter. A supremely true utterance, consisting of a gesture of the hand, was made at that moment. It was true inasmuch as Hermann Grimm, for all his penetration into many things connected with the so-called spiritual evolution of mankind, into art, into matters of universal human concern, had not the faintest inkling of what ‘spirit’ must signify for men of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch of culture. He simply did not know what spirit really is from the standpoint of a man of this epoch. In speaking of such matters one must keep bluntly to the truth: until it came to the spirit, there was truth in a man like Hermann Grimm. He made a parrying gesture because he had no notion of how to think about the spirit. Had he been one of the phrasemongers going about masked as prophets today endeavouring to better the lot of mankind, he would have believed that he too could speak about the spirit; he would have believed that by reiterating Spirit, spirit, spirit! something is expressed that has been nurtured in one's own soul.

Among those who of recent years have been talking a great deal about the spirit, without a notion of its real nature, are the theosophists—the majority of them at any rate. For it can truly be said that of all the vapid nonsense that has been uttered of late, the theosophical brand has been the most regrettable and also in a certain respect the most harmful in its effects. But a statement like the one I have made about Hermann Grimm—not thinking of him as a personality but as a typical representative of the times—raises the question: how comes it that such a true representative of Middle European life has no inkling of how to think about the spiritual, about the spirit? It is just this that makes Hermann Grimm the typical representative of Middle European civilisation. For when we envisage this brilliant culture of the townsfolk, which has its start about the year 1200 and lasts right on into the period of Goetheanism, we shall certainly perceive as its essential characteristic—but without valuing it less highly on this account—that it is impregnated in the best sense with soul but empty of anything that can be called spirit. That is the fact we have to grasp, with a due sense of the tragedy of it: this brilliant culture was devoid of spirit. What is meant here, of course, is spirit as one learns to apprehend it through anthroposophical spiritual science.

Again and again I return to Hermann Grimm as a representative personality, for the thinking of thousands and thousands of scholarly men in Middle Europe was similar to his. Hermann Grimm wrote an excellent book about Goethe, containing the substance of lectures he gave at the University of Berlin in the seventies of the last century. Taking it all in all, what Hermann Grimm said about Goethe is really the best that has been said at this level of scholarship. From the vantage-point of a rich life of soul, Hermann Grimm derived his gift not only for portraying individual men but for accurately discerning and assessing their most characteristic traits. He was brilliant in hitting upon words for such characterisations. Take a simple example. In the nature of things, Hermann Grimm was one of those who misunderstood the character of the wild Nibelung people. He was an ardent admirer of Frederick the Great and pictured him as a Germanic hero. Now Macaulay, the English historian and man of letters, wrote about Frederick the Great, naturally from the English point of view. In an essay on Macaulay, Hermann Grimm set out to show that in reality only a German possessed of sound insight is capable of understanding and presenting a true picture of Frederick the Great. Hermann Grimm describes Macaulay's picture of Frederick the Great in the very apt words: Macaulay makes of Frederick the Great a distorted figure of an English Lord, with snuff in his nose.

To hit upon such a characterisation indicates real ability to shape ideas and mental images in such a way that they have plasticity, mobility. Many similar examples could be found of Hermann Grimm's flair for apt characterisation. And other kindred minds, belonging to the whole period of Middle European culture of which I spoke yesterday, were endowed with the same gift. But if, with all the good-will born of a true appreciation of Hermann Grimm, we study his monograph on Goethe—what is our experience then? We feel: this is an extraordinarily good, a really splendid piece of writing—only it is not Goethe! In reality it gives only a shadow-picture of Goethe, as if out of a three-dimensional figure one were to make a two-dimensional shadow-picture, thrown on the screen. Goethe seems to wander through the chapters like a ghost from the year 1749 to the year 1832. What is described is a spectral Goethe—not what Goethe was, what he thought, what he desired.

Goethe himself did not succeed in lifting to the level of spiritual consciousness all that was alive within his soul. Indeed, the great ‘Goethe problem’ today is precisely this: to raise into consciousness in a truly spiritual way what was spiritually alive in Goethe. He himself was not capable of this, for culture in his day could give expression only to a rich life of the soul, not of the spirit. Therefore Hermann Grimm, too, firmly rooted as he was in the Goethean tradition, could depict only a shadow, a spectre, when he wanted to speak of Goethe's spirit. It is thoroughly characteristic that the best modern exposition of Goethe and Goetheanism should produce nothing but a spectre of Goethe.

Why is it that through the whole development of this brilliant phase of culture there is no real grasp of the spirit, no experience of it or feeling for it? Men such as Troxler, and Schelling too at times, pointed gropingly to the spirit. But speaking quite objectively, it must be said that this culture was empty of spirit. And because of this, men were also ignorant of the needs, the conditions, that are essential for the life of the spirit. Here too there is something which may well up as a feeling of tragedy from contemplation of this stream of culture: men were unable to perceive, to divine, the conditions necessary for the life of the spirit, above all in the social sphere; For the reason why the social life of Middle Europe has developed through the centuries to the condition in which it finds itself today is that it had no real experience of the spirit, nor felt the need to meet the fundamental requirement of the spiritual life by emancipating it, making it independent of and separate from the political sphere. Because men had no understanding of the spirit, they allowed it to be merged with the political life of the State, where it could unfold only in shackles. I am speaking here only of Middle Europe; in other regions of the modern civilised world it was the same, although the causes were different.

And then, in the inmost soul, a reaction can set in. Then a man can experience how in his study of nature the spirit remains dumb, silent, uncommunicative. Then the soul rebels, gathers its forces and strives to bring the spirit to birth from its own inmost being! This can happen only in an epoch when scientific thinking impinges on a culture which has no innate disposition towards spirituality. For if men are not inwardly dead, if they are inwardly alive, the impulse of the spirit begins of itself to stir within them. We must recognise that since the middle of the 15th century the spirit has to be brought to birth through encountering what is dead if it is to penetrate into man's life of soul. The only persons who can gain satisfaction from inwardly experiencing the spiritualised soul-life of the Greeks are those who, with their classical scholarship, live in that afterglow of Greek culture which enables the soul-quality of the spirit to pulsate through a man's own soul. But men who are impelled to live earnestly with natural science and to discern what is deathly, corpse-like in it—they will make it possible for the spirit itself to come alive in their souls.

If a man is to have real and immediate experience of the spirit in this modern age, he must not only have smelt the fumes of prussic acid or ammonia in laboratories, or have studied specimens extracted from corpses in the dissecting room, but out of the whole trend and direction of natural scientific thinking he must have known the odour of death in order that through this experience he may be led to the light of the spirit! This is an impulse which must take effect in our times; it is also one of the testings which men of the modern age must undergo. Natural science exists far more for the purpose of educating man than for communicating truths about nature. Only a naive mind could believe that any natural law discovered by learned scientists enshrines an essential, inner truth. Indeed it does not! The purpose of natural science, devoid of spirit as it is, is the education of men. This is one of the paradoxes implicit in the historic evolution of humanity.

And so it was only in the very recent past, in the era after Goetheanism, that the spirit glimmered forth; for it was then, for the first time, that the essentially corpse-like quality in the findings of natural science came to the fore; then and not until then could the spirit ray forth—for those, of course, who were willing to receive its light. Until the time of Goethe, men protected themselves against the sorry effects of a spiritual life shackled in State-imposed restrictions by cultivating a form of spiritual life fundamentally alien to them, namely the spiritual life of ancient Greece; this was outside the purview of the modern State for the very reason that it had nothing to do with modern times. A makeshift separation of the spiritual life from the political sphere was provided by the adoption of an alien form of culture. This Greek culture was a cover for the spiritual emptiness of Middle European life and of modern Europe in general.

On the other hand, the need to separate the economic sphere from the Rights-sphere, from the political life of the State proper, was not perceived. And why not? When all is said and done, nobody can detach himself from the economic field. To speak trivially, the stomach sees to that! In the economic sphere it is impossible for men to live unconcernedly through such cataclysms as are allowed to occur, all unnoticed, in the political and spiritual spheres. Economic activity was going on all the time, and it developed in a perfectly straightforward way. The transformation of the old impenetrable forests into meadows and cornfields, with all the ensuing economic consequences, went steadily ahead. But into economic life, too, there came an alien intrusion, one that had actually found a footing in the souls of men in Middle Europe earlier than that of Greece, namely the Latin-Roman influence. Everything pertaining to the State, to the Rights-life, to political life, derives from this Latin-Roman influence. And here again is something that will have to be stressed by history in the future but has been overlooked by the conventional, tendentious historiography of the immediate past, with its bias towards materialism—the strangely incongruous fact that certain economic ideas and procedures are a direct development from social relationships described, for example, by Tacitus, as prevailing in the Germanic world during the first centuries after the founding of Christianity.

But that is not all. These trends in economic thinking did not go forward unhampered. The Roman view of rights, Roman political thinking, seeped into the economic usages and methods originally prevailing in Europe, infiltrated them through and through and caused a sharp cleavage between the economic sphere and the political sphere. Thus the economic sphere and the political sphere, the former coloured by the old Germanic way of life and the latter by the Latin-Roman influence, remained separate on the surface but without any organic distinction consistent with the threefold membering of the body social: the distinction was merely superficial, a mask. Two heterogeneous strata were intermingled; it was felt that they did not belong together, in spite of external unification. Inwardly, however, people were content, because in their souls they experienced the two spheres as separate and distinct.

One need only study mediaeval and modern history in the right way and it will be clear that this mediaeval history is really the story of perpetual rebellion, self-defense, on the part of the economic relationships surviving from olden times against the political State, against the Roman order of life. Imaginative study of these things shows unmistakably how Roman influences in the form of jurisprudence penetrate into men via the heads of the administrators. A great deal of the Roman element had even found its way into the wild Nibelung men in their period of decline. “Graf” is connected with “grapho”—writing. One can picture how the peasants, thinking in terms of husbandry, rise up in rebellion against this Roman juridical order, with fists clenched in their pockets, or with flails. Naturally, this is not always so outwardly perceptible. But when one observes history truly, these factors are present in the whole moral trend and impulse of those times. And so—I am merely characterising, not criticising, for everything that happened has also brought blessings and was necessary for the historic evolution of Middle Europe—all that developed from the seeds planted in mid-European civilisation was permeated through and through by the juristic-political influences of the Roman world and the humanism of Greece, by the Greek way of conceiving spirit in the guise of soul.

On the other hand, directly economic life acquired its modern, international character, the old order was doomed. A man might have had a very good classical education and be an ignoramus in respect of modern natural science, but then he was inwardly on a retrograde path. A man of classical education could not keep abreast of his times unless he penetrated to some extent into what modern natural scientific education had to offer. And again, if a man were schooled in natural science, if he acquired some knowledge of modern natural science and of what had come out of the old Roman juristic system in the period of which I have spoken, he could not help suffering from an infantile disease, from ‘culture scarlet fever’, ‘culture measles’, in a manner of speaking. In the old Imperium Romanum a juristic culture was fitting and appropriate. Then this same juristic principle, the res publica (i.e. the conception of it), was transplanted from ancient Rome into the sphere of Middle European culture, together with the element of Nibelung barbarism on the other side. One really gets ‘culture scarlet fever’, ‘culture measles’, if one does not merely think of jurisprudence in the abstract, but, with sound natural scientific concepts, delves into the stuff that figures as modern jurisprudence in literature and in science.

We can see that this state of things had reached a certain climax when we find a really gifted man such as Rudolf von Ihering at an utter loss to know how to deal with the pitiable notions of jurisprudence current in the modern age. The book written by Ihering on the aim of justice (Der Zweck im Recht) was a grotesque production, for here was a man who had made a little headway in natural scientific thinking endeavouring to apply the concepts he had acquired to jurisprudence—the result being a monstrosity of human thinking. To study modern literature on law is a veritable martyrdom for sound thinking; one feels all the time as though so many worms were crawling through the brain. This is the actual experience—I am simply describing it pictorially.

We must be courageous enough to face these things fairly and squarely, and then it will be clear that we have arrived at the point of time when not only certain established usages and institutions, but men's very habits of thought, must be metamorphosed, re-cast; when men must begin to think about many things in a different way. Only then will the social institutions in the external world be able, under the influence of human thinking and feeling, to take the form that is called for by these ominous and alarming facts.

A fundamental change in the mental approach to certain matters of the highest importance is essential. But because between 1200 and the days of Goetheanism, modern humanity, especially in Middle Europe, absorbed all unwittingly thoughts that wriggled through the brain like worms, there crept over thinking the lazy passivity that is characteristic of the modern age. It comes to expression in the absence of will from the life of thought. Men allow their thoughts to take possession of them; they yield to these thoughts; they prefer to have them in the form of instinct. But in this manner no headway can be made towards the spirit. The spirit can be reached only by genuinely putting the will into thinking, so that thinking becomes an act like any other, like hewing wood. Do modern men feel that thinking tires them? They do not, because thinking for them is not activity at all. But the fact that anyone who thinks with thoughts, not with words, will get just the same fatigue as he gets from hewing wood, and actually in a shorter time, so that he simply has to stop—that is quite outside their experience. Nevertheless, this is what will have to be experienced, for otherwise modern mankind as a community will be incapable of achieving the transition from the sense-world into the super-sensible world of which I spoke in the two preceding lectures. Only by entering thus into the super-sensible world, with understanding for what is seen and apprehended in the spirit, will human souls find harmony again.

The year 1200 is the time of Walter von der Vogelweide, the time when the spiritual life of Middle Europe is astir with powerful imaginations of which conventional history has little to say. Then it flows on through the centuries, but from the 15th and 16th centuries onwards takes into itself the germs of decline with the founding of the Universities of Prague, Ingolstadt, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Restock, Wurzburg and the rest. The founding of these Universities throughout Middle Europe occurred almost without exception in a single century. The kind of life and thinking emanating from the Universities started the trend towards abstraction—towards what was subsequently to be idolised and venerated as the pure, natural scientific thinking which today invades the customary ways of thought with such devastating results.

Fundamentally speaking, this gave a definite stamp to the whole mentality of the educated middle class. Naturally, many individuals were not deeply influenced, but all the same the effect was universal. Of salient importance during this period was the increasing receptiveness of people to a form of soul-life entirely foreign to them. Side by side with what was developed through those who were the bearers of this middle-class culture, which reached its culmination in Goethe, Herder and Schiller, alien elements and impulses were at work.

I am speaking here of something profoundly characteristic. In their souls, the bearers of this culture were seeking for the spirit without a notion of what the spirit is. And where did they seek it? In the realm of Greek culture! They learnt Greek in their intermediate schools, and what was instilled into them by way of spiritual substance was Greek in tenor and content. To speak truly of the spirit as conceived in Middle Europe from the thirteenth right on into the twentieth century, one would have to say: spirit, as conveyed by the inculcation of Greek culture. No spiritual life belonging intrinsically and innately to the people came into being. Greek culture did not really belong to the epoch beginning in the middle of the 15th century, which we call the epoch of the evolution of self-consciousness. And so the bourgeoisie in Middle Europe were imbued with an outworn form of Greek culture, and this was the source of all that they were capable of feeling and experiencing in regard to the spirit.

But what the Greek experienced of the spirit was merely its expression in the life of soul (Seelenseite das Geistes). What gave profundity to the culture of ancient Greece was that the Greek rose to perception of the highest manifestation of soul-life. That was what he called ‘spirit’. True, the spirit shines down from the heights, pulsing through the realm of soul; but when the gaze is directed upwards, it finds, to begin with, only the expression of the spirit in the realm of soul.

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Man's task in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, however, is to lift himself into the very essence of the spirit—an attainment still beyond his reach in the days of Greece. This is of far greater significance than is usually supposed, for it sheds light upon the whole way in which medieval, neo-medieval culture apprehended the spirit.

What, then, was required in order to reach a concept, an inward experience, of the spirit appropriate for the modern age? It is precisely by studying a representative figure like Hermann Grimm that we can discover this. It is something of which a man such as Hermann Grimm, steeped in classical lore, had not the faintest inkling—namely, the strivings of natural science and the scientific mode of thinking. This thinking is devoid of spirit; precisely where it is great it contains no trace of spirit, not an iota of spirituality. All the concepts of natural science, all its notions of laws of nature, are devoid of spirit, are mere shadow-pictures of spirit; while men are investigating the laws of nature, no trace of the spirit is present in their consciousness.

Two ways are open here. Either a man can give himself up to natural science, contenting himself—as often happens today—with what natural science has to offer; then he will certainly equip his mind with a number of scientific laws and ideas concerning nature—but he loses the spirit. Along this path it is possible to become a truly great investigator, but at the cost of losing all spirituality. That is the one way. The other is to be inwardly aware of the tragic element arising from the lack of spirituality in natural science, precisely where science appears in all its greatness. Man immerses his soul in the scientific lore of nature, in the abstract, unspiritual laws of chemistry, physics, biology, which, having been discovered at the dissecting table, indicate by this very fact that from the living they yield only the dead. The soul delves into what natural science has to impart concerning the laws of human evolution. When a man allows all this to stream into him, when he endeavours not to pride himself on his knowledge, but asks: ‘What does this really give to the human soul?’—then he experiences something true; then spirit is not absent. Herein, too, lies the tragic problem of Nietzsche, whose life of soul was torn asunder by the realisation that modern scientific learning is devoid of spirituality.

As you know, insight into the super-sensible world does not depend upon clairvoyance; all that is required is to apprehend by the exercise of healthy human reason what clairvoyance can discover. It is not essential for the whole of mankind to become clairvoyant; but what is essential, and moreover within the reach of every human being, is to develop insight into the spiritual world through the healthy human intelligence. Only thus can harmony enter into souls of the modern age: for the loss of this harmony is due to the conditions of evolution in our time. The development of Europe, with her American affinities on the one hand and the Asiatic frontier on the other, has reached a parting of the ways. Spiritual Beings of higher worlds are bringing to a decisive issue the overwhelming difference between former ages and modern times as regards the living side-by-side of diverse populations on the earth.

How were the peoples of remote antiquity distributed and arranged over the globe? Up to a certain point of time, not long before the Mystery of Golgotha, the configuration of peoples on earth was determined from above downwards, inasmuch as the souls simply descended from the spiritual world into the physical bodies dwelling in some particular territory. Owing to physiological, geographical, climatic conditions in early times, certain kinds of human bodies were to be found in Greece, and similarly on the peninsula of Italy. The souls came from above, were predestined entirely from above, and took very deep root in man's whole constitution, in his outer, bodily physiognomy.

Then came the great migrations of the peoples. Men wandered over the earth in different streams. Races and peoples began to intermix, thus enhancing the importance of the element of heredity in earthly life. A population inhabiting a particular region of the earth moved to another; for example the Angles and Saxons who were living in certain districts of the Continent migrated to the British Isles. That is one such migration. But in respect of physical heredity, the descendants of the Angles and Saxons are dependent upon what had developed previously on the Continent; this was a determining factor in their bodily appearance, their practices, and so forth. Thus there came into the evolutionary process a factor working in and conditioned by the horizontal. Whereas the distribution of human beings over the earth had formerly depended entirely upon the way in which the souls incarnated as they came down from above, the wanderings and movements of men over the earth now also began to have an effect.

At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, however, a new cosmic historic impulse came into operation. For a period of time a certain sympathy existed between the souls descending from the spiritual world and the bodies on the earth below. Speaking concretely: souls who were sympathetically attracted by the bodily form and constitution of the descendants of the Angles and Saxons, now living in the British Isles, incarnated in those regions. In the 15th century this sympathy began to wane, and since then the souls have no longer been guided by racial characteristics, but once again by geographical conditions, the kind of climate, and so forth, on the earth below, and also by whether a certain region of the earth is flat or mountainous. Since the 15th century, souls have been less and less concerned with racial traits; once again they are guided more by the existing geographical conditions. Hence a kind of chasm is spreading through the whole of mankind today between the elements of heredity and race and the soul-element coming from the spiritual world. And if men of our time were able to lift more of their subconsciousness into consciousness, very few of them would—to use a trivial expression—feel comfortable in their skins. The majority would say: I came down to the earth in order to live on flat ground, among green things or upon verdant soil, in this or that kind of climate, and whether I have Roman or Germanic features is of no particular importance to me.

It certainly seems paradoxical when these things, which are of paramount importance for human life, are concretely described. Men who preach sound principles, saying that one should abjure materialism and turn towards the spirit—they too talk just like the pantheists, of spirit, spirit, spirit. People are not shocked by this today; but when anyone speaks concretely about the spirit they simply cannot take it. That is how things are. And harmony must again be sought between, shall I say, geographical predestination and the racial element that is spread over the earth. The leanings towards internationalism in our time are due to the fact that souls no longer concern themselves with the element of race.

A figure of speech I once used is relevant here. I compared what is happening now to a ‘vertical’ migration of peoples, whereas in earlier times what took place was a ‘horizontal’ migration. This comparison is no mere analogy, but is founded upon facts of the spiritual life.

To all this must be added that, precisely through the spiritual evolution of modern times, man is becoming more and more spiritual in the sphere of his subconsciousness, and the materialistic trend in his upper consciousness is more and more sharply at variance with the impulses that are astir in his subconsciousness. In order to understand this, we must consider once more the threefold membering of the human being.

When the man of the present age, whose attention is directed only to the material and the physical, thinks of this threefold membering, he says to himself: I perceive through my senses: they are indeed distributed over the whole body but are really centralised in the head; acts of perception, therefore, belong to the life of the nerves and senses—and there he stops. Further observation will, of course, enable him to describe how the human being breathes, and how the life passes over from the breath into the movement of the heart and the pulsation of the blood. But that is about as far as a he gets today. Metabolism is studied [in] all detail, but not as one of the three members of threefold man: actually it is taken to be the whole man. One need not, of course, go to the lengths of the scientific thinker who said: man is what he eats (Der Mensch ist, was er isst)—but, broadly speaking, science is pretty strongly convinced that it is so. In Middle Europe at the present time it looks as if he will soon be what he does not eat!

This threefold membering of the human being, which will ultimately find expression in a threefold social order because its factual reality is becoming more and more evident, manifests in different forms over the earth. Truly, man is not simply the being he appears outwardly to be, enclosed within his skin. It was in accordance with a deep feeling and perception when in my Mystery Play, “The Portal of Initiation”, in connection with the characters of Capesius and Strader, I drew attention to the fact that whatever is done by men on earth has its echo in cosmic happenings out yonder in the universe. With every thought we harbour, with every movement of the hand, with everything we say, whether we are walking or standing, whatever we do—something happens in the cosmos.

The faculties for perceiving and experiencing these things are lacking in man today. He does not know—nor can it be expected of him and it is paradoxical to speak as I am speaking now—he does not know how what is happening here on the earth would appear if seen, for example, from the Moon. If he could look from the Moon he would see that the life of the nerves and senses is altogether different from what can be known of it in physical existence. The nerves-and-senses life, everything that transpires while you see, hear, smell, taste, is light in the cosmos, the radiation of light into the cosmos. From your seeing, from your feeling, from your hearing, the earth shines out into the cosmos.

Different again is the effect produced by what is rhythmic in the human being: breathing, heart movement, blood pulsation. This activity manifests in the universe in great and powerful rhythms which can be heard by the appropriate organs of hearing. And the process of metabolism in man radiates out into cosmic space as life streaming from the earth. You cannot perceive, hear, see, smell or feel without shining out into the cosmos. Whenever your blood circulates, you resound into universal space, and whenever metabolism takes place within you, this is seen from out yonder as the life of the whole earth.

But there are great differences in respect of all this—for example, between Asia and Europe. Seen from outside, the thinking peculiar to the Asiatics would appear—even now, when a great proportion of them have lost all spirituality—as bright, shining light raying out into the spiritual space of the universe. But the further we go towards the West, the dimmer and darker does this radiance become. On the other hand, more and more life surges out into cosmic space the further we go towards the West. Only from this vista can there arise in the human soul what may be called perception of the cosmic aspect of the earth—with the human beings belonging to it.

Such conceptions will be needed if mankind is to go forward to a propitious and not an ominous future. The idiocy that is gradually being bred in human beings who are made to learn from the sketchy maps of modern geography: Here is the Danube, here the Rhine, here Reuss, here Aare, here Bern, Basle, Zürich, and so forth—all this external delineation which merely adds material details to the globe—this kind of education will be the ruin of humanity. It is necessary as a foundation and not to be scoffed at; but nevertheless it will lead gradually to man's downfall. The globe of the future will have to indicate: here the earth shines because spirituality is contained in the heads of men: there the earth radiates out more life into cosmic space because of the characteristics of the human beings inhabiting this particular territory.

Something I once said here is connected with this. (One must always illumine one fact by another). I told you that Europeans who settle in America develop hands resembling those of the Red Indians; they begin to resemble the Indian type. This is because the souls coming down into human bodies today are directed more by geographical conditions, as they were in the olden days. In our own time, the souls are directed, not by racial considerations, not by what develops out of the blood, but by geographical conditions, as in the past. But it will be necessary to get at the roots of what is going on in humanity. This can be done only when men accustom themselves to concepts of greater flexibility, capable of penetrating matters of this kind. These concepts, however, can be developed only on the foundation of spiritual science. And such a foundation is available when the spirit can be brought to birth in the human soul. For this, man needs a free spiritual life, emancipated from the political life of the State.

I have now given you one or two indications of what is astir in humanity, and of the need to strive for a new ordering of social life. Social demands cannot nowadays be advanced in terms of the trivial concepts commonly employed. Men must have insight into the nature of present-day humanity; they must make good what they have neglected in the study of modern mankind.

Translator Unknown

Today, first of all, I have the urge in my soul to say something to you with regard to what wills, out of the impulses and need of our time, to be spoken to mankind in general through my booklet about the Social Question which will be appearing in the near future. It will be called The Key Points of the Social Question in the Vital Necessities of the Present and the Future (GA 23). It will have become evident to you from the lectures which we have held here for many weeks that what I now have to say just with regard to the Social Question is, perhaps, not only a sort of secondary stream by the side of what is pulsing in our whole spiritual-scientific striving, but that, in fact, matters must be so considered that this spiritual-scientific striving develops, in a way peculiar to itself, understanding for the needs and demands of our time and of the near future. The basic character of our time can really only be radically helped as a result of spiritual impulses. Everything else could at best be a substitute. Even the external activity which has to take place will have to be of such a kind that—I will not say a particular form of Spiritual Science, but that a spiritual life, penetrating to the real Spirit, becomes possible within the Social Order.

This is necessary for the reason that, as a result of human development, the man of the present day is in a quite definite position, which I have described to you from the most diverse sides. Today I shall only refer once more to the fact that, basically speaking, all considerations have led us to realise how the man of the present day is, as a result of his organisation, in a certain state of disunion at the present point of time. You see, one can easily be inclined to look on man as a unity in his whole being. But he is not a unity. We know that he is a three-membered being. And these three members of the human entity stand in different relationships to the physical-, soul- and spiritual outer world, and to his own inner part, in the various epochs of the post-Atlantean period.

We can now consider the three-membered man in two different ways. (We will make this schematic and simply place the three members of man one above the other—see diagram). Whether we now give names to these three members according to their physical aspect and say: nerves-senses system, rhythmic or breathing-and-heart system, and metabolic system, or whether we give them names according to their spiritual aspect and say the Intuitive-spiritual, the Inspirational-psychic and the Imaginative-bodily, or whether we proceed with other words as I have represented in my book Theosophy regarding this three-membered man from the spiritual aspect, or whether we fix our attention on the physical projection of the three-membered man, to which I have drawn attention in my last book, Riddles of the Soul, from every point of view it appears to us that man is a three-membered being. But this three-membered being, man, is, if I may say so, on the other hand not at all so "simply three-membered". We can say: Man is, in a certain sense, a double being, a twofold being, and the boundary really goes midway through the rhythmic system, right through the breathing-and-heart system.

In our present phase of development, the inner part of man really only lives in the metabolic system and the lower part of the heart-lungs system, of the rhythmic system. There, man is inward in reality in today's age. On the other had, with regard to the upper part of the heart-breathing system and similarly with regard to the nerves-senses system, man is to a great extent external today. You will at once understand what I mean. Man perceives the external world through the senses: he then works it up by means of his understandings. He also breathes in the outer world by means of his lungs. From outside, man takes what comes from perceptions, from the working of his understanding, from breathing-in. But man is, as it were, a sort of dwelling-house with respect to what comes to him from outside (see diagram). The whole of external nature is really contained in this upper part of man: colours, tones, stars, clouds, the air even as far as the breathing process—and you yourselves are really only the dwelling-house for this external matter. In olden times, men have found something else which was related to this upper part: elementary spirits and also divine-spiritual beings of the higher Hierarchies. They have spoken of these nature-beings in their mythologies, which were wiser than the natural-scientific knowledge of today. Now they have fallen out of human perceptions.

Today, Man only perceives the sensible and works it up. Here, he is really carrying only the external world into himself. We are hardly sufficiently aware of how little of ourselves there really is in what we carry into ourselves as perceptions of the outer world, or even as what the memory retains of the outer world. If you go up this hill in the morning or at midday and see the Goetheanum, then go down and carry in yourself the picture of the Goetheanum and all that has happened, you apparently have something in you, but yet something which is only a mirror-image in you, for the Goetheanum is standing here on this hill. You are only its dwelling-place—with the upper part of Man which I have separated off (see diagram). And Man is so poor in spirit today because he no longer finds the Spirit in the external world.

Yes, my dear friends, there were times in the development of the Earth in which, after people had gone down again, what had been seen would have worked in those who had come up the hill here and thus had seen something such as the Goetheanum, not only as a fantasy, as an inner mystery but as a world of facts. From what they had seen people would have received—just as they carry down colours and forms now—those spiritual beings which had slipped out of every corner and which had taken part in what man did here. But this is over for men, just as though the elementary and spiritual beings had fled out of external nature. External nature is emptied of Spirit, and as a result so is this part of the human interior. And all that really is left for what is inward is the lower part of the chest, and the metabolic system with the limbs.

For the externalised man of today, this is what he calls his "inner part" if he does not really begin to interest himself in true spirituality. Man has arrived at the point where he speaks, it is true, of his "inner part", but, basically speaking, he means nothing beyond his metabolic system and, at most, the connection which the breathing and the rhythm of the heart enter into with the metabolic system. We should not be deceived about it, and should be clear with ourselves: when men declare that they are out of order in their "inner part", that they have inner difficulties, this is only a verbal expression for some lack of regularity in the metabolic system.

One man is cheerful, another ill-tempered owing to his "inner part", one is passionate, another full of humour. Basically speaking, all this is a result of the metabolic system and at most the reaction of the breathing and heart-circulation on the metabolic system. When one says that the soul is out of order in this or that person, it is, in reality, his stomach and intestines which are out of order. All that people call "soul-life" is, basically speaking, only a verbal expression for events in the metabolic system. Naturally, no one wants to confess, in accordance with reality: my stomach, my intestines, spleen or liver or such things are not in order within me, but we say: my soul has this or that difficulty. This sounds better, more elegant, to many people; they consider it to be less materialistic. To anyone who looks at things according to reality, it is merely more untruthful. For we stand today in that phase of development in which human nature already separates itself into these two members.

You may ask: by what means can this be corrected? There is only one help for the man of today, namely to get loose from himself, by means of an interest in the affairs of mankind, through real interest in what concerns all men today, and to turn the attention as little as possible to these irregularities of the metabolic system in the wider sense, which are, nevertheless, almost universally present today. If men could get loose from themselves through a far-reaching interest, which is to be reached only by taking Spiritual Science seriously—then alone can health pour itself out over the human race today.

Today, you see, one has really characteristic experiences. I was recently at the League of Nations Congress at Berne¹, where they spoke about all the things about which it is unnecessary to speak today, because they just lead to nothing, and where they did not speak about all that is most necessary today. But I do not at all wish to mention this as the main point. I should like to mention, as the main point, something about the manor of speaking which cropped up in what almost all the speakers said. In at least every third sentence uttered by these speakers is found the little word "I". "I am of the opinion", "I think", "It seems to me that this or that is necessary", "I am in favour of this or that"—you can hear this in almost every sentence. And the men were quite angry if one did not join in in the same strain! If one speaks more from an objective standpoint, if one puts one's sentences in such a way that one gives priority to the inner, objective contents of the matter, without personal opinion, they say that one is speaking authoritatively, that one is speaking arrogantly. But surely the highest arrogance is when one brings the word "I" into one's mouth every third sentence.

But people have certainly forgotten, today, to feel this arrogance. They find it more sensible if someone is always talking of himself, and they find it in the highest degree immodest and arrogant if someone tries to speak from an objective standpoint, for, you see, they have this dim feeling: he is asserting that he knows something beyond what is his personal opinion. And it is a great sin today if anyone asserts that he does know something beyond what is his personal opinion. And as to those personal opinions—!

To those who are versed in Spiritual Science I should frequently like to describe this kind of conference more accurately, just from its spiritual-scientific standpoint! One hears a speaker of the kind who utters the little word "I" with every third sentence—"I think", " I am of the opinion", "this is sympathetic to me", "I ask you to enter into this": when this speaker is speaking about the super-State, the super-parliament, the spiritual scientist says to himself: the man surely has something wrong with his liver, something is out of order in his liver and the metabolic system is speaking out of the man. A second speaker gets up and talks in a similar way. As he goes away, the spiritual scientist says to himself: probably he has a gall stone. The third is inclined to stomach trouble.

These things are important only in an age in which materialism is pulsating, where the free soul, independent of what is material, does not speak, where, in fact, it is the body which speaks. And very often indeed, today, it is the body which speaks. Really, people are only accustomed to make use of old words of their bodily indispositions. To one who looks into things in a spiritual-scientific way it would be preferable if, instead of talking about the Superman (naturally, I do not mean Nietzsche, but the others who have spoken about the "Superman" after Nietzsche's time) were to talk about the "sub-stomach". For in this way they would better catch the likeness of the reality which is, in fact, speaking out of them.

This is not pessimism, my dear friends: it is quite simply the world of present day facts. And in the present time men are impelled to become untruthful for the simple reason that they are ashamed to call the facts by the right name. There is even a longing in them to give themselves up to that "man" which is, in fact, only the physical man. In our time it is certainly the case that perhaps the only reason why we have no Molière to write a new Malade imaginaire is that we should need too many Molières, for today there is a genuine enthusiasm for being ill in people who have time to be ill. Such people as have no time for it do not, for the most part, turn their attention to those conditions which are sufficient causes for making others, who have time to be ill, feel that they are ill.

One must look for the destructive workings of materialism not only where people talk of materialism or where they talk materialistically: these working show themselves in numerous other examples as well. And sometimes even talk about the Spirit today as nothing else than the purest materialism, for this talk about the Spirit is, for very many people, nothing else than an anaesthetic for their otherwise cosy materiality. The will to activity is lacking in men today, the will to real inner activity. This is the reason why the bourgeoisie has remained in a state of ineffectiveness in face of the Social Question which has been rising up for 70 years. It is a monstrous materialism which has taken hold of men in the most diverse forms—and especially the circles on whom, in recent times, was set the task of turning to the Spiritual.

One must know this about the basic impulses of our time, about what is living in our time. Not to know it implies that one is giving oneself up to illusions. Spiritual Science is of such great importance for present day men because it takes them away from themselves, but it must be truly comprehended in this sense. An illusion can easily arise regarding Spiritual Science: a quality can assert itself, which is so thoroughly propagated at the present time just as a result of materialism—namely, superficiality. If people grasp in a superficial way what Spiritual Science wishes to arouse in the way of interests, they can be all the more hardened in themselves, can be all the more pressed into themselves. Then nothing else at all is of assistance than to return again and again to what does not in any way concern us personally, but what represents the content of our Spiritual Science and the things which are found in its content, to take them as objectively as possible and, when one speaks about the most subjective things, not to take them in a subjective way! Only think how important it is to resist, in this point, temptations which lie near.

When I recently depicted how Man is really capable of development from outside only up to the 28th year today, and how development comes to an end at that point of time when he is standing just before the mind-soul and the Ego but does not come to them, and thereby goes to meet a certain inner emptiness—this, then, is an important truth for the present time. It is important to know this: it is important to receive it into oneself as an inner experience. But it would be dangerous to think afterwards: am I, perhaps, one of those who have not developed to the mind-soul in the right way from the 28th year forward? Just the most subjective things, which refer to what is most important of all, should be taken up objectively: we should not look into whether we are among those in whom something can happen in this way: we should just be able to look away from ourselves in the most important human truths, and look at the age, at humanity, and not always think of ourselves in an egotistical way.

It is this which is characteristic of the time, which is coming forth from the deep impulses of our time and which makes it so difficult today to propagate ideas which refer to the very most important impulses of the development of the time. Man can develop no interest from this basic disposition which I have described. Their ideas remain sensations for them, do not sufficiently take hold of them, do not sufficiently spur them on to activity.

This must now be said at a time when a kind of transition has occurred for all people who are genuinely interesting themselves in our Spiritual Science. Until now you have had a spiritual-scientific literature which refers to the inner development of man and to knowledge about the Spiritual World, and which spoke to a man in such a way that he could take hold of the world, his relationship with the world, his relationship with other men, so far as it is soul-spiritual, from the most varied points of view. Now this Spiritual Science is running, with a branch—it is proceeding as the main body of Spiritual Science, for just this main body of Spiritual Science is the most necessary thing of all for really making all relationships healthy—into a stream which speaks of the Social Question, of the making healthy of the Social Organism, and which may no longer be taken inactively, no longer just passively, because otherwise it would miss its goal. And just now it will appear how many of us have made themselves ripe, during the many preceding years in which they were taking Spiritual Science into themselves, for a clear grasp of what is now to be understood as the Social Question. For what matters is a clear, unprejudiced, unsentimental grasp of what is to be uttered particularly in my forthcoming book The Basic Issues of the Social Question—it will be something on account of which we shall now have to undergo a certain trial.

Up to now, one could certainly be a good spiritual scientist if one studied Spiritual Science without troubling oneself about what was going on in life outside. And we have, you see, just two phenomena within out anthroposophical movement about which we really should reflect. We have the one phenomena that we have quite good anthroposophists who, though they know a great deal about cosmic development, the membering of Man, reincarnation, destiny and karma, nonetheless have no inkling of the reality of life, but who have sought something just in Anthroposophy, which has enabled them to hold themselves aloof from this reality of life. Those whom what I have just said specially concerns do not realise at all that it does concern them. For every one of them considers himself in naive fashion to be a practical man with regard to his life. This is the one phenomena which we have among us.

The other phenomena is sectarianism in some form or other. There is a deep inclination present, you see, to produce sectarianism just in movements which have to do with the Spiritual. It does not depend on whether this sectarianism is now developing from little cliques which appear with a sectarian character, even in very minor matters, or whether direct sectarianism is produced. For the main point is to realise that objectivity, an impersonal point of view, must permeate this anthroposophically-oriented spiritual-scientific movement which is here referred to.

This, you see, was always the difficult thing about our movement, that the personal was interchanged with what is objectively-factual, mostly without our being aware of it. When people gather into a clique which is larger of smaller, they are in full belief that they have a quite factual interest. Certainly they fully believe this, for they do not notice at all that they in reality they are generally doing what they wish for, just because this person stands near them spiritual-scientifically, because he is connected with them is such and such a way, because they wish to have just this or that relationship with him, or the like.

People are not aware of this. They live in the full belief that they are being objective. But just this sectarianism, this gathering in cliques, has brought forth the dreadful consequence that the promulgation of Spiritual Science, in whatever sphere it may be, is not judged today according to what it is but according to what a society, the Anthroposophical Society, is making and has made out of it. While I point to the most mischievous shortcomings and the most horrible "marsh-plants", of the type of an S------, it may not at all be overlooked, if one goes to the root of the matter, that this kind of "marsh-plant" has been coaxed on, raised up and cultivated by the cliquishness and sectarianism which have developed widely in the last 17 or 18 years in the anthroposophical movement. But what is going on in this anthroposophical movement very often projects itself into Anthroposophy because, you see, sins are committed by very many members against what is the most significant impulse of the time today, against individualism in the spiritual sphere. How frequently do we hear: we Anthroposophists, we Theosophists, want this or that! It is dreadful that we have as many as three basic principles!—We need no basic principles at all, for it is not these which matter: we need truths, not summarising-principles, and these truths are only for single human beings, for the individual. The Society—how often I have said it—should be something outward, but the thing itself does not concern the Society.

We must now be able to take this in a really and truly serious way. If what is now to flow into the world as a result of efforts with regard to the Social Question is to be borne along by sectarianism or clique-spirit or the various narrow-mindednesses which I have described today, quite terrible injury will be done to the matter! Here we must really develop to a more broad-minded way of thinking: we must seek for access into real, practical life. This is the main point.

Do take what I am saying about these things only in a friendly spirit. Do not take it as though I should like to say anything derogatory on the one side or the other. But now I really am compelled to utter a fundamental warning before this social side of our activities becomes the concern of all members, as it is to become—a warning not to mix into this social thinking any sectarianism, any pettiness, anything which has no wide horizon, which does not arise from clear thinking. But try, to an ever greater extent, to think from the experience and reality of life! I was, indeed, highly astonished when, a short time ago, the slogan (Devise) reached by ears, which I suppose must be uttered here from the one side or the other: one should carry practically into life the things which I am now putting forward as social ideas. What was meant was the carrying over of those practical ideas into the most unpractical measures that could be! We ought not to let that arise which has just led into the most terrible chaos and mischief in our time, the confusing of real with illusory practicality in life. What has been expressed there is so unpractical, has been thought out in so sectarian a way that I do not want to go into it further: it has to so small an extent the will really to step into practical life that I beg you before everything to look on what is going on in real life today, to know how to learn from what the various statements which I make have arisen.

For do you believe that it is a light-hearted theory when one says that labour-power has the character of a commodity? This may only be said if one has got to know it to an ever-greater extent as the most characteristic thing in life. Thus I should like, for example, to say the following—without anger, for these things are not to be taken in a personal way: I have been asked whether the three-membering—economic life, rights-life, spiritual life, could not be realised within our Society.

Certainly, one can utter something in this way with words, if one stands very well within our movement, if one feels for it quite honestly and deeply. But yet, if one say this, it is as though one had not at all grasped the basic nature of our movement. One has understood nothing at all about what I have said about the Social Question if one thinks that we can split our Society here into three, like a sect! For what are the three branches of the healthy Social Organism? First, take economic life. Do you, perhaps, wish to carry on some sort of communal economy in this Society—I do not know at all how it is to be externally realised—within the rest of the economic sphere outside? Do you wish, then, not to understand at all that one cannot cut oneself off in an egotistical way—even if it be in a group-egotistical way—and leave everything else out of consideration? You carry on economic life, in fact, together with the rest of the economy of the surrounding territory. You take, in fact, milk, cheese, vegetables, all that you need, from an economic body from which you cannot isolate yourselves. You cannot, in fact, reform the times by cutting yourselves adrift from the times. If someone wants to make a Society like this into an economic corporation, it appears to me just as though someone has a large family and says: I shall now begin threefolding in my family!

These ideas are too serious, too comprehensive. They ought not to be dragged into the petty-bourgeois field of various sectarianism which has always been there. They must be thought of in connection with the whole of mankind. They would, you see, cut themselves completely off from practical thinking about the economic circulation of the world if they wished to set up a group-economy for a sect. So much for economic life.

And rights-life! Just found the Rights-state within our Society! If you steal something, it will be entirely without importance if three people come together and pass judgement about this theft. The external court will certainly take you in charge and pass judgement. You just cannot draw yourself out of the external organisation with regard to the Rights-state.

Finally, consider spiritual life. Since there has been an Anthroposophical Society or since, with its anthroposophical content, it has belonged to the Theosophical Society, where has there been anything carried on here within this spiritual community which is dependent in even the smallest degree on any state- or political organisation? From the first day of this Society forward, our ideal has been fulfilled with regard to spiritual life, which, above all, is our task! Do you believe that it is only today that this is be achieved in this Anthroposophical Society? Is not everything fulfilled, just in this Anthroposophical Society, which is to be desired from the external spiritual organisation? Is it not the most practical ideal just with regard to this? Do you wish, now, to reform the Anthroposophical Society according to this aim? To be sure, you must have entirely failed to grasp what sort of a society you have been for so many years if it is only now that you wish to realise the Spiritual Third in this society!

Therefore, look upon just what we have been able to preserve by the skin of our teeth—freedom of spiritual investigation and teaching, at least in those people who long for no state-appointment for what they teach here—as a kind of starting-point for the rest. Just see what really is so, and do not let your thinking miss it. In my book about the Social Question it is stated again and again to be an inherited evil of the present age that the so-called practical people of today have let their thinking and speaking miss the things which matter. Is this evil also to establish itself in us, so that we no longer speak about the things which matter? It cannot be our task to carry free spiritual life into this place, but to carry out into the world what has always existed here as free spiritual life, to make it clear to men that all spiritual life must be of this kind.

What matters is, at least in the first place, to see the nearest reality. In this direction, what I have brought forward about the Social Question must, in the first place, be understood by Anthroposophists. Within the Anthroposophical Society at least, one should avoid propagating odd ideas with expressed intention of making practical what is represented here. Take seriously what has been gone through as a principal feature of the lectures of the last weeks—perhaps, indeed, of the last months: before everything, regard it quite seriously that the present time makes necessary a new adjustment of Man with regard to life, that it is not enough that we only take in now thoughts but that we should find the possibility to adjust ourselves in a new way in face of life, and that we should avoid everything which tends to isolation and to shutting ourselves off. Regard it seriously, before everything, that mankind has come to a real cul-de-sac in all three spheres with their so-called culture. How can this cul-de-sac show itself more clearly than in its chaotic, destructive effects in East- and Middle-Europe? The conditions in Russia do not arise only from the war. The war is only the culmination. What men have thought, perceived and felt for a long, long time, and what one was compelled to describe as a kind of social cancer² has brought this chaos to a head in East- and Middle-Europe.

But what is most lacking at the present time? Judgement is lacking most of all! In the present time, social enlightenment is most of all lacking! It is this which the bourgeoisie has neglected most of all—the right kind of social enlightenment. There is, you see, no social sense in men. Every man knows only himself! This is why judgement is so short-sighted. If one speaks like this today, that economic life is to be brought into the Anthroposophical Society, then this is how I should be able to represent something real to myself—if we were to buy a cow, take care of it and milk it, and thereby produce something and deal in the right way with what had been produced. Then this would not be any sectarianism within our Society, for an ordered economic life what matters before everything is to take measures to raise productivity, taking account of necessary needs.

Here a beginning was actually made, which only, in the first place, partly failed because of the personage by whom it was made. Remember, we made a beginning with our bread through Herr von R., producing bread not according to the principle of production but according to that of consumption, which can be the only really sound principle. We wished, first of all, to provide consumers, which should gave been possible through a Society. Then production would have been put in hand according to the number of these. This was a real, practical beginning. It has only failed because Herr von R. was or is a quite unpractical man. Thus this was a practical idea, but one which only had to do with the Anthroposophical Society so far as the Society represented, in the first place, a body of consumers. What matters is to turn one's glance to the thing, not to the Anthroposophical Society, certainly no to make this into an isolated sect.

With referenced to these external things which lie at the basis of production, and to many another thing, you will not come far if you do not grasp on a large scale the ideas which are in my book about the Social Question. For, in the last resort, economic practical experience is necessary for the reform of economic life; one must even know how to milk cows, and it is more important to understand the milking of cows than to put in hand some economic understanding in a little sect and then, nevertheless, to obtain milk from outside.

In our case, what matters would be to realize in just what the impulse of the present time must lie, what is the most important thing at the present time. You can engage in all the undertakings that you wish today. Go, if you can, to Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, etc. Put in hand there the best, most idealistic things; do what you wish! At the latest, all these undertakings will be bankrupt within ten years—that is how things are today. With the thoughts which men have today, you can put in hand the most idealistic undertakings; in ten years they will be bankrupt—of that you can be quite sure. It will not always be as quick as it was just now in Munich, where one workers' and soldiers' council was set aside by another, and this again by another yet more radical, and so on but everything which you put in hand today in the way of such undertakings, which appear very good and sound to you, will in their turn be overthrown so long as the same ideas remain in people's heads as have been there for centuries and are still wandering about there like ghosts.

Nothing more is to be done with these ideas! One must therefore certainly accustom oneself to think and learn the other way round, and to take in new ideas as a constituent part of the inner being of one's soul. You cannot at once, from one day to another, apply new ideas to undertakings, but you can work out in detail the ideas which are in my book, down to the most extreme specialization, because they are practical. You can try to put this or that in hand. But you will also need people, you see, for everything which you put in hand. And, so long as the old thoughts are haunting the heads of those people, your undertakings will soon become bankrupt or else will take on the earlier forms, so that everything will remain in the old manner. Therefore it is not the most important thing today to put this or that in hand. Naturally, you can put good things in hand for yourselves. I do not at all want to tempt you to put bad things in hand. But I am only drawing your attention to the fact that even if you put the best things in hand you will not change the times by doing so. In order really to work in any sphere in the new style, one can undertake something in the manner which I previously indicated to you with regard to bread, or one can do it in some such way as we are doing in the sphere of our literature.

How did we start? In the first place, I spoke to a very small circle in Berlin. Then the circles became ever larger. While they were becoming larger the need arose to have in books what was spoken. The readers were there before the books were printed. Follow up the theories about social ideas today; one of the fundamental evils of our social order consists of the continual crises and the danger of crises which arise as a result of sporadic overproduction, when people produce things without deliberation. It is worst of all in the book-trade. If you only knew what is produced in the book-trade in the way of books, editions of which are often produced of 500 copies, sometimes still more, of which not fifty copies are sold! You have employed the setter-up, you have employed the printer, you have used up paper, all for nothing! All this is thrown to the winds; a misuse of human labor-power has taken place! In the moment when you produce things without deliberation, you must be aware that you are using up human labor-power without the consumption being there to justify this using up of human labor-power, for this using-up of human labor-power is only justified by the existing need. Not the content, but the demand must be there. The spending of human labor power is only justified when one can foresee that the product of human labor is for the benefit of human beings.

Thus, in the single sphere into which we could step in a certain way as reformers, we have done so. We have even had to take refuge in under-production, not over-production. The world could by no means think otherwise than that the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis came to an end for want of readers, as other magazines have done. Just when it had to come to an end because other demands came upon me, the moment had to come when it would first have had half as many readers again as it had before, then twice as many, then three times as many. We have even had to resolve on underproduction, not overproduction. But thus crises were avoided in a sound way.

The book-trade lives in a continual crisis. If one makes statistics of books which are not bought, one sees that books are produced which are not bought today because care cannot be taken to see that they are bought. Many people have a certain insight into these things. I once spoke with Eduard von Hartmann in the eighties about the literature of the Theory of Knowledge. It was at the time when I wrote my booklet Truth and Science which is now out of print, of which no copy was printed uselessly, no copy went for waste-paper with a resulting waste of human labor-power. Eduard von Hartmann said to me: people have all their works on the Theory of Knowledge printed in editions of 500; we know that we have at the most sixty readers in Germany; in this case one should have them hectographed and send the books to the small number of readers who are really interested. It is known that works on Theory of Knowledge have had no more readers at that time.

Do not find fault with the fact that I have just spoken here about this purely economic question of anthroposophical literature. These things have nothing to do with the content of the books, you see, nothing to do with spiritual value. They can, however, illustrate what is really meant and what really matters at the present time—that first of all a sound association of consumers should be created and that production should not take place "into the blue". Not even Truth, my dear friends, should be produced from mere human predilection!

It is to this that the answer refers which I once gave to two Catholic priests in Colmar after a lecture on "The Bible and Knowledge", and which I recently touched on again. After the lecture, the two priests came to me and said: as regards to the content of the lecture they really had nothing special to object to, but they had a lot against the manner of speaking, for the way in which they spoke down from the pulpit was suitable for all men. The way in which I spoke was not suitable for all men, but only for educated people. I could only reply to them what matters in not what opinions you hold, and I hold, about the way in which one should speak to all men; no doubt we can have all sorts of interesting ideas about that, but what matters is not how one should speak but what the facts demand. And now I ask you do all the people go to you in the church? You cannot assert this. Thus I am speaking for those who remain outside and who yet also have a right to hear of Christ, and there area quite enough of them today.

These are facts which cannot be denied. But the old bourgeois education, which is wholly shut up in itself, does still deny it. It imagines something is right if done in this way: it must be so; it must be done like this. But, for life, it is not at all necessary that it be done in this way! What matters, for life, is that one observes: this is there and that is there, that one lets the facts which are there demand of one what one has to do. There are only apparently trivialities, for life today is continually sinning against these trivialities.

What is thus necessary before everything is another adjustment, and also the insight that we must see how this culture, which has been so praised, has carried death in itself, has dissolved itself. You must not believe that culture has been ruined as a result of the Radical-socialist movements of today. It has ruined itself. What the upper classes had in the way of culture has led itself into negation, is perishing by its own qualities. This upper class has simply not taken care that the lower, proletarian classes who are coming after them know anything rational about social arrangements, and thus it is astonished when they come to the fore in their social ignorance and bring really nothing about except chaos.

The position is quite serious, and it is out of this realization of the serious situation of the whole world today that the ideas flow which I have had to utter in my book about the Social Question. People will only understand this book aright if they grasp that one can put the best arrangements in hand today but that just nothing is to be done with the men who have the ideas of our time in their heads. Before everything, their heads must be filled with other ideas. What, then is the true, the real, the truly practical task? To spread enlightenment, my dear friends, before everything, to spread enlightenment and teach people to think differently! This is the task which is laid on every one of you, to bring enlightenment into people's heads, not to think of sundry reformations in details, but to give enlightenment about what is necessary in the most universal way. For, before everything, men must become different today; that is to say, the thoughts, the feelings in men's souls must become different. It is a question of carrying these ideas out there wherever one can. That is the practical thing, to put these ideas into practice. Something is achieved with every quarter of a man—pardon my speaking in such a way—when you win for these ideas. And it is achieved in the greatest degree if you win over people who have practical standing. In the matter of the signatures under the Manifesto, I recently said: it is really quite a cause for joy that there are writers' signatures under the Manifesto, but one bank director who really understands the Manifesto and works in its sense is of more value than ten writers who set their names under it.

Today, what matters is to take hold of life where it is to be taken hold of. And today this cannot be done except while one is spreading enlightenment before all else, is working in an enlightening way. For what people need as the most necessary thing of all is knowledge of the conditions for the life of the healthy Social Organism. If they do not learn to know the conditions for the life of the healthy Social Organism, they will continue to destroy the old Social Organism so long as destruction is possible. It is natural, you see, only up to a certain point. Everything which is done just now without these ideas is an exhaustion of the forces of the old order, a pulling down of the old order. This has begun in Russia and will go on further from there. What matters is to build up. But you can only build up today if people understand how the building-up must be done. For we are living in the age of the development of the consciousness-soul, that is to say in the age of conscious individualities, in the age when people must know what they are doing.

My book is written out of this spirit, and I should like it understood in this spirit. I should like you to lay it in your hearts in this spirit. It will simply serve the time; it will utter what must be uttered out of the spirit of the time. Cliques, sectarian trends within the body of our own Society, have taken care enough that, basically speaking, people presume all sorts of ghost-hunting and the like when there is talk about Anthroposophy. But one does not seek the Spirit here by always merely talking about the Spirit—one can leave that to other gentlemen—but the important thing is that the Spirit shall be in the position really to plunge down into practical life, to understand how practical life must be handled. Anyone has a poor kind of belief in the Spirit who wishes to grasp it only in a shadowy form which is floating above life. Therefore, to an ever greater extent, you must really avoid turning away from life, must to an ever greater extent seek really to understand life, to look into life; otherwise the same phenomena of which I have spoken will happen again and again. Examples can be given by hundreds and thousands. A lady came to me and said: a man has come to me to ask me to lend him money, but he is a brewer who brews beer for this money. I really cannot support this—a brewery! Now, you see, this is quite nice; in this narrow circle, the lady did not wish to support the brewery because she was an abstainer and not only wished to be an abstainer on her own account but wished also to make propaganda for temperance. I had to reply to her: "I suppose you have money in the bank, by which you live. Have you an inkling how many breweries the bank helps with your money? Have you an inkling of all that is done there? Do you believe that all this is in the sense of the idea which you have just followed with regard to the sum which you were asked to lend to the brewer? But are you not doing the same thing when your money, which you have deposited in the bank, is carried over into economic life?" For do you really believe that it means that you are turning yourself towards life if you do no more than judge this life in the narrowest circles, if you do not at all set about fixing your attention on the broad aspect of life?

But the important thing is this: our Anthroposophical Society is no field for experimenting, but it is to be the germ for everything good which is to come over mankind. With regard to the Social Question, what matters is above all that a wider stream of enlightenment about social necessities shall stream out from it. For you are certainly behaving practically, conforming with life, if you spread these things, but you must also really take trouble to spread them conformably with life, and not remain in a narrow interpretation. I hope that not one of you comes to the strange idea that we are dealing in the old national-economic ideas, by which people learn National-economy. For God's sake don't bring in anything pertaining to "export national-economics" here today, for this, you see, consists of ideas from the oldest lumber-room of all! Do not believe that you are learning to think in a national-economic way if, today, you take practicable concepts into yourselves in a scholastic way, as they are perhaps taught at universities. Do not make any programs which appear to put into practice what I have given in lectures but which, rather, mean nothing more than the terribly-grinning old bourgeois masks! Let us set ourselves on the solid ground of the great demands of our time; let us consider social life before everything in these demands of our time!

I could not but say this before you just now, when we are about to make a journey to Germany and many a task will come to meet me; and though we hope that our absence will this time be much less long than on other occasions, we are yet living in a time when one should really never make plans and projects covering a long time. One can only say people who have found one another as the members of the Anthroposophical Society have done remain together wherever they are, stand in the matter with steadfast courage and inner boldness and stick to their course, whatever the terrible billows of the present time may bring. For the most part, they will not bring anything easy. We shall most likely experience many a thing which will raise the question in us: how should things go further just among us? Stick to your course even when this happens; do what is your part in order to carry something further in the world, and you will be doing what is right.

I could only remain here at this time until this book was completed, for this book is to be of service to the time. Our friends will undertake it here, will take care of its distribution in Switzerland, and I hope for many a reason that I can be here again quite soon to take part in this work. Partly for a reason which is very much misunderstood just here in Switzerland. One can certainly hear from someone on the other side: "but what does the foreigner want just here in Switzerland? He should leave us in peace. Our democracy has lasted for 600 years; it is healthy, it is proof against what is going on outside among the crazy eastern and middle-European peoples."

I have now the conviction that the best could be done today where it could still be brought about from free-will. If such social ideas as are recorded in my book were to blossom in Russia today, this would come to pass because the most external need compelled it, and if the most external need compels it—the same in Middle-Europe, the same in Germany—then the right impulse is no longer there. The right impulse just for these ideas, which will bring social healing to mankind, would be present if they would come to pass out of freedom on a ground of which one can say the Bolshevists have not come to us, we still have something of the old conditions. Oh, if understanding for it were developed to bring forth these ideas from free-will, just on the ground here, before the water runs into the mouths of the people here as well, then Switzerland could be the blossoming land of Europe, for it is equipped for this by its geographical position! It is equipped with a gigantic mission in spite of its small size. But it will only be able to fulfill this mission if it brings to completion, from free-will, what neither the eastern nor the middle states can bring to fulfillment from free-will today—they would have had to take it in hand before now—and what the western states will not do because they have not sufficient disposition to do so. Here there are dispositions, the geographical presuppositions; everything is present here. All that is needed here is good-will towards free human resolve. To this belongs just activity of thinking. To this belongs thought-will.

Thought-will is what the mankind of today most lack. Thought-will develops very well, even geographically, among those men whom souls come because they wish to go into the mountains. (I drew your attention to this yesterday: souls no longer set very much value on race, they go to a geographical situation). Thought-will does not develop in regions such as that in which The Three Gypsies (poem by Lenau) was composed. This is a very beautiful poem, but it is composed in the plain. Man does not need a plain-disposition today; he certainly needs a mountain-disposition. Therefore, much could come out of the Swiss mountains; therefore one would like to have certain foundations here also, a point from which something could proceed. And therefore it seems important to me not to be silent just here but to speak as long as possible of the great needs of the time. And I call especially to our friends here in Switzerland to understand the demand for enlightenment, to take care that the demands of the time pass over into the consciousness just of those who live in this place. The more Swiss heads and Swiss hearts are won just for these social ideas, the better it will be for Europe and for the world. I say this quite particularly to the Swiss. You can, you see, my dear Swiss who are among us, make the foreign thing into a Swiss thing—then it is a Swiss thing! All these distinctions, really have only a passing value.

I could not but say this to you today, and I hope that you have understood me quite aright with regard to these things. I hope that the spirit which should fill and envelop this building may be further maintained as a result of the disposition of our members, and that we may at some time find ourselves together again here, held together by this spirit which, from the beginning forward, was such that it could now live itself out and which cannot be any different, for from the beginning forward it has willed to realize itself in what lies in the demands of our time.

With this I should like to take leave of you for the present. But this place here should have such a spiritual importance that if it should at any time be necessary and if the only way for me to come to work here would be to ride here on a wasted, half-dead nag, I should not shrink from even this. But tasks can come in other places which may delay my return. But in spite of everything, good-bye in our spirit, particularly in the spirit which I have slightly depicted in this last gathering and presented to your hearts.

• 1. 7-13 March 1919: see also The Real Foundation of a League of Nations. Troxler Press, Berne
• 2. see Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth, cycle 32, Lecture 6, p.12

When social questions are discussed from a spiritual scientific point of view, this is not done out of any subjective motive or impulse. Everything is based upon observation of the evolution of humanity and of what the forces underlying that evolution demand of us now and in the immediate future.

To reveal the deeper impulses working at the present time is not a congenial task, for there is little inclination to enter into such matters with any real earnestness. But our age calls for this earnestness wherever the affairs of humanity are concerned, above all for the discarding of prejudices and preconceptions. Today, therefore, I shall put before you certain deeper aspects of matters to which reference has often been made.

Once again it is necessary to survey a rather lengthy period in the life of humanity. As you know, we distinguish the present epoch from other epochs, reckoning that it began in the middle of the fifteenth century A.D. We speak of it as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, distinguishing it from the previous epoch which began in the eighth century B.C. and is called the Greco-Latin epoch after the peoples responsible for its culture. It was preceded by the epoch of Egypto-Chaldean civilization.

When we come to consider the Egypto-Chaldean epoch we find that the records of ordinary history break down. Even with the help of accessible Egyptian and Chaldean lore, external evidence does not carry us very far back in the history of humanity.

But it is not possible to grasp what is of importance for the present time unless we understand the intrinsic characteristics of that third post-Atlantean epoch of culture.

You are certainly aware that in the ordinary history of that ancient time, all civilization, all culture in the then-known world, goes by the name of paganism. Like an oasis, Hebraic culture arises in its midst as a preparation for Christianity. But disregarding for the moment this Jewish culture, which differed so fundamentally from the other forms of pre-Christian civilized life, let us turn our attention to paganism. Its special characteristic may be said to lie in its wisdom, in its deep insight into the things and processes of the world. The knowledge contained in paganism had its source in the ancient Mysteries and although according to modern scholarship it bears a mythical, pictorial character, it must be emphasized that all the imagery, all the pictures which have come down to posterity from this ancient paganism are the fruits of profound insight.

Recalling the many treasures of this super-sensible lore which we have been endeavoring to bring to light, it will be obvious that here we have to do with a primeval wisdom, a wisdom underlying all the thinking, all the perceptions and feelings of those ancient peoples. A kind of echo of this primeval wisdom, a tradition in which it was enshrined, survived here and there in secret societies, actually in a healthy form, until the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth. In the nineteenth century the source ran dry and such vestiges as remain have passed into the hands of isolated groups belonging to certain, nationalities. And what is in the possession of ordinary secret societies today can no longer be regarded as wholesome or as a genuine tradition of the old pagan wisdom.

Now this ancient wisdom has one particular characteristic of which sight must never be lost. It has one characteristic on account of which Judaism, the smaller stream then making preparation for Christianity had to be introduced as a kind of oasis.

If this ancient paganism is rightly understood, it will be found to contain sublime, deeply penetrating wisdom, but no moral impulses for human action. These impulses were not really essential to humanity, for unlike what now passes as human knowledge, human insight, this old pagan wisdom gave one the feeling of being membered into the whole cosmos. People moving about the earth not only felt themselves composed of the substances and forces present around them in earthly life, in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, but they felt that the forces operating, for example, in the movements of the stars and the sun were playing into them. This feeling of being a member of the whole cosmos was not a mere abstraction, for from the Mysteries they received directives based on the laws of the stars for their actions and whole conduct of life. This ancient star-wisdom was in no way akin to the arithmetical astrology sometimes considered valuable today, but it was a wisdom voiced by the initiates in such a way that impulses for individual action and conduct went forth from the Mysteries. Not only did human beings feel safe and secure within the all-prevailing wisdom of the cosmos, but those whom they recognized as the initiates of the Mysteries imparted this wisdom in directives for their actions from morning till evening on given days of the year. Yet, neither Chaldean nor Egyptian wisdom contained a single moral impulse from what had been imparted by the initiates in this way. The moral impulse in its real sense was prepared by Judaism and then further developed in Christianity.

Inevitably the question arises: Why is it that this sublime pagan wisdom, although it contained no moral impulse, was able, for example in ancient Greece, to come to flower in such beauty of art and grandeur of philosophy?

If we were to go much farther back, to a time more than three thousand years before the Christian era, we should find that together with the promptings of wisdom there did come a moral impulse, that the moral principles, the ethics needed by these people of old were contained in this wisdom. But a specific ethos, a specific moral impulse such as came with Christianity was not an integral part of paganism. Why was this? It was because through the millennia directly preceding Christianity, this pagan wisdom was inspired from a place far away in Asia, inspired by a remarkable being who had been incarnated in the distant East in the third millennium before Christ—namely, Lucifer.

To the many things we have learned about the evolution of humanity, this knowledge too must be added: that just as there was the incarnation which culminated in Golgotha, the incarnation of Christ in the man Jesus of Nazareth, there was an actual incarnation of Lucifer in far-off Asia, in the third millennium B.C.And the source of inspiration for much ancient culture was what can only be described as an earthly incarnation of Lucifer in a man of flesh and blood. Even Christianity, even the Mystery of Golgotha as enacted among human beings, was understood at first by the only means then available, namely the old luciferic wisdom. The one-sidedness of the gnosis, for all its amazing profundity, stems from the influence that had spread from this Lucifer incarnation over the whole of the ancient world. The significance of the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be fully grasped without the knowledge that rather less than three thousand years previously, there had been the incarnation of Lucifer.

In order that the luciferic inspiration might be lifted away from its one-sidedness, there came the incarnation of Christ and with it the impulse for the education and development of European civilization and its American offshoot. But since the middle of the fifteenth century, since the impulse for the development of individuality, of personality, has been at work, this phase of evolution has also contained within it certain forces whereby preparation is being made for the incarnation of another super-sensible Being. Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh and an incarnation of Christ in the flesh, so, before only a part of the third millennium of the post-Christian era has elapsed, there will be, in the West, an actual incarnation of Ahriman: Ahriman in the flesh. Humanity on earth cannot escape this incarnation of Ahriman. It will come inevitably. But what matters is that people shall find the right vantage point from which to confront it.

Whenever preparation is being made for incarnations of this character, we must be alert to certain indicative trends in evolution. A being like Ahriman, who will incarnate in the West in time to come, prepares for this incarnation in advance. With a view to his incarnation on the earth, Ahriman guides certain forces in evolution in such a way that they may be of the greatest possible advantage to him. And evil would result were people to live on in a state of drowsy unawareness, unable to recognize certain phenomena in life as preparations for Ahriman's incarnation in the flesh. The right stand can be taken only by recognizing in one or another series of events the preparation that is being made by Ahriman for his earthly existence. And the time has now come for individual human beings to know what tendencies and events around them are machinations of Ahriman, helping him to prepare for his approaching incarnation.

It would undoubtedly be of the greatest benefit to Ahriman if he could succeed in preventing the vast majority of people from perceiving what would make for their true well-being, if the vast majority of people were to regard these preparations for the Ahriman incarnation as progressive and good for evolution. If Ahriman were able to slink into a humanity unaware of his coming, that would gladden him most of all. It is for this reason that the occurrences and trends in which Ahriman is working for his future incarnation must be brought to light.

One of the developments in which Ahriman's impulse is clearly evident is the spread of the belief that the mechanistic, mathematical conceptions inaugurated by Galileo, Copernicus, and others, explain what is happening in the cosmos. That is why anthroposophical spiritual science lays such stress upon the fact that spirit and soul must be discerned in the cosmos, not merely the mathematical, mechanistic laws put forward by Galileo and Copernicus as if the cosmos were some huge machine. It would augur success for Ahriman's temptings if people were to persist in merely calculating the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in studying astrophysics for the sole purpose of ascertaining the material composition of the planets—an achievement of which the modern world is so proud. But woe betide if this Copernicanism is not confronted by the knowledge that the cosmos is permeated by soul and spirit. It is this knowledge that Ahriman, in preparing his earthly incarnation, wants to withhold. He would like to keep people so obtuse that they can grasp only the mathematical aspect of astronomy. Therefore he tempts many people to carry into effect their repugnance to knowledge concerning soul and spirit in the cosmos. That is only one of the forces of corruption poured by Ahriman into human souls. Another means of temptation connected with his incarnation—he also works in cooperation with the luciferic forces—another of his endeavors is to preserve the already widespread attitude that for the public welfare it is sufficient if the economic and material needs of humanity are provided for. Here we come to a point that is not willingly faced in modern life. Official science nowadays contributes nothing to real knowledge of the soul and spirit, for the methods adopted in the orthodox sciences are of value only for apprehending external nature, including the external human constitution. Just think with what contempt average citizens today regard anything that seems idealistic, anything that seems to be a path leading in any way to the spiritual. At heart they are always asking: What is the good of it? How will it help me to acquire this world's goods? They send their sons to a private school, having perhaps been to one themselves; they send them on to a university or institute of advanced studies. But all this is done merely in order to provide the foundations for a career, in other words, to provide the material means of livelihood.

And now think of the consequences of this. What numbers of people there are today who no longer value the spirit for the sake of the spirit or the soul for the sake of the soul! They are out to absorb from cultural life only what is regarded as “useful.” This is a significant and mysterious factor in the life of modern humanity and one that must be lifted into the full light of consciousness. Average citizens, who work assiduously in their offices from morning till evening and then go through the habitual evening routine, will not allow themselves to get mixed up with what they call the “twaddle” to be found in anthroposophy. It seems to them entirely redundant, for they think: that is something one cannot eat! It finally comes to this—although people will not admit it—that in ordinary life nothing in the way of knowledge is considered really useful unless it helps to put food in the mouth!

In this connection people today have succumbed to a strange fallacy. They do not believe that the spirit can be eaten, and yet the very ones who say this, do eat the spirit! Although they may refuse to accept anything spiritual, nevertheless with every morsel that passes through the mouth into the stomach they are devouring the spiritual, but dispatching it along a path other than the path which leads to the real well-being of mankind.

I believe that many Europeans think it is to the credit of their civilization to be able to say: We are not cannibals! But these Europeans and their American affinities are, none the less, devourers of soul and spirit! The soulless devouring of material food leads to the side-tracking of the spirit. It is difficult to say these things today, for in the light of such knowledge just think what would have to be said of a large section of modern culture! To keep people in the state of being devourers of the soul and spirit is one of Ahriman's impulses in preparation for his incarnation. To the extent to which people can be roused into conducting their affairs not for material ends alone and into regarding a free and independent spiritual life, equally with economic life, as an integral part of the social organism—to that same extent Ahriman's incarnation will be awaited with an attitude worthy of humanity.

Another tendency in modern life of benefit to Ahriman in preparing his incarnation is all that is so clearly in evidence in nationalism. Whatever can separate people into groups, whatever can alienate them from mutual understanding the whole world over and drive wedges between them, strengthens Ahriman’s impulse. In reality we should recognize the voice of Ahriman in what is so often proclaimed nowadays as a new ideal: “Freedom of the peoples, even the smallest,” and so forth. But blood relationship has ceased to be the decisive factor and if this outworn notion persists, we shall be playing straight into the hands of Ahriman. His interests are promoted, too, by the fact that people are taken up with the most divergent shades of party opinions, of which the one can be justified as easily as the other. A socialist party program and an anti-socialist program can be supported by arguments of equal validity. And if people fail to realize that this kind of “proof” lies so utterly on the surface that the No and the Yes can both be justified with our modern intelligence—useful as it is for natural science but not for a different kind of knowledge—if people do not realize that this intelligence lies entirely on the surface in spite of serving economic life so effectively, they will continue to apply it to social life and spiritual life irrespectively. One group will prove one thing, another it’s exact opposite, and as both proofs can be shown to be equally logical, hatred and bitterness—of which there is more than enough in the world—will be intensified. These trends too are exploited by Ahriman in preparation for his earthly incarnation.

Again, what will be of particular advantage to him is the short-sighted, narrow conception of the Gospel that is so prevalent today. You know how necessary it has become in our time to deepen understanding of the Gospels through spiritual science. But you also know how widespread is the motion that this is not fitting, that it is reprehensible to bring any real knowledge of the spirit or of the cosmos to bear upon the Gospels; it is said that the Gospels must be taken “in all their simplicity,” just as they stand. I am not going to raise the issue that we no longer possess the true Gospels. The translations are not faithful reproductions of the authentic Gospels, but I do not propose to go into this question now. I shall merely put before you the deeper fact, namely that no true understanding of Christ can be reached by the simple, easy going perusal of the Gospels beloved by most religious denominations and sects today. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and for a few centuries' afterward, a conception of the real Christ was still possible, because accounts handed down by tradition could be understood with the help of the pagan, luciferic wisdom. This wisdom has now disappeared, and what sects and denominations find in the Gospels does not lead people to the real Christ for whom we seek through spiritual science, but to an illusory picture, at most to a sublimated hallucination of Christ.

The Gospels cannot lead to the real Christ unless they are illumined by spiritual science. Failing this illumination, the Gospels as they stand give rise to what is no more than hallucination of Christ's appearance in world history. This becomes very evident in the theology of our time. Why does modern theology so love to speak of the “simple man of Nazareth” and to identify the Christ with Jesus of Nazareth—whom it regards as a man only a little more exalted than other great figures of history? It is because the possibility of finding the real Christ has been lost, and because what people glean from the Gospels leads-to hallucination, to a kind of illusion. An illusory conception of Christ is all that can be` gleaned through the way in which the Gospels are read today—not the reality of Christ. In a certain sense this has actually dawned on the theologians and many of them are now describing Paul's experience on the way to Damascus as a “vision.” They have come to the point of realizing that their way of studying the Gospels can lead only to a vision, to hallucination. I am not saying that this vision is false or untrue, but that it is merely an inner experience, unconnected with the reality of the Christ being. I do not use the word “illusion” with the side-implication of falsity, but I wish only to stress that the Christ Being is here a subjective, inner experience, of the same character as hallucination. If people could be brought to a standstill at this point, not pressing on to the real Christ but contenting themselves with a hallucination of Christ, Ahriman's aims would be immeasurably furthered.

The influence of the Gospels also leads to hallucinations when one Gospel alone is taken as the basis of belief. Truth to tell, this principle has been forestalled by the fact that we have been given four Gospels, representing four different aspects, and it does not do to take each single Gospel word-for-word on its own, when outwardly there are obvious contradictions. To take one single Gospel word-for-word and disregard the other three is actually dangerous. What you find in sects whose adherents swear by the literal content of the Gospel of St. Luke alone or that of St. John alone is an illusory conception arising from a certain dimming of consciousness. With the dimming of consciousness that inevitably occurs when the deeper content of the Gospels is not revealed, people would fall wholly into Ahriman's service, helping in a most effective way to prepare for his incarnation, and adopting toward him the very attitude he desires.

And now another uncomfortable truth for humankind today! Living in the arms of their denominations, people say: “We do not need anthroposophy or anything of the kind; we are content with the Gospels in all their simplicity.” They insist that this is said out of “humility.” In reality, however, it is the greatest arrogance! For it means that such persons, making use of ideas which have been presented to them through their birth and surge out of their blood, are deigning to rule out the deeper treasures of wisdom to be discovered in the Gospels. These “humblest” of human beings are generally the most arrogant of all, especially in the sects and denominations. The point to remember is, however, that the people who do most to prepare for the incarnation of Ahriman are those who constantly preach. “All that is required is to read the Gospels word-for-word-nothing more than that!”

Strange to say, in spite of their radical differences, the two parties play into each other's hands: those whom I called “devourers of soul and spirit” and those who demand the literal, word-for-word reading of the Gospels. Each party plays into the hands of the other, furthering the preparation of Ahriman's incarnation. For if the outlook of the “devourers of soul and spirit” on the one side and that of professed Christians who refuse to enter into the deeper truths of the Gospels on the other were to hold the day, then Ahriman would be able to make all human beings on the earth his own. A good deal of what is spreading in external Christianity today is a preparation for Ahriman's incarnation. And in many things which arrogantly claim to represent true belief, we should recognize the preparation for Ahriman's work.

Words nowadays do not really convey the innermost reality of things. As I have often told you, far too much store is set upon words—for words do not necessarily lead to that reality; nowadays indeed it is rather a case of words separating people from the real nature of things in the world. And this they do most of all when people accept ancient records such as the Gospels with “simple understanding”—as the saying goes. But there is a far truer simplicity in trying to penetrate to the in dwelling spirit of things and to understand the Gospels themselves from the vantage ground of the spirit.

As I told you, Ahriman and Lucifer will always work hand in hand. The only question is which of the two predominates in human consciousness at a particular epoch of time. It was a preeminently luciferic culture that persisted until after the Mystery of Golgotha—a culture inspired by the incarnation of Lucifer in China in the third millennium B.C. Many influences of this incarnation continued to radiate and were still powerful in the early Christian centuries; indeed they are working to this day.

But now that we are facing an incarnation of Ahriman in the third millennium after Christ, Lucifer's tracks are becoming less visible, and Ahriman's activities in such trends as I have indicated are coming into prominence. Ahriman has made a kind of pact with Lucifer, the import of which may be expressed in the following way. Ahriman, speaking to Lucifer, says: “I, Ahriman, find it advantageous to make use of ‘preserving jars.’ To you I will leave people's stomachs, if you will leave it to me to lull them to sleep—that is to say to lull their consciousness to sleep where their stomachs are concerned.”

You must understand what I mean by this. The consciousness of those human beings whom I have called devourers of soul and spirit is in a condition of dimness so far as their stomachs are concerned; for, by not accepting the spiritual into their human nature, they drive straight into the luciferic stream everything they introduce into their stomachs. What people eat and drink without spirituality goes straight to Lucifer!

And what do I mean by “preserving jars?” I mean libraries and institutions of a similar kind, where the various sciences pursued by human beings without really stirring their interest are preserved; these sciences are not really alive in them but are simply preserved in the books on the shelves of libraries. All this knowledge has been separated from human beings. Everywhere there are books, books, books! Themselves students, when they take their doctor's degree, have to write a learned thesis which is then put into as many libraries as possible. When the students want to take up some particular post, again they must write a thesis! In addition to this, people are forever writing, although only a very small proportion of what they write is ever read. Only when some special preparation has to be made do people resort to what is moldering away in libraries. These “preserving jars” of wisdom are a particularly favorable means of furthering Ahriman's aims.

This kind of thing goes on everywhere. It could only be to some purpose if people took a really live interest in it, but they do not, its existence is entirely separate and apart. Just think—if one were so disposed one might well despair—just think, for example, of a lawsuit where a lawyer has to be engaged to plead the case. The time comes when one has to discuss the matter. Documents pile up! The lawyer has them all there in a dossier, but when one starts talking, this lawyer has no inkling of the circumstances. The papers are turned over and over without getting anywhere; the lawyer has no connection at all with the documents. Here is one portfolio full of them, there another. The number of documents grows and grows but as for interest in them—that is simply nonexistent! These professional people make one despair when one has dealings with them; they really know nothing about the matter at issue, have no connection with it, for everything remains in the documents. These are the little preserving jars and the libraries are the big preserving jars of soul and spirit. Everything is preserved in them but human beings do not want to connect themselves with it, to permeate it with their interest. And finally there arises the mood which does not want the head to play any part in a professed view of the world. But after all, the head, or some element of the head, is necessary for any understanding! What people like is to base their religious faith, their view of the world, on the heart alone. The heart must play a part, of course; but the way in which people today often speak of their religion reminds me of a saying much quoted in the district where my youth was spent. It was to this effect: “There is something very special about love. If you buy it, you buy the heart only and the head is thrown in gratis.” This is more or less the attitude which people today like to adopt in their view of life; they would like to take in everything through the heart, as they say, without exerting the head at all. The heart cannot beat without the head, but the heart is well able to take things in if by “heart” here one really means the stomach! And then, what ought to be achieved through the head is supposed to be thrown in gratis, especially where the most important things in life are concerned. It is very important indeed to pay heed to these matters, because in observing them it becomes evident what earnestness must be applied to life at this juncture, how necessary it is to learn from the illusions to which even the Gospels may give rise, and how dearly humankind today loves those illusions.

Truth is beyond the reach of the kind of knowledge for which people aspire today. They feel on secure ground when they can reckon by means of figures, when they can prove things by statistics. With statistics and figures Ahriman has an easy game; it suits him admirably when some erudite scholar points out, for example, that conditions in the Balkans are due to the fact that the population of Macedonia consists of so many Greeks, so many Serbs, so many Bulgarians. Nothing can stand up against figures because of the faith that is reposed in them; and Ahriman is only too ready to exploit figures for his purposes. But later on one begins to see just how “reliable” such figures are! Admittedly, figures are sometimes a means of proof, but if one goes beyond them and investigates more closely, one often notices things like the following. In the statistics of Macedonia, for example, a father may be put down as a Greek, one son as a Serb, another son as a Bulgarian; so the father is counted in with the Greeks, one son with the Serbs, and the other with the Bulgarians. What would really help one to get at the truth, however, would be to discover how it has happened that in the same family one is said to be Greek, one Serbian, and one Bulgarian, and how this affects the figures—rather than simply accepting the figures that people find so satisfactory today. If the father is Greek then naturally the sons are Greek too. Figures are means whereby people are led astray in a direction favorable to Ahriman for his future incarnation in the third millennium A.D.

We shall speak of these things again in the lecture tomorrow.

The lecture yesterday will have shown you that if we are to acquire insight into the nature and evolution of humanity, we must be constantly mindful of the power and influence of Lucifer, of Christ, and of Ahriman.

These influences were, of course, already at work in earlier stages of cosmic evolution, but in spheres where it was unnecessary for people to have clear consciousness of their effects. On the other hand, the very purpose of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch is that human beings should become increasingly conscious of what takes effect through them in earthly existence. The unveiling of many more of the secrets of human life would be desirable at the present time if only there were greater willingness to face things frankly and objectively. For without the knowledge of certain facts of the kind indicated yesterday, it will not be possible for humanity to make progress either in the inner life or in the sphere of social life. Think only of something that is connected with the social problems we have recently been studying. It has been our aim to demonstrate the necessity for separating the spiritual life, and also the political life or life of rights, from the economic life. Our greatest concern is to create conditions throughout the world, or at least—for we cannot do more at present—to convince people of the necessity for conditions which would provide the foundation for a free spiritual life no longer dependent upon the other spheres of social life or as deeply entangled as it is today in the economic life on the one side and in the political life of the state on the other. Civilized humankind must either establish the independence of the spiritual life or face collapse—with the inevitable result of an Asiatic influence taking effect in the future.

Those who still do not recognize the gravity of the present situation in the world are also, in a certain respect, helping to prepare for Ahriman's incarnation. Many things in external life today bear witness to this. The ahrimanic incarnation will be greatly furthered if people fail to establish a free and independent spiritual life and allow it to remain entangled in the economic or political life. For the ahrimanic power has everything to gain by the spiritual life being even more closely intermingled with these other spheres. To the ahrimanic power a free spiritual life would denote a kind of darkness, and people's interest in it, a burning, raging fire. The establishment of this free spiritual life is essential in order that the right attitude, the right relationship, may be adopted to Ahriman's incarnation in the future.

But there is still a strong tendency today to conceal the facts of which we spoke yesterday. The vast majority of people cast a veil over these things; they refuse to see them as they really are and allow themselves to be deceived by words which have no connection with reality. And very often, endeavors to shirk reality are described as “honest” and “well-meaning.”

Take, for example, the recently published letter of Romain Rolland, in which he says that people should not allow themselves to be deluded by erstwhile proclamations of the victorious powers concerning justice and the upholding of political rights. The treatment which Russia is receiving from the Entente has led him to speak in these terms. He says: No matter whether it be on the part of monarchies or republics—what has been said about rights and justice is so much phrase mongering; the issue at bottom is one of power, and of power alone.

Now even the apparent approach to reality still betrays willingness to be deluded, for Romain Rolland is just as deluded as ever; the delusion is not one whit less. It could only be so if such people were to discard phrases and recognize that all these things for which they aspire are meaningless as long as they fail to realize that if the old unified state as such—whether a democracy, a republic or a monarchy—does not become threefold, this is simply a way of helping Ahriman's incarnation. Hence all these things, including this recent letter addressed to the world by Romain Rolland, amount to nothing more than rhetorical harangues. People do not grasp the reality, for reality can be grasped only when the necessity for spiritual knowledge and deep penetration into the nature of things is thoroughly understood.

You are all familiar with the much quoted verse: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.” Do people really take these lines in earnest? They utter them, but so often as mere phrases! No particular emphasis is laid on the tense: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “Word” here must obviously have the meaning it bore in ancient Greece. It is not “word” as understood today—word as mere sound—but it is the inner, spiritual reality. In either case, however, it is the imperfect tense that is employed. The implication therefore is: “In the beginning the Word was; but it is no longer.” Otherwise the sentence would run: “Now is the Word; and the Word is not with God; it was with God, and a God was the Word but is so no longer.” This, moreover, is what stands in the Gospel of St. John; otherwise what would be the meaning of the words immediately following: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” This indicates a further evolution of the Word. “Word” also means anything that human beings can acquire in the way of intellectual wisdom through their efforts and through their intelligence. But it must be quite clear to us that what “word” denotes here is not really the goal for which humanity must strive at the present time or in the immediate future. To express what is now the goal, we should have to say: “Let human beings seek for the Spirit that reveals itself in the Word; for the Spirit is with God, and the Spirit is a God.” Humankind must press on from the word to the spirit, to perception and knowledge of the spirit.

When I remind you of these first verses of the Gospel of St. John, you will realize what little inclination there is today to take such things in earnest and to surmount the arbitrary interpretations so often accepted in matters of the greatest moment. Human intelligence itself must be quickened and illumined by what is revealed in spiritual vision—not that actual seership is essential; what matters is that the fruits of spiritual vision shall be understood. I have repeatedly emphasized that today it is not the seer alone who can apprehend the truth of clairvoyant experience; this apprehension is within the power of everyone at the present time, because the spiritual capacities of human beings are sufficiently mature if they will but resolve to exercise them and are not too indolent to do so. But if the level befitting humanity is to be achieved, such things as were mentioned in the lecture yesterday must be taken in deep earnestness! I used a trivial example to show you how easy it is to be deluded by figures and numbers. Is there not a great deal of superstition where numbers are concerned? What can in some way be counted is accepted in science. Natural science loves to weigh, to compute, and social science loves statistics—again a matter of computation and reckoning. It will be difficult indeed for people to bring themselves to admit that all knowledge of the external world acquired through measure and number is so much delusion.

To measure—what does it mean, in reality? It means to compare something with a given dimension, be it length or volume. I can measure a line if I compare it with a line twice, three times, four times, etc., smaller:

In such measurements, no matter whether of lengths or surfaces or weights, the qualitative element is entirely lacking. The number three always remains the same, whether one is counting sheep, human beings, or politicians.

It is not a matter of the qualitative, but only of the quantum, the quantitative. The essential principle of volume and number is that the qualitative is left out of account. But for that very reason, all knowledge derived from the principles of volume and measure is illusion; and the fact which must be taken in all seriousness is that the moment we enter the world that can be weighed and measured, the world of space and time, we enter a world of illusion, a world that is nothing but a fata morgana as long as we take it to be reality. It is the ideal of present-day thinking to experience in connection with all the things of the external world of space and time, their spatial and temporal significance; whereas, in truth, what things signify in space and time is their external aspect only, and we must transcend space and time, penetrating to much deeper levels, if we are to reach the innermost truth, the innermost being of things. And so a future must come when people will be able to say: “Yes, with my intelligence I can apprehend the external world in the way that is the ideal of natural science. But the vista thus presented to me is wholly ahrimanic.” This does not mean that natural science is to be ignored or put aside; it is a matter of realizing that this natural science leads only to the ahrimanic illusion. Why, then, must people have natural science, in spite of the fact that it leads only to illusion? It is because in earth existence they are already on the descending curve of evolution. Of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin epoch, it may be said that with respect to knowledge, humanity was, relatively speaking, at the zenith. But now, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, human beings are on the path of decline, they are a being growing physically weaker, and to perceive the world in the way the Greeks perceived it would be too much for their strength.

That is something we are not told in history! Just imagine what modern historians would have to say about it—those worthy historians who describe Greece as if they were describing some region of their own time because they do not know that the Greeks looked out into nature with different eyes, listened with different ears from those of modern people. These historians do not tell us that modern human beings would suffer from constant headache or migraine if they were to see and hear in the outer world all that the Greeks saw and heard. The Greeks lived with infinitely greater intensity in the world of the senses. Our own apprehension of this world has already weakened. To be able to bear it, a fata morgana has to be and is presented to us. And not only what we perceive with the senses but on account of our scientific conceptions we “dream” about the external world—that, most emphatically of all, is a fata morgana. The greatest dreamers where the external world is concerned are precisely those who pride themselves on being realistic in their thinking. Darwin and John Stuart Mill are fundamentally dreamers. The dreamers are the very people who claim to be thoroughgoing realists.

But neither must we give ourselves up entirely to our own inner life and impulses. From the way things have developed in the movement represented by the “Theosophical Society,” many of you will have realized that cultivation of the inner life alone, as attempted by numbers of people today, does not lead to the goal befitting humanity in the present age. For the all too prevalent tendency is to make no free resolve to transcend ordinary life and attain higher vision but rather to bring into prominence that in us which is not free. All kinds of hallucinatory tendencies, all kinds of faculties fraught with illusion come into play.

It should be realized that just as external science becomes ahrimanic, the higher development of our inner nature becomes luciferic if we give ourselves up to mystical experiences. The luciferic tendency wakens and becomes especially powerful in everyone who, without the self-training described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, sets about any mystical deepening of the impulses already inherent in their nature. The luciferic tendency shows itself in everyone who begins to brood over experiences of their inner life, and it is extremely powerful in present-day humanity. It takes effect in egoism of which most people are entirely unaware. One comes across so many today who are quite satisfied when they can say of something they have done that they have no cause for self-reproach, that they did it to the best of their knowledge and according to their conscience. That is an entirely luciferic attitude. For in what we do in life the point is not whether or not we have cause to reproach ourselves; what really matters is that we shall take things objectively, with complete detachment, and in accordance with the course of objective facts. And the majority of people today make no effort to achieve this objective understanding or to acquire knowledge of what is necessary for world evolution.

Therefore spiritual science must emphasize the following: That Ahriman is actually preparing for his incarnation; where we can recognize how he is preparing for it; and with what attitude it must be confronted. In such questions the point is not to say: We do this or that in order that we may have no cause for self-reproach—but to learn to recognize the objective facts. We must come to know what is at work in the world, and act accordingly—for the world's sake.

It all amounts to this, that modern people only speak truly of themselves when they say that they hover perpetually between two extremes: between the ahrimanic on the one side, where they are presented with an outer delusion, a fata morgana, and, on the other, the luciferic element within them which induces the tendency to illusions, hallucinations and the like. The ahrimanic tendencies in people today live themselves out in science, the luciferic tendencies, in religion, while in art they swing between the one extreme and the other. In recent times the tendencies of some artists have been more luciferic—they are the expressionists; the tendencies of the others have been more ahrimanic—they are the impressionists. And then, vacillating between all this, there are the people who want to be neither the one nor the other, who do not rightly assess either the luciferic or the ahrimanic but want to avoid both. “Ahriman—no!—that I must not, will not do, for it would take me into the realm of the ahrimanic; that I must not, will not do, for it would take me into the realm of the luciferic!” They want to be virtuous, avoiding both the ahrimanic and the luciferic.

But the truth of the matter is that Lucifer and Ahriman must be regarded as two scales of a balance and it is we who must hold the beam in equipoise.

And how can we train ourselves to do this? By permeating what takes ahrimanic form within us with a strongly luciferic element. What is it that arises in modern people in an Ahrimanic form? It is his knowledge of the outer world. There is nothing more ahrimanic than this knowledge of the material world, for it is sheer illusion. Nevertheless if the fata morgana that arises out of chemistry, out of physics, out of astronomy and the like can fill us with fiery enthusiasm and interest, then through our interest—which is itself luciferic—we can wrest from Ahriman what is his own.

That, however, is just what human beings have no desire to do; they find it irksome. And many people who flee from external, materialistic knowledge are misconceiving their task and preparing the best possible incarnation for Ahriman in earth existence. Again, what wells up in our inmost being today is very strongly luciferic. How can we train ourselves rightly in this direction? By diving into it with our ahrimanic nature, that is to say, by trying to avoid all illusions about our own inner life and impulses and observing ourselves just as we observe the outer world. Modern people must realize how urgent it is to educate themselves in this way. Anyone who has an observant eye in these matters will often come across circumstances of which the following is an example.

A man tells someone how indignant he is with countless human beings. He describes minutely how this or that in a, in b, in c, and so on, angers him. He has not an inkling that he is simply talking about his own characteristics. This peculiarity in human beings was never so widespread as it is today. And those who believe they are free of it, are the greatest culprits. The essential is that people should approach their own inner nature with ahrimanic cold-bloodedness and dispassion. Their inner nature is still fiery enough even when cooled down in this way! There is no need to fear that it will be overcooled.

If the right stand is to be taken to Ahriman's future incarnation, people must become more objective where their own impulses are concerned, and far, far more subjective where the external world is concerned—not by introducing pictures of fantasy but by bringing interest, alert attention, and devotion to the things of immediate life.

When people find one thing or another in outer life tedious, possibly because of the education they have received or because of other circumstances, the path which Ahriman wants to take for the benefit of his incarnation is greatly smoothed. Tedium is so widespread nowadays! I have known numbers of people who find it irksome to acquaint themselves for example with banking procedure, or the stock exchange, or single or double entry bookkeeping. But that is never the right attitude. It simply means that the point has not been discovered where a thing burns with interest. Once this point is reached, even a dry cashbook can become just as interesting as Schiller's Maid of Orleans, or Shakespeare's Hamlet, or anything else—even Raphael's Sistine Madonna. It is only a question of finding the point at which every single thing in life becomes interesting.

What I have just said may make you think that all these matters are very paradoxical. But in reality they are not. It is we who are paradoxical in our relationship to truth. What we must realize—and this is a dire necessity today—is that we, not the world, are at fault. Nothing does more to prepare the path for Ahriman's incarnation than to find this or that tedious, to consider oneself superior to one thing or another and refuse to enter into it. Again it is the same question of finding the point where everything is of interest. It is never a matter of a subjective rejection or acceptance of things, but of an objective recognition of the extent to which things are either luciferic or ahrimanic, with the result that the scales are overweighted on the one side or the other.

To be interested in something does not mean that one considers it justifiable. It means simply that one develops an inner energy to get to grips with it and steer it into the right channel.

As some of you may know—it is a long time ago now—a number of friends bought themselves books on mathematics. A kind of “sporting spirit” had crept into them! They bought the works of Lubsen [Heinrich Borchert Lubsen (1801-64).] but it was not long before most of the volumes found their way to library shelves and the mathematical knowledge was not much in evidence! This, of course, is not meant as a hint to tackle the matter again—I am making no such suggestion. But to come to grips with something in which; to begin with, one is not interested at all, in order that .a new understanding of world existence may arise—that is of untold significance. For such things as I want to bring home to you in these lectures—how Lucifer and Ahriman intervene in the evolution of humankind side by side with the Christ impulse—these things must be taken in all earnestness and their consequences rightly assessed.

Had there been no luciferic wisdom, no understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could have been acquired through the gnosis in the early centuries of Christendom. Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha diminished with the fading of the luciferic wisdom. And where is there any evidence today of such understanding? The fact that understanding cannot be found through external, ahrimanic science is perceived by those who to some extent recognize its characteristics. Take, for example, a man like Cardinal Newman—a very significant figure in the sphere of religion during the second half of the nineteenth century. At his investiture as Cardinal in Rome, he declared that he could see no salvation for the religious development of humankind other than a new revelation! [See his speech in Rome, May 12, 1879, when he had been raised to the rank of Cardinal. “... Hitherto the civil power has been Christian. Even in countries separated from the Church, as in my own, the dictum was in force, when I was young, that ‘Christianity was the law of the land.’ Now, everywhere that goodly framework of society, which is the creation of Christianity, is throwing off Christianity. The dictum to which I have referred, with a hundred others which followed upon it, is gone, or is going everywhere; and by the end of the century, unless the Almighty interferes, it will be forgotten.” (The Life of John Henry Newman, by Wilfrid Ward, Vol. 2, p. 460.)] But there it remained. He himself showed no special inclination to receive anything of the new spiritual life that can now stream into humanity out of the spiritual worlds. What he said remained in the sphere of abstraction.

In very truth humanity needs a new revelation. Of this there is evidence on all sides. There have been discussions recently about the deterioration in morals and in the general attitude toward morality during the last four or five years. The conclusion reached is that denominational religious instruction must be introduced more intensively into the schools. But it cannot be emphasized often enough that this instruction was already being given and the times are supposed to have come under its influence. If the old denominational instruction is again to be introduced we shall simply be beginning the whole process over again. In a short time we shall be back where we were in 1914. It is in the highest degree important to realize that in the subconsciousness of human beings there are longings quite different in character from what comes to expression on the surface.

When we founded the Waldorf School in Stuttgart earlier this year, we were obliged to arrange for the religious instruction to be divided among the various clergy. A particular hour is devoted to religious instruction, which is given by a Catholic priest for the Catholic children and by an Evangelical pastor for the Evangelicals. I shall not speak of the difficulties that came from the side of the priests—that is a chapter by itself. What I do want to say, however, is that an immediate desire was expressed for religious teaching apart from any denomination. At first I thought that the attendance would be insignificant in comparison with the numbers attending the denominational instruction. But in spite of the fact that soon there will not be a single pulpit in Stuttgart from which invectives are not poured on Anthroposophy, a large number of children—five times as many as we expected—have asked for a kind of anthroposophical instruction in religion, and the class has had to be divided into two. Subjectively this may not be altogether welcome, for it may prove to be a rod for our own backs. But of that I do not want to speak. I want only to show that there is a longing for progress in human beings but that they are asleep and do not perceive that forces are keeping these longings in subjection. And moreover the courage to bring these longings to the surface is very largely lacking.

Just think what the effect could be of knowledge such as that of the future incarnation of Ahriman, who is preparing for it by means I have been describing both yesterday and today. It is essential to inform ourselves objectively about these things in order that we may take the right stand toward what is going on around us in the way of preparation for the Ahriman incarnation. Only if you apply deep and mature reflection to what has been said in these lectures about the ahrimanic currents will you be able to apprehend the gravity of the present situation.

The phase of evolution beginning in our own time has a very special character. The same may, of course, be said of each epoch but in every case it is a matter of defining the particular characteristics. The present phase of evolution may be characterized in a general way by saying that all the experiences confronting humankind in the physical world during the earth's further existence will represent a decline, a retrogression. The time when human progress was made possible through the constant refinement of the physical forces is already over. In the future, too, humankind will progress, but only through spiritual development, through development on a higher level than that of the processes of the physical plane. People who rely entirely on the processes of the physical plane will find in them no source of satisfaction. An indication given in spiritual science a long time ago, in the lecture course on the Apocalypse,¹ namely that we are heading for the “War of All against All,” must from now onward be grasped in all its significance and gravity; its implications must not remain in the realm of theory but also come to expression in the actions, the whole behavior of human beings.

The fact that—to use a colloquialism—people in the future are not going to get much fun out of developments on the physical plane will bring home to them that further evolution must proceed from spiritual forces.

This can be understood only by surveying a lengthy period of evolution and applying what is discovered to experiences that will become more and more general in the future. The trend of forces that will manifest in the well-nigh rhythmical onset of war and destruction—processes of which the present catastrophe is but the beginning—will become only too evident. It is childish to believe that anything connected with this war can bring about a permanent era of peace for humanity on the physical plane. That will not be so. What must come about on the earth is spiritual development. Its direction and purport will be clear to us if, after surveying a comparatively lengthy epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, we bear in mind something of the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha and then try to envisage the impulse of that event working in the future evolution of humankind.

We have studied the Mystery of Golgotha from many different points of view and will do so again today by characterizing, very briefly, the civilization which preceded it—let us say as far back as the third millennium B.C.—and then continued for a time as pagan culture in the period of Christian development itself. Within this pagan culture, the utterly different Hebraic-Jewish culture took root, having Christianity as its offspring.

The nature of pagan culture can best be understood if we realize that it was the outcome of knowledge, vision and action born of forces much wider in range than those belonging to present earthly existence. It was actually through Hebraic culture that the moral element was first inculcated into humanity. In paganism the moral element did not occupy a place separate and apart; this pagan culture was such that people felt themselves members of the whole cosmos.

This is something we must particularly bear in mind. Human beings living on earth within the old pagan world felt themselves membered into the whole cosmos. They felt how the forces at work in the movements of the stars extend into their own action, or, better said, into the forces taking effect in their actions. What later passed for astrology, and does so still, is but a reflection—and a very misleading one at that—of the ancient wisdom gleaned from contemplation of the stars in their courses and then used as the basis for precepts governing human action.

These ancient civilizations can be understood only if light is thrown by spiritual science upon human evolution in its outer aspect some four or five thousand years before Christ.

We are apt to speak in rather a matter-of-fact way of the second or the first post-Atlantean epochs, but we err if we picture human existence on the earth in the fifth, sixth, or seventh millennia B.C. as having been similar to our present existence. It is quite correct that people living on the earth in those ancient times had a kind of instinctive soul life, in a certain respect more akin to the soul life of animals than to that of present-day human beings. But it is a very one-sided conception of human life to say that in those ancient times people were more like animals. In tenor of soul, the human being then moving about the earth was, it is true, more like the animal; but those human-animal bodies were used by beings of soul and spirit who felt themselves members of the super-sensible worlds, above all of the cosmic worlds. And provided we go back far enough, say to the fifth pre-Christian millennium, it may be said that people made use of animal bodies as instruments rather than feeling themselves within those bodies. To characterize these people accurately, one would have to say that when they were awake, they moved about with an instinctive life of soul like that of animals, but into this instinctive life of soul there shone something like dreams from their sleeping state, waking dreams. And in these waking dreams they perceived how they had descended, to use animal bodies merely as instruments. This inner, fundamental tenor of the human soul then came to expression as a religious rite, in the Mithras cult with its main symbol of the God Mithras riding on a bull, above him the starry heavens to which he belongs, and below him the earth to which the bull belongs. This symbol was not, strictly speaking, a symbol to these people of old; it was a vision of reality. People's whole tenor of soul made them say to themselves: When I am outside my body at night I belong to the forces of the cosmos, of the starry heavens; when I wake in the morning I make use of animal instincts in an animal body.

Then human evolution passed, figuratively speaking, into a period of twilight. A certain dimness, a certain lethargy, spread over the life of humanity; the cosmic dreams receded and instinct gained the upper hand.

The attitude of soul formerly prevailing in human beings was preserved through the Mysteries, mainly through the Asiatic Mysteries. But in the fourth millennium B.C. and until the beginning of the third, humanity in general—when uninfluenced by the Mystery wisdom—lived an existence pervaded by a more or less dim, twilight consciousness. In Asia and the then-known world, it may be said that during the fourth and at the beginning of the third millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, people's life of soul was dim and instinctive. But the Mysteries were there, into which, through the powerful rites and ceremonies, the spiritual worlds were able to penetrate. And it was from these centers that human beings received illumination.

At the beginning of the third millennium a momentous event took place. The root cause of this dim, more instinctive life may be characterized by saying that as beings of spirit and soul, people were still unable at that time to make use of the human organs of intellect. These organs were already within them, they had taken shape in their physical constitution, but the being of spirit and soul could not make use of them. Thus human beings could not acquire knowledge through their own thinking, through their own powers of intellectual discernment. They were dependent upon what was imparted to them from the Mysteries. And then, about the beginning of the third millennium, a momentous event took place in the east of Asia.

A child of a distinguished Asiatic family of the time was allowed to grow up in the precincts of the Mystery ceremonies. Circumstances were such that this child was actually permitted to take part in the ceremonies, undoubtedly because the priests conducting the rites in the Mysteries felt it as an inspiration that such a child must be allowed to participate. And when the being incarnate in that child had reached the age of about forty—approximately that age—something very remarkable came to light. It became evident—and there is no doubt at all that the priests of the Mysteries had foreseen the event prophetically—it became evident that this man who had been allowed to grow up in the precincts of one of the Mystery centers in East Asia, began suddenly, at the age of about forty, to grasp through the faculty of human intellect itself what had formerly come into the Mysteries through revelation, and only through revelation. He was as it were the first to make use of the organs of human intellect, but still in association with the Mysteries.

Translating into terms of our present language how the priests of the Mysteries spoke of this matter, we must say: In this man, Lucifer himself was incarnated—no more and no less than that! It is a significant, momentous fact that in the third millennium before Christ an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh actually took place in the east of Asia. And from this incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh—for this being became a teacher—there went forth what is described as the pre-Christian, pagan culture which still survived in the gnosis of the earliest Christian centuries.

It would be wrong to pass derogatory judgment on this Lucifer culture. For all the beauty produced by Greek civilization, even the insight that is still alive in ancient Greek philosophy and in the tragedies of Aeschylus would have been impossible without this Lucifer incarnation.

The influence of the Lucifer incarnation was still powerful in the south of Europe, in the north of Africa, and in Asia Minor during the first centuries of Christendom. And when the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place on earth, it was essentially the luciferic wisdom through which it could be understood. The gnosis, which set about the task of grasping the import of the Mystery of Golgotha, was impregnated through and through with luciferic wisdom. It must therefore be emphasized, firstly, that at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. there was a Chinese incarnation of Lucifer; at the beginning of our own era the incarnation of Christ took place. And to begin with, the significance of the incarnation of Christ was grasped because the power of the old Lucifer incarnation still survived. This power did not actually fade from the human faculty of comprehension until the fourth century A.D.; and even then, it had its aftermath, its ramifications.

To these two incarnations, the Lucifer incarnation in ancient times and the incarnation of the Christ which gives the earth its meaning, a third incarnation will be added in a future not so very far distant. And the events of the present time are already moving in such a way as to prepare for it.

Of the incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third millennium B.C., we must say: through Lucifer, human beings have acquired the faculty of using the organs of their intellect, of their power of intellectual discernment. It was Lucifer himself, in a human body, who was the first to grasp through the power of intellect what formerly could be imparted to humanity only through revelation, namely, the content of the Mysteries.

What is now in preparation and will quite definitely come to pass on earth in a none-too-distant future is an actual incarnation of Ahriman.

As you know, since the middle of the fifteenth century we have been living in an era in which it behooves humankind to come more and more into possession of the full power of consciousness. It is of the very greatest importance that people should approach the coming incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness of this event. The incarnation of Lucifer could be recognized only by the prophetic insight of the priests of the Mysteries. People were also very unconscious of what the incarnation of Christ and the event of Golgotha really signified. But they must live on toward the incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness amid the shattering events which will occur on the physical plane. Amid the perpetual stresses of war and other tribulations of the immediate future, the human mind will become very inventive in the domain of physical life. And through this very growth of inventiveness in physical life—which cannot be averted in any way or by any means—the bodily existence of a human individuality in whom Ahriman can incarnate will become possible and inevitable.

From the spiritual world this Ahrimanic power is preparing for incarnation on the earth, endeavoring in every conceivable way to make such preparation that the incarnation of Ahriman in human form may be able to mislead and corrupt humankind on earth to the uttermost. A task of humankind during the next phase of civilization will be to live toward the incarnation of Ahriman with such alert consciousness that this incarnation can actually serve to promote a higher, spiritual development, inasmuch as through Ahriman himself humanity will become aware of what can, or shall we say, can not be achieved by physical life alone. But people must go forward with full consciousness toward this incarnation of Ahriman and become more and more alert in every domain, in order to recognize with greater and greater clarity those trends in life which are leading toward this Ahrimanic incarnation. People must learn from spiritual science to find the key to life and so be able to recognize and learn to control the currents leading toward the incarnation of Ahriman. It must be realized that Ahriman will live among people on the earth, but that in confronting him people will themselves determine what they may learn from him, what they may receive from him. This, however, they will not be able to do unless, from now onward, they take control of certain spiritual and also unspiritual currents which otherwise are used by Ahriman for the purpose of leaving humankind as deeply unconscious as possible of his coming; then, one day, he will be able to appear on earth and overwhelm people tempting and luring them to repudiate earth evolution, thus preventing it from reaching its goal. To understand the whole process of which I have been speaking, it is essential to recognize the character of certain currents and influences—spiritual or the reverse.

Do you not see the continually growing number of people at the present time who do not want any science of the spirit, any knowledge of the spiritual? Do you not see how numerous are the people to whom the old forces of religion no longer give any inner stimulus? Whether they go to church or not is a matter of complete indifference to large numbers of human beings nowadays. The old religious impulses mean nothing to them. But neither will they bring themselves to give a thought to what can stream into our civilization as new spiritual life. They resist it, reject it, regard it as folly, as something inconvenient; they will not allow themselves to have anything to do with it. But, you see, human beings as we live on earth are veritably a unity. Our spiritual nature cannot be separated from our physical nature; both work together as a unity between birth and death. And even if human beings do not receive the spiritual through their faculties of soul, the spiritual takes effect, nevertheless. Since the last third of the nineteenth century the spiritual has been streaming around us; it is streaming into earthly evolution. The spiritual is there in very truth—only people are not willing to receive it.

But even if they do not accept the spiritual, it is there! And what becomes of it? Paradoxical as it may seem—for much that is true seems paradoxical to the modern mind—in those people who refuse the spiritual and like eating and drinking best of all things in life, the spiritual streams, unconsciously to them, into the processes of eating and digestion. This is the secret of that march into materialism which began about the year 1840, or rather was then in active preparation. Those who do not receive the spiritual through their souls receive it today nonetheless: in eating and drinking they eat and drink the spirit. They are “eaters” of the soul and spirit. And in this way the spirit that is streaming into earth evolution passes over into the luciferic element, is conveyed to Lucifer. Thereby the luciferic power, which can then be of help to the ahrimanic power for its later incarnation, is constantly strengthened. This must come to the knowledge of those who admit the fact that in the future people will either receive spiritual knowledge consciously or consume the spirit unconsciously, thereby delivering it into the hands of the luciferic powers.

This stream of spirit-and-soul-consumption is particularly encouraged by Ahriman because in this way he can lull humankind into greater and greater drowsiness, so that then, through his incarnation, he will be able to come among people and fall upon them unawares because they do not confront him consciously.

But Ahriman can also make direct preparation for his incarnation, and he does so. Certainly, people of our day also have a spiritual life, but it is purely intellectual, unconnected with the spiritual world. This purely intellectual life is becoming more and more widespread; at first it took effect mainly in the sciences, but now it is leading to mischiefs of every kind in social life as well. What is the essential character of this intellectual life?

This intellectual life has very little to do with the true interests of human beings! I ask you: how many teachers do you not see today, passing in and out of higher and lower educational institutions without bringing any inner enthusiasm to their science but pursuing it merely as a means of livelihood? In such cases the interest of the soul is not directly linked with the actual pursuit. The same thing happens even at school. Think how much is learned at the various stages of life without any real enthusiasm or interest, how external the intellectual life is becoming for many people who devote themselves to it! And how many there are today who are forced to produce a mass of intellectual material which is then preserved in libraries and, as spiritual life, is not truly alive!

Everything that is developing as intellectual life without being suffused by warmth of soul, without being quickened by enthusiasm, directly furthers the incarnation of Ahriman in a way that is after his own heart. It lulls people to sleep in the way I have described, so that its results are advantageous to Ahriman.

There are numerous other currents in the spiritual or unspiritual life which Ahriman can turn to his advantage. You have lately heard—and you are still hearing it—that national states, national empires must be founded. A great deal is said about “freedom of the individual peoples.” But the time for founding empires based on relationships of blood and race is past and over in the evolution of mankind. [Quote 1] If an appeal is made today to national, racial, and similar relationships, to relationships arising out of the intellect and not out of the spirit, then disharmony among humankind will be intensified. And it is this disharmony among humankind which the ahrimanic power can put to special use. Chauvinism, perverted patriotism in every form—this is the material from which Ahriman will build just what he needs.

But there are other things as well. Everywhere today we see parties being formed for one object or another. People nowadays have no discernment, nor do they desire to have it where party opinions and party programs are concerned. With intellectual ingenuity, proof can be furnished in support of the most radically opposing theories. Very clever arguments can be used to prove the soundness of Leninism—but the same applies to directly contrary principles and also to what lies between the two extremes. An excellent case can be made out for every party program: but the one who establishes the validity of the opposite program is equally right. The intellectualism prevailing among people today is not capable of demonstrating the inner potentialities and values of anything. It can furnish proofs; but what is intellectually proved should not be regarded as of real value or efficacy in life. People oppose one another in parties because the soundness of every party opinion—at any rate the main party opinions—can be proved with equal justification. Our intellect remains at the surface layer of understanding and does not penetrate to the deeper layer where the truth actually lies. This, too, must be fundamentally and thoroughly understood.

People today prefer to let their intellect remain on the surface and not to penetrate with deeper forces to those levels where the essential nature of things is disclosed. It is only necessary to look around a little, for even where it takes its most external form, life often reveals the pitfalls of current predilections. People love numbers and figures in science, but they also love figures in the social sphere as well. Social science consists almost entirely of statistics. And from statistics, that is to say from figures, the weightiest conclusions are reached. Well, with figures too, anything can be proved and anything believed; for figures are not a means whereby the essential reality of things can be proved—they are simply a means of deception! Whenever one fails to look beyond figures to the qualitative, they can be utterly deceptive.

The following is an obvious example. There is, or at least there used to be, a great deal of argument about the nationality of the Macedonians. In the political life of the Balkan peninsula, much depended upon the statistics compiled there. The figures are of just as much value as those contained in other statistics. Whether statistics are compiled of wheat and rye production, or of the numbers of Greek, Serbian, or Bulgarian nationals in Macedonia—in regard to what can be proved by these means it is all the same. From the figures quoted for the Greeks, for the Bulgarians, for the Serbians, very plausible conclusions can be drawn. But one can also have an eye for the qualitative element, and then one often finds it recorded that the father was Greek, one son was Bulgarian, another was Serbian. What is at the back of it you can puzzle out for yourselves! These statistics are taken as authoritative, whereas in this case they were compiled solely in support of party aims. It stands to reason that if the father is really a Greek, the two sons are also Greeks. But the procedure adopted there is just an example of many other things that are done with figures. Ahriman can achieve a great deal through figures and numbers used in this way as evidence of proof.

A further means of which Ahriman can avail himself is again one that will seem paradoxical. As you know, we have been concerned in our movement to study the Gospels in the light of spiritual science. But these deeper interpretations of the Gospels, which are becoming more and more necessary in our time, are rejected on all sides, just as spiritual science as a whole is rejected.

The people who often profess humility in these matters—and they are insistent about it—are actually the most arrogant of all. More and more generally it is being said that people should steep themselves in the very simplicity of the Gospels and not attempt to understand the Mystery of Golgotha by entering into the complexities of spiritual science. Those who feign unpretentiousness in their study of the Gospels are the most arrogant of all, for they despise the honest search for knowledge demanded in spiritual science. So arrogant are they that they believe the highest revelations of the spiritual world can be garnered without effort, simply by browsing on the simplicity of the Gospels. What claims to be “humble” or “simple” today is often supreme arrogance. In sects, in religious confessions—it is there that the most arrogant people are to be found:

It must be remembered that the Gospels came into existence at a time when the luciferic wisdom still survived. In the first centuries of Christendom, people's understanding of the Gospels was quite different from what it came to be in later times. Today, people who cannot deepen their minds through spiritual science merely pretend to understand the Gospels. In reality they have no idea even of the original meaning of the words; for the translations that have been made into the different languages are not faithful reproductions of the Gospels; often they are scarcely even reminiscent of the original meaning of the words in which the Gospels were composed.

Real understanding of the intervention of the Christ being in earthly evolution is possible today only through spiritual science. Those who want to study, or actually do study the Gospels “without pretension”—as the saying goes—cannot come to any inner realization of the Christ being as he truly is, but only to an illusory picture, or, at very most, a vision or hallucination of the Christ being. No real connection with the Christ impulse can be achieved today merely through reading the Gospels—but only a hallucinatory picture of the Christ. Hence the prevalence of the theological view that the Christ was not present in the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was simply an historical figure like Socrates or Plato or others, although possibly more exalted. The “simple man of Nazareth” is an ideal even to the theologians. And very few of them indeed can make anything of an event like Paul's vision at the gate of Damascus, because without the deepened knowledge yielded by spiritual science the Gospels can give rise only to a hallucination of the Christ, not to vision of the real Christ. And so Paul's vision at Damascus is also regarded as a hallucination.

Deeper understanding of the Gospels in the light of spiritual science is essential today, for the apathy that takes hold of people who are content to live merely within the arms of the denominations will be used to the utmost by Ahriman in order to achieve his goal—which is that his incarnation shall catch people unawares. And those who believe they are being most truly Christian by rejecting any development of the conception of the Christ mystery, are, in their arrogance, the ones who do most to promote Ahriman's aims. The denominations and sects are positively spheres of encouragement, breeding-grounds for Ahriman. It is futile to gloss these things over with illusions. Just as the materialistic attitude, rejecting the spiritual altogether and contending that the human being is a product of what people eat and drink, furthers Ahriman's aims, so are these aims furthered by the stubborn rejection of everything spiritual and adherence to the literal, “simple” conception of the Gospels.

You see, a barrier which prevents the single Gospels from unduly circumscribing the human mind has been erected through the fact that the event of Golgotha is described in the Gospels from four—seemingly contradictory—sides. Only a little reflection will show that this is a protection from too literal a conception. In sects, however, where one Gospel only is taken as the basis of the teaching—and such sects are quite numerous—pitfalls, stupefaction, and hallucination are generated. In their day, the Gospels were given as a necessary counterweight to the luciferic gnosis; but if no attempt is made to develop understanding of their content, the aims of Ahriman are furthered, not the progress of humankind. In the absolute sense, nothing is good in itself, but is always good or bad according to the use to which it is put. The best can be the worst if wrongly used. Sublime though they are, the Gospels can also have the opposite effect if people are too lazy to search for a deeper understanding based on spiritual science.

Hence there is a great deal in the spiritual and unspiritual currents of the present time of which people should be acutely aware, and determine their attitude of soul accordingly. Upon the ability and willingness to penetrate to the roots of such matters will depend the effect which the incarnation of Ahriman can have upon human beings, whether this incarnation will lead them to prevent the earth from reaching its goal, or bring home to them the very limited significance of intellectual, unspiritual life. If people rightly take in hand the currents leading toward Ahriman, then simply through his incarnation in earthly life they will recognize the ahrimanic influence on the one side, and on the other its polar opposite—the luciferic influence. And then the very contrast between the ahrimanic and the luciferic will enable them to perceive the third reality. Human beings must consciously wrestle through to an understanding of this trinity of the Christian impulse, the ahrimanic and the luciferic influences; for without this consciousness they will not be able to go forward into the future with the prospect of achieving the goal of earth existence.

Spiritual science must be taken in deep earnestness, for only so can it be rightly understood. It is not the outcome of any sectarian whim but something that has proceeded from the fundamental needs of human evolution. Those who recognize these needs cannot choose between whether they will or will not endeavor to foster spiritual science. On the contrary they will say to themselves: The whole physical and spiritual life of human beings must be illumined and pervaded by the conceptions of spiritual science!

Just as once in the East there was a Lucifer incarnation, and then, at the midpoint, as it were, of world evolution, the incarnation of Christ, so in the West there will be an incarnation of Ahriman.

This ahrimanic incarnation cannot be averted; it is inevitable, for humanity must confront Ahriman face to face. He will be the individuality by whom it will be made clear what indescribable cleverness can be developed if they call to their help all that earthly forces can do to enhance cleverness and ingenuity. In the catastrophes that will befall humanity in the near future, people will become extremely inventive; many things discovered in the forces and substances of the universe will be used to provide human nourishment. But these very discoveries will at the same time make it apparent that matter is connected with the organs of intellect, not with the organs of the spirit but of the intellect. People will learn what to eat and drink in order to become really clever. Eating and drinking cannot make them spiritual, but clever and astute, yes. Humanity has no knowledge of these things as yet; but not only will they be striven for, they will be the inevitable outcome of catastrophes looming in the near future. And certain secret societies—where preparations are already in train—will apply these things in such a way that the necessary conditions can be established for an actual incarnation of Ahriman on the earth. This incarnation cannot be averted, for people must realize during the time of the earth's existence just how much can proceed from purely material processes! We must learn to bring under our control those spiritual or unspiritual currents which are leading to Ahriman.

Once it is realized that conflicting party programs can be proved equally correct, our attitude of soul will be that we do not set out to prove things, but rather to experience them. For to experience a thing is a very different matter from attempting to prove it intellectually.

Equally we shall be convinced that deeper and deeper penetration of the Gospels is necessary through spiritual science. The literal, word-for-word acceptance of the Gospels that is still so prevalent today promotes ahrimanic culture. Even on external grounds it is obvious that a strictly literal acceptance of the Gospels is unjustified. For as you know, what is good and right for one time is not right for every other time. What is right for one epoch becomes luciferic or ahrimanic when practiced in a later one. The mere reading of the Gospel texts has had its day. What is essential now is to acquire a spiritual understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha in the light of the truths enshrined in the Gospels. Many people, of course, find these things disquieting; but those whose interest is attracted by anthroposophy must learn to realize that the levels of culture, gradually piling one above the other, have created chaos, and that light must penetrate again into this chaos.

It is interesting nowadays to listen to someone whose views have become very extreme, or to read about some burning question of the day, and then to listen to sermons on the same subject given by a priest of some denomination who is still steeped in the form of thought current in bygone times. There you face two worlds which you cannot possibly confuse unless you avoid all attempts to get at the root of these things. Listen to a modern socialist speaking about social questions and then, immediately afterward, to a Catholic preacher speaking about the same questions. It is very interesting to find two levels of culture existing side by side but using the words in an entirely different sense. The same word has quite a different meaning in each case.

These things should be seen in the light that will dawn if they are taken in the earnest spirit we have been trying to convey. People belonging to definite religions do also come, in the end, to long in their way for spiritual deepening. It is by no means without significance that a man as eminently spiritual as Cardinal Newman, ardent Catholic though he was, should say at his investiture in Rome that he could see no salvation for Christianity other than a new revelation.

In effect, what Cardinal Newman said was that he could see no salvation for Christianity other than a new revelation! But he had not the courage to take a new spiritual revelation seriously. And so it is with many others. You can read countless treatises today about what is needed in social life. Another book has recently appeared: Socialism, by Robert Wilbrandt, the son of the poet. In it the social question is discussed on the foundation of accurate and detailed knowledge. And finally it is stated that without the spirit nothing is achieved, that the very course of events shows that the spirit is necessary. Yes, but what does such a man really achieve? He gets as far as to utter the word “spirit,” to pronounce the abstract word “spirit;” but he refuses to accept, indeed he rejects, anything that endeavors to make the spirit really take effect.

For that, it is essential above all to realize that wallowing in abstractions, however loud the cry for the spirit, is not yet spiritual, not yet spirit! Vague, abstract chattering about the spirit must never be confused with the active search for the content of the spiritual world pursued in anthroposophical science.

Nowadays there is much talk about the spirit. But you who accept spiritual science should not be deluded by such chattering; you should perceive the difference between it and the descriptions of the spiritual world attempted in anthroposophy, where the spiritual world is described as objectively as the physical world. You should probe into these differences, reminding yourselves repeatedly that abstract talk of the spirit is a deviation from sincere striving for the spirit and that by their very talk, people are actually removing themselves from the spirit. Purely intellectual allusion to the spirit leads nowhere. What, then, is “intelligence?” What is the content of our human intelligence? I can best explain this in the following way. Imagine—and this will be better understood by the many ladies present!—imagine yourself standing in front of a mirror and looking into it. The picture presented to you by the mirror is you, but it has no reality at all. It is nothing but a reflection. All the intelligence within your soul, all the intellectual content, is only a mirror image; it has no reality. And just as your reflected image is called into existence through the mirror, so what mirrors itself as intelligence is called into existence through the physical apparatus of your body, through the brain. You are intelligent only because your body is there. And as little as you can touch yourself by stretching your hand toward your reflected image, as little can you lay hold of the spirit if you turn only to the intellectual—for the spirit is not there! What is grasped through the intellect, ingenious as it may be, never contains the spirit itself, but only a picture of the spirit. You cannot truly experience the spirit if you get no further than mere intelligence. The reason why intelligence is so seductive is that it yields a picture, a reflected picture of the spirit—but not the spirit itself. It seems unnecessary to go to the inconvenience of penetrating to the spirit, because it is there—or so, at least, one imagines. In reality it is only a reflected picture—but for all that, it is not difficult to talk about the spirit.

To distinguish the mere picture from the reality—that is the task of the tenor of soul which does not merely theorize about spiritual science but has actual perception of the spirit.

That is what I wanted to say to you today in order to intensify the earnestness which should pervade our whole attitude to the spiritual life as conceived by anthroposophy. For the evolution of humanity in the future will depend upon how truly this attitude is adopted by people of the present day. If what I have characterized in this lecture continues to be offered the reception that is still offered to it today by the vast majority of people on the earth, then Ahriman will be an evil guest when he comes. But if people are able to rouse themselves to take into their consciousness what we have been studying, if they are able so to guide it that humanity can freely confront the ahrimanic influence, then, when Ahriman appears, human beings will acquire, precisely through him, the power to realize that although the earth must enter inevitably into its decline, humankind is lifted above earthly existence through this very fact. When human beings have reached a certain age in physical life, the body begins to decline, but if they are sensible they make no complaint, knowing that together with the soul they are approaching a life that does not run parallel with this physical decline. There lives in humankind something that is not bound up with the already prevailing decline of the physical earth but becomes more and more spiritual just because of this physical decline.

Let us learn to say frankly: Yes, the earth is in its decline, and human life, too, with respect to its physical manifestation; but just because it is so, let us muster the strength to draw into our civilization that element which, springing from humankind itself, will live on while the earth is in decline, as the immortal fruit of earth evolution.

• 1. Twelve lectures given at Nürnberg, 1908.

I want to speak today OF something that will help to deepen our understanding of truths that must now be given to humankind by anthroposophy. We have often spoken of the two poles of forces of the human being: the pole of will and the pole of intelligence. To understand the nature of the human being we must be constantly mindful of these two poles.

The human is a being of will and a being of intelligence. Between them—at any rate from birth until death—lies the element of feeling, constituting the bridge between the intelligence and the will. You know that these forces separate from each other in a certain sense when people reach what is called the threshold of the spiritual world.

Our study today will be concerned more particularly with the relationship in which humanity stands to the surrounding world, on the one side as a being of intelligence and on the other as a being of will. We shall deal with the latter first.

In the life between birth and death, human beings unfold the force of will as the impulse of their actions and activity. As it comes to expression through the human organism, the force of will is a very intricate, complicated matter. Nevertheless in one aspect, everything of the nature of human will bears a great likeness, amounting almost to identity, with certain forces of nature. It is therefore quite correct to speak of an inner relation between the forces of will in the human being and the forces of nature.

You know from earlier studies that even while people are awake, they are in a condition resembling sleep wherever their will is involved. True, we have in our consciousness the ideas lying behind what we will, but how a particular idea takes effect in the form of will—of that we know nothing. We do not know how the idea, “I move my arm,” is connected with the process leading to the actual movement of the arm. This process lies entirely in the subconscious and it may truly be said that people are no more conscious of the real process of will than they are of what takes place during sleep. But when the question arises as to the connection of human will with the surrounding world, we come to something that will strike the kind of consciousness that has developed in the course of the last three to five centuries as highly paradoxical. It is generally thought that the evolution of the earth would be the same even if human beings had no part in it at all. A typical natural scientist describes the evolution of the earth as a series, let us say, of geological, purely physical processes. And even if scientists do not expressly say so, they have in mind that from the earth's beginning until its hypothetical end, everything would go on just the same even if it were uninhabited by human beings. Why is this view held by natural science today? The reason is that when anything takes place, for example in the mineral kingdom, or the plant kingdom, let us say on November 9, 1919, people believe that its cause lies in what has happened in the mineral kingdom prior to this particular point of time. People think: the mineral kingdom takes its course and what happens at any point is the effect of what went before; the mineral effect is due to a mineral cause.

This is the way people think and you will find evidence of it in any text book of geology. Conditions obtaining at the present time are said to be the effects of the Ice Age, or of some preceding epoch but the causes are attributed entirely to what once took place in the mineral kingdom as such; the fact that humanity inhabits the earth is ignored. The belief is that even were humans not present, everything would run a similar course, that the external reality would be the same—although, in fact, humankind has always been part of this external reality. The truth is that the earth is one whole, humanity itself being one of the active factors in the earth's evolution. I will give you an example.

You know that our present epoch—thinking of it for the moment in the wider sense, as comprising the period since the great Atlantean catastrophe—was preceded by the Atlantean epoch itself, when the continents of Europe, Africa, and America in their present form were not in existence. At that time there was one main continent on the earth—Atlantis as it is called—extending over the area that is now the Atlantic Ocean. You know too that at a certain period in this Atlantean evolution, immorality of a particular kind was rampant throughout the then-Civilized world. Human beings had far greater power over the forces of nature than they later possessed and employed these forces for evil purposes. Thus we can look back to an age of widespread immorality. And then came the great Atlantean catastrophe. The orthodox geologist will naturally trace this catastrophe to processes in the mineral kingdom; indeed it is a fact that one part of the earth subsided and another arose. But it will not occur to those who base their thinking on the principles of modern natural science to say to themselves that the deeds and activities of human beings were among the contributory causes. Yet so it is. In very truth the Atlantean catastrophe was the outcome of the deeds of people on the earth.

Outer, mineral causes are not alone responsible for these great catastrophic events that break in upon earth existence. We must look for causes lying within the sphere of human actions and impulses: Humanity itself belongs to the chain of causative forces in earth existence. Nor does this apply only to an event of such magnitude but to what is happening all the time. Only the connection between what goes on within human beings and cosmic happenings which take effect in tellurian events remains hidden, to begin with. In this respect the whole of our natural science amounts to a great, all-embracing illusion. For if you want to get at the real causes you will not discover them by studying the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms alone.

Let me give you the following illustration of what comes into consideration here. We will approach it, so to speak, from the opposite side. Here (X) is the center of the earth. When something takes place in the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, or the animal kingdom, it is a matter of seeking the causes. The causes lie at certain points which are to be found everywhere. You can picture what I mean by thinking of the following. In the region around Naples in Italy, you will find that the earth over a wide area will emit vapor if you take a piece of paper and set it alight. Vapors begin to rise from the ground beneath you. You will say: the force which drives up the vapors lies in the physical process generated by the lighting of the paper. In this case, the physical process is that by lighting the paper you rarify the air and because of the rarification of the air the vapors inside the earth press upward. They are kept down by the normal air-pressure and this is diminished by setting light to the paper. If I merely want to give an example of effects of a purely mineral nature—such as these vapors arising out of the earth—I could say for the sake of illustration that here, and here (points in the diagram), a piece of paper is set alight. This shows you that the causes of the rising of the vapor do not lie below the soil, but above it. Now these points in the diagram a, b, c, d, e, f—do not represent pieces of paper that have been set alight; in this instance they represent something different. Imagine, to begin with, that each point on its own has no significance but that the significance lies in the system of points as a whole. Do not think now of the pieces of lighted paper, but of something else which at the moment I will not specify. Something else is there as an active cause, above the surface of the earth; and these different causes do not work singly, but together. And now imagine that there are not six points only, but, let us say, 1,500 million points¹ all working together, producing a combined effect. These 1,500 million points are actually there. Each of you has within you what may be called the center of gravity of your own physical structure. When people are awake, this center of gravity lies just below the diaphragm; when they are asleep it lies a little lower. There are therefore some 1,500 million of these centers of gravity spread over the earth, producing a combined effect. And what issues from this combined effect is the actual cause of a great deal of what takes place in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms on the earth. It is a scientific fallacy to trace back to mineral causes the forces manifesting in air and water and in the mineral realm; in reality the causes are to be found within the human beings.

This is a truth of which there is scarcely an inkling today. It is known to very, very few that the causes of processes active in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms lie within the human organism. (This does not apply to all the forces working in these kingdoms of nature, but to a large proportion of them.) Within humankind lie the causes for what happens on earth. Therefore mineralogy, botany, zoology, cannot be cultivated truly without anthropology—without the study of the human being. Science tells us of physical, chemical, and mechanical forces. These forces are intimately connected with the human will, with the force of human will that is concentrated in our center of gravity. If we speak of the earth with an eye to the truth of these matters, we must not follow the geologist in speaking of an earth in the abstract, but humanity must be accounted an integral part of the earth. These are the truths that reveal themselves on yonder side of the threshold. Everything that can be known on this side of the threshold belongs to the realm of the illusions of knowledge, not to the realm of truth.

At this point the question arises: What relation is there between the forces of will that areconcentrated in our center of gravity, and the external, physical, and chemical forces? We are speaking, remember, of present-day humanity. In normal life, this relation takes effect in the metabolic processes. When people take into themselves the substances of the outer world, it is their will that actually digests and works upon these substances. And if nothing else were in operation, then what is taken into the organism from outside would simply be destroyed. The human will has the power to dissolve and destroy all extraneous substances and forces; and the relation between the human being and the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms of nature today is such that our will is connected with the forces of dissolution and destruction inherent in our planet.

We could not live were this destruction not to take place—but for all that it is destruction. This must never be forgotten. And what are often described as unlawful magical practices are based essentially on the fact that certain human beings learn to employ their will wrongfully, in such a way that they do not confine the destructive forces to their normal operations within the organism but extend them over other human beings, deliberately and consciously applying the forces of destruction that are anchored in their will. That, quite obviously, is a practice that is never, under any circumstances, permissible.

Through our will we are connected with the earth's forces of decline. And if as human beings we had only our forces of will, the earth would be condemned through us, through humankind, to sheer destruction. The prospect of the future would then be far from inspiring; it would be a vista of the gradual dissolution of the earth and its ultimate dispersal in cosmic space. So much for the one pole in the human constitution.

But the human is a twofold being. One pole is, as we have seen, connected with the destructive forces of our planet; the other pole—that of intelligence—is connected with the will by the bridge of feeling. But in waking life, human intelligence is of little account as far as the planet earth is concerned. During waking life we cannot really establish a true relationship to earth existence through our intelligence. What I have told you in regard to the will happens while we are awake, although we are not conscious of it. If you see a rock crumbling away and ask where the actual causes of the crumbling lie, then you must look into the inner, organic nature of the human being. Strange as this will seem to the modern mind, it is indeed so. But as I said, the earth would face a sorry future if the other pole of human nature were not there—the pole of the up-building forces. Just as the causes of all destruction lie in the will that is concentrated in our center of gravity, so the up-building forces lie in the sphere into which we pass during sleep. From the time of falling asleep until that of waking, we are in a condition figuratively described by saying that with our “I” and astral body we are outside the physical body. But then we are entirely beings of soul and spirit, unfolding the forces that are in operation between falling asleep and waking. During this time we are connected, through these forces, with everything that builds up the earth planet, everything that adds to the forces of destruction the constructive, up-building forces. If you did not go about the earth, the destructive forces actually proceeding from your will would not be working in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. If you never went to sleep, the forces whereby the earth is continually up-built would not stream out of your intelligence. The constructive, up-building forces of the planet earth also lie in humanity itself. I do not say: in the individual human being—for I have expressly said that all these single causes form a collective whole. The up-building forces lie in humankind as a whole, actually in the pole of intelligence in our being but not in our waking intelligence. Waking intelligence is really like a lifeless entity thrusting itself into earth evolution. The intelligence that works, unconsciously, during our sleep—that is what builds up the earth planet. By this I am only trying to explain that it is a fallacy to look outside the human being for the destructive and the constructive forces of our earth; you must look for them within the human being. Once you grasp this, what I am now going to say will not be unintelligible.

You look up to the stars, saying that something is streaming from them that can be perceived by human sense organs here on earth. But what you behold when you gaze at the stars is not of the same nature as what you perceive on the earth in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. In reality it proceeds from beings of intelligence and will whose life is bound up with those stars. The effects appear to be physical because the stars are at a distance. They are not in reality physical at all. What you actually see are the inner activities of beings of will and intelligence in the stars. I have already spoken to you of the ingenious description of the sun given by astrophysicists. But if it were possible to journey to the sun by some means of transport invented by a Jules Verne, it would be found with amazement that nothing of what was to be expected from these physical descriptions exists. The descriptions are merely a composite picture of solar phenomena. What we see is in reality the working of will and intelligence which at a distance appears as light. If inhabitants of the moon—supposing in this sense there were such beings—were to look at the earth, they would not detect its grassy or mineral surfaces but—also perceiving it as a light effect or something similar—they would detect what takes place around the centers of gravity of human bodies and also the effects of the conditions in which human beings live between going to sleep and waking. That is what would actually be seen from the universe. Even the most perfect instrument would not enable the chairs, for instance, on which you are now sitting, to be seen; what would be seen is all that is taking place in the region of your centers of gravity and what would happen if you were suddenly to fall asleep—it is to be hoped that this would not happen in every case! But wherever it did happen, it would be perceived out in the universe.

So that to the outer universe, what takes place through human beings is the perceptible reality—not what surrounds us in earthly existence. A very common saying is that everything perceived with the senses is maya—the great illusion—no reality but simply appearance. Such an abstraction is of little account. It has meaning only when one enters into the concrete, as we have now been doing. To say glibly that the animal, plant, and mineral worlds are maya means nothing: What is of value is the realization that what you perceive outwardly depends fundamentally upon yourselves and that—not of course at each moment but in the course of human evolution—you make yourselves an integral part of the chain of causes and effects.

Even when such a shattering truth is uttered—and I think it may well be shattering—it is not always seen in the aspect where it becomes of importance in life. Such a truth assumes importance only when we perceive its consequences. We are not physical beings only; we are moral—or maybe immoral—beings in earthly existence. What we do is determined by impulses of a moral nature.

Now just think with what bitter doubt modern thought is assailed in this domain. Natural science provides a knowledge of the earthly that is confined to the connection between purely external causes and effects; and in this cycle of natural causes and effects, the human being too is involved. So it is alleged by external, abstract science which takes account of one aspect only of earthly existence.

The fact that moral impulses also light up in people is admitted but nothing is known about the connection between these moral impulses and what comes to pass in the round of external nature. Indeed the dilemma of modern philosophy is that the philosophers hear on the one hand from the scientists that everything is involved in a chain of natural causes and effects—and on the other hand have to admit that moral impulses light up in people. That is the reason why Kant wrote two “Critiques”: the Critique of Pure Reason, concerned with the relation of the human being to a purely natural course of things, and the Critique of Practical Reason where he puts forward his moral postulates—which in truth, if I may speak figuratively, hover in the air, come out of the blue and have no a priori relation with natural causes.

As long as we believe that what takes place in the external manifestations of nature can be traced only to similar manifestations, as long as we cling to this illusion, the intervention of moral impulses is something that remains separate and apart from the course of nature. Nearly everything that is discussed today lies under the shadow of this breach. In their thinking people cannot use the earthly round as such with the moral life of humanity. But as soon as you grasp something of what I have tried briefly to outline, you will be able to say: Yes, as a human being I am a unity, and moral impulses are alive within me. They live in what I am as a physical being. But as a physical human being I am fundamentally the cause—together with all humankind—of every physical happening. The moral conduct and achievements of human beings on the earth are the real causes of what comes to pass in the course of earth existence.

Natural history and natural science describe the earth in the way we find in text books of geology, botany, and so forth. What is said there seems entirely satisfactory according to the premises formed through modern education. But let us suppose that an inhabitant of Mars were to come down to the earth and observe it in the light of Martian premises. I am not saying that such a thing could happen but merely trying to illustrate what I mean. Suppose a being from Mars, having wandered dumbly about the earth were then to learn some human language, read some geology, and thus discover what kind of ideas prevail concerning the processes and happenings on the earth. This being would say: But that is not all. By far the most important factor is ignored. For example, I have noticed crowds of students loitering about in their beer houses, drinking and indulging their passions. Something is happening there: the human will is working in the metabolism. These are processes of which no mention is made in your books on physics and geology; they contain no reference to the fact that the course of earth existence is also affected by whether the students drink or do not drink. That is what a being not entirely immersed in earthly ideas and prejudices would find lacking in the descriptions given by human beings themselves of happenings on earth. For a being from Mars there would be no question but that moral impulses, pervading human deeds and the whole of human life, are part and parcel of the course of nature. According to modern preconceptions there is something inexorable in the play of nature, indeed pleasantly inexorable for materialistic thinkers. They imagine that the earth's course would be exactly the same were no human beings in existence; that whether they behave decently or not makes no fundamental difference or really alters anything. But that is not the case! The all-essential causes of what happens on the earth do not lie outside the human being; they lie within humankind. And if earthly consciousness is to expand to cosmic consciousness, humanity must realize that the earth—not over short but over long stretches of time—is made in its own likeness, in the likeness of humanity itself. There is no better means of lulling people to sleep than to impress upon them that they have no share in the course taken by earth existence. This narrows down human responsibility to the single individual, the single personality.

The truth is that the responsibility for the course of earth existence through ages of cosmic time, lies with humanity. Everyone must feel themselves to be a member of humanity, the earth itself being the body for that humanity.

Someone may say: For ten years I have given way to my passions, indulged my fancies and have thereby ruined my body. With equal conviction such a person should be able to say: If earthly humanity follows impure moral impulses, then the body of the earth will be different from what it would be were the moral impulses pure. The day-fly, because it lives for twenty-four hours only, has a view of the world differing entirely from that of human beings. The range of our vision is not wide enough to perceive that what happens externally in the course of nature is not dependent upon purely natural causes. In regard to the present configuration of Europe, it is far more important to ask what manner of life prevailed among human beings in the civilized world two thousand years ago than to investigate the external mineral and plant structure of the earth. The destiny of our physical earth planet in another two thousand years will not depend upon the present constitution of our mineral world, but upon what we do and allow to be done. With world consciousness, human responsibility widens into world responsibility. With such consciousness we feel as we look up to the starry heavens that we are responsible to this cosmic expanse, permeated and pervaded as it is by spirit—that we are responsible to this world for how we conduct the earth. We grow together with the cosmos in concrete reality when behind the phenomena we seek for the truth.

I so often tell you that we must learn to perceive the concrete realities of things for the most part taught as abstractions today. Nothing much is accomplished by adopting oriental traditions such as: the external world of the senses is maya. We must go much deeper if we are to arrive at the truth. Such abstractions do not carry us far, because in the form in which they have been handed down they are nothing but the sediment of a primeval wisdom that did not hover in abstractions but teemed with concrete realities which must be brought to light again through spiritual intuition and research. When you read in oriental literature of maya and of truth as its antithesis, do not imagine that what you read there today can be really intelligible to you. It is only a much later compilation of matters that were concrete realities to the ancient wisdom. We must get back to these concrete realities. People think today that they have some understanding of cosmic processes when they assert that the external world of sense is maya. But nothing can be understood unless one presses on to the underlying realities. The moment it is realized: we have not to ask how the present mineral world has developed out of the mineral processes of another age; we have rather to ask about what has been going on in humankind—at that moment the real meaning of the saying, “the outer world is maya,” becomes clear. Then we begin to perceive in the human being a reality far greater than is usually perceived. And then the feeling of responsibility for earth existence begins.

If you will try to get to the inner core of these things—and it must be by inward contemplation, not by means of the kind of intelligence employed in natural science—you will gradually find your way to the realization that humankind is composed of free human beings. Nature does not, in truth, counteract our freedom, for as human beings we ourselves fashion the nature immediately surrounding us. It is only in its partial manifestations that nature counteracts our freedom. Nature counteracts our freedom to an extent no greater than if—to give an example—you are stretching out your hand and someone else takes hold of it and checks the movement. You will not deny freedom of will simply because someone else checks a movement. As people of the present day we are checked in many respects because of some action of our predecessors that is only now taking effect. But at all events it was an action of human beings.—What human beings? Not anyone against whom we can turn with reproach, for we ourselves were the ones who, in earlier earthly lives, brought about the conditions obtaining today.

We must not confine ourselves to the mere mention of repeated earthly lives but think of the connection between them in such a way that even in external nature we perceive the effects of causes we ourselves laid down in earlier lives. Naturally, in reference to the single, individual human being, we must speak of contributory causes only, for in all these things, as I have said, it is a matter of the collective inter-working of human beings on the earth. None of us should, for that reason, exclude ourselves as individuals, for each of us has a share in what is brought about by humanity as a whole and then comes to expression in what constitutes the body for the whole of earthly humanity in its on-flowing life.

I have been endeavoring to give you an idea of how a spiritual scientist must regard the statements made in ordinary scientific text-books. Suppose I were to draw a series of figures:

And now suppose some creature who had never lived in our world were to crawl out of the earth and, having some rudiments of arithmetical knowledge, were to look at the figures and say: First figure, second figure, third figure. The third is the effect of the second, and the second the effect of the first. Effect of the first figure—a triangle; effect of the second circle. This creature would then be combining cause and effect. But it would be a fallacy, for I have drawn each figure separately. In reality the one is independent of the other. It only appears to be dependent to this creature who associates what comes first with what follows, as if the one were the outcome of the other. This, approximately, is how the geologist describes the process of the earth: Diluvial epoch, Tertiary epoch, Quaternary epoch, and so on. But this is no more true than the statement that the circle is the outcome, the effect of the triangle, or the triangle the effect of the rectangular figure. The configurations of the earth are brought about autonomously—through the deeds of earthly humanity, including the mysterious workings of the intelligence during the periods of sleep when human beings are outside their physical bodies.

This shows you that the descriptions given by external science are very largely illusion—maya. But merely to speak about maya is of little account. To the assertion that the external world is maya we must be able to reply by stating where the actual causes lie. These causes are hidden to a great extent from our powers of cognition. The part played by humankind in shaping earth existence cannot be fathomed by means of external science but only by an inner science. My book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment speaks of the human being's inner activity between the time of going to sleep and waking. This can be revealed by knowledge that reaches down to the sphere of the will Human beings know nothing of the connection between the will and the outer world for the processes of the will are hidden and concealed. We do not know what is really going on when by lifting our hand we set in operation a process of will; nor do we know that this process continues and has an effect in the whole course of earth existence.

This is indicated in the scene in my mystery play, The Portal of Initiation, where the actions of Capesius and Strader have their outcome in cosmic manifestations—in thunder and lightning. It is, of course, a pictorial representation, but the picture contains a deeper truth; it is not fantasy but actual truth. For a fairly long period in evolution, truths of this kind have been voiced only by true poets whose fantasy must always be perception of super-sensible processes.

This is very little understood by modern people who like to relegate poetry, indeed all art, to a place separate and apart from external reality. They feel relieved not to be asked to see in poetry anything more than fantasy. True poetry, true art, is of course, no more than a reflection of super-sensible truth—but a reflection it is. Even if poets are not themselves conscious of the super-sensible happenings, if their soul is linked with the cosmos, if they have not been torn away from the cosmos by materialistic education, they give utterances to super-sensible truths, in spite of having to express them in pictures drawn from the world of sense.

Many examples of this are contained in the second part of Goethe's Faust, where as I have shown in the case of particular passages, the imagery has a direct relation with super-sensible processes.² The development of art in recent centuries affords evidence of what I have been saying. Take any picture painted by no means very long ago, and you will find that as a rule, landscape is given very secondary importance. The painting of landscape has come into prominence only since the last three to five centuries. Earlier than that you will find that landscape takes second place; it is the human world that is brought to the forefront because the consciousness still survived that in regard to objective processes of earth existence the human world is much more important than the landscape—which is but the effect of the human world. In the very birth of preference for landscape there lies, in the sphere of art, the parallel phenomenon of the birth of the materialistic trend of mind—consisting in the belief that landscape and what it represents has an existence of its own, entirely apart from humanity. But the truth is quite the reverse. Were some inhabitant of Mars to come down to the earth he would certainly be able to see meaning in Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper,” but not in paintings of landscapes. He would see landscapes—including painted landscapes—and the whole configuration of the earth quite differently and with his particular organ of sense could not fathom their meaning. Please remember that I am saying these things merely in order to illustrate hypothetically what I want to convey.

So you see, the saying: “the external world is maya” cannot be fully understood without entering into the concrete realities. But to do this we must relate ourselves intimately with earth existence as a whole, know ourselves to be an integral part of it. And then we must grasp the thought that there can be external and apparent realities which are not the truth, not the true realities. If you have a rose in your room, it is an apparent reality only, for the rose as it is in front of you there cannot be the reality. It can be true reality only while it is growing on the rose tree, united with the roots which in turn are united with the earth. The earth as described by the geologists is as little a true reality as a plucked rose is a reality.

Spiritual science endeavors never to halt at the untrue reality, but always to seek what must be added, in order to have the whole, true reality. The meager sense of reality prevailing in our present civilization expresses itself in the very fact that every external manifestation is taken as reality. But there is reality only in what lies before one as an integrated whole. The earth by itself, without human beings, is no more a true reality than the rose plucked from the rose tree. These things must be pondered and worked upon; they must not remain theories but pass over into our feelings. We must feel ourselves members of the whole earth. It is of importance again and again to call up the thoughts: this finger on my hand has true reality only as long as it is part of my organism; if it is cut off it no longer has true reality. Similarly, the human being has no true reality apart from the earth, nor has the earth without humankind. It is an unreal concept when modern scientific investigators think, according to their premises, that earth evolution would run the same course if humanity were not there. I recently showed you that it would not be so, by telling you that the bodies laid aside by human beings at death become a leaven in earth evolution and that if no human bodies—either by burial or cremation—became part of the earth, the whole course of physical happenings would be other than it is in consequence of these bodies having been received into the earth.

In the lecture today I wanted to speak in greater detail of the connection between the two poles of will and intelligence in human beings and their cosmic environment.

• 1. Representing, approximately, the total population of the earth.
• 2. Twenty-eight lectures given in the year 1915. Geisteswissenschaftliche Erlauterungen zu Goethe's Faust.

We have heard that the human soul was once endowed with a kind of primeval wisdom, that this wisdom gradually faded away and is now no longer accessible. Consequently with respect to their knowledge, people feel thrown back more and more upon what is presented to them by physical existence. By “knowledge” I do not mean only science in the accepted sense, but the knowledge that is consciously applied by the soul in the ordinary affairs of life.

The question will naturally arise: how did this ancient wisdom actually come into being? Here I must touch upon a new aspect of matters we have often considered from other angles.

Let us look back to the time when human beings began in the real sense to be citizens of the earth, when as beings of soul and spirit they came down to the earth, surrounded themselves with its forces and became earthly beings. If human beings had simply descended to the earth with the qualities inherent in their own nature, evolution would have taken quite a different course through the various epochs of culture. But having made the descent, human beings would have been obliged to establish a relationship with the surrounding world, to acquire earthly knowledge—I will not say through clairvoyance in the proper sense—but through instincts imbued with a certain measure of clairvoyance. The acquisition of this earthly knowledge would have been a very slow and gradual process and for long ages people would have remained ineffectual, childish beings. By our own time they would, it is true, have succeeded in developing a constitution of soul and body compatible with humanness, but they would never have reached the spiritual heights they have actually attained. That they were able to achieve this evolution in a way other than by passing through all the stages of childhood is due to the intervention in earthly evolution of the luciferic beings. We know from recent lectures that the Lucifer individuality himself incarnated in Asia in a certain epoch of pre-Christian times, and that the original pagan wisdom to which many historical data bear witness proceeded from this being. But the luciferic beings have from the very beginning been associated in some way with the evolution of humanity.

I beg you earnestly—although I know that such requests are of little avail-not to adopt a philistine attitude when mention is made of luciferic beings. Even among anthroposophists there is still the tendency to say: “That is certainly luciferic. At all costs let us avoid it, reject it!” But these things have to be considered in many different aspects and it must always be remembered that the whole of the old pagan wisdom emanated from a luciferic source. The subject is one that calls for deep and serious study.

The farther back we go in the evolution of humanity, the more do we find certain individuals who through the qualities attained in earlier incarnations were sufficiently mature to apprehend the treasures of wisdom possessed by the luciferic beings. Think, for example, of the seven Holy Rishis of ancient India. When Indians interpreted the wisdom of the Holy Rishis, they knew, if they had been initiated into these things, that the teachers of the Rishis were luciferic beings. For what the luciferic beings brought with them into earth evolution was, above all, the world of thought, of intellectualistic thought pervading culture, the world of reason in the highest sense of the word—the world of wisdom. And going back to the primeval origins of human existence, we find that the sources of pagan wisdom always lie with luciferic beings.

It may be asked: How is this possible? We must realize that human beings would have remained children had they not received from the Mysteries the constant instruction that emanated from luciferic beings. Those who possessed the knowledge and the inherited, primeval wisdom wherewith to foster the progress and education of humankind were not—like a modern philistine—fearful of receiving this wisdom from luciferic sources. They took upon themselves the obligation incumbent upon everyone to whom luciferic beings impart knowledge from spiritual realms. The obligation—for so it may be called, although such words do not always convey the exact meaning—was to use this luciferic, cosmic wisdom rightly, for the good of earth evolution. The difference between the “good” wisdom and the purely luciferic wisdom—which so far as content is concerned is exactly the same—is that the “good” wisdom is in hands other than those of the luciferic beings. That is the essential point. It is not a question of there being one wisdom that can be neatly packed away in some chamber of the soul and make a person virtuous! The wisdom of worlds is uniform, the only difference being whether it is in the hands of wise people who use it for good, whether it is in the hands of the Angeloi or Archangeloi, or whether it is in the hands of Lucifer and his hosts. In olden times the wisdom needed for the progress of humanity could be obtained only from a luciferic source; hence the initiates were obliged to receive it from that source and at the same time to take upon themselves the obligation not to yield to the aspirations of the luciferic beings.

Lucifer's intention was to convey the wisdom to humanity in such a way that it would induce people to abandon the path of earth evolution and take a path leading to a super-earthly sphere, a sphere aloof from the earth. The luciferic beings inculcated their wisdom into human beings but their desire was that it would make them turn away from the earth, without passing through earthly evolution. Lucifer wants to abandon the earth to its fate, to win humankind for a kingdom alien to the kingdom of Christ.

The sages of olden time who received the primeval wisdom from the hands of Lucifer had, as I said, to pledge themselves not to yield to his wishes but to use the wisdom for the good of earth evolution. And that, in essence, was what was accomplished through the pre-Christian Mysteries. If it be asked what it was that humanity received through these Mysteries, through the influence of the luciferic beings who, in postAtlantean times, still inspired certain personalities like the Rishis of India and sent their messengers to the earth—the answer is that human beings received the rudiments of what has developed in the course of evolution into the faculties of speech and of thinking. Speaking and thinking are, in their origins, luciferic, but were drawn away from the grip of Lucifer by the sages of old. If you are really intent upon fleeing, from Lucifer, then you must make up your minds to be dumb in the future, and not to think!

These things are part of the initiation science which must gradually come within the ken of humanity, although on account of the kind of education that has now been current for centuries in the civilized world, people shrink from such truths. The caricatured figure of Lucifer and Ahriman—the medieval devil—is constantly before their minds and they have been allowed to grow up in this philistine atmosphere for so long that even today they shudder at the thought of approaching treasures of wisdom that are intimately and deeply connected with evolution. It is much pleasanter to say: “If I protect myself from the devil, if I give myself to Christ with the simple-heartedness of a child, I shall be blessed, and my soul will find salvation.” But in its deep foundations, human life is by no means such a simple matter. And it is essential for the future of human evolution that these things we are now discussing shall not be withheld. It must be known that the art of speaking and the art of thinking have become part of evolution only because they were received through the mediation of Lucifer. The luciferic element can still be observed in thinking. Speech, which has for long ages been differentiated and adapted to earthly needs, has already been assailed by Ahriman. It is he who has brought about different tongues on earth. Whereas the luciferic tendency is always toward unification, the fundamental tendency of the ahrimanic principle is differentiation. What would thinking be if it were not luciferic?

If thinking were not luciferic, human beings on the earth would be like one whose thought was utterly non-luciferic, namely Goethe. Goethe was one of those who, in a certain respect, deliberately set out to confront and defy the luciferic powers. That, however, makes it essential to keep constant hold of the concrete, individual reality. The moment you generalize or unify—at that moment you are nearing luciferic thinking. If you were to contemplate each human individual, each single plant, each single animal, each single stone in itself alone, having in mind the one, single object, not classifying into genera and species, not generalizing in your thought—then you would be little prone to luciferic thinking. But anyone who was to attempt such a thing, even as a child, would never get beyond the lowest class in any modern school.

The fact of the matter is that the universal thinking implicit in pagan wisdom has gradually been exhausted. The human constitution is such that this luciferic principle of unification can no longer be of much real service to people on earth. This has been counteracted by the fact that the God-created nature of the human being has followed in the wake of earth evolution, has become related to, allied with the earth. And because this is so, through their own inherent nature, people are less allied with the luciferic element which always tends to draw them away from the earth.

But woe betide if humanity were simply to draw away from the luciferic element without putting something different in its place. That would bring nothing but evil. For then human beings would grow together with the earth, that is to say with the particular territory on earth where they are born; and cultural life would become completely specialized, completely differentiated. We can already see this tendency developing. It has taken root most markedly since the beginning of the nineteenth century; but the tendency to split up into smaller groups has been all too apparent as a result of the catastrophic world war. Chauvinism is more and more gaining the upper hand until it will finally lead people to split up to such an extent that at last a group will embrace only one single human being! Things could come to the point where individual human beings would again split into right and left, and be at war within themselves; left would be at loggerheads with right. Such tendencies are even now evident in the evolution of humankind. To combat this, a counterweight must be created; and this counterweight can only be created if, like the old wisdom inherent in paganism, a new wisdom, acquired by the free resolve and will of human beings, is infused into earthly culture. This new wisdom must again be Initiation wisdom.

And here we come to a chapter that must not be withheld from modern knowledge If, in the future, people were to do nothing themselves toward acquiring a new wisdom, then, without their consciousness, the whole of culture would become ahrimanic, and it would be easy for the influences issuing from Ahriman's incarnation to permeate all civilization on the earth. Precautions must therefore be taken in regard to the streams by which the ahrimanic form of culture is furthered. What would be the result if people were to follow the strong inclination they have today to let things drift on as they are, without understanding and guiding into right channels those streams which lead to an ahrimanic culture? As soon as Ahriman incarnates at the destined time in the West, the whole of culture would be impregnated with his forces. What else would come in his train? Through certain stupendous acts he would bring to humanity all the clairvoyant knowledge which until then can be acquired only by dint of intense labor and effort. People could live on as materialists, they could eat and drink—as much as may be left after the war!—and there would be no need for any spiritual efforts. The ahrimanic streams would continue their unimpeded course. When Ahriman incarnates in the West at the appointed time, he would establish a great occult school for the practice of magic arts of the greatest grandeur, and what otherwise can be acquired only by strenuous effort would be poured over humankind.

Let it never be imagined that Ahriman will appear as a kind of hoaxer, playing mischievous tricks on human beings. No, indeed! Lovers of ease who refuse to have anything to do with spiritual science would fall prey to his magic, for by means of these stupendous magic arts he would be able to make great numbers of human beings into seers—but in such a way that the clairvoyance of each individual would be strictly differentiated. What one person would see, a second and a third would not see. Confusion would prevail and in spite of being made receptive to clairvoyant wisdom, people would inevitably fall into strife on account of the sheer diversity of their visions. Ultimately, however, they would all be satisfied with their own particular vision, for each of them would be able to see into the spiritual world. In this way all culture on the earth would fall prey to Ahriman. Human beings would succumb to Ahriman simply through not having acquired by their own efforts what Ahriman is ready and able to give them. No more evil advice could be given than to say: “Stay just as you are! Ahriman will make all of you clairvoyant if you so desire. And you will desire it because Ahriman's power will be very great.” But the result would be the establishment of Ahriman's kingdom on earth and the overthrow of everything achieved hitherto by human culture; all the disastrous tendencies unconsciously cherished by humankind today would take effect.

Our concern is that the wisdom of the future—a clairvoyant wisdom—shall be rescued from the clutches of Ahriman. Again let it be repeated that there is only one book of wisdom, not two kinds of wisdom. The issue is whether this wisdom is in the hands of Ahriman or of Christ. It cannot come into the hands of Christ unless people fight for it. And they can only fight for it by telling themselves that by their own efforts they must assimilate the content of spiritual science before the time of Ahriman s appearance on earth.

That, you see, is the cosmic task of spiritual science. It consists in preventing knowledge from becoming—or remaining ahrimanic. A good way of playing into Ahriman s hands is to exclude everything of the nature of knowledge from denominational religion and to insist that simple faith is enough. If people cling to this simple faith, they condemn their soul to stagnation and then the wisdom that must be rescued from Ahriman cannot find entry. The point is not whether people do or do not simply receive the wisdom of the future but whether they work upon it; and those who do must take upon themselves the solemn duty of saving earthly culture for Christ, just as the ancient Rishis and initiates pledged themselves not to yield to Lucifer's proviso that humankind be enticed away from the earth.

The root of the matter is that for the wisdom of the future too, a struggle is necessary, a struggle similar to that waged against Lucifer by the ancient initiates through whose intermediary the faculties of speech and of thinking were transmitted to humanity. Just as it devolved upon the initiates of the primeval wisdom to wrest from Lucifer that which has become human reason, human intellect, so the insight which is to develop in the future into the inner realities of things must be wrested from the ahrimanic powers. Such are the issues—and these issues play strongly into life itself.

I recently read some notes written shortly before his death by one who was a friend of the anthroposophical movement. He had been wounded in the war and lay for a long time in hospital where, in the course of the operations performed on him, he had many a glimpse into the spiritual world. The last lines he wrote contain a remarkable passage, describing a vision which came to him not long before his death. In this last experience, the atmosphere around him became, as he expresses it, like dense granite, weighing upon his soul. Such an impression can be understood in the light of the knowledge that we have to battle for the wisdom of the future; for the ahrimanic powers do not allow this wisdom to be wrested from them without a struggle. Let it not be thought that wisdom can be attained through blissful visions. Real wisdom has to be acquired “in travail and suffering.” What I have just told you about the dying man is a very good picture of such suffering, for in this struggle for the wisdom of the future, one of the most frequent experiences is that the world is pressing in upon us, as though the air had suddenly frozen into granite. It is possible to know why this is so. We have only to remember that it is the endeavor of the ahrimanic powers to reduce the earth to a state of complete rigidification. Their victory would be won if they succeeded in bringing earth, water, and air into this rigidified state. Were that to happen, the earth could not again acquire the Saturn warmth from which it proceeded and which must be regained in the Vulcan epoch; and to prevent this is the aim of the ahrimanic powers. A trend which has an important bearing on this is the lack of enthusiasm in human souls at the present time for the content of spiritual science. If this lack of enthusiasm were to persist, the first impulse toward the rigidification of the earth would emanate from human souls themselves, from their apathy, their indolence and love of ease. If you reflect that this rigidification is the aim of the Ahrimanic powers, you will not be surprised that compression, the feeling that life is becoming granite-like, is one of the experiences that must be undergone in the struggle for the wisdom of the future.

But remember that people today can prepare themselves to look into the spiritual world by apprehending with their healthy human reason what spiritual science has to offer. The effort applied in study that lets itself be guided by healthy human reason can be part of the struggle which leads eventually to vision of the spiritual world. Many tendencies will have to be overcome, but for people of today the fundamental difficulty is that when they want to understand spiritual science they have to battle against their own granite-like skulls. If the human skull were less hard, less granite-like, spiritual science would be far more widely accepted at the present time. Infinitely more effective than any philistine avoidance of the ahrimanic powers would be to battle against Ahriman through sincere, genuine study of the content of spiritual science. For then human beings would gradually come to perceive spiritually the danger that must otherwise befall the earth physically, of being rigidified into granite-like density.

And so it must be emphasized that the wisdom of the future can be attained only through privations, travail, and pain; it must be attained by enduring the attendant sufferings of body and soul for the sake of the salvation of human evolution. Therefore the unwavering principle should be never to let oneself be deterred by suffering from the pursuit of this wisdom. So far as the external life of humankind is concerned, what is needed is that in the future the danger of the frozen rigidification—which, to begin with, would manifest in the moral sphere—shall be removed from the earth. But this can happen only if people envisage spiritually, feel inwardly and counter with their will, what would otherwise become physical reality.

At bottom, it is simply due to faint heartedness that people today are unwilling to approach spiritual science. They are not conscious of this, but it is so, nevertheless; they are fearful of the difficulties that will have to be encountered on every hand. When people come to spiritual science they so often speak of the need for “upliftment.” By this they usually mean a sense of comfort and inner well-being. But that cannot be offered, for it would simply lull them into stupor and draw them away from the light they need. What is essential is that from now onward, knowledge of the driving forces of evolution must not be withheld from humankind. It must be realized that in very truth the human being is balanced as it were between the luciferic and the ahrimanic powers, and that the Christ has become a companion of human beings, leading them, first away from the battle with Lucifer, and then into the battle with Ahriman.

The evolution of humanity must be understood in the light of these facts. One who presents secrets of cosmic existence in the way that must be done in spiritual science is often laughed to scorn, for example about the use of the principle of the number seven—as you will find in my book Theosophy. But you will notice that people do not laugh when the rainbow is described as sevenfold, or the scale—tonic, second, third, and so on, up to the octave which is a repetition of the tonic. In the physical world these things are accepted, but not when it comes to the spiritual. What must be regained here is something that was implicit in the old pagan wisdom. A last glimmer of this pagan wisdom in regard to a matter like the principle of the number seven is to be found in the Pythagorean school—which was actually a Mystery school. You can read about Pythagoras today in any text book; but you will never find any understanding of the reason why he based the world order on number. The reason was because in the ancient wisdom everything was based on number. And a last glimmer of insight into the wisdom contained in numbers still survived when Pythagoras founded his school. Other branches of the ancient wisdom survived much longer, some indeed until the sixth and seventh centuries of the Christian era. Up to that time many true things about the higher worlds are said in the sphere of what is called natural philosophy. And then, gradually, this primeval intelligence in humankind ran dry—if I may use this expression.

Let us picture some orthodox representative of modern learning sitting in a corner and saying: “What nonsense these anthroposophists talk! What do they mean by asserting that the primeval wisdom has run dry? Wonderful, epoch-making results have been achieved, above all during the last few centuries, and are still being achieved. There may have been a temporary halt in 1914, but at any rate up to then marvels were accomplished!” But if you look candidly and without bias at what has been achieved most recently, you will arrive at the following conclusion. Admittedly, masses of notes have been collected—masses of scientific and historical data. This kind of collecting has become the fashion. Countless experiments have been made and described. But now ask yourselves: Are there any fundamentally new ideas in all that this modern age has produced? New ideas, new conceptions were given by individual spirits like Goethe but Goethe has not been understood. If you study recent findings of natural science or historical research, it will be clear to you that, with respect to ideas, there is nothing new. Certainly, Darwin made journeys, described many things he saw on these journeys and gathered it all into an idea. But if you grasp the idea of evolution in its details, as idea, you will find it in the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras. So too you will find the fundamental principles of modern natural science in Aristotle-that is to say in the pre-Christian era. These ideas are treasures of the primeval wisdom—springing from a luciferic source. But the primeval wisdom has run dry, and something new in the form of insight into the spiritual world must be attained. A certain willingness on the part of humanity is necessary to undertake the labor entailed by really new ideas. And humankind today is sorely in need of new ideas, especially concerning the realm and the life of the soul. Fundamentally, all that science tells us in regard to the soul amounts to nothing more than a collection of words. What is taught in the lecture halls about thinking, feeling, and willing is simply a matter of words thrown out spasmodically. It amounts to little more than the sounds of the words. There is hardly the beginning of an attempt to take seriously anything that is really new.

In this connection one may have curious experiences! Some time ago I was invited to speak to a “Schopenhauer Society” in Dresden. I thought to myself: Yes—a Schopenhauer society—that must surely be something out of the ordinary! So I tried to show how the contrast between sleeping and waking, between waking up and going to sleep is to be understood in the psychological sense, how the soul is involved. I spoke of something I have recently mentioned to you, namely, that a zero-point is there at the moments of falling asleep and waking up, that sleep is not merely a cessation of the waking state, but bears the same relation to the waking state as debts bear to assets.

If you were to search through modern psychology you would not find the slightest trace of any attempt to get to the root of these far-reaching matters. After the lecture, in a “discussion” as it was called, certain learned members of the audience got up to speak. One of these philosophers made a really splendid statement, to the following effect. He said: “What we have been hearing could not possibly be a concern of serious science. Serious science has other, very different matters with which to occupy itself. We can know nothing of what has just been put before us so plausibly; none of it is a concern of human cognition. Moreover we have known it all for a long time.” In other words, therefore: what we cannot know is something with which we have long been familiar!

Now contradictions do exist, but contradictions of this kind exist only in the heads of present-day scholars! If someone says that certain things cannot be known, that they are not objects of human cognition—well and good, that is his opinion. But if he says in the same breath that he has known all about them for a long time, then there is an obvious contradiction. Erudite scholars of today often have a habit of placing two diametrically opposite opinions side by side in this way.

This kind of thinking has a great deal to do with the present situation. An individual—thanks to the Divine Powers and also, be it remembered, to Lucifer and Ahriman—is often able to form a fairly sound judgment of these things; but when it comes to presenting them to the world—that is a different matter altogether. Many people are willing to embark upon the study of spiritual science provided they find a society of rather sectarian tendencies in which they can take refuge. But when they have to face the world and present something of which the world itself possesses evidence, everything is apt to go up in smoke and they become veritable philistines. And then Ahriman's progress is greatly furthered.

Human beings are dwellers in two worlds. Our uniqueness amongst the creatures of the earth lies in this role that we have as half beast and half angel. A dynamic tension exists because of the contrary demands which living in each of these realms places on us. We experience this on a daily basis, an internal tug-of-war, pulling first in one direction, then to the opposite pole. Whenever we are called upon to make a choice, a decision, the earthly and the heavenly draw us one way or the other and often both at once!

A long held view has been that, of course, one should always give way to the heavenly or spiritual; the alternative is to succumb to the earthly, the fallen, to evil. The struggle has been portrayed as white versus black, as good versus evil. The enduring legacy of this attitude has been to deem the earthly, the bodily nature of the human being as soiled, unclean, corrupt, shameful. With this view the spiritual aspirant of the past had no choice but to reject the body, the earth. In India incarnating into a physical body has long been considered a curse, the entering into the “veil of tears” which constitutes life.

The physical body was especially singled out for punishment, to be starved and tortured, purged and scourged. St. Francis derided his body as his “donkey,” but reluctantly acknowledged that he must give it some care if it was to continue carrying him about. The medieval Cathars saw the human body as a pit into which the devil had lured the souls of weakened angels. Procreation was thus looked upon with horror as an act of unwitting cruelty—each new birth dragged a heavenly soul into the fallen world of matter, bringing another diabolically corrupt angel into the flesh. Even to study the physical body too closely was suspect, hence Leonardo's need for secrecy in dissection of corpses. The accumulation of an inordinate amount of the material realm in the form of wealth has also been rather suspect.

Such views have persisted on varying levels into modern times, and not just amongst the puritanical or the late Victorian. Sigmund Freud had difficulty, as a scientist, in acknowledging an angelic side in his patients. He reframed the conflict as one involving human bodily nature and the probably superstitious religious and moral beliefs they maintain. This wrestling match between the instinctual id and the moralistic superego was refereed by the central ego.

Later psychologists have continued to use this framework of two opposing forces moderated by the central force of an ego (though they all interpret the ego somewhat differently). Gestalt psychologists very pragmatically focus on how an individual becomes caught in this struggle between the two poles, without worrying about the relative merits of either pole—what is important is to get the individual “unstuck,” to empower the central ego to again be able to choose, to act more decisively through becoming conscious of its dilemma. The Italian psychiatrist, Robert Assagioli, wrote of the pull between the lower and higher unconscious, once again recognizing an earth/heaven dichotomy. He developed a therapy that sought a “psychosynthesis” of the two opposing forces, paving the way for the discovery of one's unifying center. Similarly, Carl Jung described the marriage of Eros and Logos within the soul, with the sometimes alchemical participation of the ego.

Some of these more spiritually inclined psychologists share with Rudolf Steiner the recognition that it is a synthesis of the two poles and not the choosing of one over the other that frees us for self-development. Humanity has both an earthly and a heavenly mission, tasks in the outer world as well as the inner, necessitating an acceptance, an embracing of both our natures.

In examining this predicament of living in two worlds, Rudolf Steiner, by virtue of his capacity for spiritual research, went much further than previous researchers. Steiner was able not merely to speak of opposing psychological forces, but to relate these specifically to the influence of mighty spiritual beings, Lucifer and Ahriman. The influence of these beings is not to be thought of as limited to the realm of the soul but rather taken in the widest context as encompassing human evolution, history, and almost every aspect of our existence.

The name Lucifer comes from the Latin meaning “bearer of the Light.” One's childhood picture of Lucifer as a slithering manifestation of evil is difficult to reconcile with the beauty of this name. Lucifer, however, represents a force that paradoxically can combine beauty and if you will, beauty gone too far, to the extreme of decadence, hence to evil.

In the Greek legend, Icarus and his father Daedalus escape from the tower of their island prison with wings fashioned of wax. Despite his father's warning, Icarus becomes enamored of his newfound power and of the beauty of the Sun; he flies up to the light (and heat), his wings melt, and he falls to his death. The wiser and more restrained Daedalus keeps his flight balanced between heaven and earth, thus succeeding in his escape from bondage. The Greeks were very aware of the temptation of Lucifer—in most of their tales of tragedy, “hubris” or overweening pride was the source of a hero's downfall.

In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, the Representative of Humanity, Lucifer is portrayed as an exceedingly handsome and powerful winged form. Despite his having fallen from Heaven, he was nevertheless, an angel, a leader of angels. As the Light Bearer he has particular gifts for humankind, especially that of wisdom, the gift he first offered to Adam and Eve. By their eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, Lucifer promised that they would “be as gods.” Like Icarus, they were not yet prepared for such a gift and ignoring warnings to the contrary, they accepted it and fell from Paradise. In this example it should be noted that the gift in and of itself is not evil. As in our earlier psychological examples, neither the heavenly nor the earthly is of itself to be seen as either absolutely desirable or absolutely forbidden. The beings of the polarities actually have something of value to offer to humanity. This is very different from the traditional view of the Devil's offerings! However, an individual must be inwardly prepared for the reception of these gifts if they are to be of any value. The hallucinogenic drug user is open to receiving Luciferic light and often feels quite wise when in the midst of the drug experience. Without the meditative discipline of the serious student of the spirit, however, the contact with those realms is rarely beneficial and, in fact, is often quite harmful.

In this century, society has especially interested itself in the material. Partially in response to the excessive rejection of the earth and the body, and of the authoritarianism which maintained this position, we have now fully entered the realm of matter, with head, heart, and soul. Whereas in former times humankind was more dreamy in its consciousness and thus more prone to the Luciferic realm of fantasy, illusion, and superstitious thinking, modern consciousness tends to the concrete, to materialism. The belief only in what can be ascertained by the physical senses (and the instruments which extend those senses) binds us to the earth and to the influence of the being named Ahriman.

Aingra Mainu, or Ahriman, was first spoken of in the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia. He was the evil god, the lord of lies who tempted men and women to believe that they were solely earthly beings. At a time in history when the clairvoyance which had once been common was becoming rare, the ethical teachings of Zarathustra sought to remind the people of their divine origin and to teach through the revelation he had received of the Lord of the Sun, Ahura Mazda.

The influence of Ahriman has grown through the centuries, quietly gaining respectability in the age of the Renaissance and flourishing in our own century as the predominant worldview. Only in the last years has there been any serious questioning of the notion that the only reality is the physical one. For the most part the realm of soul and spirit has been dismissed. The prevailing scientific view has been that only what can be weighed, measured, or quantified should merit serious attention. Ahriman has welcomed statistics as his handmaid.

At the beginning of the century, the Russian philosopher, Vladimir Soloviev, warned of this danger in his “A Short Narrative about Anti-Christ.” In this fictional essay Soloviev described the appearance of a great individual who taught world peace and became first the World Leader, and later the reuniter of the world's religions. He is a vegetarian and anti-vivisectionist and brings great material prosperity and physical comfort to all who acknowledge his authority, all of this without effort on the people's part. The world becomes peaceful, even docile, for the minor sacrifice of individuality and freedom.

The influence of Ahriman is seen in the generous gifts that he has bestowed on humankind in the past centuries and for which we must feel very grateful. All of the technological marvels which science has made possible have given many of us relative freedom from all manner of drudgery while maintaining a high standard of living, freeing us to pursue other interests, giving us more time ... or do we have more time? The great difficulty with our acceptance of Ahriman's bounty has been our relative blindness and lack of foresight as we have lost ourselves in its enjoyment. The birth of the ecology movement and discussion of the reductionist nature of science has wakened some consciousness of the danger into which we have strayed. Some awareness has arisen as to what we are sacrificing in the Faustian bargain which society has struck, a sacrifice which involves our very humanity.

Through Darwin's theory of evolution as well as through Freud's positing of the sexual as the primary motive of humankind, the idea that we are no more than “naked apes” has become quite accepted. To this instinctual or animalistic picture of the human, science has added the model of the human being as machine, with the brain as computer. With such a confining definition of humanity, is it any wonder that we have increasingly come to act and to see ourselves as just machines, or just animals?

The challenge for the individual is often not how to face either Ahriman or Lucifer, but how not to be torn asunder in the encounter with both forces. In T.S. Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Becket, is conducted to an examination of himself and his past by a succession of four Tempters. The first three attempt to win him with the Ahrimanic enticements of pleasures of the senses, good fellowship, and temporal power for himself and for his Church. Becket turns away from these three only to be approached by a fourth Tempter, clad like himself as a priest and tonsured. The Luciferic temptation now offered is the most dangerous and difficult for Becket, the whisper of spiritual pride—to die in order to attain immortality on earth, to envisage the saint's tomb being visited by pilgrims for centuries, to stand high within the ranks in heaven. Only with difficulty does Becket turn away from these “higher vices.”

In Rudolf Steiner's sculpture, a strong figure stands with one clenched hand upraised to the beautiful Lucifer, the other hand stretched downward to the twisted and sclerotic Ahriman. The Representative of Humanity stands heroically, holding at bay and in balance the two opposing forces, centered within the “Third Force,” that force which we recognize in ourselves in the word ‘I’.

In this series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner strives to deepen our understanding of the two opposing forces, to alert us especially to the dangers of Ahriman, whose wiles have lulled us into a soporific state. The intent, however, is not to drive us to obsession over Luciferic or Ahrimanic demons, but rather to remind us, to reawaken us to our true center. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical means, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep.” We recognize that dawn in the figure of the risen Christ who stands for all of us as the “Representative of Humanity” in the modern struggle for the kernel of our being.

Thomas Poplawski

I want during the next few evenings to talk to you about various things in connection with our present civilisation, things which are necessary to right understanding and action in the world to-day. It is not very difficult—in view of the many facts that meet one almost at every turn—to perceive signs of decline within our civilisation, and that it contains forces that make for its downfall. Recognising these forces of decline and fall within our civilisation, we have then to seek out the quarters from which it may draw fresh sources of new strength. If we survey our present civilisation we shall see that there are present in it three main downward forces,—three forces which gradually and inevitably must bring about its overthrow. All the distressing phenomena which we have hitherto experienced in the course of man's evolution, and all those that we have still to go through,—for in many respects we are only just at the beginning,—are all only so many symptoms of a vast process going on in our age, which, taken as a whole, presents a phenomenon of decline and fall.

If we look beyond our own immediate civilisation, beyond what has taken place in our own times merely, or during the last three or four hundred years,—if we take a wide survey of the whole course of man's evolution we may observe that earlier ages had a groundwork for their civilisation, a foundation for the habits and thoughts of everyday life, such as we to-day only believe ourselves to have. These old civilisations, especially the heathen civilisations, had something of a scientific character about them, a scientific character of a sort which made men realise that what lived within their own souls was part of the life of the whole universe. Just think what a vivid conception the Greeks still possessed of worlds extending beyond the bounds of everyday existence, of a world of gods and spirits behind the world of sense. One has but to recall how great a part was played in everyday life by whatever could form any sort of link between the people of those older civilisations and a spiritual world to which they were no strangers. In all their daily transactions, these men of the old civilisations were conscious of forming part of a creation that was not exhausted within the limits of the everyday world, but where spiritual beings made their activities felt. The commonest everyday affairs were carried on under the guidance of spiritual forces. Thus, in the heathen civilisations especially, we find when we look back on them, a dominant scientific character, which is best described by saying: in those days people—we can put it in that way—people had a COSMOGONY; that is, they recognised themselves to be members of the whole universe. They knew that they were not merely beings that had gone astray and were wandering about over the face of the green earth like lost sheep, but that they were part and parcel of the whole wide universe, and had their own functions in the universe as a whole. The men of old days possessed a COSMOGONY.

Our civilisation possesses no instinct for the creation of a cosmogony in real life. Our mode of conception is not, in the strict sense of the term, a genuinely scientific one. We have tabulated isolated facts and have constructed a logical system of concepts, but we have not got a real science, forming a practical link between us and the spiritual world. How paltry is the part played by the science of our day in common life, compared with what a man of old felt pulsing through him from forces of the spiritual world! In all his actions, he had a cosmogony; he knew himself a member of the whole vast universe. When he looked up at the sun and the moon and the stars, they were not to him strange worlds; for he knew himself, in his own deepest nature, akin to the sun and moon and world of stars. Thus, the old civilisation possessed a Cosmogony; but for our civilisation this cosmogony is lost. Without a cosmogony in life, man cannot be strong.—That is one thing,—what I might call the scientific element,—that is bringing about the downfall of our civilisation.

Another, the second element that is bringing about its downfall, is that there is no true impulse for FREEDOM. Our civilisation lacks the power to ground life upon a broad basis of general freedom. Only very few people in our day arrive at any real conception of freedom. There are plenty who talk about it; but very few to-day arrive at any real conception of what freedom really is, and fewer still have any real impulse for it. And so, it comes, that our civilisation is gradually sinking into something where it can find neither strength nor support—into fatalism. Either we have religious fatalism, in which men yield themselves up to religious forces of some sort or another, make these religious forces their master, and ask nothing better than to be pulled about by strings, like puppets at a show; or else we have the fatalism of natural science. And the effects of such scientific fatalism are seen in the way people have come to regard everything that happens as happening by natural necessity, or by economic necessity, and as leaving no scope for free action on the part of man. When men feel themselves fettered to the world of economics or the world of nature, that is, to all intents and purposes, fatalism. Or else, again, we have that fatalism which has come in with the more modern forms of religious faith,—a fatalism that deliberately precludes freedom. Just ask yourselves how many hearts and souls there are to-day that consciously yearn to yield themselves up, for Christ, or a spiritual power of some kind, to do what he pleases with them. Why, it is even an accusation that one frequently hears made against Anthroposophy, that it lays too little stress on men being redeemed by Christ and not by themselves. People prefer to be led; they prefer to be guided; they would really prefer fatalism to be true. How often lately, in these troublous [troubled?] years, has one not heard that kind of talk from one person or another. They would say: “Why doesn't God, why doesn't Christ, come to the help of this or that set of people? There must, after all, be a divine justice somewhere!” People would like this divine Justice ... They would like to have it suspended aloft as a fate. They do not want to get to that ingrained innate strength which comes from the impulse of Freedom and permeates the whole being. A civilisation that does not know how to foster the impulse of Freedom weakens men and dooms itself to downfall.

That is the second thing. Of the forces that are bringing about the decline of our civilisation, the first is the lack of a COSMOGONY, and the second is the lack of a genuine impulse for FREEDOM.

The third is that our civilisation is incapable of evolving anything that can give fresh fire to religious feeling and purpose. Our civilisation, in truth, aims at nothing more than nursing the old religions and fanning their cold ashes. But to bring new religious impulses into life,—for that our civilisation lacks the strength. And lacking this, it lacks also the strength for true altruistic action in life. That is why all the processes of our civilisation are so egoistic, because it has within itself no real, no strong, altruistic motive-power. There is nothing, friends, that can supply altruistic motive-power, but a spiritual view of life. Only when a man comes to recognise himself as a member of the spiritual world, does he cease to be so tremendously interested in himself that the whole world revolves round him. When he does,—then, indeed, egoistic motives cease and altruistic ones set in. Our age, however, is little given to cultivating so great an interest in the spiritual world. The interest in the spiritual world has got to be a good deal further developed before people really feel themselves members of it.

And so, one might say that it was like impulses given from on high that REINCARNATION and KARMA came amongst us and into our civilisation. But how were these impulses interpreted? At bottom it was in a very egoistic way that these ideas of Reincarnation and Karma were understood, even by those who took them up. For instance, they would say: “Oh, well! In some life or other everyone has deserved what he gets.” Even otherwise quite intelligent people have been known to say that the ideas of Reincarnation and Karma of themselves sufficiently warranted the existence of human suffering. There was at bottom no justification for the social question,—so said many otherwise intelligent people,—for, if a man was poor, it was what he had earned in his previous incarnation, and he has to work off in this incarnation only what he deserved from a previous one. Even the ideas of reincarnation and karma are unable to permeate our civilisation in any way except one which gives no stimulus to the altruistic sense. It is not enough for us merely to introduce ideas such as those of reincarnation and Karma,—the question is, in what way we introduce them. If they become merely an incentive to egoism, then they do not raise up our civilised life, they only serve to sink it lower.

There is another way, again, in which reincarnation and karma become unethical, anti-ethical, ideas; many people say: “I must be good, so that I may have a good incarnation next time.” To act from such a motive, to be virtuous in order that one may have as pleasant a time as possible in one's next incarnation,—this is not mere simple egoism, it is double egoism; yet this double egoism is what many people did actually get out of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. So that one may say that our civilisation possesses so little of any altruistic religious impulse that it is incapable of conceiving even such ideas as those of reincarnation and karma in the sense that would make them a stimulus to altruistic, not to egoistic actions and sentiments.

Those are the three things which are acting within our civilisation as forces of decline and fall:—lack of a COSMOGONY, lack of a sound foundation of FREEDOM, lack of an ALTRUISTIC SENSE. But without a cosmogony there is no real science or system of knowledge, there is no real knowledge; then all knowledge ultimately becomes a mere game, in which all the worlds and the civilisation of man are toys. And this is what knowledge has, in many respects, become in our age,—in so far as it is not merely a utilitarian incident of external culture, of external technical culture. Freedom has become in many respects in our age an empty phrase, because the force of our civilisation is not that which lays a large foundation of freedom nor spreads abroad the impulse of freedom. Neither have we in the economic field the possibility of progressing further in the social direction, because our civilisation contains no altruistic motive-force, but only egoistic, that means anti-social motive-forces,—and one cannot socialise with antisocial forces. For socialising means creating a social framework such that each man lives and works for the rest. But just imagine in our present civilisation each man trying to live and work for the rest! Why, the whole order of society is so instituted that each one can only live and work for himself. All our institutions are like that.

The question then arises:—How are we going to surmount these signs of our civilisation's decline and fall? To plaster over such signs of decline in our civilisation, my dear friends, is quite impossible. There is nothing for it but to recognise the facts as they have just been stated, to regard them dispassionately and without reservations, and to harbour no illusions. One must say to oneself: There they are, these forces of decline and fall, and one must not imagine that one can in any way turn them in another direction, or anything of that sort. No, they are very powerful forces of decline, and it is necessary to give them their proper name, and to speak of them as we are doing now. This being so, what we have got to do is to turn to where forces can be found for the re-ascent. That is not to be done by theorising, People in the present day may invent the most beautiful theories, may have the most beautiful principles, but with theories one can do nothing. To do anything in life, it must be by means of the forces that are actually present in the world; and one must summon them up. If our civilisation were through and through as I have been describing it,—I mean, if it were like that through and through,—then there would be nothing for it but to say to ourselves: “There is nothing for it, but just to let our civilisation go to pieces, and ourselves go to pieces along with it.” For to attempt in any way to redress the signs of the times by mere theories or conceptions would be an utter absurdity.

One can but ask:—Does not the root of the matter perhaps lie really deeper? It does lie deeper; and in this way:—People to-day—and I have here often pointed out the same thing from different aspects,—people to-day are too much bent upon the absolute. When they ask: “What is true?” they mean, “What Is true absolutely?”—not what is true of a particular age. When they ask, “What is good?” they are asking, “What is good absolutely?” They are not asking, “What is good for Europe? What is good for Asia? What is good for the 20th century? What is good for the 25th century?” They are asking about absolute Goodness and Truth. They are not asking about what actually exists in the concrete evolution of mankind. We must put the question to ourselves in a different way, for we must look at the actuality of things, and from the point of view of actuality; questions must be differently put, very often so put that the answers seem paradoxical compared with what one is inclined to assume from a surface view of things. We must ask ourselves: Is there no possibility of arriving once more at a mode of conception which is cosmogonical, which takes in the universe as a whole? Is there no possibility of arriving at an impulse of freedom which shall be an actual influence in social life? Is there no possibility for an impulse which shall be religious and at the same time an impulse of brotherhood, and therefore the real basis for an economic social order? Is there no possibility^ of arriving at such an impulse? And if we put these questions before us from a real aspect, then we get real answers. For the point, we have here to remember is this: that the various types of people on the earth to-day are not all adapted to the whole all-comprehensive universal truth, but that the various types of men are only adapted to particular fields of the true activity. We must ask ourselves; Where in the life of earth to-day may there, perhaps, exist the possibility for a cosmogony to evolve? Where does the possibility exist for a sweeping impulse of freedom to evolve? And where does the impulse exist for a communal life among men, which is religious and also, in a social sense, brotherly?

We will take the last question first; and if we contemplate the state of affairs on our earth impartially, we shall come to the conclusion that the temperament, the mode of thought for an actual brotherly impulse upon our earth is to be sought amongst the Asiatic peoples, the peoples of Asia, especially in the civilisations of Japan and India. Despite the fact that these civilisations are already fallen into decadence, and despite the fact that external, superficial appearances are against it, we find there enshrined in men's hearts those impulses of generous love towards all living things, which alone can supply foundations for religious altruism in the first place, and, in the second, for an actual, altruistic, industrial form of civilisation.

But here we are met by a peculiar fact: that the Asiatics have, it is true, the temperament for altruism, but that they have not got the kind of human existence which would enable them to carry their altruism into practice; they have merely got the temperament but they have no possibility, no gift, for creating social conditions in which altruism could begin to be externally realised. For thousands of years the Asiatics have managed to nurse the instincts of altruism in human nature. And yet they brought this to a state in which China and India were devastated by monster famines. That is the peculiar thing about the Asiatic civilisation, that the temperament is there, and that this temperament is inwardly perfectly sincere, but that there exists no gift for realising this temperament in outward life. That is just the peculiar thing about this Asiatic civilisation, that it contains a tremendously strong instinct for altruism in men's inward nature, yet no possibility for the moment of realising 4t externally. On the contrary, if Asia were left to herself alone, this very fact, that she has this capacity for paying the inward basis of altruism, without any gift for realising it outwardly, would turn Asia into an appalling desert of civilisation.

We may say, then, that of these three things: the impulse for COSMOGONY, the impulse for FREEDOM, the impulse for ALTRUISM, Asia possesses more especially the inward temperament for the third. It is, however, but one third of -what is necessary to bring our civilisation into the ascendant, which Asia possesses,—the inward temperament for altruism.

What has Europe got? Well, Europe has got the utmost necessity for solving the social question; but she has not got the temperament for the social question. To solve the social question, she would need to have the Asiatic temperament. The social necessities of Europe are such as to supply all the conditions requisite for a solution of the social question; but the Europeans would first need to become permeated through and through with the way of thought which is natural to the Asiatic, only the Asiatic has no gift for actually perceiving social needs as they exist externally. Often, indeed, he even acquiesces in them. In Europe, there is every external incentive to do something about the social question, but the temperament is lacking. On the other hand, there is in Europe, in the very strongest degree, the talent, the ability which would provide the soil for Freedom,—for the impulse of freedom. The strong point of European talents, specifically European talents, lies in developing in the very highest degree the inner sentiment, the inner feeling for freedom. One might say that the gift for getting to a real idea of Freedom is specifically European; but among these Europeans there are no people who act freely, who could make freedom a reality. Of Freedom as an idea, the Europeans can form the loftiest conception. But just as the Asiatic would be able to set about doing something, if he possessed the clear thought of the Europeans without their other failings, if he could only get the clear-out European idea of Freedom, so the European can evolve the most beautiful conception of Freedom, but there is no possibility, politically, of realising this idea of freedom through the direct agency of the European peoples, for, of the three essentials to civilisation,—the impulse for altruism, the impulse for freedom, the impulse for cosmogony,—the European possesses only one-third, the impulse for Freedom. The other two he has not got.

So, the European also has only got one-third of what is necessary in order really to bring forth a new age. It is very important that people should at last recognise these things as being the secrets of our civilisation. In Europe we can, at least, say that we have all the conditions of thought and feeling requisite for knowing what freedom is, but, without something more, there is no possibility for us to actualise this freedom. I can assure you, for instance, that in Germany the most beautiful things were written by various individuals about freedom, at the time when all Germany was groaning under the tyranny of Ludendorff and Co. Most beautiful things were written about freedom at the time. Here in Europe, a talent undoubtedly exists for conceiving the impulse of freedom. That is one-third, so far, towards the actual upraising of our civilisation,—one-third, not the whole.

Leaving Europe and going westwards—and I take Great Britain and America together in this connection,—passing, then, to the Anglo-American world, we find there again, one-third of the impulses, just one out of the three impulses necessary to the upraising of our civilisation, and that is, the impulse towards a cosmogony. Anyone acquainted with the spiritual life of the Anglo-American world knows that, formalistic as Anglo-American spiritual life is in the first instance, that, materialistic as it is in the first instance, and though, indeed, it even tries to get what is spiritual in a materialistic fashion, yet it has got in it the makings of a cosmogony. Although this cosmogony is to-day being sought along altogether erroneous paths, yet it lies in Anglo-American nature to seek for it. Again, a third, the search for a cosmogony. But there the possibility of bringing this cosmogony into connection with free altruistic man does not exist. There is the talent for treating this cosmogony as an ornamental appendage, for working it out and giving it shape; but no talent for incorporating the human being in this cosmogony as a member of it. Even the spiritualist movement, in its early beginnings in the middle of the 19th century, of which it still preserves some traces, had, one may say, something of a cosmogony about it, although it led into the wilderness. What they were trying to get at were the forces that lay behind the sense-forces; only they took a materialistic road, a materialistic method, to find them. But they were not endeavouring through these means to arrive at a science of the formalist kind that you get, for instance, among the Europeans; they were trying to become acquainted with the real actual super-sensual forces. Only, as I said, they took a wrong road, what is still known as the “American” way. So here, again, we have one-third of what will have to be there before our civilisation can really rise again.

One cannot to-day arrive at the secrets of our civilisation, my dear friends, unless one can distinguish how these three impulses needed for its rise are distributed among the different parts of our earth's surface; unless one knows that the tendency towards Cosmogony is an endowment of the Anglo-American world, that the tendency towards Freedom lies in the European world, whilst the tendency towards Altruism and towards that temperament which, properly realised, leads to socialism is, strictly speaking, peculiar to Asiatic culture. America, Europe, Asia, each has one- third of what must be attained for any true regeneration, any real reconstruction of our civilisation.

These are the fundamental ideas which must inspire thought and feeling to-day for anyone who is in earnest and sincere about working for a reconstruction of our civilisation. One cannot to-day shut oneself up in one's study and ponder over which is the best programme for the coming times. One has got to-day to go out into the world and search out the impulses already existing there. As I said, if one looks at our civilisation and at all that is hurrying it to its fall, one cannot avoid an impression that it is impossible to save it. And it cannot be saved unless people come to see that one thing is to he found amongst one people, and the second amongst another, the third amongst a third,—unless people all over the earth come together and set to work on big lines to give practical recognition to what none of them, singly, can of himself achieve, in the absolute sense, but which must be achieved by that one who is marked out, so to speak, by destiny for that particular work. If the American to-day, besides a cosmogony, wants also to evolve freedom and socialism, he cannot do it. If to-day the European, besides founding the impulse for freedom, wants to supply cosmogony and altruism, he cannot do it. No more can the Asiatic realise anything save his long- engrained altruism. Let this altruism be once taken over by the other groups of the earth's inhabitants, and saturated with that for which each has a special talent, then, and then only, we shall really get on.

We have got once for all to admit to ourselves that our civilisation has grown feeble, and must again find strength. I have expressed this in a rather abstract way, and to make it more concrete will put it as follows:—The old pre-Christian civilisations of the East produced, as you know, great cities. Great cities existed in them. We can look back over a wide spread range of civilisations in the East, which all produced great cities. But the great cities they produced had, as well, a certain character about them. All the civilisations of the East had this speciality for creating, along with the life of great cities, the conception that, after all, man's life is a void, a nothing, unless he penetrates beyond the merely physical into the super-physical. And so, great cities such as Babylon, Nineveh, and the rest, were able to develop a real growth, because men were not led by these cities to regard what the cities themselves brought forth as being itself the actual reality, but, rather, what is behind it all. It was in Rome that people came to make the civilisation of cities a gauge of what was to be regarded as real. The Greek cities are inconceivable without the country round them. If history, as we have it, were not such a conventional fiction,—a “fable convenue,”—and would only revive past times in their time aspect, it would show us the Greek cities rooted in the country. But Rome no longer had her roots in the country. Indeed, the whole history of Rome consists in the conversion of an imaginary world into a real world, the conversion of a world which is unreal into one which is real. It was in Rome that the Citizen was first invented,—that ghastly mock-figure alongside the living being, Man. For man is a human being; and if he is a citizen besides, that is a fiction. His being a citizen is something that is entered in the church register, or the town register, or somewhere of the sort. That besides being a human being, endowed with particular faculties, he is also the owner of assessed property, duly entered in the land register,—that is a fiction alongside the reality. That is thoroughly Roman thought. But Rome achieved a great deal more than that. Rome managed to take all that results from the separation of the town from the country,—the real, actual country,—and to give it a fictitious reality. Rome, for instance, took the old religious concepts and introduced into them the Roman legal concepts. If we go back to the old religious concepts with an open mind, we do not find the Roman legal concepts contained in the old religious ones. Roman jurisprudence simply invaded religious ethics. All through religious ethics, thanks to what Rome has made of them, there is, at bottom, a notion of the supersensible world as of a place with judges sitting, passing judgment on human actions, just as they do on the Benches of our law-courts, that are modelled on the Roman pattern.

Yes, so persistent is the influence of these Roman legal concepts, that when there is any talk of Karma, one actually finds that the majority of people to-day who accept the doctrine of Karma picture it working, as though Justice were sitting over there beyond, meting out rewards and punishments according to our earthly notions, a reward for a good deed, and a punishment for a bad one,—exactly the Roman conception of law. All the saints and supernatural beings exist after the fashion of these Roman legal concepts which have crept into the supernatural world.

Who to-day, for instance, comprehends the grand idea of the Greek “Fate”? The concepts of Roman jurisprudence do not help us much to-day, do they, towards the understanding of the “Oedipus.” Indeed, men seem altogether to have lost the capacity for comprehending tragic grandeur, owing to the influence of Roman legal concepts. And these Roman legal concepts have crept into our modern civilisation; they live in every part of it; they have become in their very essence a fictitious reality, something imaginary,—not something one imagines, but something that is imaginary. It is absolutely necessary for us clearly to see that, in our whole way of conceiving things, we have lost touch with reality, and that what we need is to impregnate our conceptions afresh with reality. It is because men's concepts are, at bottom, hollow, that our civilisation still remains unconscious of the need for the common co-operation of men all over the round earth. We are never really willing to go to the root of what is taking place under our eyes; we are always more or less anxious to keep on the surface of things. Just to give you another example of this. You know how in the various parliaments throughout the world in former days,—say, the first half of the 16th century, or a little later,—party tendencies took shape in two definite directions, the one Conservative the other Liberal,—which for a long time enjoyed considerable respect. The various other parties that have come up since were later accessions to these two main original ones. There was the party of a conservative tendency, and the party of a liberal tendency. But, my dear friends, it is so very necessary that one should nowadays get beyond the words to the real thing behind, and there are many matters about which one must ask, not what people, who stand for a certain thing, say about it, but what is going on subconsciously within the people themselves. If you do so, you will find that the people who attach themselves to one or other of the parties of a conservative tone are people who in some way are chiefly connected with agrarian interests, with the care of land and cultivation of the soil; that is to say, with the primal element of human civilisation. In some way or other this will be the ease. Of course, on the surface, there may be all sorts of other circumstances entering in as well. I do not say that every conservative is necessarily directly connected with agriculture. Of course there is here, as everywhere else, a fringe of people who adhere to the catchwords of a cause. It is the main feature that one has to consider; and the main feature is that that part of the population which has an interest in preserving certain forms of social structure and in keeping things from moving too fast, is agrarian.

On the other hand, the more industrial element, drawn from labour that has been detached from the soil, is liberal, progressive. So that these two-party tendencies have their source in something that lies deeper; and one must, in every case, try to lift such things out of the mere phrases into which they have fallen,—to get through the words to the real thing behind them.

But ultimately, it all tells the same tale,—that the form of civilisation in which we have been living is one whose strength lies in words. We must push forward to a civilisation built upon real things, to a civilisation of real things. We must cease to be imposed upon by phrases, by programmes, by verbal ideals, and must get to the clear perception of realities. Above all, we must get to a clear perception of realities of a kind that lie deeper than forms of civilisation in city or country, agricultural or industrial. And much deeper than these are those impulses which to-day are at work in the various members of the body human distributed over the globe,—of which the American is making towards Cosmogony, the European towards Freedom, and the Asiatic towards Socialism.

At present, this certainly comes out, has and does come out, in a curious way. Anglo-American civilisation is conquering the world, But, in conquering the world, it will need to absorb what the conquered parts of the world have to give; the impulse to Freedom and the impulse to Altruism; for in itself it has only the impulse to Cosmogony. Indeed, Anglo-American civilisation owes its success to a cosmogonic impulse. It owes it to the circumstance that people are able to think in world-thoughts. We have often and often talked about this during the war, and how the successes of that side proceeded from supersensible impulses of a particular kind, which the others refused to recognise. The cosmogonic element cannot and must not be left thus isolated; it must be permeated from the domain of freedom.

Yes, my dear friends, but then, to see the full meaning of this, it is, I need hardly say, necessary to get right, right away from phrases, and pierce to the realities. For anyone who is tied to phrases would naturally think; Well, but who of late has stood out as the representatives of Freedom, if not the Anglo- American world?—Why, of course, in words, yes, to any extent, but what matters about a thing is not how it is represented in words, but what it is in reality. We have had over and over again, as you know, occasion to refer to -the language of “Wilsonism.” Phraseology of the Wilson type has been gaining ground in Western countries for a long-time past. In October 1918, it even for a time laid hold of Central Europe. And over and over again here,—I remember there was always quite a little commotion here when, over and over again, as the years went on, one had to point out the futility of all that Woodrow Wilson's name stood for, how utterly hollow and abstract it all was, for which Woodrow Wilson's name stood. But now, you see, people even in America are apparently beginning to see through Wilsonism, and hour hollow and abstract it all is. Here, there was no question of any national feeling of hostility towards Wilson, there was no question of antagonism proceeding from Europe. It was an antagonism arising from the whole conception of our civilisation and its forces. It was a question of showing Wilsonism for what it is,—the type of all that is abstract, all that is most unreal in human thought. It is the Wilson type of thought which has had such one-sided results, because it has absorbed the American impulse without really possessing the impulse of freedom (for talking about freedom is by no means a proof that the impulse of freedom itself is really there), and because it had not the impulse for really practical Altruism.

The life of Central Europe, with all that it was, lies in the dust. What lived in Central Europe is, to a great extent, sunk in a fearful sleep. At the present moment, the German is, one might say, forced to think of freedom, not as they talked of it in all manner of fine phrases at the time when they were groaning under the yoke of Ludendorff,—when constraint of itself engendered an understanding of the idea of freedom. Mow they think of it, but with crippled powers of soul and body, in total inability to summon up the energy for real intense thought. We have in Germany all sorts of attempts at democratic forms, but no democracy. We have a republic, but no republicans. And this is in every way a symptom that has especially manifested itself in Central Europe, but it is characteristic of the European world in general.

And Eastern Europe?—For years and years, the proletariat of the whole world have been boasting of all that Marxianism was going to do. Lenin and Trotsky were in a position to put Marxianism into practice; and it is turning into the wholesale plunder of civilisation, which is identical with the ruin of civilisation. And these things are only just beginning. Yet for all that, there does exist in Europe the capacity for founding freedom, ideally, spiritually. Only, Europe must supplement this in an actual practical sense, through the co-operation of the other people on the earth.

In Asia, we can see the old Asiatic spirit lighting up again in recent years. Those people who are spiritual leaders in Asia (take, for example, the one I have already alluded to, Rabindranath Tagore),--the leading spirits of Asia show by their very way of speaking that the altruistic spirit is anything but dead. But there is still less possibility now than there was even in old days, of achieving a civilisation through this one third only of the impulses that go to the making of a civilisation.

All this is the reason why to-day there is so much talk about things which are peculiar to the civilisation that is dying, but which people talk about as though they stood for something that could be effective as an ideal. For years, we have had it proclaimed that “Every nation must have the possibility of ...” well, I don't quite know of what, living its own life in its own way, or something of that sort. Now, I ask you: For the man of to-day, if he is frank and honest about it, what is a “nation”?—Practically just a form of words, certainly nothing real. If one talks about the Spirit of a Nation, in the sense in which we speak of it in Anthroposophy, then one can talk about a Nation, for then there is a reality at the back of it; but not when it merely signifies an abstraction. And it is an abstraction that people have in mind today when they talk of the “freedom” of nationalities, and so forth. For they certainly don't believe in the reality of any sort of national Being. And herein lies the profound inward falsity to which men to-day do homage. They don't believe in the reality of the national Being, yet they talk of the “Freedom of the Nation,” as if to the materialist man of our day, the “nation” meant anything at all. What is the German nation? Just ninety millions of persons, who can be added together and summed up, A plus A plus A. That is not a National Being—a self-contained entity—for men to believe in. And it is just the same with the other nations. Yet people talk about these things and believe that they are talking about realities, and all the while are lying to themselves in the depths of their souls.

But it is with Realities we are dealing when we say; The Anglo- American Being—a striving towards cosmogony; the European Being—a striving towards freedom; the Asiatic Being—a striving towards altruism. When we then try to comprehend these three divided forces in a consciousness that embraces the universe as a whole,—when, from out of this consciousness of the universal whole, we say to ourselves: “The old civilisation is bursting through its partitions, it is doomed,” to try to save it -would be to work against one's age, not with it. We need a new civilisation upon the ruins of the old one. The ruins of the old civilisation will get ever smaller and smaller; and that man alone understands the present times who has will and courage for one that shall be really new. But the new must be grounded, neither in a sense of country as among the Greeks and Romans, nor in a sense of the Earth, as with men of modern times. It must proceed from a sense of the Universe, the world-consciousness of future man, that world-consciousness which once more turns its eyes away from the earth here, and looks up to the Cosmos. Only, we must arrive at a view of this Cosmos which shall carry us in practice beyond the Schools of Copernicus and Galileo.

My dear friends, the Europeans have known how to express the earth's environment in terms of mathematics; but they have not known how, from the earth's environment, to extract a real science. For the times in which he lived, Giordano Bruno was a remarkable figure, a great personality; but to-day we need to realise that where he could only perceive a mathematical order, there a spiritual order reigns, reality reigns. The American does not really believe in this purely mathematical world, in the purely mathematical cosmos. His particular civilisation leads him to reach out to a knowledge of the supersensible forces beyond, even though he is, as yet, on the wrong road. In Europe, there was no sort of knowledge that they did not pursue; and yet when Goethe, in his own way, really put the question: “What is scientific knowledge?” there was no getting any further; for Europe had not got the power to take what can be learnt from the study, say, of Man, and widen it into a cosmogony, a science of the universe. Goethe discovered metamorphosis, the metamorphosis of plants, the metamorphosis of animals, the metamorphosis of man. The head, in respect of its system of bones, is a vertebral column and spinal marrow, transformed. So far, so good; but you need to follow it up and develop it, until you realise that this head is the transformed man of the previous incarnation, and that the trunk and limbs are the man in the initial stage of the coming incarnation. Real science must be cosmic, otherwise it is not science. It must be cosmic, must be a cosmogony, otherwise this science is not something that can. give inward human impulses which will carry man on through life. The man of modern times cannot live instinctively; he must live consciously. He needs a cosmogony; and he needs a freedom that is real. He needs more than a lot of vague talk about freedom; he needs more than the mere verbiage of freedom; he needs that freedom should actually grow into his immediate life and surroundings. This is only possible along paths that lead to ethical individualism.

There is a characteristic incident in connection with this. At the time when my Philosophy of Freedom appeared, Edouard von Hartmann was one of the first to receive a copy of the book, and he wrote me: “The book ought not to be called The Philosophy of Freedom,” but “A Study in Phenomena connected with the Theory of Cognition, and in Ethical Individualism.” Well, for a title that would have been rather long-winded; but it would no# have been bad to have called it “Ethical Individualism,” for ethical individualism is nothing but the personal realisation of freedom. The best people were totally unable to perceive how the actual impulses of the age were calling for the thing that is discussed in that book, The Philosophy of Freedom.

Turning now to Asia,—indeed, my dear friends, Asia and Europe must learn to understand each other. But if things go on as they have in the past, then they will never understand each other, especially as Asia and America have to understand each other as well The Asiatics look at America and see that what they have there is really nothing more than the machinery of external life, of the State, of Politics, etc, The Asiatic has no taste for all this machinery; his understanding is all for the things that arise from the inmost impulses of the human soul. The Europeans have, it is true, dabbled in this same Asiatic spirit, the spiritual life of Asia; but it must be confessed that they have not, so far, given proof of. any very great understanding of it. Nor have they been in very perfect agreement, and the kind of disagreement that arose plainly showed that they had very little understanding of how to introduce into European culture what are the real actuating impulses of Asiatic culture. Just think of Mme. Blavatsky; she wanted to introduce into the civilisation of Europe every kind of thing out of the civilisation of India, of Thibet. Much of it was very dubious, that she tried to introduce. Max Müller tried another way of bringing Asiatic civilisation into Europe. One finds a good deal in Blavatsky that is not in Max Müller; and there is a good deal in Max Müller that is not in Blavatsky. But from the criticism Max Müller passed on Blavatsky it is plain how little insight there was into the subject. In Max Müller's opinion, it was not the real substance of the Indian spirit that Blavatsky had brought over to England, but a spurious imitation, and he expressed his opinion in a simile, by saying: That if people met a pig that was grunting, they would not be astonished; but if they met a pig talking like a man, then they would be astonished. Well, in the way Max Müller used the simile he can only have meant that he, with his Asiatic culture, was the pig that grunted, and that Blavatsky was as if a pig should start talking like a man! To me it certainly seems that there is nothing remarkably interesting about a pig grunting; but one would begin to feel rather interested if a pig were suddenly to start running about and talking like a man Here the simile of itself shows that the analogy they found was a very thin one and lies chiefly in the words. But people do not notice that nowadays; and if one does make bold to point out the absurd side of the matter, then people think one ought not to treat “recognised authorities” like Max Müller in that kind of way, it is not at all proper!

That is just where it is, my dear friends, the time is at hand when one must speak out honestly and straightforwardly. And if one ie to be honest and straightforward, one must speak out quite plainly about the occult facts of our civilisation in the present day,—such facts as these: That the Anglo-American world has the gift for Cosmogony, that Europe has the gift for Freedom, Asia the gift for Altruism, for religion, for a social-economic order.

These three temperaments must be fused together for a complete humanity. We must become men of all the worlds, and act from that standpoint, as inhabitants of the universe. Then, and then only, can that come about which the age really demands.

We will talk more about this tomorrow. To-morrow we meet at 7 o'clock. First there will be the Eurhythmic performance, then a break, and after that the lecture.