The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The four plays here produced in an English translation in two volumes, are perhaps best described as Christian Mystery Plays. They are intended to represent the experiences of the soul during initiation; or in other words, the psychic development of man up to the moment when he is able to pierce the veil and see into the beyond. Through this vision he is then able to discover his real self and carry into effect the cryptic injunction graven on the old Greek temples Γνωθι σεαυτόν, know thyself. At a later stage he comes to ‘realize’ himself, and finally learns the true significance of the Second Advent of our Lord. This process is known as the ‘Rosicrucian’ initiation—an initiation specially adapted to modern days—the time and manner of which depend on the individual nature and circumstances of each person.

The four plays form one continuous series, and the characters portrayed are of quite an ordinary kind except that they take more than the usual interest in spiritual matters, their first desire being so to improve their own mental and moral state as to make then able to benefit their fellows.

We find amongst them many types—the occult leader and the seeress who explains the coming of Christ. We are shown the spiritual development of an artist, a scientist, a philosopher, a historian, a mystic, and a man of the world; and we hear too the scoffing cynicism of the materialist Fox. We are led to realize how the characters are connected on the physical as well as the spiritual plane; and we learn also about the nature of elementals and the twin forces of hindrance known as Lucifer and Ahriman; the former of whom may be described as an embodiment of the spiritual impulse to action, an impulse always necessary but often distorted to bring about self-glorification rather than the ambition to do good; the latter as an embodiment of an influence which seeks to materialize everything, thus hindering true spiritual growth and freedom. These two influences are given to man that he may gain free will by having perfect liberty to guide them in the one direction or in the other.

With regard to the writing and production of the plays, Doctor Steiner's habit is to write a play whilst the rehearsals are actually in progress, finishing it a few days before the first public performance, and the first play was written and acted in this manner in August, 1910, the second in August, 1911, the third in August, 1912, and the fourth in August, 1913. It was not until then that the complete key to the development of the characters was attainable. The last play explains the progress of the other three, and, following out the hint given in the second play by the account of the previous incarnation in the Middle Ages, traces the characters right back to their earlier incarnation in ancient Egypt.

The plays were performed in Munich every summer under the personal direction of the author and were acted by men and women of several nationalities—all students of his teaching. The audiences numbered some two thousand and were composed entirely of his followers.

In 1913, owing to the difficulties and expense incurred each year in securing an appropriate theatre, his supporters acquired a plot of ground in Munich, and plans were designed for a theatre of their own, but the Munich authorities after much prevarication and delay finally prohibited its building.

Because of this, and because of the hostility which his writings and lectures had aroused in other parts of Germany, Doctor Steiner was led to set up his theatre in Switzerland at the little village of Dornach—not far from Bâle. Here a theatre is being built in accordance with his own designs and it is hoped that the plays will be performed there regularly as soon as the edifice is complete.

In conclusion I should like to express my gratitude to my friends and fellow students R. T. Gladstone, M.A., Cantab, and S. M, K. Gandell, M.A., Oxon, for their most valuable help in the very difficult task of translating the plays into English verse. Only a translator can appreciate the difficulties involved in preserving both the sense and rhythm of the original, and it is no exaggeration to say that without their aid the production of these works in English would not have been possible at the present time.

I would also like to take this occasion of thanking Doctor Steiner himself for permitting me to attend the rehearsals and assist in the performances of the plays. It was a great privilege and pleasure for which I can never feel sufficiently grateful. And last, but not least, I have to thank him for his ever kind and patient attention to all my questions on the subject of these plays and of spiritual science in general.

H. COLLISON.

New York, 1919.

Introductory Comments to the Lecture Cycle The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity Copenhagen, June 5, 1911

The Mission of the New Revelation of the Spirit

In the next few days I will have the opportunity to speak here about a theosophical subject that is important to me, namely, the spiritual guidance of the individual and humanity. Since our friends here have asked me to, I will preface my lecture series today with a few comments that may serve as a kind of introduction to the subject.

Theosophists must have as a characteristic what we may call an inherent yearning for self-knowledge in the broadest sense. Even people only slightly familiar with theosophy can sense that such self-knowledge will give birth to a a comprehensive appreciation for all human feeling and thinking as well as for all other beings. This appreciation must be an indispensable part of our whole theosophical movement.^S1

Often people do not understand clearly that in our German theosophical movement what lights up our way is the sign you know as the mark of the Cross with Roses. It is easy to harbor misunderstandings about our spiritual, theosophical movement that seeks to live into the spiritual life of today—that is, into our hearts and their feelings, our will and its deeds—under the sign of the Rose Cross. People easily misunderstand our movement. Many people, even those with good intentions, have difficulty realizing that our spiritual movement, working under the sign of the Rose Cross, is inspired in all its principles—in its whole feeling and sensitivity—to be understanding and tolerant of every human striving and every aspiration. Though this tolerance is an inherent characteristic of the Rosicrucian movement, it may not be obvious at first glance, because it lies in its depths. You will find, therefore, that people who confuse tolerance with the one-sided acceptance of their own opinions, principles, and methods are particularly likely to misunderstand our movement.

It is very easy to imagine this tolerance; yet to attain it is extremely difficult. After all, we find it easy to believe that people who disagree with us are our opponents or enemies. Similarly, we can easily mistake our own opinion for a generally accepted truth. For theosophy to flourish and be fruitful for the spiritual life of the future, however, we have to meet each other on an all-inclusive basis. Our souls must be filled with profound understanding not only for those who share our beliefs but also for those who, compelled by the circumstances of their own experience, their own path through life, may perhaps advocate the opposite of what we do. The old morality, now on the wane, taught us to love and to be tolerant of those who share our thoughts and feelings. However, with its truth, theosophy will more and more radiate a much more far-reaching tolerance into people's hearts. This more profound tolerance will enable us to meet others with understanding and encouragement and to live in harmony with them, even when their thoughts and feelings differ completely from our own.

This touches upon an important issue. What do people come upon first when they turn to the theosophical movement? What are they compelled to acknowledge first? Normally, the general insight people encounter first when they approach theosophy is the idea of reincarnation and karma—the idea of the continued working of causes from one life into the next. Of course, this is not a dogma for us. Indeed, we may have different opinions about this basic insight. Still, the conviction of reincarnation and karma forces itself upon us right from the start of our acquaintance with theosophy. However, it is a long way from the day we first become convinced of these truths to the moment when we can begin, in some way, to see our whole life in the light of these truths. It takes a long time for the conviction to become fully alive in our soul.

For example, we may meet a person who mocks or even insults us. If we have immersed ourselves in the teaching of reincarnation and karma for a long time, we will wonder who has spoken the hurtful, insulting words our ears have heard. Who has heaped mockery upon us—or even who has raised the hand to hit us? We will then realize that we ourselves did this. The hand raised for the blow only appears to belong to the other person. Ultimately, we cause the other to raise his or her hand against us through our own past karma.

This merely hints at the long path from the abstract, theoretical conviction of karma to the point where we can see our whole life in the light of this idea. Only then do we really feel God within us and no longer experience him only as our own higher self, which teaches us that a tiny spark within us shares in God's divinity. Instead, we learn to be aware of this higher self in such a way that a feeling of unlimited responsibility fills us. We feel responsible not only for our actions, but also for what we suffer, because what we suffer now is after all only the necessary result of what we did in the far-distant past.

Let us experience this feeling pouring into our souls as the warm, spiritual life blood of a new culture. Let us feel how new concepts of responsibility and of love arise and take hold of our souls through theosophy. Let us recognize that is no empty phrase to claim that the theosophical movement arose in our time because human beings need new moral, intellectual, and spiritual impulses. And let us be aware that a new spiritual revelation is about to pour itself forth into our hearts and our convictions through theosophy, not arbitrarily, but because the new moral impulses and the new concepts of responsibility—and, indeed, the destiny of humanity—require such a new spiritual revelation. Then we can know in an immediate, living way that it has a coherent meaning for the world that the same souls present here now repeatedly lived on earth in the past. We have to ask what this meaning is—why are we incarnated again and again?

We find this meaning when we learn through theosophy that every time we see all the wonders of this world with new eyes in a new body, we get a glimpse of the divine revelations veiled by the sensory world. Or, with our newly formed ears, we can listen to the divine revelation in the world of sound. Thus, we learn that in every new incarnation we can and should experience something new on earth. We understand that some people are destined by karma to announce prophetically what all of humanity will gradually, bit by bit, accept as the meaning of an epoch.

What people in the Theosophical Society—and in the theosophical movement in general—know because of these revelations from the spiritual world has to flow into all aspects of human culture. The souls living in this world now in their physical bodies feel drawn to theosophy because they know that this new element must be added to what human beings have already gained for themselves from the spiritual world in the past. We must keep in mind, however, that in every epoch the whole meaning of the mystery of the universe must be understood anew. Thus, in every epoch we have to meet anew what is revealed to us out of the spiritual worlds.

Our epoch is unique; though people often carelessly characterize every age as one of transition, this term—which is often just an empty phrase—applies in its truest sense to our time. Indeed, an epoch is dawning when we will have to witness many new developments in the evolution of the earth. We will have to think in a new way about many things. In fact, many people still conceive many new things in the old style and the old sense, finding it impossible to grasp the new in a new way. Our old concepts often lag far behind the new revelations.

Let me point out only one example of this. It is often emphasized—and rightly so—that human thinking has made tremendous progress in the last four centuries because it has been able to fathom the physical structure of the universe. Of course, it is only proper to highlight the great achievements of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bruno, and others. Nevertheless, this has led to an argument that sounds rather clever and goes roughly as follows. Copernicus's ideas have led us beyond the earth into space. In the process, what Giordano Bruno suspected has turned out to be true: our earth is only a small celestial body among countless others. And in spite of this, so the argument goes, we are supposed to believe that the greatest drama ever, the central event of evolution, took place on this earth and that the life of Christ Jesus is at the center of evolution. Why would an event of such great importance for the whole universe have been played out here on this small planet earth, which—as we have learned—is only one tiny planet among countless others?

This argument seems plausible—so much so that to our intellect it looks clever and intelligent. However, this argument does not consider the depth of spiritual perception revealed in the simple fact that the starting point of Christianity, the beginning of the greatest event on earth, is set neither in a royal palace nor any other glamorous place, but in a manger with poor shepherds. Clearly, spiritual perception did not content itself with locating this great event on our earth, but also moved it to a remote corner of the earth. It is small wonder, then, that this perception strikes us as odd and peculiar next to the claim that we cannot possibly continue to “have the greatest drama of world evolution take place in a provincial theater.” (These words have indeed been used.) However, it is in the nature of Christianity to have the greatest drama of the universe take place in a provincial theater as well as elsewhere.

We can see from all this how difficult it is for us to respond to events with the proper, true perception. We have to learn a lot before we will understand what the right thoughts and feelings about human evolution are. Turbulent times are ahead of us—both for the present and for the near future. Much of the old is used up and worn out, and the new is being poured into humanity from the spiritual world. People familiar with human evolution predict—not because they want to but because history compells them—that our whole soul life will change during the coming centuries and that this change will have to begin with a theosophical movement that has a correct understanding of itself. But the theosophical movement must fill its role in this change with humility and with a true understanding of what has to happen for humanity in the coming centuries.

Only gradually and over time did people learn to study the structure of the universe with their intellect as Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo did. It was only in recent centuries that people learned to interpret the world intellectually—in earlier times, they attained knowledge in a very different way. In the same way, new spiritual insights are to supersede intellectual knowledge today. Even now, human souls in their bodies are already yearning to look at the world not just intellectually. If materialism had not done so much to suppress these spiritual impulses, such souls, in whom we can virtually sense the passionate yearning for spiritual contents, could appear even more. These spiritual impulses could then make themselves felt more strongly in people who are only waiting for an opportunity to look at the universe and existence in a different way than they did up to now.

Privileged people, endowed with what we usually call “grace,” can often see in their minds' eyes what becomes the general vision of all humanity centuries later. As I have pointed out frequently, the experience of the impulse of the Christ event that Paul, an individual filled with grace, had on the road to Damascus will eventually become the common property of all human beings. As Paul knew through a spiritual revelation who Christ was and what he had done, so all people will eventually receive this knowledge, this vision. We are at the threshold of the age when many people will experience a renewal of the Christ event of St. Paul. It is an intrinsic part of the evolution of our earth that many people will experience for themselves the spiritual vision, the spiritual eye, that opened up for Paul on the road to Damascus. This spiritual eye looks into the spiritual world, bringing us the truth about Christ, which Paul had not believed when he had heard it in Jerusalem. The occurrence of this event is a historical necessity. This is what has been called the second advent of Christ in the twentieth century. Christ will be recognized as an individuality. People will realize that Christ has continually revealed himself by coming ever closer to the physical plane—from the moment when he appeared to Moses, as though in a reflection, in the burning bush to the time when he lived for three years in a human body. Seeing this, people will understand that Christ is at the center of earthly evolution.

A body has only one center of gravity; a scale has only one suspension point.If you support the scale beam in more than one place, you interfere with the effects of the law of gravity. A body needs only one center of gravity. That is why, concerning the central or pivotal point of evolution, occultists from antiquity to the present have acknowledged that evolution was headed toward one point, namely, the Mystery of Golgotha, and that human evolution began its ascent at this point. Still, it is very difficult to understand what the Christ event, the Mystery of Golgotha, really means for the spiritual guidance of humanity. To understand this rightly, we have to silence all the feelings and opinions from this or that denomination within us. We have to be as impartial and objective in regard to the Christian methods of education, which have prevailed for many centuries in the west, as we are regarding other religious methods of education. Only then can we really come to know the spiritual center of the earth's evolution. Nevertheless, in the coming centuries those who proclaim the spiritual central point of human evolution most fervently will be seen as “bad Christians”—or even as unworthy of being called Christian at all.

Many people find even the idea that Christ could incarnate in a human body only once, and only temporarily—for three years—difficult to understand. People who have familiarized themselves in more detail with what Rosicrucian theosophy has to say about this know that the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth had to be very complicated to accommodate the powerful individuality of Christ. As we know, one human being would not have been sufficient for this, and therefore two persons had to be born. The Gospel of St. Matthew tells the story of one of them, the Gospel of St. Luke follows the life of the other. We know, too, that the individuality who incarnated into the Jesus child we meet in the Gospel of St. Matthew had completed tremendous achievements in its development in earlier earth lives. At the age of twelve, in order to develop further capacities, this “Matthew-Jesus” individuality left its body to dwell in another earthly body—that of the “Luke-Jesus”—until its thirtieth year. Thus, everything humanity had ever experienced that was noble and great, as well as everything that was humble, worked together on the personality of Jesus of Nazareth so as to enable his body to take in the being we call Christ. We will have to develop a profound understanding to grasp what occultists mean when they say that there can be only one event on Golgotha—as in mechanics a body has only one center of gravity.

An epoch that faces great soul events, such as the ones we have briefly outlined here, is particularly suited to lead us to search our souls. Indeed, searching our own souls and hearts is now one of the many tasks of all true theosophists in the theosophical movement. We need to search our own hearts and souls—return within ourselves—to help us realize that it requires sacrifice to follow the path to the understanding of that singular truth of which the occultism of all times has unambiguously spoken.

Such times in which the shining lights of truth and the warm gifts of love are to be poured out over humanity also bring events confirming the truth of the proverb that “strong lights cast deep shadows.” The deep, black shadows that enter together with the gifts we have just spoken of consist of the potential for error. The human heart's susceptibility to error is inseparably bound up with the great gifts of wisdom that are to flow into human evolution. Let us not delude ourselves, therefore, into believing that the erring human soul will be less fallible in times to come than it has been in the past. On the contrary, our souls will be even more susceptible to errors in the future than ever before. Occultists have prophesied this since the dawn of time. In the coming times of enlightenment, to which I could only allude here, the slightest potential for error as well as the greatest aberrations can gain ground. Therefore, it is all the more necessary that we squarely face this potential for error and realize that because we are to expect great things, error can all the more easily creep into our weak human hearts.

Regarding the spiritual guidance of humanity, we have to draw the following lesson from this potential for error and from the age-old warnings of occultists: We must exercise the great tolerance we spoke of in the beginning, and we must give up our habit of blindly believing in authority. Such a blind belief in authority can be a powerful temptation and can lead to error. Instead, we must keep our hearts open and receptive to everything that wants to flow out of the spiritual worlds into humanity in a new way. Accordingly, to be good theosophists, we must realize that if we wish to cultivate and foster in our movement the light that is to stream into human evolution, we must guard against all the errors that can creep in with the light.

Let us feel the full extent of this responsibility and open our hearts wide to see that there has never been a movement on this planet earth that fostered such open, loving hearts. Let us realize that it is better to be opposed by those who believe their opinion is the only true one, than to fight them. It is a long way from one of these extremes to the other. Nevertheless, those who take up the theosophical movement spiritually will be able to live with something that has run through all history as a seed sentence, a motto for all spirituality—and rightly so.

Upon realizing that though there is much light, the potential for error is great, you may have doubts and wonder how we weak human beings can find our way in this confusion. How are we to distinguish between truth and error? When such thoughts arise within you, you will find comfort and strength in the motto: The truth is what leads to the highest and noblest impulses for human evolution, the truth should be dearer to us than we are to ourselves. If our relationship to truth is guided by these words and we still make a mistake in this life, the truth will be strong enough to draw us to itself in the next incarnation. Honest mistakes we make in this incarnation will be compensated and redeemed in the next. It is better to make an honest mistake than to adhere to dogmas dishonestly. After all, our path will be lit by the promise that truth will ultimately prevail, not by our will, but by its own inherent divine power.

However, if our circumstances in this incarnation propel us into error instead of into truth, and if we are too weak to obey when truth pulls us toward itself, then it will be good if what we believe in disappears. For then it does not, and should not, have the strength to live. If we are honestly striving for truth, truth will be the victorious impulse in the world. And if what we have now is a part of the truth, it will be victorious, not because of what we can do for it, but because of the power inherent in it. If what we have is error, however, then let us be strong enough to say that this error should perish.

If we take this as our guiding motto, we will find the standpoint that enables us to realize that, under any circumstances, we can find what we need, namely, confidence. If this confidence imbues us with truth, then the truth will prevail, regardless of how much its opponents fight it. This feeling can live in the soul of every theosophist. And if we are to impart to others what flows down to us from the spiritual world, evoking feelings in human hearts that give us certainty and strength for life, then the mission of the new spiritual revelation will be fulfilled—the revelation that has come to humanity through what we call theosophy to lead human souls gradually into a more spiritual future.

• S1. For the sake of historical accuracy and to indicate the tone of the original, we have not substituted or added “anthroposophy” where Steiner speaks of “Theosophy” or “anthroposophical movement” where he speaks of “Theosophical movement.” Nevertheless, the continuity between Rudolf Steiner's theosophy and anthroposophy should always be kept in mind. (See note 1)

[ 1 ] If we reflect upon ourselves, we soon come to realize that, in addition to the self we encompass with our thoughts, feelings, and fully conscious impulses of will, we bear in ourselves a second, more powerful self. We become aware that we subordinate ourselves to this second self as to a higher power. At first, this second self seems to us a lower being when compared to the one we encompass with our clear, fully conscious soul and its natural inclination toward the good and the true. And so, initially, we may strive to overcome this seemingly lower self.

A closer self-examination, however, can teach us something else about this second self. If periodically we look back on what we have experienced or done in life, we make a strange discovery, one that becomes more meaningful for us the older we become. Whenever we think about what we did or said at some time in the past, it turns out that we did a great many things we actually understood only at a later date. When we think of things we did seven or eight years ago—or perhaps even twenty years ago—we realize that only now, after a long time, is our mind sufficiently developed to understand what we did or said then.

Of course, there are people who do not make such self-discoveries because they do not try to. Nevertheless, this sort of soul-searching is extraordinarily fruitful. For in such moments as we become aware that we are only now beginning to understand something we did in our earlier years-that in the past our minds were not mature enough to understand what we did or said then-a new feeling emerges in our soul. We feel ourselves as if sheltered by a benevolent power presiding in the depths of our own being. We begin to trust more and more that, in the highest sense of the word, we are not alone in the world and that whatever we can understand or do consciously is fundamentally only a small part of what we accomplish in the world.

[ 2 ] After we have gone through this process of discovery a number of times, an insight that is theoretically easy to understand can become part of our practical lives. We know, in theory at any rate, that we would not get very far in life if we had to do everything in full consciousness, rationally understanding all the circumstances and ramifications in every case. To see that this is so we need only consider how and when we accomplish those acts that are the wisest and most important for our existence. A moment's thought will reveal that we act most wisely in the time between birth and the moment at which memory, that first moment we can remember when in later years we try to recall our early life, begins.

This is to say that, as we think back to what we did three, four, or five and more years ago, we reach a certain point in childhood beyond which our memory does not extend. Our memory does not go back any further. Parents or other people can tell us what happened before that time, but our own memory does not go back beyond a certain point. This is the point in our lives when we first began to perceive ourselves as an I. People whose memory is intact can usually remember back to, but not earlier than, this moment.

Our souls, however, have already performed their wisest deeds before this time. Never again in later life, after we have attained full consciousness, will we be able to accomplish such splendid and tremendous deeds as those we accomplished out of the unconscious depths of our souls in the first years of childhood. As we know, we bring the fruits of earlier lives on earth with us into the physical world at birth. For example, at birth our physical brain is still an incomplete and unfinished instrument. The soul must then work on it, adding the finer, detailed structures that make it the medium of all the soul's faculties. In fact, before the soul is fully conscious, it works on the brain to transform it into an instrument to express all the capacities, aptitudes, characteristics, and so on, that it has as a consequence of earlier lives. This work on our own body is guided from a perspective that is wiser than anything we can achieve later with our full consciousness. Moreover, during this time when the brain is being transformed, we must also acquire the three most important capacities for life on earth.

[ 3 ] The first capacity we must learn is to orient our body in space. People today do not realize what this means and that it touches on the most essential differences between human beings and animals. Animals are destined from the beginning to achieve their equilibrium in a certain way: one is destined to be a climber, another a swimmer, and so on. Animals are so constituted that from the outset they can orient themselves in space correctly. This is true even of primates. If zoologists were aware of this, they would put less emphasis on the number of similar bones, muscles, and so forth that human beings and animals have. After all, this is not nearly as important as the fact that human beings are not given an innate way to achieve equilibrium in space but must develop it out of their total being.¹

It is significant that we must work on ourselves to develop from beings that cannot walk into ones that walk upright. We achieve our vertical position, our position of equilibrium in space, by ourselves. In other words, we establish our own relationship to gravity. Those who do not wish to consider the question deeply will, of course, easily dispute our explanation on apparently good grounds. They may claim, for example, that we are just as well constituted for walking upright as climbing animals are for climbing. Upon closer examination, however, we find that animals' orientation in space is determined by their physical organization. In human beings, however, it is the soul that establishes the relationship to space and shapes the organization.

[ 4 ] The second capacity we learn out of ourselves from our essential being—which remains the same through successive incarnations—is language. This allows us to relate to our fellow human beings and makes us bearers of the spiritual life that permeates the physical world primarily by means of human beings. It has often been emphasized, and with good reason, that someone stranded on a desert island who had had no contact with other human beings before learning to speak would never learn to do so. What we receive through heredity, on the other hand, what is implanted in us for development in later years, does not depend on our interactions with other human beings. For example, we are predisposed by heredity to change teeth in our seventh year. Even on a desert island our second set of teeth would grow if we reached that age. But if our soul being, the part of us that continues from one life to the next, is not stimulated we will not learn to speak. In a sense, we must sow the seed for the development of the larynx in the time before our earliest memory-before we attain full I-consciousness-so that the larynx can then become an organ of speech.

[ 5 ] There is still a third, even less well known, capacity that we learn on our own through what we bear within us through successive incarnations. I am referring here to our ability to live within the world of thoughts and ideas, the world of thought itself. Our brain is formed and worked on because it is the tool of thinking. At the beginning of life, the brain is still malleable because we must shape it ourselves to make it an instrument for the thinking appropriate to our essential being. The brain at birth is the result of the work of forces inherited from our parents, grandparents, and so on. It is in our thinking that we bring to expression what we are as individuals in conformity with our former earthly lives. Therefore, after birth, when we have become physically independent of our parents and ancestors, we must transform the brain we have inherited.

[ 6 ] Clearly, then, we accomplish significant steps in the early years of life. We work on ourselves in accordance with the highest wisdom. In fact, if we had to rely on our own intelligence, we could not achieve what we must accomplish without our intelligence in the first few years of our lives. Why is this so? Why must all these things be accomplished from soul depths that lie outside our consciousness? Because, in the first years of our lives, our souls, as well as our whole being, are much more closely connected with the spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than is the case later.

Clairvoyants, who can trace the spiritual processes involved because they have undergone spiritual training, discover that something tremendously significant happens at the moment when we achieve I-consciousness, that is, at the moment of our earliest memory. They can see that, during the early years of childhood, an aura hovers about us like a wonderful human-superhuman power. This aura, which is actually our higher part, extends everywhere into the spiritual world. But at the earliest moment we can remember,² We can experience ourselves as a coherent I from this point on because what had previously been connected to the higher worlds then entered the I. Thereafter, our consciousness establishes its own relationship to the outer world.

This conscious relationship to the outer world does not yet exist in early childhood. In childhood, a dream world still seems to hover about us. We work on ourselves with a wisdom that is not in us, a wisdom that is more powerful and comprehensive than all the conscious wisdom we acquire later. This higher wisdom works from the spiritual world deep into the body; it enables us to form the brain out of the spirit. We can rightly say, then, that even the wisest person can learn from a child. For the wisdom at work in children does not become part of our consciousness in later life. It is obscured and exchanged for consciousness.

In the first years of life, however, this higher wisdom functions like a “telephone connection” to the spiritual beings in whose world we find ourselves between death and rebirth. Something from this world still flows into our aura during childhood. As individuals we are then directly subject to the guidance of the entire spiritual world to which we belong. When we are children—up to the moment of our earliest memory—the spiritual forces from this world flow into us, enabling us to develop our particular relationship to gravity. At the same time, the same forces also form our larynx and shape our brain into living organs for the expression of thought, feeling, and will.

[ 7 ] During childhood, then, we work out of a self that is still in direct contact with the higher worlds. Indeed, to a certain degree, we can still do this even in later life, although conditions change. Whenever we feel that we did or said something in earlier years that we are only now coming to understand, we have an indication that we were guided by a higher wisdom at that earlier time. Only years later do we manage to gain insight into the motives of our past conduct. All this indicates that at birth we did not entirely leave behind the world we lived in before entering into our new, physical existence. In fact, we never leave it behind completely. What we have as our part of higher spirituality enters our physical life and remains with us. Thus, what we bear within us is not a higher self that has to be developed gradually, but one that already exists and that often leads us to rise above ourselves.

[ 8 ] All that we can produce in the way of ideals and artistic creativity—as also the natural healing forces in our body, which continuously compensate for the injuries life inflicts—originate not in our ordinary, rational minds but in the deeper forces that work in our early years on our orientation in space, on the formation of the larynx, and on the development of the brain. These same forces are still present in us later. People often say of the damages and injuries we sustain in life that external forces will not be of any help and that our organism must develop its own inherent healing powers. What they are talking about is a wise, benevolent influence working upon us. From this same source also arise the best forces that enable us to perceive the spiritual world—that is, to have true clairvoyance.

[ 9 ] We can now ask why the higher powers work on us only in the early years of childhood. [ 10 ] It is easy to answer one half of this question, for if these higher forces continued to work on us in the same way into later life, we would always remain children and could never achieve full I-consciousness. What worked previously from without must be transferred into our own being.

But there is a more significant reason, one that can tell us more about the mysteries of human life. Spiritual science teaches that we have to consider the human body at the present stage of the earth's evolution as having developed from earlier conditions. People familiar with spiritual science know that in the course of this evolution various forces have worked on our whole being—some on the physical body, others on the etheric body, and others again on the astral body.³ We have evolved to our present condition because beings we call luciferic and ahrimanic have affected us. Through their forces, our essential being became worse than it would have been if only the forces of the spiritual guides of the world, those who want to advance our development in a straight line, had worked on us. Indeed, suffering, disease, and death can be traced to the fact that, in addition to the beings who advance our development in a straight line, luciferic and ahrimanic beings are also at work and continuously thwart our progress.

What we bring with us at birth contains something that is better than anything we can make of it in later life. [ 11 ] In early childhood, the luciferic and ahrimanic forces have only a limited influence on our being. Essentially, they are active only in what we make of ourselves through our conscious life. If we retained the best part of ourselves in its full force beyond the first phase of childhood, its influence would be too much for us because the luciferic and ahrimanic forces opposing the part of ourselves that is better than the rest would weaken our whole being. Our constitution as human beings in the physical world is such that, once we are no longer soft and malleable as children, we can no longer stand to have the forces of the spiritual world continue to affect us directly. The forces that underlie our orientation in space and the formation of the larynx and the brain would shatter us if they continued to influence us directly in later life. These forces are so powerful that our organism would waste away beneath their holiness if they continued to work on us. However, for the activity that brings us into conscious contact with the supersensible world, we have to call upon these forces again.

[ 12 ] This leads us to a realization that is very significant if we understand it rightly. In the New Testament it is put thus: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) What then seems to be the highest ideal for a human being if the above statement is correctly understood? Surely that our ideal must be to approach ever closer a conscious relationship with the forces that worked on us, without our awareness, in the first years of childhood. At the same time, we must realize that we would collapse under the power of these forces if they were immediately and too easily to affect our conscious life. That is why a careful preparation is necessary to achieve the capacities that lead to a perception of supersensible worlds. The goal of this preparation is to enable us to bear what we simply cannot bear in ordinary life.

[ 13 ] Our passing through successive incarnations is significant for the overall evolution of our essential being, which has undergone successive past lives and will continue to go through future lives. The evolution of the earth runs parallel to our own. At some point in the future, the earth will have reached the end of its course; then the planet earth, as a physical entity, will have to separate from the totality of human souls—just as when we die the body separates from the spirit, and the soul, in order to live on, enters the spiritual realm between death and rebirth.⁴ From this point of view, our highest ideal must be the striving to make all the fruits to be gained in earthly life truly our own before we die.

[ 14 ] The forces that make us too weak to bear those forces that work on us in childhood originate in the organism of the earth. By the time this separates from humanity, we must have advanced to the point of giving over our whole being to the forces that presently work on us only in childhood. Only when we have reached this level can we claim to have attained our goal. Thus, through successive earthly lives, we must gradually make our entire being, including our consciousness, an expression of the forces that work on us under the guidance of the spiritual world in early childhood. This is the purpose of evolution.

After such considerations, the realization that we are not alone takes hold of our soul. This realization imbues us with humility, but also with a proper consciousness of our human dignity. We realize at the same time that something lives in us that can prove at all times that we can rise above ourselves to a self that is already surpassing us and will continue to do so from one life to the next. As this realization assumes a more and more definite form, it can have a very soothing, heartwarming effect and, at the same time, imbue the soul with the appropriate humility and modesty. What lives within us is truly a higher, divine human being, and we can feel ourselves pervaded by this being as by a living presence of whom we can say, This is my inner guide in me.

[ 15 ] Given this, the thought easily arises that we should strive in every way possible to achieve harmony with that part in us that is wiser than our conscious intelligence. Thereafter, our attention will no longer be directed to the conscious self but will be focused instead on an expanded self, and from this perspective we can then combat and eradicate all our false pride and arrogance. From this feeling we will gradually come to a right understanding of our present incompleteness. We shall come to see that we will become complete when the comprehensive spirituality at work in us has the same relationship to our adult consciousness that it had to our unconscious soul life in early childhood.

[ 16 ] Even though we may not remember anything from our first four years of life, we can safely say that the active influence of the higher spiritual realms lasts for about the first three years. By the end of this period we have become able to connect the impressions from the outer world with our I-concept. To be sure, this coherent I-concept cannot be traced back beyond the first moment we can remember. This is a moment that is difficult to locate, for with the awakening of distinct I-consciousness, our memory may be so weak that it cannot be recovered later. Nevertheless, we may say that people generally remember as far back as the beginning of the fourth year. In other words, we are justified in saying that the higher forces that have a decisive influence on us in childhood can work on us for three years. It follows that our constitution in the present, middle phase of the earth's evolution enables us to absorb these higher forces for only three years.

[ 17 ] Now if, through some special cosmic powers, we could somehow remove the ordinary I from a person—if the ordinary I that has accompanied a person through successive incarnations could be separated from that person's physical, etheric, and astral bodies—and we could then replace the ordinary I with an I that is connected with the spiritual worlds—what would happen? After three years this person's body would fall apart! If such a thing were to happen, world karma would have to do something to prevent the spiritual being connected to the higher worlds from living in this body for more than three years. [During the transition from childhood to the following stages, our organism retains its viability because it can still change during this period. In later life it can no longer change, and therefore cannot survive with the self connected directly to the spiritual worlds.] Only at the conclusion of our earthy lives will we be able to retain the forces within ourselves that allow us to live with that spiritual being for more than three years. Then we will be able to say, Not I but this higher self in me, which has been there all along, is now at work in me. Until then, we will not be able to experience this. At most, we will be able to feel the presence of this higher self, but our actual, real human I will not yet be able to bring the higher self fully to life.

[ 18 ] Let us now assume that a human organism were to enter the world at some moment in the middle of the earth's lifetime, and that, at a certain point by means of certain cosmic powers, this organism was freed of its I and received in its stead the I that is usually active only in the first three years of childhood—the I that is connected to the spiritual worlds we live in between death and rebirth. How long would such a person be able to live in an earthly body? Such a person would be able to survive in this earthy body only for about three years. After three years, world karma would have to intervene and destroy this human organism.

[ 19 ] What we have assumed here did actually occur at one time in history. When the human organism known as Jesus stood on the banks of the Jordan to be baptized by John, his I left his physical, etheric, and astral bodies. But after the Baptism, that organism bore within itself the higher self of humanity in fully conscious form. The self that works on us with cosmic wisdom in childhood, before we are conscious of it, was then fully conscious in Jesus of Nazareth. And by this very fact, this self, which was connected to the higher spiritual world, could live in this human body for only three years. Events then had to follow a course that brought an end to Jesus' physical life three years after the Baptism.

[ 20 ] Indeed, we have to understand the external events in the life of Jesus Christ as resulting from the inner causes discussed above. They are the outer expression of these causes. [ 21 ] This reveals the deeper connection between the guide in us—which radiates into our childhood as into a dark room and always works under the surface of our consciousness as our best self—and what once entered into human history to live for three years in a human sheath.

[ 22 ] This “higher” I, which is connected to the spiritual hierarchies, entered history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth—an event that is symbolized by the spirit descending in the form of a dove, saying: “This is my well beloved Son, today I have begotten him” (Matthew 3: 17). (Such is the original meaning of the words). What is revealed here? If we hold this image of the Baptism before our eyes, we have before us the highest human ideal. That is what is meant when the gospels tell us that Christ can be seen and known in every person. Even if there were no gospels and no tradition to report that a Christ once lived, our knowledge of the nature of the human being would tell us that Christ is alive in us.

[ 23 ] To know the forces at work in childhood is to know the Christ in us. The question then arises whether this realization also leads us to acknowledge that Christ at one time really lived on earth in a human body? We can answer “yes” to this without requiring any documents, because true clairvoyant self-knowledge convinces people in our time that there are forces in the human soul that come from Christ.

In the first three years of childhood these forces are active without any effort on our part. They can also work on us in our later life—if we seek Christ in ourselves through contemplation. It was not always possible to find the Christ within; indeed, as clairvoyant perception reveals, prior to Christ's life on earth, there were times when no amount of contemplation would have helped people to find the Christ. Clairvoyant cognition teaches us that this is so. Between the time when Christ could not be found within and the present, when he can be found in this way, lies Christ's life on earth. It is because Christ lived on the earth that we can now find him within, in the way I have indicated. Thus, for clairvoyant perception, the fact that Christ lived on the earth is proven without recourse to any historical documentation.

[ 24 ] It is as if Christ had said: Human beings, I want to be an ideal for you that presents to you on a higher, spiritual level what is fulfilled in the body. In the early years of life we learn out of the spirit, first, to walk—that is, we learn, under the guidance of the spirit, to find our way in earthly life. Then we learn to speak—to formulate the truth—out of the spirit. In other words, we develop the essence of truth out of speech sounds. Finally, we also develop the organ for our life as earthly I-beings. Thus, in the first three years of life, we learn three things. We learn to find the “way,” that is, to walk; we learn to represent the “truth” with our organism, and we learn to express “life” in our body through the spirit. There is no more meaningful paraphrase imaginable of the words “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

Most meaningfully, therefore, the I-being of Christ is expressed in the words: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!” The higher spiritual forces form our organism in childhood—though we are not conscious of this—so that our body becomes the expression of the way, the truth, and the life. Similarly, the human spirit gradually becomes the conscious bearer of the way, the truth, and the life by permeating itself with Christ. Thereby we transform ourselves in the course of our earthly life into the power at work in us in childhood.

[ 25 ] Words such as these about the way, the truth, and the life can open the doors of eternity for us. Once our self-knowledge has become true and substantial, these words will resound for us from the depths of our soul.

[ 26 ] What I have presented here opens up a twofold perspective on the spiritual guidance of the individual and of humanity as a whole. First, as individuals, we find the Christ, the guide in us, through self-knowledge. We can always find Christ in this way because, since his life on earth, he is always present in us. Second, when we apply the knowledge we have gained without the help of historical documents to these documents, we begin to understand their true nature. They are the historical expression of something that has revealed itself in the depths of the soul. Therefore, historical documents should be regarded as part of that guidance of humanity that is intended to lead the soul to itself.

[ 27 ] If we understand the eternal spirit of the words “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” in this way, we do not need to ask why we have to enter life as children even after having passed through many incarnations. For we realize that this apparent imperfection is a perpetual reminder of the highest that lives in us. We cannot be reminded often enough—we need to be reminded at least at the beginning of each new life – of the great truth of what we really are in our innermost essential being, that underlies all our earthly lives but remains untouched by the imperfections of earthly existence.

[ 28 ] It is best not to present too many definitions or concepts when talking about spiritual science or theosophy [anthroposophy] or about occultism in general. It is better to describe things and to try to convey an idea of what they really are like. That is why I have tried here to give you a sense of what is characteristic of the first three years of life and of how this relates to the light that radiates from the cross on Golgotha. The description I have given bespeaks an impulse in human evolution that will make St. Paul's words “Not I, but Christ in me” come true. All we need to know is what as human beings we really are; on the basis of this knowledge we can then gain insight into the being of Christ. Only after we have arrived at this Christ-idea through a real understanding of humanity, and after we have understood that to find Christ we must seek him in ourselves, will turning to the Bible be useful for us. No one has a greater or more conscious appreciation of the Bible than those who have found Christ in this way.

Imagine that a Martian who had never heard anything about Christ and his works, came down to earth. This Martian would not understand much of what happened here, and much of what interests people today would not interest this visitor. However, this Martian would be interested in what is the central impulse of earthy evolution, namely, the Christ-idea as expressed in human nature. Once we understand this, we will for the first time be able to read the Bible correctly, for we will then see that it expresses in a wonderful way what we have first perceived within ourselves. You see, we do not need to be taught a particular appreciation of the gospels. When we read the gospels as fully conscious individuals, what we have learned through spiritual science enables us to fully realize their greatness.

[ 29 ] I am hardly exaggerating when I claim that there will come a time when the general opinion will be that people who have learned to understand and appreciate the content of the gospels through spiritual science will see them as scriptures intended for the guidance of humanity and that their understanding will do the Bible more justice than anything else has so far. It is only through understanding our own inner being that we can come to see what lies hidden in these profound scriptures. Now, if we find in the gospels what is so completely part of our own being, it follows that it must have entered the scriptures through the people who wrote them. Thus, what we have to admit concerning ourselves—and the older we get, the more often we have to admit it—namely, that we do many things we don't understand fully until many years later: this must also be true for the writers of the gospels. They wrote out of the higher self that works on all of us in childhood. Thus, the gospels originate in the same wisdom that forms us. The spirit is revealed physically in the human body as well as in the writing of the gospels.

[ 30 ] In this context, the concept of inspiration becomes meaningful once again in a positive sense. Just as higher forces work on the brain in the first three years of childhood, so the spiritual worlds imbued the writers of the gospels with the forces out of which they wrote their gospels. These facts reveal the spiritual guidance of humanity. After all, if there are people in the human race who write documents out of the same forces that wisely shape human beings, then humanity as a whole is truly being guided. And just as individuals say or do things they understand only at a later age, so humanity as a whole produced evangelists as mediators who provided revelations that can be understood only gradually. These scriptures will be understood more and more as humanity progresses. As individuals, we can feel a spiritual guidance within us; humanity as a whole can feel it in persons who work as the gospel writers did.

[ 31 ] The concept of the guidance of humanity we have just established can now be expanded in many ways. Let us assume a person has found students or disciples, that is, people who declare their faith in him and become his loyal followers. Such a person out of genuine self-knowledge will easily realize that having found students gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not originate within him. Instead, spiritual forces from higher worlds want to communicate with the students and find in the teacher a suitable instrument for revealing themselves.

[ 32 ] Such a teacher may then reason as follows: When I was a child, I worked on myself by means of forces that came from the spiritual world. The best I can now contribute here must also come from higher worlds. I must not consider it as part of my ordinary consciousness. Indeed, such an individual may feel that something like a daemon—the word daemon here refers to a benevolent spiritual power—works from the spiritual world through him on the students.

According to Plato, Socrates felt something like this when he spoke of his daemon as something that guided and directed him.⁵ Many attempts have been made to explain Socrates' daemon. However, to explain it we must accept the idea that Socrates could feel something akin to what emerges from the above considerations. Based on this, we then realize that during the three or four centuries when the Socratic principle prevailed in Greece, Socrates introduced a mood into the Greek world that served as preparation for another great event. The mood I am referring to accompanied the realization that what we perceive of an individual does not comprise the whole of what enters this world from the higher one. This mood continued to prevail long after Socrates' death. The best people who had this feeling later also best understood the words “Not I, but the Christ in me.” They realized that Socrates had to speak of a daemon-like force working out of the higher worlds, but through the ideal of Christ it became clear what Socrates had really meant. Of course, Socrates could not yet speak of Christ because in his time people could not yet find the Christ-being within.

[ 33 ] Here again we feel something of a spiritual guidance of humanity; nothing can enter the world without preparation. Why did Paul find his best followers in Greece? Because Socratism had prepared the ground there. That is, more recent events in the development of humanity can be traced back to earlier events that prepared people to allow the later events to work upon them. This gives us an idea of how far the guiding impulse of human evolution reaches; it puts the right people at the right time in the place where they are needed for our development. In facts such as these the guidance of humanity is evident in a general way.

[ 34 missing ]

• 1. For a further description of the essential differences between human beings and animals, see Wolfgang Schad, Man and Mammals, (Garden City, NY: Waldorf Press, 1977) and Rudolf Steiner, Study of Man, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966).
• 2. Steiner describes the aura in Theosophy, 140–153.
• 3. The physical body is the corporeal aspect of the human being, related to the mineral kingdom. The etheric body, or body of formative forces through which life unfolds, is related to the plant kingdom. The astral body bears desires, pleasure and pain, and the qualitative world of emotions, and is related to the animal kingdom. See Occult Science, 21–28.
• 4. For a description of earth evolution, see Occult Science, chap. 2.
• 5. Socrates, 470–399 B.C., Greek philosopher and teacher. Plato, 427–347 B.C., Greek philosopher, the most famous student of Socrates.

[ 1 ] We can find an interesting parallel between what is revealed in the life of the individual and what rules in the development of humanity as a whole if we consider, for example, what the teachers and leaders of ancient Egypt told the Greeks about the guidance and direction of Egyptian spiritual life. The story is told that when an Egyptian was asked who had guided and led his people since ancient times, he answered that in remote antiquity gods had ruled and taught them and that only later did human beings become their leaders. He added that the first leader they acknowledged on the physical plane as a human-like being rather than a god was called Menes.¹ In other words, according to Greek accounts, the Egyptian leaders asserted that the gods themselves had guided and directed their people in earlier times.

We must always take care to understand in the right way reports that have been handed down to us from ancient times. We need to think carefully about what the ancient Egyptians meant when they said that the gods had been their kings and great teachers. They meant that in ancient times those people who felt in their souls a kind of higher consciousness, a wisdom from higher worlds, had to put themselves into a clairvoyant state before they could find their true inspirer and teacher, for their true teacher would approach them only when their spiritual eyes were opened. Such a person when asked, “Who is your teacher?” would not have pointed to this or that individual, but would have entered a clairvoyant state—and we know from spiritual science that it was easier to achieve a clairvoyant state in ancient times than it is today. In that clairvoyant state, a person would have met his teacher, for in those days beings came down from the spiritual worlds who did not become incarnate in human bodies. Thus, in the remote past of ancient Egypt, the gods still ruled and taught, using human beings as their channels. At that time, however, the term “gods” referred to beings who had preceded human beings in their development.

[ 2 ] Spiritual science teaches us that before becoming the “earth” as we know it today, the earth passed through an earlier planetary state or condition called the “moon state.”² During this moon state, human beings were not yet human in our sense of the word. Nevertheless, there were other beings on the old Moon who had evolved to the same level as humans have now reached on the earth, though they looked very different from us. In other words, on the old Moon, which perished and later developed into our earth, there were beings we can consider as our forerunners. In Christian esoteric ism these beings are called angeloi (angels), while those beings above them, who reached the human stage of their development even earlier than the angels, are called archangeloi (archangels).

The angeloi, known as dhyanic beings or dhyani in oriental mysticism, reached the human level of their development during the Moon stage. Consequently, if they completed their evolution on the old Moon, they are now one level above us. At the end of earthly evolution, we will arrive at the level they reached at the end of the moon stage.

[ 1 ] When the earth state of our planet began and human beings appeared on it, the angels could not manifest in outer human form because the human flesh body is essentially an earthly product appropriate only for beings now at the human stage of development. Since the angels are a level above the human, they could not incarnate in human bodies; they could participate in the government of the earth only by enlightening and inspiring human beings who had achieved a state of clairvoyance. These higher, angelic beings used clairvoyant individuals to intervene in the guidance of the earth's destiny. [ 3 ] Thus the ancient Egyptians still remembered a time when their leaders were vividly conscious of their connection with these higher beings, called variously gods, angels, or dhyanic beings. These beings who influenced humanity without incarnating in human bodies, without taking on fleshly human form, were our forerunners; they had already outgrown the level of development we have reached only now.

[ 4 ] The word “superhuman”³ is often misused these days, but in this case we can use it correctly and apply it to those beings who had already achieved the human level of development during the moon period—the planetary stage preliminary to our earth—and have now grown beyond it. Such beings could appear on earth only in an etheric body and thus could be perceived only by clairvoyant individuals.⁴ That is how they came down to earth from the spiritual worlds and ruled on the earth even in post-Atlantean times.⁵

[ 5 ] These beings had the remarkable characteristic indeed—they still have it today—that they did not need to think. In fact, it may be said that they cannot think at all the way we do. After all, how do we think? Well, usually we start from a particular point, and once we have understood it, we try to comprehend other things on the basis of this understanding. If our thinking did not follow this pattern, many people would have an easier time learning in school. Mathematics, for example, cannot be learned in a day because we must begin at one point and proceed slowly from there. This takes a long time. An entire world of ideas cannot be taken in at a glance because human thinking takes its course over time. A complex thought structure cannot be present in the mind all at once; rather, we must make an effort to follow it step by step.

The higher beings I have described are not encumbered by this peculiar characteristic of human thinking. Instead, they realize an extensive train of thought as quickly as animals know to grab something the moment their instinct tells them it is edible. In higher beings, then, instinct and reflective consciousness are one and the same. What instincts are for animals at their evolutionary level, in their kingdom, direct spiritual thinking, or direct spiritual conceptualization, is for these dhyanic beings or angels. And this instinctive, conceptualizing inner life is what makes these higher beings so essentially different from us.

[ 6 ] Obviously, the angeloi cannot possibly use the kind of brain or physical body we have. They must use an etheric body because the human body and brain can process thoughts only over time. The angeloi do not form their thoughts over time; they feel their wisdom flash up in them by itself, as it were. They cannot possibly make mistakes in their thinking the way we can. Their thinking is a direct inspiration. The individuals who were able to approach these superhuman or angelic beings were therefore aware of being in the presence of sure and reliable wisdom.

In ancient Egypt, then, those who were teachers or rulers knew that the commandments which their spiritual guides gave them and the truths they uttered were immediately right and could not be wrong. And the people to whom these truths were then imparted felt the same way. [ 7 ] The clairvoyant leaders of ancient times could speak in such a way that the people believed that their words came from the spiritual world. In short, there was a direct current flowing down from the higher, guiding spiritual hierarchies.

[ 8 ] Thus, the next higher world of the spiritual hierarchies guides the entire evolution of humanity; it works both on the individual in childhood and on humanity as a whole. The angeloi or superhuman beings of this realm are one level above us and reach directly up into the spiritual spheres. From these spheres they bring to earth what works into human culture. In the individual, this higher wisdom leaves its imprint on the formation of the body during childhood, and it formed the culture of ancient humanity in a similar way.

[ 9 ] This is how the Egyptians, who reported that they were in contact with the divine realm, experienced the openness of the human soul to the spiritual hierarchies. Just as the child's soul opens its aura to the hierarchies until the moment indicated in the previous lecture, so, through its work, humanity as a whole opened its world to the hierarchies with which it was connected.

[ 10 ] This connection to the higher hierarchies was particularly significant in the case of the holy teachers of India. These were the great teachers of the first post-Atlantean epoch, of the first Indian culture that spread in the south of Asia. After the end of the Atlantean catastrophe, when the physiognomy of the earth had changed and Asia, Europe, and Africa had developed in the eastern hemisphere in their new form, but before the time documented in ancient records, the culture of the ancient teachers of India flourished.

People today generally have a completely false picture of these great Indian teachers. If, for example, an educated person of our time were to meet one of the great teachers of India, he or she would look puzzled and probably say, “This is supposed to be a wise man? That is not how I imagined a wise man.” According to our current definition of the terms “clever” and “intelligent,” the ancient holy teachers of India would not have been able to say anything intelligent. By today's standards, these teachers were simple and very plain people who would have given the simplest answers to questions, even to questions pertaining to everyday life. Often, it was scarcely possible to elicit anything from them other than some sparse utterance that would seem quite insignificant to the educated classes of our day.

However, at certain times, these holy teachers proved to be more than merely simple people. At these times they had to gather in groups of seven, because what each could sense individually had to harmonize as if in a seven-tone harmony with what the other six experienced. Each wise man was able to perceive this or that, depending on his particular faculties and development. And out of the harmony of the individual perceptions of these seven individuals, there emerged the primeval wisdom that resounds through ancient times. Its reverberation can be heard even today if we decipher the occult records correctly. The records I am referring to are not the revelations of the Vedas, though the Vedas are certainly marvelous in their own right.⁶ The teachings of these holy men of ancient India precede the writing of the Vedas by a long time. The Vedas, those tremendous works, are only a faint echo of those earlier teachings.

When these wise teachers faced one of the angeloi or superhuman forerunners of humanity, and looked clairvoyantly into the higher worlds, listening all the while clairaudiently to this being, their eyes shone like the sun. And what they were able to impart then had an awe inspiring effect on the people around them; all who heard them knew that they were not speaking out of human wisdom or human experience, but that gods, superhuman beings, were intervening in human culture.

[ 11 ] The ancient cultures originated from this influx of divine wisdom. The gate to the divine-spiritual world was completely open for the human soul during Atlantean times. In the course of the post-Atlantean periods, however, gradually the gate closed. Little by little, people in many countries felt that human beings had to rely more and more on themselves. Here we can see again that the development of humanity as a whole parallels that of the child. At first the divine-spiritual world still extends into the child's unconscious soul, which is active in the formation of the body. Then comes the moment when each person begins to perceive himself or herself as an I, the first moment one can remember. Before this lies a time we cannot in any ordinary way usually recall. This is why it is said that even the wisest among us can still learn something from the soul of the child as it is in the time before memory develops. Thereafter, the individual is left to his or her own devices; I-consciousness appears, and we become able to remember our experiences.

In the same way there came a time when nations began to feel themselves cut off from the divine inspiration of their forefathers. For just as we are separated more and more from the aura guiding us during our early childhood years, so in the life of nations the divine forebearers gradually and increasingly withdrew. As a result, human beings were left to their own research and their own knowledge. In historical records that describe this development, we can feel the intervention of the guides of humanity.

The ancient Egyptians called the first founder of culture, who was human rather than divine, “Menes.” And they dated the human possibility of error from the same moment, because from then on human beings had to rely on the instrument of the brain. The ancient Orientals likewise gave the name “Manes” to the human being as thinker and called the first bearer of human thinking “Manu.” The Greeks called the first developer of the principle of human thought “Minos” with whom the legend of the labyrinth is associated. The fact that human I beings can fall into error is symbolized by the labyrinth. Labyrinths were first built at the time when the gods withdrew from human beings. They are, of course, images of the convolutions of the brain, in which the thinker can get lost. At the time of Minos people sensed that they had gradually moved away from being guided directly by the gods and were developing a new form of guidance in which the I experienced the influence of the higher spiritual world.

[ 12 ] To summarize: Besides the forerunners of the human race, who completed their human stage on the Moon and have now become angels, there are other beings who did not complete their development at that time. While the angeloi or dhyanic beings advanced one level above ours at the moment when human evolution began on earth, these other beings, like the higher categories of luciferic beings, did not complete their human evolution on the old Moon, and thus remain somehow incomplete.

Thus when the earthly condition of our planet began these early human beings were not alone; they received inspiration from divine-spiritual beings. Without their inspiration, like children without guidance, these early human beings would have been unable to progress. Therefore the beings who had completed their evolution on the old Moon were indirectly present on the earth with them. Between these angelic beings and early, childlike humankind, however, there lived beings who had not completed their evolution on the old Moon. These beings, of course, were on a higher level than we are because they could have become angels during the old Moon period. But they had not reached full maturity then and thus remained below the angels, although they are still far superior to us in terms of typically human attributes. Indeed, these beings who stand between us and the angels occupy the lowest level among the multitudes of luciferic spirits—the realm of the luciferic beings begins with them.

[ 13 ] It is extraordinarily easy to misunderstand these beings. We could ask why the divine spirits, the rulers of the good, permitted such beings to remain behind, thus allowing the luciferic principle to enter humanity. While we may object that the good gods will certainly turn everything to the good, this question nevertheless suggests itself. Another misunderstanding arises if we consider these beings as simply “evil.” To think that these beings are “evil,” however, is to misunderstand them because, although they are the source of evil in human evolution, they are not “evil” at all. Rather, they just stand midway between us and the superhuman beings. In a certain way, indeed, these beings are more perfect than we are. They have already achieved a high level of mastery in all the capacities we still have to acquire. At the same time, unlike the angelic forerunners of the human race, these luciferic beings, because they did not complete their human stage of development on the old Moon, are still able to incarnate in human bodies during earthly evolution. The angeloi, on the other hand, the great inspirers of humanity upon whom the ancient Egyptians still relied, cannot appear in human bodies but can only reveal themselves through human beings. Thus, in the remote past, besides human beings and angels, there existed beings who were neither angels nor humans and were able to incarnate in human bodies. Indeed, in Lemurian and Atlantean times a number of individuals bore such “retarded” angelic beings within them as their innermost core. During those periods ordinary human beings, who were to develop through successive incarnations to an appropriate level of the human ideal, coexisted with beings who looked outwardly like ordinary people. These luciferic beings had to clothe themselves in human bodies because earthly conditions require the outward form of a physical body. Thus, particularly in ancient times, humanity lived side by side with these other beings who belong to the lowest category of luciferic individualities.

While the angels worked on human culture through human individuals, the luciferic beings incarnated and founded cultures in various places. The legends of ancient peoples often talk about great persons who established cultures in this or that particular place. These were embodied luciferic beings. However, it would be wrong to assume that because such an individual was an incarnation of a luciferic being he or she was therefore necessarily evil. In fact, human culture has received countless blessings from these beings.

[ 14 ] According to spiritual science, in ancient times, specifically in the Atlantean period, there existed a kind of human primal or root language that was the same over all the earth because speech in those times came much more out of the innermost core of the soul than it does today. The following will make this clear. In Atlantean times people experienced outer impressions in such a way that to give expression to something external the soul was compelled to use a consonant. Thus, what was present in space—the universe and everything in it—induced people to imitate everything around them with consonants. People felt the wind blowing, the sound of waves, the shelter a house provides, and imitated these experiences by means of consonants. On the other hand, people's inner experiences, such as pain or joy, were imitated by vowels. Thus, one can see that in speech the soul became one with external events or beings.

[ 15 ] The Akashic chronicle reveals, for example, that when people in the past approached a hut arching over a family, sheltering and protecting the people, they observed primarily its shape curving around the inhabitants.⁷ This protective curving of the hut was expressed through a consonant, but the fact that there were ensouled bodies in the hut—people could feel this sympathetically was expressed through a vowel. Gradually, the concept of protection emerged: “I have protection, protection for human bodies.” This concept was expressed in consonants and vowels, which were not arbitrary, but an unambiguous and direct expression of the experience. [ 16 ] This was the case everywhere on earth. The existence of a “primal language” common to all people is not a figment of the imagination. To a certain extent, the initiates of every nation are still able to understand this original language. Every language contains certain sounds reminiscent of it; in fact, our modern languages are the relics of the primeval, universal human language.

[ 17 ] This original language was inspired by the superhuman beings, our true forerunners, who completed their development on the Moon. If there had been no other influence than this, the entire human race would basically have remained unified; there would have been one universal way of speaking and thinking everywhere on earth. Individuality and diversity could not have developed, and human freedom likewise could not have been established. Divisions and splits in humanity were necessary for the development of human individuality. Languages became different in each region of the earth because of the work of those teachers who were an incarnation of a luciferic being. These luciferic or “retarded” angelic beings used the language of the nation in which they incarnated for their teaching. Thus, we owe the fact that every nation speaks a particular, non-universal language to the presence of such great, enlightening teachers, who were, in fact, “retarded” angelic beings who had reached a far higher level than the human beings around them. Beings like the early heroes celebrated by the ancient Greeks who worked in human form, for example, as well as beings who worked in human form in other nations, were such incarnations of angelic beings who had not completed their development.

Clearly, then, these beings cannot be dismissed as completely “evil.” On the contrary, they have provided what has destined the human race to be free by introducing diversity into what would otherwise have remained universally uniform over the whole earth. This is true for many other aspects of life as well as for languages. Individualization, differentiation, and freedom are due to the beings who remained behind on the Moon.

To be sure, it may be said that the wise leadership of the world intended to guide all beings to their goal in the planetary evolution. However, if this had been done directly, certain other things would not have been achieved. Certain beings are held back in their development because they have a special task in the evolution of humanity. The beings who had completely fulfilled their task on the Moon would have created only a uniform humanity and, therefore, they had to be opposed by the luciferic beings. And this in turn gave these luciferic beings the possibility of changing something that was actually a defect into something good.

[ 18 ] On this basis we can consider the question of why evil, imperfection, and disease exist in the world from a wider perspective. We can look at “evil” in exactly the same way we have just looked at the imperfect, “retarded” angelic beings. Everything that is at one time imperfect or retarded in its development is changed into something good in the course of evolution. This is, of course, no justification of our evil deeds.

[ 19 ] This also tells us why the wise government of the world holds back the development of certain beings and prevents them from reaching their goal. The reason is that the holding back will serve a good purpose in subsequent evolutionary periods. In ancient times, when the nations were not yet able to direct themselves, teachers guided particular eras and particular individuals. In a sense, all the teachers of the nations—Kadmos, Kekrops, Pelops, Theseus, and so on—bore an angelic being in the innermost depths of their soul.⁸ This is a clear indication that humanity is in fact subject to guidance and direction in this respect as well.

[ 20 ] Thus, at each stage of evolution there are beings who fail to reach the goal they should have attained. In ancient Egyptian civilization, which flourished several thousand years ago on the banks of the Nile, superhuman teachers revealed themselves to the people and were considered by them to be divine guides. At the same time, however, other beings were active who had not yet completely reached the level of angels.

The ancient Egyptians had attained a certain level of development—that is, the souls of people today had developed to a certain level during the Egyptian period. Thus the guidance I am talking about here has a twofold benefit: it helps the person who is guided to achieve something, and it also helps the guiding beings to advance in their development. For example, an angel is more after having guided people for a while than it was before taking this guiding role. In other words, angels advance through their guiding work—“full” angels as well as those who have not yet completed their development. All beings can advance at all times; everything is in continuous development. Nevertheless, at each stage some beings remain behind and fail to complete their development.

Ancient Egyptian culture, therefore, was influenced by three categories of beings: divine leaders or angels, semi-divine leaders who had not yet fully reached the level of angels, and human beings. Now while the human beings on earth progressed in their evolution during the ancient Egyptian period, some superhuman beings or angels were held back, that is, they did not fulfill their guiding role in a way that would have allowed them to bring all of their powers to expression. Consequently, these beings remained behind as angels and did not develop further. Similarly, the imperfect, “retarded” angelic beings, who had not yet developed to the level of the “full” angels, were also arrested in their development. Thus, when the Egypto-Chaldean cultural period drew to a close and the Greco-Latin period began, guiding beings from the earlier cultural epoch who had not finished their development were still present. However, they could now no longer use their powers because their place in guiding humanity had been taken over by other angels or semi-angelic beings. As a result, these beings who were left over, so to speak, were unable to continue their own evolution. [ 21 ] Thus we have a category of beings who could have used their powers during the Egyptian period, but did not do so to the full extent possible and so were unable in the subsequent Greco-Latin period to use their own forces because other guiding beings had taken their place. In addition, the nature and character of the Greco-Latin epoch also made their intervention impossible.

Earlier we saw that the beings who had not evolved to the level of angels on the old Moon later had the task of actively participating in the earthly evolution of humanity. By the same token, those guiding beings who did not complete their development in the Egypto-Chaldean period are similarly meant to intervene in human development in a later epoch. This is to say that, in a given later cultural epoch, the normal progress of human evolution is to be directed by beings whose turn it is to take on a guiding role; but, at the same time, other beings will be active who did not develop fully in earlier times, for instance, those who failed to complete their development in the ancient Egyptian epoch. This characterization applies to our own period as well; that is, we live in a time when, besides the normal leaders of humanity, the incompletely developed beings from the ancient Egypto-Chaldean cultural period actively intervene.

[ 22 ] To understand the unfolding of events and beings, we must see events in the physical world as effects (revelations) of causes or archetypes that lie in the spiritual world. Our culture, by and large, is characterized by a trend toward spirituality. The urgent striving for spirituality we see in many people is the result of the work of those spiritual guides who have attained the developmental level appropriate to them. These normally developed spiritual guides of our evolution are at work in everything that can lead us to the great treasures of spiritual wisdom that theosophy [ anthroposophy] can impart to us.

However, the beings who did not develop properly during the Egypto-Chaldean period are also shaping the cultural trends of our time. They are at work in much that is thought and done in the present and the near future. In particular, these beings are active in everything that gives our culture a materialistic cast, but often their influence can be felt even in the trend toward the spiritual. Indeed, we are experiencing what amounts to a resurrection of Egyptian culture in our time.

The beings invisibly guiding events in the physical world thus belong to one of two classes. The first comprises those spiritual individualities who developed properly and normally up to our time. These were able to help in the guidance of our culture at the time when the leaders of the Greco-Latin period preceding our own gradually completed their mission of guiding humanity through the first Christian millennium. The second class works together with the first and consists of those spiritual individualities who did not complete their development in the Egypto-Chaldean period. These had to remain inactive during the Greco-Latin period, but they can actively participate in guiding us now, because our time is very similar to the Egypto-Chaldean period.

That is why much in contemporary culture seems to be a resurrection of ancient Egyptian forces. However, the forces that worked spiritually in ancient Egypt now frequently appear recast in materialistic form. Let us look, for example, at the way ancient Egyptian knowledge is being revived today. In this connection, we may think of Kepler, who was imbued with a sense of the harmony of the structure of the cosmos and expressed this harmony in the important mathematical laws of celestial mechanics called Kepler's laws.⁹ These laws may appear to us now rather dry and abstract, but they grew directly out of Kepler's perception of the harmony of the universe. Kepler himself wrote that to be able to make his discoveries he had to penetrate the holy mysteries of the Egyptians and steal the holy vessels from their temples.¹⁰ What he thus brought the world will not be understood in its full significance for humanity until much later.

Kepler's words are not mere phrases; rather, they indicate that he vaguely sensed that he was re-experiencing what he had learned in Egyptian times during his incarnation in that epoch. Indeed, we can assume that, in a past life, Kepler had deeply studied and penetrated ancient Egyptian wisdom which then reappeared in his soul in a new form appropriate to modern times. Understandably, the Egyptian spirit brings a materialistic trend into our culture since a strong element of materialism existed in Egyptian spirituality. For example, the Egyptians embalmed corpses, that is, they attached great importance to the preservation of the physical body. Our funerary customs, though with appropriate modifications, derive from this Egyptian tradition.

The same forces that failed to develop properly at that time are now again actively participating in human evolution—though, of course, in a different way. The modern worship of mere matter grew out of the outlook that made the embalming of bodies important. The Egyptians embalmed the bodies of their dead and thus preserved something they considered very important. They believed that the further development of the soul after death was linked to the preservation of the physical body. In the same way, modern anatomists dissect the physical body and think that they are learning something about the laws of the human organism.

Today, the forces of the ancient Egyptian and Chaldean worlds that were progressive then have become regressive and are at work in modern science. To fully appreciate the character of our present time, we must come to know these forces. If we remain ignorant of their significance, these forces will harm us. Only if we are aware of their activity and can find a right relationship to them will they not be harmful. Only through knowing them will we be able to guide these forces to good ends. They must be put to use, for without them we would not have the great achievements of technology, industry, and so on. These forces belong to the lowest rank of luciferic beings. We must see them for what they are. Otherwise, we begin to believe that no other impulses than the modern materialistic ones exist, and we fail to see other forces that can guide us upward to the spiritual realm. For this reason, we must clearly distinguish two spiritual streams in our time.

[ 23 ] If the wise powers guiding the world had not retarded the development of these luciferic beings during the Egypto-Chaldean period, our era would lack a certain necessary gravity. Only the forces that would bring us at all costs into the spiritual realm would then be working on us. Of course, we would be only too inclined to give in to them and would become dreamers and visionaries; we would be interested in life only if it became spiritualized as quickly as possible. A certain contempt for the physical-material world would then be our typical attitude. However, to fulfill its mission, our present cultural epoch has to bring the forces of the material world fully to fruition, so that their sphere can be conquered for spirituality.

We can be tempted and seduced by the most beautiful things if we pursue them one-sidedly, and this one-sidedness, if it takes hold, can also turn every good endeavor and striving into fanaticism. It is true that humanity advances through its noble impulses, but it is also true that the impassioned and fanatic advocacy of the noblest impulses can bring about the worst results for our development. Only when we strive toward the highest goals with humility and clarity, and not out of impassioned enthusiasm, will wholesome and healthy developments for the progress of humanity result.

Therefore, the wisdom at work in guiding the world arrested the development of those forces that should have fully evolved during the Egyptian cultural epoch. This was done to give the achievements of our era a certain necessary weight, thereby enabling us to understand the material world, the things on the physical plane. These same forces now direct our attention toward physical life.

[ 24 ] Thus, humanity develops under the guidance of beings that have progressed properly and of other beings that failed to do so. People with clairvoyant vision can observe the cooperation of the two classes of beings in the supersensible world. They can understand the spiritual processes of which the physical events around us are the manifestation.

[ 25 ] Of course, opening our spiritual eye or spiritual ear to the spiritual world through exercises of some kind is not sufficient to enable us to understand what is happening in the world process. It only allows us to see what is there, to recognize that there are spiritual beings of the soul or the spiritual realm. In addition to this, we must also be able to distinguish, to cognize the different kinds of spiritual beings involved in the world process. We cannot tell just by looking whether a being of the soul or spiritual realm is developing appropriately or whether its development has been arrested. We do not know whether it advances or hinders our evolution. If we develop clairvoyant abilities but do not also gain a full understanding of the conditions of human development as we have described them, we will never be able to tell what type of being we are encountering. Thus, clairvoyance must always be accompanied by a clear assessment of what we perceive in the supersensible world.

This is particularly necessary in our own time. It was not always so. In very ancient cultures, things were quite different. In ancient Egypt, for example, clairvoyants could identify to what group a being of the supersensible world belonged, because that information was as if written on its forehead. Therefore, clairvoyants could not mistake one being for another. Nowadays, however, the danger of misunderstanding and mistaking one being for another is very great. In ancient times, people were still close to the realm of the spiritual hierarchies and could recognize the beings they encountered. Now, however, errors are easily possible, and the only way to protect ourselves against serious harm is to make an effort to grasp concepts and ideas such as those presented here.

[ 26 ] In esotericism, a person who is able to see into the spiritual world is called a “clairvoyant.” But, as I have said, just being a clairvoyant is not enough, because clairvoyants, though they can see in the supersensible world, cannot distinguish. Therefore, people who have developed the ability to distinguish between the beings and events of the higher worlds are called “initiates.” Initiation is what enables us to distinguish between various types of beings. People can be clairvoyant and see into the higher worlds without also being initiates. In ancient times, being able to distinguish between these beings was not especially important, for once the ancient mystery schools had brought their students to the point of clairvoyance, there was no great danger of making mistakes. Now, however, the danger of falling into error is very great. Therefore, in all esoteric schooling the development of clairvoyance must always be accompanied by initiation. As people become clairvoyant, they must also become able to distinguish between the particular types of supersensible beings and occurrences they perceive.

[ 27 ] In modern times, the powers guiding humanity are faced with the special task of creating a balance between the principles of clairvoyance and initiation. At the beginning of the modern period, the leading spiritual teachers necessarily had to consider what I have just explained. As a matter of principle, therefore, the esoteric spiritual movement that is suited to our time works to establish the right relationship between clairvoyance and initiation. This balanced relationship became necessary when, in the thirteenth century, humanity underwent a crisis in regard to its faculty of higher cognition. Around the year 1250, in fact, we find the period in which people felt most cut off from the spiritual world.

Clairvoyant exploration of this time reveals that even the outstanding minds striving for higher cognition had to admit that their ability to know the physical world was limited by their reason, intellect, and spiritual knowledge. They felt that human research and the human capacity to know would never enable them to reach the spiritual world. In fact, they only knew of the existence of a spiritual world because reports of it had been handed down from previous generations. In the thirteenth century, then, direct spiritual perception of the higher worlds had become darkened and more difficult. It was with good reason, therefore, that at the height of scholasticism people believed that human knowledge was restricted to the physical world.¹¹

[ 28 ] By about 1250, people had to draw the boundary between what they believed on the basis of the traditions handed down to them and what they could perceive and understand on their own. The latter was limited to the physical, sensory world. Later, a new era dawned when it began to be possible again to gain direct insight into the spiritual world. However, this new clairvoyance is different from the old one that had more or less disappeared by the year 1250.

For this new form of clairvoyance, Western esotericism had to lay down the strict principle that initiation must always guide our spiritual ears and eyes. This characterizes the special task that the esoteric stream, then introduced into Europe, had taken upon itself. As the year 1250 approached, a new way of guiding human beings toward the supersensible worlds began to take hold.

[ 29 ] This new guidance was prepared by the spirits that worked in that time behind the outer events of history. Already centuries earlier, they had prepared what would be necessary for esoteric schooling under the conditions that would prevail after 1250. If the term “modern esotericism” is not a misnomer, we can apply it to the spiritual work of these more highly developed individuals. Conventional history, focusing only on outer events, knows nothing of them. But their deeds have affected all cultural developments in the West since the thirteenth century.

[ 30 ] The significance of the year 1250 for the spiritual development of humanity becomes especially clear if we consider the following result of clairvoyant research. Even individualities who had already reached high levels of spiritual development in their previous incarnations and incarnated again around 1250 had to experience a complete, though temporary, obscuring of their direct vision of the spiritual world. Even completely enlightened individuals were as though cut off from the spiritual world and knew about it only from their memories of earlier incarnations. From this we can see that a new element obviously had to appear in the spiritual guidance of humanity. This new element is true modern esotericism. It enables us to fully understand how what we call the Christ-impulse can take part in guiding humanity as well as each individual in all activities and aspects of life.

[ 31 ] The Christ-principle was first assimilated by human souls in the period between the Mystery of Golgotha and the advent of modern esotericism. During this period, people accepted Christ unconsciously as far as their higher spiritual forces were concerned. Later, when people had to accept Christ consciously, they made all sorts of mistakes. In their understanding of Christ they were led into a labyrinth. In those first years of Christianity, the Christ-principle took root in lower, subordinate soul forces. This was followed by a time, one in which we are still living, in which people began to understand the Christ-principle with their higher soul capacities. In fact, even today, we are only at the beginning of this understanding. Indeed, as I will explain in the next chapter, the decline of supersensible cognition up to the thirteenth century and its slow revival in a new and different form since then coincide with the intervention of the Christ-impulse in human history. Modern esotericism, therefore, may be understood as the elevation of the Christ-impulse into the leading element in the guidance of those souls who want to work on gaining a knowledge of the higher worlds that is appropriate to current developmental conditions.

[ 32 missing ]

• 1. Menes, c.3400 B.C., Egyptian king. First king of the first dynasty.
• 2. For a description of the planetary stages, see Steiner, Occult Science, 108–254.
• 3. riedrich Wilhelm Nietzche, 1844–1900, elaborated his idea of the “superhuman” in the character of Zarathustra in his Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883). He portrays a future wherein humanity attains dominance and the realization of its earthly purpose through the free exercise of creative power. Nietzche believed that modern spirituality is a symptom of decadence, and that the “superhuman” would triumph over declining Western culture.
• 4. Etheric body. See note 3, Lecture One
• 5. or a description of earth evolution during the post-Atlantean epochs, see Occult Science, 229–254.
• 6. The Vedas are the most ancient of Hindu sacred texts. Steiner speaks of them in Occult Science, 231. Also The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul (lecture 3 and lecture 4) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1945) and The East in the Light of the West (Blauvelt, NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1986) 161ff.
• 7. The Akashic Chronicle refers to a pictorial record of every thought, feeling, and deed occurring since the world began. Accessible to psychic vision.
• 8. Kadmos, founder of the ancient Greek city of Thebes and its first ruler. Kekrops, legendary king of Athens. Pelops, son of Tantalus. King in Elis, father of Atreus and Thyestes. Theseus, king of Athens. Conquered the Minotaur.
• 9. Johannes Kepler, 1571–1630, German astronomer, physicist, and mathematician.
• 10. Steiner here refers to a passage in Kepler's foreword to the fifth volume of his work Harmonices Mundi (1619), which reads as follows: “Yes, I am the one; I have stolen the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a shrine to my God out of them far beyond the boundaries of Egypt. If you can forgive me, I will be glad; if you will be angry with me, I will bear your anger. Here I cast the die and write this book for today's readers as well as for those of the future—what does it matter? Even if it has to wait a hundred years for its reader: God Himself has waited for six thousand years for him who looks at His creation with understanding.”
• 11. Scholastic thought was dominant in medieval Christian Europe from the 9th–17th centuries. Steiner describes the characteristics of scholasticism in Eleven European Mystics, (Blauvelt, NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971), 168–174. Also The Redemption of Thinking, (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).

[ 1 ] As I explained in my preceding remarks, it is the beings who completed their human stage of development during the previous incarnation of the earth—the old moon period—who guide human spiritual evolution. Their guidance, however, is obstructed and opposed by beings who did not complete their development during the moon period. Nevertheless, while these “imperfect” beings obstruct the guiding activity of those who completed their development, they also, paradoxically, further it. The resistance they offer to our progress strengthens, solidifies, and lends increased weight and significance to the forces that are called forth by the beings who advance our development. In Christian esotericism, these classes of superhuman beings who have attained the developmental level immediately above our own, both those who advance our development and those who help us by introducing obstacles, are called angels or angeloi. Above them are the beings of the higher hierarchies, the arch-angels, archai, and so on, who also take part in guiding humanity.

In each of these hierarchies we find beings of varying degrees of perfection. At the beginning of the present earth's evolution, for instance, we find angeloi of higher and lower standing. Those of [lower] standing barely attained the minimum level of development when the moon stage of evolution ended and the earth stage began, while those of higher standing had passed far beyond it. Between these two types are to be found angeloi of every possible level of development whose participation in the guidance of human evolution on earth is in accordance with the level they have attained. Thus, the beings who had the guiding role in Egyptian cultural development were those who had reached a higher stage of perfection on the Moon than those who guided humanity during the Greco-Latin age, and these, in turn, were more perfect than the beings who guide us now. Those who were to guide humanity later trained themselves for this task during the Egyptian and the Greek periods. By this means, they were prepared to guide a culture that had progressed further.

[ 2 ] In the time period following the Atlantean catastrophe seven successive cultural epochs may be distinguished: first, the ancient Indian; second, the ancient Persian;^S1 third, the Egypto-Chaldean; and fourth, the Greco-Latin. Our own period, which began around the twelfth century, constitutes the fifth cultural epoch and, although we are still in the middle of it, the first preparations for the sixth epoch are already underway. In other words, these individual periods of evolution overlap and transitions are very gradual. A seventh post-Atlantean epoch will follow the sixth.

Looking more closely at the guidance of humanity, we realize that it was only in the third cultural epoch—the Egypto-Chaldean—that the angels or lower dhyanic beings became to some extent independent guides of human evolution. This was not the case in the ancient Persian period. The angels then did not yet possess this independence and were subordinate to a higher guidance to a greater degree than they were during the Egyptian period. In ancient Persian times, angels still worked according to the impulses of the hierarchy above them. Thus, although everything was already subject to the angels' guidance, they themselves submitted to the direction of the archangels (archangeloi).

In the age of ancient India, on the other hand, during which post-Atlantean life reached unequaled spiritual heights—natural heights—under the guidance of great human teachers, the archangels themselves were still subject to a higher guidance, namely, that of the archai or “primal beginnings.”

[ 3 ] Thus we may say that from the Indian period on, through the ancient Persian and Egypto-Chaldean cultures, certain beings of the higher hierarchies increasingly withdrew from the direct guidance of humanity. Consequently, by the time of the fourth, Greco-Latin post-Atlantean cultural period, human beings had become, in certain respects, entirely independent. To be sure, the superhuman beings described above still guided human evolution, but they held the reins as loosely as possible.

As a result, the spiritual beings guiding humanity benefited as much from our actions as we did ourselves. This explains the entirely “human” character of the Greco-Roman period: human beings were left completely to their own resources. [ 4 ] The characteristics of art and political life in the Greek and Roman epochs grew out of this necessity of human beings to live out their individuality in their own way.

When we consider very early periods of cultural history, we find humanity guided by beings who had reached their human level of development in earlier planetary stages. The fourth, Greco-Latin epoch was intended to test human beings to the greatest extent possible. For this reason, the entire spiritual leadership of humanity had to be arranged in a new way.

In our epoch, the fifth post-Atlantean one, the beings guiding us belong to the same hierarchy that ruled the ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans. The beings who were guiding people then are in fact now resuming their activities. As I said above, certain of these beings remained behind in their development, and we can feel their influence now in today's materialistic feelings and perceptions.

[ 5 ] Both the angelic (or lower dhyanic) beings that advance our development, as well as those who try to obstruct it, progressed in their development by guiding the ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans through qualities they had themselves acquired in very ancient times. At the same time, through their work of guidance they advanced their own development. Thus, these advancing angeloi are guiding our fifth post-Atlantean epoch with abilities they acquired during the Egypto-Chaldean period. As a result of this progress, they can now develop very special capabilities. Namely, they have qualified themselves to be filled with forces that flow from the most important being of the whole of earthly evolution. The power of Christ works on them.

This power works not only in the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth but also in the spiritual worlds on superhuman beings. Christ exists not only for the earth but also for these higher beings. The beings who guided ancient Egypto-Chaldean culture were not then guided by Christ; they submitted to Christ's guidance only later. This submission was the step in their development that enabled them to guide the fifth post-Atlantean period under Christ's influence. Now they are followers of Christ in the higher worlds.

On the other hand, the angelic beings I have described as obstructing our development were held back in their development precisely because they did not submit to Christ's leadership and continue to work independently. This is why the materialistic trend in our culture will become more and more pronounced. There will be a materialistic stream guided by the Egypto-Chaldean spirits whose development was held back. Most of what is called modern materialistic science is under this influence.

Besides this influence, a second, different stream is also making itself felt. This is geared to helping us find the Christ-principle, as we call it, in all we do. For example, some people today claim that our world consists, in the final analysis, only of atoms. Who instills into human beings the idea that the world consists only of atoms? They get this idea from the superhuman angelic beings whose development was arrested during the Egypto-Chaldean period. [ 6 ] However, the angelic beings who reached their goal in the ancient Egypto-Chaldean cultural period and encountered Christ at that time can instill other ideas in us. They can teach us that substance is permeated with the spirit of Christ right down to the smallest parts of the world. And, however strange it may seem now, a time will come when chemistry and physics will not be taught as they are today under the influence of the Egypto-Chaldean spirits whose development was held back. Instead, scientists will teach that matter is built up piece by piece the way Christ ordered it. People will find Christ even in the laws of chemistry and physics, and a spiritual chemistry and a spiritual physics will develop.

[ 7 ] Undoubtedly this now seems to many people merely a daydream or worse. But yesterday's folly is often tomorrow's wisdom. Careful observers can already discern the factors working toward this end in our cultural development. At the same time, of course, such observers know only too well the scientific or philosophical objections that can be raised—with apparent justification—against this supposed folly.

[ 8 ] On the basis of the assumptions presented here, we can understand the advantages the guiding superhuman beings have over us. Post-Atlantean humanity encountered Christ when the Christ-event entered human history in the fourth post-Atlantean or Greco-Latin epoch. The superhuman guiding beings encountered Christ during the Egypto-Chaldean period and worked their way up toward him. Then, during the Greco-Latin epoch, they had to leave humanity to its fate, in order later to take part in guiding its development again. Today when we practice theosophy [anthroposophy] this means that we acknowledge that the superhuman beings who guided humanity in the past are now continuing their guiding function by submitting themselves to Christ's leadership. The same is also true for other beings.

[ 9 ] In the ancient Persian epoch archangels took part in guiding humanity. They submitted to the leadership of Christ even earlier than the beings of the lower hierarchies. Zarathustra, for example, turned the attention of his followers and his people to the sun, telling them that the great spirit Ahura Mazda, “he who will come down to earth,” lives in the sun.¹ The archangels who guided Zarathustra taught him about the great sun-guide who had not yet come down to earth but had only started on his way so as to later be able to intervene directly in earthly evolution. Similarly, the guiding beings presiding over the great teachers of India taught them about the Christ of the future. It is an error to think that these teachers knew nothing about Christ. They only said he was “above their sphere,” and that they “could not reach him.”

[ 10 ] As in our fifth cultural epoch it is the angels who bring Christ into our spiritual development, so in the sixth cultural epoch we will be guided by the beings who guided the ancient Persian epoch. The spirits of primal beginning, the archai, who guided humanity in ancient India, will, under Christ, guide humanity in the seventh cultural epoch. In Greco-Latin times, Christ came down from spiritual heights and revealed himself in the flesh in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—he descended right into the physical world. When they are ready, human beings will find Christ again in the next higher world. In the future, Christ will no longer be found in the physical world but only in the worlds directly above it.

After all, human beings will not always remain as they are now. We will become more mature and will find Christ in the spiritual world, as Paul did in the event on the road to Damascus, an event that prophetically foreshadows the future. And as the great teachers who led humanity in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch also guide us, so too it will be they who will lead us in the twentieth century to a vision of Christ similar to the one Paul saw. They will show us that Christ works not only on the earth but spiritualizes the entire solar system. Then, in the seventh cultural epoch, the reincarnated holy teachers of India will proclaim Christ as the great spirit, whose presence they first sensed in the unity of Brahman but which received its meaning and content only through Christ.² They will recognize Christ as the spirit they believed to rule above their sphere. Thus, step by step, humanity is led into the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] To speak of Christ as the leader of successive worlds and of the higher hierarchies is the teaching of the science that has unfolded since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries under the sign of the Rose Cross, a science that has increasingly proven essential for humanity.³ Looking at Christ from this perspective, we gain new insights into the being who lived in Palestine and then fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha, as the following shows.

[ 12 ] There have been many different views of Christ before today's. For example, certain Christian gnostics of the first centuries claimed that the Christ who lived in Palestine did not have a physical body of flesh at all but had only an apparent “etheric”body that became visible to physical eyes.⁴ Consequently, since for them only an etheric body was present, they said Christ's death on the cross was not a real death but only an apparent one. There were also various disputes among the adherents of Christianity—for example, the famous dispute between the Arians and the Athanasians,⁵ and so on—as well as many different interpretations of the true nature of Christ. Many different views of Christ, indeed, have been held by people right into our own time.

[ 13 ] Spiritual science, however, must see Christ not just as an earthly being but as a cosmic being. In a certain sense, we human beings are also cosmic beings. We live a dual life: a physical life in the physical body from birth until death and a life in the spiritual worlds between death and rebirth. While we are incarnated in the physical body, we are dependent on the earth because the physical body is subject to the living conditions and forces of the earth. We ingest the substances and forces of the earth, and we are also part of the earth's physical organism. But once we have passed through the portal of death, we no longer belong to the forces of the earth.

Yet, it would be wrong to imagine that having passed through the portal of death we do not belong to any forces at all, for after death we are connected with the forces of the solar system and the other galaxies. Between death and rebirth we live in and belong to the cosmos in the same way as between birth and death we live in the earthly realm and belong to the elements of air, water, earth and so on. After death, we enter the realm of cosmic influences; for example, the planets affect us not only with gravity and other physical forces explained by physical astronomy but also with their spiritual forces. Indeed, we are connected with these cosmic spiritual forces after death, each of us in a particular way appropriate to our individuality. Just as a person born in Europe has a different relationship to temperature conditions and so on than a person born in Australia, so each of us similarly has a unique, individual relationship to the forces working on us during life after death. One person may have a closer relationship to the forces of Mars while another is more closely connected to those of Jupiter and yet others may have a closer relationship to the forces of the entire galaxy, and so on. These forces also lead us back to the earth to our new life. Thus, before our rebirth we are connected with the entire starry universe.

[ 14 ] The unique relationship of an individual to the cosmic system determines which forces lead him or her back to earth; they also determine to which parents and to which locality we are brought. The impulse to incarnate in one place or another, in this or that family, in this or that nation, at this or that point in time, is determined by the way the individual is integrated into the cosmos before birth.

[ 15 ] In the past the German language had an expression that poignantly characterized the birth of an individual. When someone was born, people said that he or she had “become young” (“ist jung geworden”). Unconsciously, this expression indicates that following death we are first subject to the forces that made us old in our previous incarnation, but just before our new birth, these are replaced by other forces that make us “young” again. In his drama Faust, Goethe says of someone that he “became young in Nebelland (the land of mist)”; Nebelland is the old name for medieval Germany.⁶

[ 1 ] People who are knowledgeable about these things can “read” the forces that determine a person's path in his or her physical life; on this basis horoscopes are cast. Each of us is assigned a particular horoscope, in which the forces are revealed that have led us into this life. For example, if in a particular horoscope Mars is above Aries, this means that certain Aries forces cannot pass through Mars but are weakened instead.

[ 16 ] Thus, human beings on their way into physical existence can get their bearings through their horoscope. Before ending this discussion—which, after all, seems a daring one in our time—we should note that most of what is presented today in this area is the purest dilettantism and pure superstition. As far as the world at large is concerned, the true science of these things has largely been lost. Therefore, the principles presented here should not be judged according to the claims of modern astrology, which is highly questionable.

[ 17 ] The active forces of the starry world push us into physical incarnation. Clairvoyant perception allows us to see in a person's organization that he or she is indeed the result of the working together of such cosmic forces. I want to illustrate this in a hypothetical form that nevertheless corresponds fully to clairvoyant perceptions.

[ 18 ] If we examined the structure of a person's brain clairvoyantly and could see that certain functions are located in certain places and give rise to certain processes, we would find that each person's brain is different. No two people have the same brain. If we could take a picture of the entire brain with all of its details visible, we would get a different picture for each person. If we photographed a person's brain at the moment of birth and took a picture of the sky directly above his or her birthplace, the two pictures would be alike. The stars in the photograph of the sky would be arranged in the same way as certain parts of the brain in the other picture. Thus, our brain is really a picture of the heavens, and we each have a different picture depending on where and when we were born. This indicates that we are born out of the entire universe.

[ 19 ] This insight gives us an idea of the way the macrocosm manifests in the individual and from this, in turn, we can understand how it manifests in Christ. If we were to think that after the Baptism, the macrocosm lived in Christ in the same way as it does in any other human being, we would have the wrong idea.

[ 20 ] Let us consider for a moment Jesus of Nazareth and his extraordinary life. At the beginning of the Christian era, two boys named Jesus were born. One belonged to the Nathan line of the house of David, the other to the Solomon line of the same house. These two boys were born at approximately—though not exactly—the same time.⁷

[ 1 ] In the Solomon child portrayed in the Gospel of St. Matthew, the individuality who had lived earlier as Zarathustra incarnated. Thus, in the Jesus depicted in the Gospel of St. Matthew, we actually encounter the reincarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster.⁸ The individuality of Zarathustra grew up in this child just as Matthew describes it, until the boy's twelfth year. Then Zarathustra left his body and entered the body of the other Jesus, the one described by the Gospel of St. Luke. That is why at this moment the child Jesus so suddenly became entirely different from what he had previously been. When his parents found him in the temple in Jerusalem after the spirit of Zarathustra had entered him, they were astonished. This is shown by the fact that they could not understand what he said when they found him for they knew only the Nathan Jesus as he had been before. The Jesus who now stood before them could talk as he did to the scribes in the temple because the spirit of Zarathustra had now entered into him.

The spirit of Zarathustra lived and matured to a still higher perfection in this Jesus, who came from the Nathan line of the house of David, up to his thirtieth year. It should also be noted that impulses from the Buddha streamed out of the spiritual world into the astral body of this youth, in whom the spirit of Zarathustra now lived.

[ 21 ] It is true, as the Eastern tradition teaches, that the Buddha was born as a “bodhisattva” and only reached the rank of buddha on earth in his twenty-ninth year.⁹ [ 22 ] When Gautama Buddha was still a small child, Asita, the great Indian sage, came weeping to the royal palace. As a seer, Asita knew this royal child would become the “Buddha.” He only regretted that, since he was already an old man, he would not live to see the son of Suddhodana become Buddha. This wise man Asita was reborn in the time of Jesus of Nazareth; it is he who is introduced in St. Luke's Gospel as the temple priest and sees the Buddha reveal himself in the Nathan Jesus. And because he saw this he said: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace ... for mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (Luke 2:29-30). Through the astral body of this Jesus boy—the one presented in the Gospel of St. Luke—Asita could see what he had not been able to see in India: the bodhisattva who has become Buddha.¹⁰

[ 23 ] All of this was necessary for the development of the body that was to receive the Baptism by John in the river Jordan. At the moment of the Baptism, the individuality of Zarathustra left behind the threefold body—physical, etheric, and astral—of the Jesus who had grown up in the complicated way that enabled Zarathustra's spirit to dwell in him—for the reborn Zarathustra had had to undergo the two developmental possibilities represented in the two Jesus boys. Thus John the Baptist was brought before the body of Jesus of Nazareth in whom the cosmic individuality of Christ was now working. Other human beings are placed into their earthly existence through cosmic-spiritual laws, but these are then counteracted by those originating in the conditions of the earth's evolution. In the case of Christ Jesus, however, the cosmic spiritual powers alone remained active in him after the Baptism. The laws of the earth's evolution did not influence him at all.

[ 24 ] During the time that Jesus of Nazareth pursued his ministry and journeys as Jesus Christ in Palestine in the last three years of his life—from the age of thirty to thirty-three—the entire cosmic Christ-being continued to work in him. In other words, Christ always stood under the influence of the entire cosmos; he did not take a single step without cosmic forces working in him. The events of these three years in Jesus' life were a continuous realization of his horoscope, for in every moment during those years there occurred what usually happens only at birth. This was possible because the entire body of the Nathan Jesus had remained susceptible to the influence of the totality of the forces of the cosmic-spiritual hierarchies that guide our earth.

Now that we know that the whole spirit of the cosmos penetrated Christ Jesus we may ask, Who was the being who went to Capernaum and all the other places Jesus went? The being who walked the earth in those years certainly looked like any other human being. But the forces working in him were the cosmic forces coming from the sun and the stars; they directed his body. The total essence of the cosmos, to which the earth belongs, determined what Christ Jesus did. This is why the constellations are so often alluded to in the gospel descriptions of Jesus' activities. For example, in the Gospel of St. John the time when Christ finds his first disciple is described as “about the tenth hour” (John 1:39). In this fact the spirit of the entire cosmos expressed itself in a way appropriate to the appointed moment. Such indications are less obvious in other places in the gospels, but people who can read the gospels properly will find them everywhere.

[ 25 ] The miracles of healing the sick must also be understood from this point of view. Let us look at just one passage, the one that reads, “Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any that were sick with various diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on them and healed them” (Luke 5:40). What does this mean? Here the gospel writer points out that this healing was connected with the constellation of the stars, that in those days the necessary constellation was present only after the sun had set. In other words, in those times the healing forces could manifest themselves only after sunset. Christ Jesus is portrayed as the mediator who brings together the sick and the forces of the cosmos that could heal them at precisely that time. These were the same forces that also worked as Christ in Jesus. The healing occurred through Christ's presence, which exposed the sick to the healing cosmic forces. These healing forces could be effective only under the appropriate conditions of space and time, as described above. In other words, the forces of the cosmos worked on the sick through their representative, the Christ.

[ 26 ] However, these forces could work in this way only while Christ was on earth. Only then were the cosmic constellations so connected to the forces in the human organism that certain diseases could be cured when these constellations worked on individuals through Christ Jesus. A repetition of these conditions in cosmic and earthly evolution is just as impossible as a second incarnation of the Christ in a human body. Thus, the life of Christ Jesus was the earthly expression of a particular relationship between the cosmos and human forces. When sick people remained for a while by Christ's side, their nearness to Christ brought them into a relationship to the macrocosm and this had a healing effect on them.

[ 27 ] What I have said so far allows us to understand how the guidance of humanity has been placed under the influence of Christ. Nevertheless, the other forces whose development was held back in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch also continue to work alongside those that are Christ-filled, as we can see in many contemporary interpretations of the gospels. Books are published that take great pains to show that the gospels can be understood astrologically. The greatest opponents of the gospels cite this astrological interpretation, claiming, for example, that the path of the archangel Gabriel from Elizabeth to Mary represents the movement of the sun from the constellation of Virgo to another one.

To a certain extent, this astrological interpretation is correct; however, in our time, ideas of this sort are instilled into people by the beings whose development was arrested during the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. Under their influence there are some who would have us believe that the gospels are merely allegories representing certain cosmic relationships. The truth is, however, that the whole cosmos is expressed in Christ. In other words, we can characterize Christ's life by describing for each of its events the cosmic relationships that, through Christ, entered life on earth.

As soon as we understand all this correctly, we will inevitably and fully accept that Christ lived on earth. The false view mentioned above, however, claims that, because Christ's life is expressed in the gospels through cosmic constellations, it follows necessarily that the gospels are only an allegory of these constellations and that Christ did not really live on earth.

[ 28 ] Allow me to use a comparison to make things clear. Imagine every person at birth as a spherical mirror reflecting everything around it. Were we to trace the outlines of the images in the mirror with a pencil, we could then take the mirror and carry the picture it represents with us wherever we went. Just so, we carry a picture of the cosmos within us when we are born, and this one picture affects and influences us throughout our lives. Of course, we could also leave the mirror clean as it was originally, in which case it would reflect its surroundings wherever we took it, providing us with a complete picture of the world around us. This analogy explains how Christ was in the time between the Baptism in the Jordan and the Mystery of Golgotha. What enters our earthly life only at our birth flowed into Christ Jesus at each moment of his life. After the Mystery of Golgotha, what had streamed into Christ from the cosmos merged with the spiritual substance of the earth, and it has been united with the spirit of the earth ever since.

[ 29 ] When Paul became clairvoyant on his way to Damascus, he was able to perceive that what had previously been in the cosmos had merged with the spirit of the earth. People who can relive this event in their soul can see this for themselves. In the twentieth century, human beings are able for the first time to experience the Christ-event spiritually, as St. Paul did. [ 30 ] Up to this century only those individuals who had gained clairvoyant powers through esoteric schooling were able to have such experiences. Today and in the future, however, as a result of natural human development, advancing soul forces will be able to see Christ in the spiritual sphere of the earth. Beginning with a certain point in the twentieth century, a few people will be able to have such experiences and will be able to relive the incident at Damascus, but thereafter gradually more and more people will be able to do so, and in the distant future it will have become a natural capacity of the human soul to see Christ in this way.

[ 31 ] When Christ entered earthly history, a completely new element was introduced into it. Even the outer events of history bear witness to this. In the first cultural periods after the Atlantean catastrophe, people knew very well that the physical planets, such as Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn, were the expressions or manifestations of spiritual beings. In later ages this view was completely forgotten. People came to see the heavenly bodies as merely material things—to be judged according to their physical conditions. By the Middle Ages, people saw in the stars only what their physical eyes could perceive: the sphere of Venus, the sphere of the sun, of Mars, and so on up to the sphere of the firmament of fixed stars. Beyond that, they believed, there was the eighth sphere which enclosed the others like a solid blue wall around them.

Then Copernicus came and shook to its foundations the established outlook of relying completely and exclusively on what the human senses could perceive.¹¹ According to modern natural science, only people with muddled minds can claim that the world is maya or illusion and that we must look into a spiritual world to see the truth. Scientists believe that true science is based on what our senses tell us, and they record those perceptions. However, the only time when astronomers relied exclusively on their senses was in the days when the astronomy prevailed that modern astronomers oppose!

[ 32 ] Modern astronomy began to develop as a science when Copernicus started to think about what exists in the universe beyond the range of human sensory perception. In fact, it is true of all the sciences that they developed in opposition to sensory appearance. When Copernicus explained that what we see is maya, illusion, and that we should rely on what we cannot see—that was the moment when science as we know it today began.

In other words, the modern sciences did not become “science” until they stopped relying exclusively on sensory perception. Giordano Bruno, as the philosophical interpreter of Copernicus's teachings, proclaimed that the eighth sphere, which had been considered the boundary of space enclosing everything, was not a boundary at all.¹² It was maya, an illusion, and only appeared to be the boundary. In reality, a vast number of worlds had been poured into the universe. Thus what had previously been regarded as the boundary of the universe now became the boundary of the world of human sensory perception. We have to look beyond the sense world. Once we no longer see the world merely as it appears to our senses, then we can perceive infinity.

[ 33 ] Originally, then, humanity had a spiritual view of the cosmos, but in the course of history this was gradually lost. The spiritual world view was replaced by an understanding of the world based exclusively on sensory perception. Then the Christ impulse entered human history. Through this principle humanity was led once again to imbue the materialistic outlook with spirituality. At the moment when Giordano Bruno burst the confines of sensory appearance, the Christ-development had so far advanced in him that the soul force, which had been kindled by the Christ-impulse, could be active within him. This indicates the significance of Christ's involvement in human history and development, which is really still in its early stages.

[ 34 ] What, then, are the goals of spiritual science?

[ 35 ] Spiritual science completes what Bruno and others did for the outer physical sciences by demonstrating that the conventional, sense-based sciences can perceive and understand only maya or illusion. At one time, people looked up to the “eighth sphere” and believed it to be the boundary of the universe. Similarly, modern thinking considers human life bounded by birth and death. Spiritual science extends our view beyond these boundaries.

[ 36 ] Ideas like this one allow us to see human evolution as an uninterrupted chain. And, indeed, what Copernicus and Bruno accomplished for space by overcoming sensory appearance had already been known earlier from the inspirations of the spiritual stream that is continued today by spiritual science or theosophy [anthroposophy]. Modern esotericism, as we may call it, worked in a secret and mysterious way on Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, and others.¹³ Thus, people whose outlook is based on the findings of Bruno and Copernicus betray their own traditions when they refuse to accept theosophy [anthroposophy] and insist on looking only at sensory appearance.

Just as Giordano Bruno broke through the blue vault of heaven, so spiritual science breaks through the boundaries of birth and death and proves that the human being comes forth from the macrocosm to live in this physical life and returns again to a macrocosmic existence after death. What is revealed in the individual on a limited scale can be seen on a much larger scale in the representative of the cosmic spirit, in Christ Jesus. The impulse Christ gave to evolution could be given only once. Only once could the entire cosmos be reflected as it was in Christ; the constellation that existed then will not appear again. This constellation had to work through a human body in order to be able to impart its impulse to the earth. Just as this particular constellation will not occur a second time, so Christ will not incarnate again. People claim that Christ will appear again on earth only because they do not know that Christ is the representative of the entire universe and because they cannot find the way to the Christ-idea presented in all its elements by spiritual science.

[ 37 ] Thus, modern spiritual science or theosophy [anthroposophy] has developed a Christ-idea that shows us our kinship with the entire macrocosm in a new way. To really know Christ we need the inspiring forces that are now imparted through the ancient Egyptian and Chaldean superhuman beings who were themselves guided by Christ. We need this new inspiration, which has been prepared by the great esotericists of the Middle Ages since the thirteenth century. This new inspiration must now be brought more and more to the attention of the general public. If we prepare the soul properly for the perception of the spiritual world according to the teachings of spiritual science, we will be able to hear clairaudiently and to see clairvoyantly what is revealed by these ancient Chaldean and Egyptian powers, who have now become spiritual guides under the leadership of the Christ-being. The first Christian centuries up to our own time were only the preparation for what humanity will receive and understand one day.

In the future, people's hearts will be filled with a Christ-idea whose magnitude will surpass anything humanity has known and understood so far. The first impulse that Christ brought and the understanding of him that has lived on until now is even in the best exponents of the Christ-principle only a preparation for a true understanding of Christ. Strangely enough, those who present the Christ-idea in this way in the West will in all probability be accused of not basing themselves on western Christian tradition. After all, this western Christian tradition is utterly inadequate for understanding Christ in the near future.

Western esotericism allows us to see the spiritual guidance of humanity gradually merge with the guidance proceeding from the Christ-impulse. Modern esotericism will gradually flow into people's hearts, and the spiritual guidance of the individual and humanity will more and more be seen consciously in this light.

[ 38 ] Let us recall that the Christ-principle first entered human hearts when Christ ministered in Palestine in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. In those days, people who had gradually resigned themselves to trusting only in the sensory world could receive the impulse appropriate to their understanding. The same impulse then worked through modern esotericism to inspire such great minds as Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo.¹⁴ That is why Copernicus could assert that sensory appearance cannot teach us the truth about the solar system and that we must look beyond it to find the truth.

At that time, people were not yet mature enough—even a brilliant man like Giordano Bruno was not yet ready—to integrate themselves consciously into the stream of modern esotericism. The spirit of this stream had to work in them without their being conscious of it. Giordano Bruno proclaimed proudly that the human being is actually a macrocosmic being condensed into a monad to enter physical existence; and that this monad expands again when the individual dies. What had been condensed in the body expands into the universe in order to concentrate again at other levels of existence and to expand again, and so on. Bruno expressed great concepts that fully agree with modern esotericism, even though they may sound like stammering to our modern ears.

[ 39 ] We are not necessarily always conscious of the spiritual influences that guide us. For example, such influences led Galileo into the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands of people had seen the old church lamp there, but they did not look at it the way he did. Galileo saw the lamp swing and compared its oscillations with his pulse beats. In this way he discovered that the church lamp swung in a regular rhythm similar to that of his pulse—the “law of the pendulum,” as it is known in modern physics. Anyone familiar with modern physics knows that physics as we know it would not exist if it had not been for Galileo's laws. What was at work in leading Galileo to the swinging lamp in the cathedral—thus giving modern physics its first principles—now works in spiritual science. The powers that guide us spiritually work secretly in this way.

[ 40 ] We are now approaching a time when we have to become conscious of these guiding powers. We will be able to understand better what must happen in the future if we correctly grasp the inspiration coming to us from modern esotericism. From this inspiration we also know that the spiritual beings whom the ancient Egyptians considered to be their teachers—the same beings who ruled as gods—are ruling again, but that they now want to submit to Christ's leadership. People will feel more and more that they can allow pre-Christian elements to be resurrected in glory and style on a higher level. In the present era we need a strengthened consciousness, a high sense of duty and responsibility concerning the understanding of the spiritual world. For this to enter our soul we must understand the mission of spiritual science in the way I have outlined.

• S1. Ancient Persian here does not refer to what is called “Persian” in ordinary history but rather to an ancient Asian prehistoric (Iranian) culture that developed in the region where the Persian Empire flourished later.
• 1. Zarathustra, 660?–583? B.C., Persian religious leader, also known as Zoroaster.
• 2. Brahman, Hindu Godhead or Absolute; the creator god of the Hindu sacred triad (with Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer).
• 3. The Rose Cross is the emblem of the Rosicrucians. Tradition associates the rose with Persia, the cross is the symbol of Christianity. Historically, the Rosicrucian Order is thought to have been founded as a secret society c.1430 by Christian Rosenkreutz. Commonly associated with healing, occultism, alchemy; Steiner counters the “... materialistic caricature of Rosicrucianism ... presented today. The task of the Rosicrucians was to formulate a science by means of which they would be able to let their (universal) wisdom flow gradually into the world.” Rosicrucian Esotericism, (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1978), 6. See also George Adams, The Mysteries of the Rose-Cross, (Sussex, England: New Knowledge Books, 1955).
• 4. Gnosticism arose in the Hellenistic era. Gnostics believed that salvation is attained through knowledge rather than through faith or deeds.
• 5. Arius, c.250–336, Greek ecclesiastic at Alexandria. Taught Neoplatonic doctrine that God is alone, unknowable, and separate from every created being, that Christ is a created being and not God in the fullest sense but a secondary deity, and that in the incarnation the Logos assumed a body but not a human soul. Growing dispute over his teaching led Emperor Constantine to call the Council of Nicaea (325) where Arianism was declared heresy. Saint Athanasius, c.293–373, Greek theologian and prelate in Egypt. Lifelong opponent of Arianism. Attended Council of Nicaea (325) as deacon. Bishop of Alexandria. Advocated homoousian doctrine. Often exiled because of his opposition to Arianism. Wrote doctrinal works. Not author of Athanasian creed, which originated later (5th or 6th century).
• 6. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, leading German poet and playwright. Faust (1808–32), a drama in verse, is Goethe's masterpiece. The lines referred to are in Part Two, Scene 2.
• 7. Nathan and Solomon were both sons of King David, the second king of Israel. The Gospel of St. Luke cites Nathan as a forefather of Mary (Luke 3:31); St. Matthew traces Joseph's lineage to Solomon (Matthew 1:16). For a detailed account of the two Jesus children, see Rudolf Steiner, From Jesus to Christ, (London Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973), lecture 8.
• 8. The Zoroaster mentioned here by Steiner lived in very ancient times, according to the Greeks—already 5000 years before the Trojan war. He is not identical with the Zoroaster or Zarathustra mentioned in ordinary history.
• 9. Buddha, Indian religious leader, founder of Buddhism. Historical name Siddhartha Gautama, c.563–483 B.C. Some Eastern religions believe him one of the last incarnations of the Godhead. Son of a royal family, he renounced luxury and became an ascetic. Bodhisattva, a being that compassionately refrains from entering Nirvana for the salvation of others.
• 10. Steiner describes the human being as comprised of four “bodies”: physical, etheric, astral, and ego. The astral body bears the inner world of desires, pleasure and pain, and the qualitative world of emotions. See Occult Science, 21–28.
• 11. Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473–1543, Polish astronomer. Made astronomical observations of orbits of sun, moon, planets. Gradually abandoned accepted Ptolemaic system of astronomy and worked out heliocentric system in which the earth rotates daily on its axis and, with other planets, revolves around the sun.
• 12. Giordano Bruno, 1548–1600, Italian philosopher. Arrested by the Inquisition and burned at the stake. A critic of Aristotelian logic and champion of Copernican cosmology, which he extended with the notion of the infinite universe.
• 13. See Lecture Two, note 2
• 14. Nicholas Cusanus, 1401–1464, German prelate and philosopher. Bishop and later created cardinal. Wrote treatises for church councils as well as works on mathematics and philosophy. Anticipated Copernicus by his belief in the earth's rotation and revolution around the sun.
  
  Galileo Galilei, 1564–1642, Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. First to use telescope to study the skies. Tried by the Inquisition for supporting the Copernican system.

The basis of our consideration today may seem a weird arrangement to somebody: on one side Tolstoy, on the other side Carnegie, two personalities about whom probably some say, more different, more opposite persons one can hardly find. On one side, the solver of riddles of the highest social and spiritual problems searching from the depths of spiritual life—Tolstoy; and on the other side the steel tycoon, the rich man, the man about whom one knows literally hardly more than that he thought about how the accumulated wealth is to be used best of all—Carnegie. Then again the arrangement of both persons with spiritual science or anthroposophy.

Indeed, with Tolstoy nobody probably doubts that one can illumine the depths of his soul with the light of spiritual science. However, with Carnegie some probably say, what has this man to do generally with spiritual science, this man of the only practical, business work?—Spiritual science would be the grey theory, the unrealistic and life-hostile worldview as one regards it is so often, if it does not care a little about the issues of practical life, as one believes sometimes. Therefore, it could appear weird that just such a man of practical life is adduced to illustrate certain issues. If one has understood that this spiritual science is something that can flow into all single fields, yes, into the most mundane fields of practical life, then one does not consider it as something surprising that also this personality is adduced to illustrate something that should be just illustrated within spiritual science. Secondly—to speak in the sense of Emerson—we have two representative personalities of our time before ourselves. The one like the other expresses the whole striving on the one side, the work on the other side typically, as they prevail in our time. Just the opposite of the whole development of personality and soul is so characteristic with these both men on one side for the variety of life and work in our time, on the other side, nevertheless, again for the basic nerve, the real goals of our present.

We have, on one side, Tolstoy who has grown out of a distinguished class, of wealth and abundance, of a life sphere in which everything is included that external life can offer as comfort and convenience. He is a human being whom his soul development has brought almost to proclaim the worthlessness of all he got with birth, not only to himself, but also to the whole humankind like a Gospel. We have the American steel tycoon on the other side, a personality that has grown out of hardship and misery, grown out of a life sphere where nothing at all exists of that which external life can offer as convenience and comfort. A person who had to earn dollar by dollar and who ascended to the biggest wealth, who got around in the course of his soul development to regarding this accumulation of wealth as something absolutely normal for the present and to thinking only about it how this accumulated wealth is to be used to the welfare and happiness of humankind. What Tolstoy never desired when he had reached the summit of his soul development he had it abundantly in the beginning of his life. The external goods of life that Carnegie had abundantly acquired last were refused to him in the beginning of his life. This is the expression of their natures, even if in exterior way, however, the characteristic of both personalities to a certain extent at the same time. What can take action with a person in our time, what one can reflect of these external processes in and around the personality shows us with both what prevails in our present in the undergrounds of the social and mental existence generally. We see Tolstoy, as said, born out of a sphere of life in which everything existed that one can call comfort, wealth, and refinement of life. Of course, we can deal only quite cursorily with his life, because today it concerns of characterising our time in these representative personalities and of recognising their needs in a certain way.

In 1828, Leo Tolstoy is born in a family of Russian counts about which he himself says that the family immigrated originally from Germany. Then we see Tolstoy losing certain higher goods of life. Hardly he is one and a half years old, he loses the mother, the father in the ninth year. Then he grows up under the care of a relative who is, so to speak, the embodied love, and from her spiritual condition, the marvellous soul condition had to flow in his soul like by itself. However, on the other side, another relative who wants to build up him out of the viewpoints of her circles, out of the conditions of time as they formed in certain circles influences him. She is a person who is completely merged in the outward world activity which later became very odious to Tolstoy and against which he fought so hard. We see this personality striving from the outset to make Tolstoy a person “comme il faut,” a person who could treat his farmers in such a way, as it was necessary in those days, who should receive title, rank, dignity, and medals and should play a suitable role in the society.

Then we see Tolstoy coming to the university; he is a bad student as he absolutely thinks that everything that the professors say at the University of Kazan is nothing worth knowing. Only oriental languages can occupy him. In all other matters, he was not interested. Against it the comparison of a certain chapter of the code of Catherine the Great (1729–1796) with The Spirit of the Laws (1748) by Montesquieu (Charles de Secondat, Baron de M., 1689–1755) attracted him. Then he tries repeatedly to manage his estate, and we see him almost getting around to diving head first into the life of luxury of a man of his circles, diving head first into all possible vices and vanities of life. We see him becoming a gambler, gambling big sums away. However, he has hours within this life over and over again when his own activities disgust him, actually. We see him meeting peers as well as men of letters and leading a life, which he calls a worthless, even perishable one at moments of reflection. However, we also see—and this is important to him who looks with pleasure at the development of the soul where this development manifests in especially typical signs—particular peculiarities appearing with him in the development of his soul which can disclose us already in the earliest youth what is, actually, in this soul.

Thus, it is of immense significance, what a deep impression a certain event makes on Tolstoy at the age of eleven years. A friendly boy once told him that one has made an important discovery, a new invention. One has found—and a teacher has spoken in particular of the fact—that there is no God that this God is only an empty invention of many human beings, an empty picture of thought. Everything that one can know about the impression that this boy's experience made on Tolstoy shows already how he absorbed it that in him a soul struggled striving for the highest summits of human existence.

However, this soul was weird in other ways as well. Those people who like to state outer appearances and do not pay attention to that in the soul, which emerges from the centre as the actual individual through all outer obstacles, they ignore and do not pay attention to anything in such youth experiences that has different effects on the one soul and on the other one. In particular, one has to pay attention if a soul shows a disposition in the earliest youth that one could pronounce with the nice sentence of Goethe in the second part of his Faust: “I love the man who wants what cannot be.” This sentence says a lot. A soul, which desires, so to speak, something that is obvious foolishness to the philistine view, such a soul, if it appears in its first youth as such, shows the width of the scope of view just by such peculiarities. Thus, one must not ignore it, if Tolstoy tells such things in one of his first writings, in which he gives reflections of his own development.

We are not allowed to ignore when he says there things, which were absolutely valid for him, for example, when he shaved off his eyebrows and defaced his not very extensive beauty in such a way for a while. This is something that one can regard as a big outlandishness. However, if one thinks about it, it becomes an indication. Another example is that the boy imagines that the human being can fly if he presses the arms against the knees rather stiffly. If he did this, he would be able to fly, he thinks. He goes up once in the second floor and jumps out of the window, retaining the heels. He is saved like by a miracle and carries off nothing but a little concussion, which compensates one another by an 18-hour sleep again. He proved for his surroundings with it to be a strange boy. However, someone who wants to observe the soul and knows what it means to go out in his soul in the earliest youth from the track, which is predetermined on the left and on the right, does not disregard features in the life of a young person. Thus, this soul seems to be great and to have many talents from the start. Hence, we can understand that he was fulfilled with a certain disgust of himself when he was tired of the debaucheries of life, which were due to his social rank, in particular after a gamble affair.

When he goes then to the Caucasus, we can understand that there his soul becomes fond of the simple Cossacks, of those people whom he gets to know and recognises that they have, actually, quite different souls than all those people whom he had got to know up to now basically. All the principles of his peers appeared to him so unnatural. Everything that he had believed up to now seemed to him so strange, so separated from the original source of existence. However, the human beings, whom he got to know now, were people whose souls had grown together with the sources of nature like the tree by the roots with the sources of nature, like the flower with the liquid of the ground. It impressed him enormously that they were grown together with nature, that they had not become foreign to the sources of existence, that they were beyond good and evil in their circles.

In 1854, when he became a soldier, full of zest for action, to take part in the Crimean War, we see him with the most intensive devotion studying the whole soul life of the simple soldier. However, we see now a more specified feeling taking place in Tolstoy's soul, we see him being deeply moved by the naturalness of the simple human being on the one side, on the other side, also by the misery, poverty, the tortures, and depression of the simple human being. We see how he is fulfilled with love and desire to help, and that the highest ideals of human happiness, human welfare, and progress flash as shades in his mind, how he realises completely on the other side that the natural human beings cannot understand his ideals. This causes a conflict in his soul, something that does not allow him to penetrate to the basic core of his being.

Thus, he is thrown back repeatedly from that life he leads and in which he is thrown just with the Danube army from one extreme to the other. A superior says, he is a golden human being whom one can never forget again. He works like a soul that pours out goodness only and, on the other hand, has the ability to amuse the others in the most difficult situations. Everything is different if he is there. If he is not there, everybody hangs his head. If he has plunged into life, he comes back with a terrible remorse, with awful regret to the camp. Between such moods, this great soul was thrown back and forth. From these moods and experiences those views and pictorial descriptions of his literary career come, which caused, for example, the most accepting review even from Turgenev (Ivan T., 1818–1883, Russian author), and which have found recognition everywhere. However, we see at the same time how in a certain way beside the real centre, the centre of his soul, always he looks at the big strength, at the basic spring of life, how he struggles for the concepts of truth and human progress. However, he cannot help saying at a being together with Turgenev: you all do not have, actually, what one calls conviction. You talk, actually, only to hide your conviction.

One can say, life made his soul feel low, bringing it into heavy, bitter conflicts. Indeed, something most serious should yet come. At the end of the fifties, one of his brothers fell ill and died. Tolstoy had often seen death in war, had often looked at dying human beings, but he had not yet realised the problem of life to such extent as at the sight of the beloved dying brother. Tolstoy was not so fulfilled at that time with philosophical or religious contents that these contents could have supported him. He was in such a basic mood that expressed itself towards death possibly in such a way that he said, I am incapable to give life a goal. I see life decreasing, I see it running in my peers worthlessly; they do things which are not worth to be done. If one strings up an event to the other and forms ever so long rows, nothing valuable results.—At that time, he could also not see any contents and life goal in the fact that the lower social classes were in distress and misery.

He said to himself at that time, such a life whose sense one searches in vain is finished by the futility of death and if the life of everybody and any animal ends in the futility of death, who is generally able to speak about the meaning of life? Sometimes, Tolstoy had already set himself the goal to strive for perfection of his soul, to search contents for the soul. He had not advanced so far that any contents of life could be roused in the soul even from the spirit. Therefore, the sight of death had put the riddle of life in such horrible figure before his spiritual eye.

We see him travelling in Europe just in the same time. We see him visiting the most interesting cities of Europe—in France, Italy, Germany. We see him getting to know some valuable persons. He gets to know Schopenhauer (Arthur Sch., 1788–1860, German philosopher) personally shortly before his death, he gets to know Liszt (1811–1882, Austrian-Hungarian composer) and still some others, some luminaries of science and art. He gets to know something of the social life, gets to know the court life at Weimar. Everything was accessible to him; however, he looks at everything with eyes from which the attitude looks that has just been characterised. From all that he had gained only one: as well as it is at home, in the circles, which he has grown out of, it is also in Western Europe.

Now a goal faces him in particular. He wanted to found a kind of model school, and he founded it in his hometown where every pupil should learn after his talents where it should not be a stencil. We cannot get involved with the description of the pedagogic principles, which one used there. However, this must be stressed that he had an ideal of education in mind, which should meet the individuality of the child.

We see a kind of interregnum taking place, where in certain way the stormy soul experiences a kind of standstill, that soul in which the problems and the questions followed in rapid succession, into which the sensations and emotions have flowed in contradicting way. A calmer life prevails in it. This time begins with the marriage in the sixties. It was the time from which the great novels come in which he gave the comprising tremendous pictures of the social life of the present and the previous time: War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1873–1877). So much has flowed in from that which he had learnt onto these works.

Thus, he lived until the seventies of the last century. Then comes a time of his life where he faces a crucial decision where all qualms, doubts, and problems come to life again which prevailed once like from dark spiritual depths.

A comparison, a picture that he forms is rather typical of what his soul experienced. One needs to visualise this picture only and to know that it means quite another matter to a soul like Tolstoy's soul, as for another soul that is much more superficial. You need to visualise this picture only, and you can deeply look into the mind of Tolstoy. He compares his own life to an Eastern fable, which he tells possibly in such a way:

There is a man, pursued by a beast. He flees, finds a dried out well and plunges into it to escape from the beast. He holds fast onto the branches, which have grown out on the sides of the well wall. In this way, he thinks he is protected against the pursuing monster. However, in the depth, he sees a dragon, and he has the feeling, he must be devoured by it if he gets tired only a little or if the branch breaks, onto which he holds fast. There he also sees on the leaves of the shrub some drops of honey from which he could feed himself. Nevertheless, at the same time he also sees mice gnawing away at the roots of the shrub onto which he holds fast.

Two things to which Tolstoy adhered were family love and art. For the rest, he considered life in such a way that all tantalising worries of life pursue him. He escapes one and is welcomed by the other monster. Then one sees mice gnawing away the few things that one still.—One must take the picture deeply enough to see what goes forward in such a soul, what is shown there and what Tolstoy experienced in all thinking, feeling and willing in the most extensive way. The branches still pleased him. However, he also found various things, which had to gnaw away at the delight in them. If the whole life is in such a way, that one cannot find sense in it, that one looks for the meaning of life in vain, what does it mean to have a family, to build up descendants to whom one transfers the same futility? This was also something he had in mind. And art? If life is worthless, what about art, the mirror of life? Can art be valuable if it only is able to reflect that in which one looks for sense in vain?

That just stood before his soul and burnt in him after an interregnum again. Where he looked around with all those who tried to fathom the meaning of life in great philosophies and in the most various worldviews, he nowhere found anything that could satisfy his searching. Recently it was in such a way that he turned his look to those people who were originally connected with the springs of life according to his opinion. These human beings had preserved a natural sense, a natural piety. He said to himself, the scholar who lives like me, who overestimates his reason finds nothing in all researching that could interpret the meaning of life to him. If I look at the usual human being who unites there in sects: he knows, why he lives, he knows the meaning of life. How does he know this, and how does he know the meaning of life? Because he experiences the sensation in himself, there is a will, the everlasting divine will as I call it. What lives in me devotes itself to the divine will. What I do from morning to evening is a part of the divine will. If I move the hands, I move them in the will of the divine. Without being brought by reason to abstractions, the hands move.—That faced him so peculiarly, that grasped him so intensely: if the human is deeply grasped in the soul. He said to himself, there are human beings who can answer the question of the meaning of life to themselves that they can use.

It is even magnificent how he contrasts these simple human beings with those who he got to know in his surroundings. Everything is thought out of the monumental of the paradigms. He says, I got to know people who did not understand to give life any meaning. They lived by force of habit, although they could gain no meaning of life, but I got to know those who committed suicide, because they could not find any meaning of life.—Tolstoy himself was before it.

Thus, he studied that category of human beings about whom he had to say to himself, it could not be talk of a meaning of life and of a life with a meaning. However, the human being, who is still connected with the sources of nature, whose soul is connected with the divine forces as the plant with the forces of life, can answer to the question: why do I live?—Therefore, Tolstoy came so far to search for a community with those simple human beings in the religious life. He became religious in certain way, although the outer forms made a repellent impression on him. He went to the Communion again. Now it was something in him that one can explain in such a way: he strove with all fibers of his soul to find and to feel a goal. Nevertheless, again his thinking and feeling impeded him everywhere in certain way. He was able to pray together with these human beings, who were believers in the naive sense and answered to the question of the meaning of life to themselves.

He could pray—and this is tremendously typical—up to the point of a uniform way of feeling. However, he was not able to go further when they prayed: we confess ourselves to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.—This made no sense to him. It is generally typical that he was able to come up to a certain point, looking for a religious life, which was based on brotherly feelings. This life in devoutness should produce a unity of feelings, unity of thoughts. However, he could not rise to the positive contents, the knowledge of the spirit, to the spiritual view, which gives reality. The traditional dogmatics meant nothing to him. He could not connect any sense with the words, which are given in the Trinity.

Thus, he came, while all these things flocked together, to the mature period of his life, to the period in which he tried to delve completely into that which he could call true, real Christianity. He strove in such a way, as if he had wanted to comprise, to penetrate the liveliness of Christ's soul with his own soul. With this spirit of Christ's soul, he wanted to penetrate himself. A worldview should arise from it, and from this something like a transformation of all present life should result which he subjected to harsh criticism. Because he believes now to feel in his soul, what Christ had thought and felt, he feels strong enough to issue a challenge to all ways of life, to all ways of feeling and thinking of the present. He criticised harshly that out of which he has grown and which he could see in the farther environment of his time. He feels strong enough to put up the demand, on the other side, to let the spirit of Christ prevail and to get out a renewal of all human life out of the spirit of Christ. With it, we have characterised, so to speak, his maturing soul and have seen this soul having grown out of that which many of our contemporaries call the summits of life. We have seen this soul getting around to harshly criticise the summits of life, and to putting as its next goal the renewal of the spirit of Christ which it finds strange to everything that lives presently, in the renewal of Christ's life which it nowhere finds in reality. Therefore, in certain sense, Tolstoy says no to the present and affirms what he calls the spirit of Christ, which he could not find in the present but only in the first times of Christianity. He had to go back to the historical sources, which came up to him. There we have a representative of our present who has grown out of the present, saying no to this present.

Now we have a look at the other man, who affirms most intensely, what Tolstoy denies most intensely, who reaches the same formula but applies it quite differently. There we see Carnegie, the Scotsman, growing out of that dividing line of modern times which we can characterise by the fact that trade, large-scale industry and the like sweep away the small trade from the social order. We really see Carnegie growing out of that dividing line of modern life, which a newer poet so nicely characterised with the words (poem by Heinrich von Reder, 1824–1909, Bavarian officer, poet, and painter):

Gone to rack on a mule track

a smithy stands in woodland solitude;

no longer does the hammer blow

accompanied by merry songs.

Not far away the buildings rise

where sooted blacksmiths

are working so hard.

With the steam mill's nails

the coffin is closed,

it carries the nail-smith

impoverished to grave.

One needs to wake only such a mood, and one illuminates brightly that dividing line in the cultural development of modern times, which has become so important to life. Carnegie's father was a weaver who had a good living at first. He worked for a factory. This went well up to the time when the large-scale industry flooded everything. Now we see the last day approaching, when Carnegie's father can still deliver the produced to the trader. Then poverty and misery enter in the weaver's family. The father does no longer see any possibility to make a living in Scotland. He decides to emigrate to America, so that both sons do not live in misery and die.

The father finds work in a cotton factory, and the boy is employed as a bobbin boy in his twelfth year. He has to perform hard work. However, there is after one week of hard, heavy work a happy day for the 12-year-old boy. He gets his first wage: 1 dollar and 20 cents. Never again—so says Carnegie—he has taken up any income with such delighted soul as this dollar and twenty cents. Nothing made more joy to him later, although many millions went through his fingers. We see the representative of practical pursuit in our present that grows out of distress and misery that is natured in such a way to immerse himself in the present, as it is, and to become the self-made man in it. He struggles. He gains his dollar every week.

Then somebody employs him in another factory with a better wage. Here he has to work even more, he must stand in the basement and has to heat and maintain a small steam engine with big heat. He feels that as a responsible post. The fear to turn the tap of the engine wrongly what could lead to an accident for the whole factory is dreadful to him. He often catches himself sitting in his bed at night and dreaming of the tap the whole night which he turned taking care of turning it in the right direction.

Then we see him employed as a telegraph messenger in Pittsburgh after some time. There he is already highly happy with the small wage of the telegraph messenger. He has to work at a place where also books are which he had hardly seen before. Sometimes he also has newspapers to read. He has now only one worry: telegraph messengers are not to be needed in the city if they are not able to know all addresses of the companies by heart, which receive telegrams. He really manages to know the names and addresses of the Pittsburgh companies. He also already develops a certain independence. His consciousness is paired exceptionally with cleverness. He goes now a little earlier to the telegraph office, and there he learns to telegraph by own practicing. Thus, he can aim at the ideal that any telegraph messenger is allowed to have in a young, ambitious community: to become a telegraph operator once. He even succeeds in a special trick. When one morning the telegraph operator was not there, a death message comes in. He takes up the telegram and carries it to the newspaper to which it was determined. There are connections where one regards such an action, even if it succeeds, not as favourable. However, Carnegie thereby climbed up to the telegraph operator.

Now something else presented itself to him. A man who dealt with railways recognises the talents of the young man and one day he makes the following proposal to him. He said to him, he should take over railway stocks of 500 dollars that had just become available. He can win a lot if he pursues these matters. Carnegie tells now—it is delightful how he tells this—how he raised 500 dollars really by the care and love of his mother, and how he bought his stocks. When he got the first revenue, the first payment of more than five dollars, he went with his fellows out to the wood. They looked at the payment and thought and learnt to recognise that there is something else than to be paid for work, something that makes money from money. That aroused big viewpoints in Carnegie's life. With it, he grew into the characteristic of our time.

Thus, we see him immediately understanding when another proposal is made. It is typical how he grasps with complete presence of mind what appears before his soul for the first time. An inventive head shows him the model of the first sleeping car. Straight away, he recognises that there is something tremendously fertile in it, so that he takes part in it. He emphasises now again by what this consciousness, actually, grew. He did not have enough money to take part in suitable way in the enterprise of the first sleeping car society of the world. However, his ingenious head caused that he got money already from a bank: he issued his first bill of exchange. This is nothing particular, he says, but this is something particular that he finds a banker who accepts this bill of exchange. This was the case.

Now he needed to develop this only to become completely the man of the present. Hence, we have not to be surprised that he became a steel tycoon when he got the idea to replace the many wooden bridges with iron and steel bridges, that he became the man who set the tone in the steel industry and acquired the countless riches. Thus, we really see the type of the human being in him who grows into the present, the present, which unfolds the most exterior life. He grows into the most outward of appearance. However, he grows into it by his own strength, by his abilities. He becomes the extensively rich person out of distress and misery, while he himself really acquired everything from the first dollar on. He is a pensive person who associates this whole impulse of his life with the progress and life of whole humanity.

Thus, we see another strange Gospel growing out of his way of thinking, a Gospel that follows Christ. However, Carnegie immediately says at the beginning of his Gospel, it is a Gospel of wealth (essay Wealth or Gospel of Wealth, 1889). That is why his book shows how wealth is applied best of all to the welfare and to the progress of humanity. He opposes Tolstoy immediately about whom he says: he is a person who takes Christ in such a way as it is not suitable at all to our time, who regards him as a strange being of old past. One must understand Christ in such a way that one transfers Him to the present life.—Carnegie is a person who affirms the whole life of the present completely. He says: if we look back at the times when the human being were more alike than today, they were still less divided into those who had to assign a job and those who have to take a job, and if we compare the times, we see how primitive the single cultures were in those days. The king was not able in that old time to satisfy his needs in such a way as today the poorest person can satisfy them now. What happened had to happen. That is why it is right that one distributes the goods in such a way.

Carnegie establishes a strange doctrine of the distribution or application of wealth. Above all, we find with him that ideas of the purely personal efficiency, of the nature of the efficiency of the human being originate in his soul who has worked his way in life up to that which he becomes in the end. At first Carnegie sees outward goods only, then also that the human being must be efficient, externally efficient. Someone has to apply his efficiency not only to acquire wealth but also to manage it in the service of humanity.

Carnegie intensely draws the attention to the fact that quite new principles would have to enter, so to speak, in the social construction of humanity if welfare and progress should originate from the new progress and the distribution of goods. He says, we have institutions of former time that make it possible that by inheritance from the father to the son and the grandchildren goods, rank, title and dignities go over. In the life of the old time, this was possible.—He regards it as right that one can substitute with routine what the personal efficiency does not give: rank, title, dignities.

Nevertheless, he is convinced by that life he has experienced that it requires personal, individual efficiency. He points to the fact that one had ascertained that five of seven insolvent houses became insolvent, because they demised to the sons. Rank, title, and dignities devolved from the fathers upon the sons, however, never business acumen. In those parts of modern life, where commercial principles prevail, they should not be transmitted simply from the testator to the descendants. It is much more important that someone builds up a personally efficient man, than to bequeath his wealth to his children. That is why Carnegie concludes in the absurd sentence: someone has to make sure that he applies the accumulated wealth to such institutions and foundations by which the human beings are promoted to the largest extent.—The sentence with which he formulates this, which can appear grotesque, which originates, however, from Carnegie's whole way of thinking is this: “Who dies rich dies dishonourably.” One could say in certain sense, this sentence of the steel tycoon sounds even more revolutionary than many a sentence of Tolstoy.

”He who dies rich dies dishonourably” means: someone dies dishonourably who does not apply the accumulated goods to endowments by which the human beings can learn something, can get the possibility to do further studies. If he makes many human beings efficient with his wealth during his life and does not hand it down to descendants, who can use it their way lacking any talent and only to their personal well-being, he dies not dishonourably.

Thus, we see with Carnegie a very strange principle appearing. We see that he affirms the present social life and activity, that he gains, however, a new principle from it: the fact that the human being has to advocate not only the use of wealth, but also its management, as a manager of the goods in the service of humanity. This man does not at all believe that anything can devolve from the parents upon their descendants. Even if he knows the outward life only, he realises, nevertheless, that inside of the human being the forces have to originate which make the human being efficient to do his work in life.

We see these two representatives of our present: that who harshly criticizes what has developed bit by bit and who wants to lead the soul to higher fields out of the spirit. On the other side, we see a man who takes the material life as it comes, and who is pointed to the fact that within the human being the spring of work and of the health of life is to be found. Nevertheless, one may find something just in this teaching of Carnegie that allows me to remark the following. If anybody does not look thoughtlessly and pointlessly at this soul life, but looks at the forces pouring out of the souls bit by bit, does look at the individual, and is clear in his mind absolutely that it is not handed down,—what has one then to look at? One has to look at the real origin, at that which comes from other sources. One finds if one comes to the sources of the present talents and abilities that these are caused in former lives. By the principle of reincarnation and of spiritual causing, karma, one finds the possibility to process such a principle meditatively that it has forced the practical life upon a practical person.

Nobody can hope that from a mere externalisation of life anything could come that the soul satisfies, can bring the civilisation to the highest summits. Never can one hope that on those roads anything else would come than a distribution of wealth salutary in the external sense. The soul would become deserted, it would overexert its forces, but it would find nothing in itself if it could not penetrate to the sources of the spirit, which are beyond the external material life. While the soul is rejected by a material approach to life, it must find the spring, which can flow only from a spiritual approach to life. With such a life praxis, as Carnegie has it, that deepening and spiritualisation coming from spiritual science have to combine, so that the souls do not become deserted. On the one side, Carnegie demands that from the single soul, which makes it fit for the external life, on the other side, Tolstoy wants to give the single soul what it can find from the deep well of the spiritual being.

As well as Carnegie grasps the being of the present with sure look from the material life, we find Tolstoy on the other side with sure look grasping the characteristic of the soul. Up to a certain limiting point, we see Tolstoy coming who affects us, indeed, strangely if we compare everything that lives in Tolstoy's worldview to that which faces us in particular in the West-European civilisation.

One can examine work by work of Tolstoy and one sees one fact emerging above all. The matters, which one has gathered here in the West with an immense expenditure of philosophical reflection, academic pondering, and moving conclusions from pillars to post, appear to Tolstoy in such a way that they occur in five to six lines like flashes of thought and become conviction to that who can understand such a thing. Tolstoy shows, for example, how we have to find something in the human soul that is of divine nature that can visualise the divine in the world if it lights up in us. Tolstoy says there, around me, the academic naturalists live; they investigate what is real outdoors in the material, in the so-called objective existence. They search the divine primal ground of existence. Then such people try to compose the human being from all principles, substances, atoms et cetera that they search spread out outdoors in the space. Then in the end, they try to understand what the human being is, while they believe to have to combine all external science to find the primal ground of life. Such human beings, he says, appear to me like human beings who have trees and plants of the living nature round themselves. They say, this does not interest me. But there is a wood far away, I hardly see it; I want to investigate and describe this wood, then I also understand the trees and the plants which are around me, and I am able to describe them.—People appear to me that way who investigate the being of the animals with their instruments to get to know the nature of the human being. They have it in themselves; they only need to see what is in close proximity. However, they do not do this. They search the faraway trees, and they try to understand what they cannot see, the atoms. However, they do not see the human being.

This way of thinking is so monumental that it is more valuable than dozens of insights and theories that are written out of old cultures. This is typical for the whole thinking of Tolstoy. To such things, he came, and in such things, one must look. To the West European this is extremely unsatisfactory; only by a devious route via Kant he gets around to it. With the assurance of his soul, Tolstoy is driven to pronounce what is not proved, but is true, what is recognised by immediate view and of which one knows if it is pronounced that it is true. His work On Life (1887) shows this monumental original springing of the deepest truth like from the spring of life, which he searched. His last writings just show this and what is in such a way that it can shine like an aurora to a rising future.

Therefore, we have to say, the less we are inclined to take Tolstoy dogmatically, the more we are inclined to take up the gold nuggets of a primitive paradigmatic thinking, the more he becomes fertile. Of course, those who accept a personality only in such a way that they swear on their dogmas, who cannot allow to be fertilised by it, they do not have a lot from him. Something does not agree with them. However, someone who can allow to be fertilised by a great personality may receive a lot from Tolstoy. We see truth working in him, paradigmatically, and that this truth flows with strong forces onto his personal life. How does it flow in there? It is rather interesting to see that different views live in his family and tolerate each other. How was he able, however, to introduce his principles in the everyday life? By working, and not only with principles. Thereby he becomes a true pioneer of something that only must sprout in future. On the other side, Tolstoy is also a child of his time, even though he is a pioneer of the future.

Perhaps, one can nowhere feel more impressively how he puts himself in the present than in that strange picture of the year 1848, when he was twenty years old. One looks only at the face of the 20-year-old, which expresses energy and willpower, also reticence at the same time. However, the spirited twinkle in the eyes reveals something that faces the riddles of life quizzically. He is volcanic inside but not able to cause the volcano to erupt. Indeed, we see mysterious depths of the soul expressing themselves in his physiognomy, and we get the expression of the fact that something tremendous lives in him but that he cannot yet express it completely in this hereditary organism.

It is also that way with the variety of the forces which live in Tolstoy, and which could not be expressed so really. It is in such a way, as if they are expressed as caricatures, distorted in certain respect. One has also to recognise the character in him that is sometimes distorted grotesquely. Hence, it is quite wonderful if he is able to point to that which one calls something transient with the human beings normally: look at the human body. How often its substances have been exchanged! Nothing material is there that was there in the ten-year-old boy. Compare the usual consciousness to the image life of the fifty years old man: it has become completely different, until the soul structure. We cannot call it permanent, but everywhere we find the centre in it, which we may imagine possibly in the following way. The objects of the outside world are there. There is this, there is that, there a third one. Two human beings face the objects. The eyes see the same things, but they are to the one this way, to the other that way. The one says, I like this; the other says: I do not like this.—If in the outside world everything is the same, and if the one soul says, I like it, and the other says, I do not like it, if the way of life is different, a centre is there that is different from all appearance that remains constant, in spite of all change of consciousness and body. Something is there that was there before birth and is there after birth, my particular ego. This my particular ego has not begun with birth. It is not the point that anybody positions himself with the west-European habits to such a remark, but it matters that one has the sensation: one can do such a remark. Therein the greatness of the soul appears. It becomes apparent that the soul lives and how it lives. Immortality is guaranteed therein.

Tolstoy just approaches the border of that which we get to know as the innermost being of the soul by spiritual-scientific deepening. He is wedged by the world against which he himself fights so much and cannot penetrate to true cognition of that which is there before birth, and of that which comes after death. He does not come to the teaching of reincarnation and karma. Just as little, he gets to the inner impulse of the soul like Carnegie who almost demands it. Therefore, we see whether now a human being is in contradiction to everything that lives and works in the present or whether someone complies with all life forms of the present: he is led to the gates of the anthroposophic approach to life. Tolstoy would be able to find the way to Carnegie, Carnegie never to Tolstoy.

With this talk, I wanted to show that a worldview and an approach to life could be given which introduces into the immediate life praxis, which can transfer the newfound to the known, to the performed. Moreover, we see if we familiarise ourselves deeper and deeper with spiritual science that it brings that to the human beings of the one and the other view which, in the end, Tolstoy has found his way and Carnegie has found his way: a satisfying life. However, it does not depend on it that the immediate viewfinder finds the satisfactory life, and that those who search with him can find it. What Tolstoy and Carnegie have found for themselves as adequate, this can be found for all human beings only impersonally and spiritually if true spiritual knowledge of that is found which goes from life to life, which carries the guaranty of eternity in itself.

The anthroposophic spiritual science that is represented here—of course, always only piecemeal—is regarded by a lot of people who do not know or do not want to know it as a field of daydreamers and of such human beings who, as one says so easily, are not in the real, in the practical life. Indeed, someone who wants to inform himself cursorily with this or that brochure or with a single talk about the contents and the goal of spiritual science can easily get to such a judgment. That applies, in particular if he—like many others—is less willing on penetrating into the real spiritual fields or if he has all prejudices and suggestions which arise from our civilisation so numerously against such a field of research. Moreover, it is not so seldom today that the bad will is added, no matter whether consciously or unconsciously, then the judgement is ready: oh, this spiritual science deals with matters which the practical human being who wants to stand firmly with both feet on the ground of life should not care about!

However, spiritual science feels intimately related with the most practical fields of life, and where it is appropriately pursued, it places the greatest value on the fact that thinking, the most certain guide, experiences a practical development with the real practical life. Because firstly spiritual science should not be anything that hovers unworldly and otherworldly anywhere in the cloud-cuckoo-land and wants to deduct the human being from the usual everyday life. However, it should be something that can serve our life with all that we think, act, and feel at every moment. Secondly, spiritual science is in a certain sense a preparation of our soul for those levels of knowledge, by which the human being himself penetrates into the higher worlds. One often stresses that spiritual science has a value not only for the human being who already has open eyes to penetrate in the spiritual world, but that the healthy human mind, the unclouded reason and power of judgement are able to understand what the spiritual researcher knows about the higher worlds. For the acceptance of his communications has an infinite value for the human being, long before he himself can penetrate into the spiritual fields. One can say, spiritual science is for everybody a preparation to develop the higher organs of knowledge bit by bit slumbering in the soul by which the spiritual worlds become discernible to us.

We have already spoken partly; we will have still to speak partly about the different methods and performances, which the human being has to carry out in order to penetrate into the spiritual worlds. However, there is always an unconditional requirement: who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world, who wants to apply the methods exactly given by spiritual research, so that the spiritual senses are opened to him, that should never ever venture this way to the higher fields of life without standing on the ground of a healthy, a practically qualified thinking. This healthy thinking is the guide, the true leitmotif, in order to reach the spiritual worlds. Someone reaches them best of all using the methods of spiritual science who does not disdain to educate himself strictly to a thinking bound to reality and its principles. Indeed, if one speaks about the real practical thinking, one easily is contrary to practice, and probably practice of thinking in our world. One has only to remind of something that I have already often suggested here in order to characterise this. Many a person attributes practice to himself in our world. What is, however, practice about which today the so-called practical human beings talk? There is somebody apprenticed to a master. There he learns all those performances and measures which were carried out for decades, maybe since centuries and which are strictly compulsory. He appropriates that all, and the less he thinks, the less he forms an independent, free judgement, the more he goes beaten tracks, the more the world considers him as practical, in particular those consider him who are active in this field. One calls this often impractical what differs only in the least sense from anything that one practises since long time. Maintaining such a practice is mostly not bound to reason, but only to force. Someone who has any position in life and has to carry out things in a way, which appears to be correct for him, insists that every other who is active in this field must do this just as he does it. If he has the power, he pushes everybody out who wants to go forward differently.

Life praxis consists of such conditions in many cases. Then the right also results, as for example in the case where a big progress should be implemented: The first German railway should be built from Fürth to Nuremberg. One consulted an eminently practical board, the Bavarian Medical Council, whether generally this railway should be built. One can read this judgement, even today. It reads, one should build no railway because the driving would ruin the nerves. However, if one wanted to build railways, one should fence them on the left and on the right with high wooden walls, so that passing persons would not get concussions. This is a judgement of practitioners. Whether one would consider these practitioners as practitioners even today, this is the question. Probably not.

Another example, which can show us whether progress originates from those who call themselves practitioners or from other people: you find it certainly very practical that one has no longer to go to the post office with any letter where the postage has then to be determined according to distance and weight. Only during the forties of the nineteenth century, the uniform letter postage was introduced in England. However, not a practitioner of the postal system invented it, but such a practitioner said when the matter should be decided in the parliament, firstly he did not believe that such an advantage arose, as Hill (Sir Rowland Hill, 1795–1879) calculated, and secondly the post-office building had to be extended. He could not imagine that the post-office building has to comply with the postal traffic and not vice versa the traffic with the post-office building. When the first railway should be built from Berlin to Potsdam, a practitioner said, namely that who let two stagecoaches go to Potsdam for many years: if people wanted to throw their money out of the window, one could build the railway. Because this practice of the so-called practitioners is so impractical, if the big issues of life are considered, one can become contrary to these practitioners if one speaks about the practical development of thinking. Something presents to the impartial observer in all fields of life that can show how it is with the real life praxis.

Once I experienced a quite vivid example, what practical thinking can prevent. A friend of my study time came once excitedly with red head to me. He said, he must immediately go to the professor and inform him that he has made a great invention. Then he came back and said, he could speak the expert only in one hour, and then he explained his invention to me. It was a device, which set a machine in motion expending a very small quantity of steam power only once supplied, and then this machine perpetually performed an immense work. My friend himself was surprised that he was so clever to make such an invention, which exceeded everything and made good economic sense. I said to him, he should trace back the matter to a simple thought. I said, “Imagine, you stand in a railroad carriage and you try to push against the walls of the carriage in order to move it. If you succeed in moving the carriage standing and pushing in it, your engine is good, because it is based on the same principle.”

At that time, I realised that a main obstacle of all practical thinking can be called with a technical term: one is a “carriage pusher from within!” This fits the thinking of many people; they are “carriage pushers from within.” What does that mean? That one is only able to survey a certain narrow field and to apply to this field what one has learned to this field. However, one is also forced to stop within this field and cannot see at all that everything changes substantially, as soon as one exits from the “carriage.”

This is one of the principles, which one has to follow above all with a practical development of thinking: that every human being who is active in any field must try to connect it with adjacent fields regardless of his own activity. Otherwise, it is impossible that he gets to a practical thinking. For this is a peculiarity which is connected with a certain internal sluggishness that the human thinking likes to be encapsulated and forgets what is outdoors, even if it is palpable.

I have recently stated in other connections that one wants to prove the Kant-Laplace theory: Once the universal nebula was there. This started rotating by any cause; the single planets of the solar system separated bit by bit and received the movement, which they have still today. One makes this very clear in a school experiment, the so-called Plateau (Joseph P., 1801–1883, Belgian physicist) experiment: one gives an oil drop in a vessel with water. Then one cuts out a disc of cardboard as the equator. One lays this under the oil globule. Then one pierces it with a needle, rotates the needle—and small oil globules separate in the equator area like planets, and they move around the big globule. One has committed something very impractical in intellectual respect: the experimenter has forgotten himself what is sometimes rather good; he has forgotten that he himself has turned the thing. For one is not allowed to forget the most important of the matter. If one wants to explain an experiment, one has to invoke all things in the field to which it comes down; these are the essentials.

The first that must exist with that who wants to experience a practical development of thinking is that he confides in reality, in the reality of thoughts. What does this mean? You cannot scoop water from a glass without water. You cannot take out thoughts from a world without thoughts. It is absurd if one believes that the whole sum of our thoughts and mental pictures exists only in us. If anybody disassembles a clock and reflects the principles of its construction, then he must suppose that the watchmaker has joined the parts of the clock first according to these principles. Nobody should believe that one could find any thought from a world, which is not created and formed according to thoughts. All that we learn about nature and its events is nothing else than what must be put first into this nature and its events. It is no thought in our soul, which has not been outdoors in the world first. Aristotle said more correctly than some modern people did: what the human being finds in his thinking last exists in the world outdoors first.

However, if anybody has this confidence in the thoughts, which are contained in the world, then he sees very easily that he has to educate himself at first to a thinking full of interest in the world. He has to educate himself to that great, beautiful ideal of thinking as it distinguished Goethe: the concrete thinking, that thinking which isolates itself as little as possible from the things, that sticks to the things as intensely as possible. Heinroth (Johann Christian August H., 1773–1843, physician, formed the term “psychosomatics”), the psychologist, used a sentence concerning Goethe that his thinking is a concrete one, where the thoughts express nothing else than what is included in the things themselves and that in the things nothing else is searched than the real creative thought. If anyone has this confidence, this faith in the reality of thoughts, he easily realises that he can educate himself in harmony with the environment, in harmony with reality to a practical, healthy thinking not receding from the things.

One has to take into consideration three ways if the human being really wants to take on an education to practical thinking: firstly, the human being must and should develop an interest in the surrounding reality, interest concerning facts and objects. Interest in the environment, this is the magic word for the education of thought. Secondly, desire and love of that which we do. Thirdly, the satisfaction of that which we reflect. Who understands these three things: interest in the environment, desire, and love in the activities and the satisfaction of contemplation soon finds that these are the main demands of a practical development of thinking. Indeed, the interest in our environment depends on matters that we discuss with the next talks when we speak about the invisible members of the human nature and about the temperaments.

The biggest enemy of thinking is often thinking itself. If anybody thinks that only he himself can think and the things would not have any thought in themselves, he is hostile, actually, to the practice of thinking. Imagine that a person would have formed some narrow mental pictures of the human being, would have made a few stereotyped schematic concepts of the human being. Now any human being faces him who has roughly the qualities, which fit his pattern. Then he is ready with his judgement and does not believe that this human being can tell him anything particular. If we approach anything that surrounds us with the feeling that any fact can tell us something particular, that we are not entitled at all to let judge something else about the things than the things themselves, then we soon notice which fruits such concrete sense bears. The confidence that the things can tell us much more than we are able to say about the things is again such a magic ideal of the practice of thinking. The things themselves should be the educators of our thinking, the facts themselves.

Imagine once that a person brings himself to use the following two important means of education for his practical development of thinking: he opposes himself with any fact, for example, that somebody has done a walk to this or that place just today. He experiences that at first. Now the person concerned wants to educate his thinking. There it is good if he says to himself, I have experienced this and that, now I want to contemplate how the today's event was caused yesterday, the day before yesterday and so on. I go back and try to form a view from that which goes forward to that which could have been. If I have selected such an event and the cause of it after my intellectual imagination, then I can investigate whether the real cause complies with my thoughts. I have something very important from such compliance or non-compliance. If my thoughts comply with that which I can know as the cause, then it is good. In most cases, this will not be the case. Then one investigates in what one was deceived and tries to compare the wrong thoughts with the right course of the events. If one does this repeatedly, one notices that one no longer makes mistakes after a shorter or longer time, but that one can liberate such a thought from a fact, which corresponds, to the objective course of the events.

Alternatively, one does the following: again, someone takes an event and tries to construct in thoughts what can result tomorrow or in some hours from this event. Now he waits quietly whether that happens which he has thought himself. In the beginning, he experiences that this is not right which he has thought. However, if he continues this, he sees thinking immersing itself in the facts that it does not form any mental pictures for itself, but that the thoughts proceed as the things proceed. This is the development of the factual sense. If he even forbids to himself to form abstractions, then he experiences that he grows gradually together with the things and that he obtains a sure judgement.

There are people who are directed by a certain sure instinct to such a thinking. This is because they are already born with special dispositions to develop such a thinking. Such a person was Goethe. He had grown together with the things so that his thinking did not proceed in the head, but in the things inside. Goethe, who was once a lawyer, had a healthy power of judgement and a sure instinct to tackle the things. There was no long referring to documents and reviewing of documents if a case had to be undertaken. Goethe did not allow that. It was a practitioner.

If once all documents of the Weimar minister Goethe are published—I have seen big parts of them—then the world will recognise Goethe as an eminently practical nature, not as a quixotic human being. One knows that he accompanied his Grand Duke with the training of recruits to Apolda (small town near Weimar). He observed everything that took action—and, besides, he wrote his Iphigenia. Compare to it what disturbs a modern poet at work. Moreover, Goethe was a much greater poet than anyone was who is not allowed to be disturbed today. Because of the eminently practical thinking, he could also say, for example, if he looked through the window: today we cannot go out, because it will be raining in three hours.—He had done cloud studies, but had put up no theory. It was in such a way that from his thinking developed what developed in nature outdoors. One calls this concrete thinking. One obtains such concrete thinking if one does such exercises in particular as I have just stated them. However, this is connected with a certain unselfishness, as strange as this sounds. However, there are principles also in the soul, and someone will not attain very much who thinks only of himself if he does such experiments. If he looks, for example, at a fact and says then immediately, ah, have I not said it? Therefore, this is the most certain obstacle of practical thinking. Thus, we could state many things to show how one can systematically develop the sympathetic adherence of the thoughts to the things, so that one learns to think in the things.

The second is desire and love of all we do. They really only exist if we can renounce success. Where it depends only on success desire and love are not undimmed. Hence, not anyone who is dependent on success can develop that rest in trying which is necessary, so that desire and love of activity can inspire us bit by bit. By nothing, we learn more than by lending a hand to everything possible and renouncing the so-called success. I knew somebody who had the habit to bind his schoolbooks himself (Steiner himself). It looked bad, but he thereby learnt enormously. If he had looked at the success, he would have maybe refrained from it. However, just in the activities we develop the qualities, the talents that enable us to become dexterous up to the movements. We never become dexterous if we look at the success of our activities in particular. If we are not able to say to ourselves, the failures in our activities are as dear to us as our results, we never reach the second level, which is necessary if one trains thinking.

Thirdly, we have to find satisfaction in thinking itself. This is something that appears so unambitious and is mostly combated today. How often does one hear saying, why have our children to learn this and that? They cannot need this in the practical life.—This principle to think only what one can need is the most impractical principle. There must be areas for a human being if he wants to think practically where the mere activity of thinking grants satisfaction to him.

If a human being does not find time, may it be only short, to do something that he does purely intellectually and that satisfies him intellectually, he can remain always only on beaten paths. If he finds, however, such a thing that he does only because of his inner interest, then he has something that has a big, strong effect on him, on his finer organisation, on the finer structure of his organism. Never work the things on us creatively, which captivate us to life, which enslave us; they wear out our talents, they take vitality from us. The things, however, which we do intellectually only to our satisfaction create vitality, new talents and they go into the subtlest organisation of our being and increase the subtle structures of our organism. Not by working for the benefit of the outside world, but by working to our satisfaction we create something by which we advance a developmental step. If we approach practice with this finer organisation again, this affects the practice, and everybody can see that it is right.

Take a painting, for example, the Sistine Madonna by Raphael, and put a human being and a dog before it. The painting makes a different impression on the human being and the dog. The same applies to the life praxis. If one remains captivated in life, the things always make the same impression on us, and one is not able to intervene creatively. If anyone develops a level higher in his activity of thinking, he faces the impressions as the same being in two different forms. He faces it once with that on which he has not yet worked, the other time with that on which he has worked. He becomes more and more practical because the impressions, which make the things on us, are raised more and more. Hence, there is loss of time, indeed, if one does such a thing that does not belong to life praxis directly, however, it promotes life praxis extraordinarily indirectly.

These are the three levels of any practical development of thinking: interest in the environment, desire, and love of all trying and working, and perpetually controlling oneself. You see, for example, such an astute man like Leonardo da Vinci already describing the way in which one can advance just while trying. He does not despise to say how one can appropriate the art of drawing bit by bit. He says, draw on tracing paper, put what you have drawn on the template, and look at that in which the drawn differs. Then make it once again and try—doing so—to do the right thing at the wrong places.—Thus, he shows how it depends on working with desire and love. The third is the satisfaction within contemplation that refrains from the external world and can quietly rest in itself. These are such things that can show us first that we grow into a real practice of thinking by the trust in the thoughts in nature, in the world building of thoughts. However, if we also believe that thinking itself is a creative force, we advance. Someone does much for the practical development of his thinking who does the following systematically: he thinks about something, for example, about what he has to do or about a question of the worldview, it may be anything usual or anything of the highest. If he is out now to find a solution quickly, then he develops no practical thinking as a rule. This rather means saying to himself: you are as little as possible allowed to interfere, actually, in your own thoughts.—Besides, most human beings can imagine nothing at all if one says this. This is a main requirement: that we open ourselves to the thoughts in ourselves that we get used to becoming the scene of the work of our thoughts. We could think, there would be only one single way to accomplish a certain thing, or only one single answer to a question. Nevertheless, we are no dogmatists to whom only one single answer is right.

If we want to learn practical thinking, we have to try to give ourselves also another answer, maybe also a third one, or a fourth. There are things to which one can think ten sorts of answers. One has to imagine them all carefully, of course, only such things where this is possible, not with such ones, which must be made quickly; one often makes them rather badly than too slowly. If one has ten possible solutions, one carries out each in thoughts with love. Then one says, I want to think no longer about it, I wait until tomorrow and open myself to the thoughts. These thoughts are forces that work in my soul, even if I am not at all involved with my consciousness. I wait until tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, and then I cause this thought again in myself.—Maybe I do this still a second or a third time, and each time I survey the single things much clearer and can then decide better than before. This is an incredible schooling of practical thinking presenting different possible solutions of a thing in thoughts to oneself, to allow them to rest and to take up them later again.

Who does this for a while notices that his thinking becomes versatile, that he develops presence of mind and repartee by a certain practice. Then he grows together with life until the most usual things and recognises what is clever and clumsy, what is wise, and what is foolish. It does not come into his mind to behave in such a way as often so-called practical persons behave. I already had to know many practical persons who can use the beaten paths of their occupation very well; if you see such persons in other situations, for instance, at travelling, their practice is often rather odd. The proof that the practical development of thinking can lead to real life praxis is founded in experience. This works up to the hands, up to the way to seize something. Much less, you drop plates and pots than other persons if you work in such way on your inside. Practical thinking works up to the limbs. If it is carried out actively and not in the abstract, it makes pliable and flexible.

However, impractical thinking is most obvious where the practice of thinking should work, for example, in science. I have stated the hypothetical astronomic experiment as an example. One often experiences, how frightfully impractical just the scientists of today are. I do not attack the real methodical work, the excellent activity of our science in the slightest. Nevertheless, the thoughts, which the modern human beings form, are often almost dreadful. Our microscopes and the photograph are very well developed. One can observe all possible mysterious facts in the various little beings. One observes plants and sees certain strange things in these plants, possibly faceted organs like the eyes of a fly, and one even sees a sort of lenses in some plants at this or that place.

One observes with other plants that certain insects are attracted, and then the plants close their leaves and catch the insects. One has excellently observed that all. How does the present impractical thinking explain these phenomena? One confuses the human soul, which reflects the outer processes internally, with that which one observes purely externally in the plants. One talks about the ensoulment of the plant, and one throws plant soul, animal soul and human soul in a mess. One throws this in a mess. Indeed, I object nothing to the marvellous observations of nature, which are popularised in the world. However, the thinking of our contemporaries is confused if anybody says, certain plants have their stomachs at the surface with which they draw in the food and devour it. This thought is approximate in such a way, as if anybody says: I know a being, this is organised artfully and has an organ in itself by which something like a magnetic force is exercised on little living beings, so that they are drawn in and are devoured; this being, which I have in mind, is the mousetrap! This thought is completely the same as that which assumes the ensoulment of the plant. You could speak in the same sense of an ensoulment of the mousetrap as you talk about the ensoulment of the plant if you really thought in this peculiar way.

The matter is that one is able to penetrate into the very own nature of thinking, and that one becomes no “carriage pusher from within” in such fields. Something else is important for the practical development of thinking and this is that one has confidence in the inner spiritual organ of thinking. With most human beings, the benevolent nature provides that this spiritual organ of thinking is not ruined too very much because the human being must sleep.

Because the spiritual does not stop then, because it is there always, this organ of thinking works for itself and the human being cannot ruin it perpetually. However, it is quite another matter if the human being allows nature to take care of thinking with important and serious facts of life only, or if he himself takes this in hand. It is a very important principle to let the organ of thinking work in yourselves. You are practicing this best of all if you try not to think for a while, howsoever short. A big, immense decision belongs to it to sit or to lie somewhere without letting thoughts go through the head. It is much easier to let your thoughts surge up and down in yourselves, until you are released from them by a good sleep than to tell yourselves: now you are awake and, nevertheless, you do not think, but you think nothing at all. If you are able to sit or to lie quietly and to think nothing with full consciousness, then the organ of thinking works in such a way that it gains strength in itself, accumulates strength. Who puts himself in the situation over and over again not to think with full consciousness notices that the clearness of his thinking increases, that in particular repartee grows because he does not only leave his apparatus of thinking to itself by sleep, but that he lets this apparatus of thinking itself work under his guidance.

Only somebody who has taken leave of his spiritual senses can believe that then it is not thought at all. Here the word applies that Goethe says about nature: “She has thought and thinks continuously.”

In addition, the innermost nature of the human being has thoughts, even if the human being is not present with his conscious thoughts. Nevertheless, in the case where he is not at all with his thinking, something thinks in him of which he is not aware. At these moments, if he lies there without his own personal thoughts, something higher really thinks in him, and this higher works tremendously educating on him. This is essential and important that the human being also lets the superconscious, the divine work in himself, which does not announce itself directly but in its effects. You become a clear and glib thinker gradually if you have dedicated yourselves to such exercises of thinking. A certain energy belongs to it to carry out such exercises of thinking.

You realise at the single examples, which I have given today, how one can develop this thinking with own strength. I could only give some examples of self-education of thinking, but these examples have shown that one is able to point to real remedies of thinking whose fruits life and experience can give only.

Who exercises his thinking that way experiences that—on the one side—he can go up to the highest fields of spiritual life, that he can use this thinking—on the other side—also in the everyday life. What one gains with the overview of the big spiritual facts one should apply to practical life. All fields of the everyday life, education in particular, could experience a tremendous fertilisation because of this, and another view of life praxis would make itself noticeable all around us. In addition, someone who wants to develop the qualities slumbering in him in order to penetrate to the spiritual fields would have a sure base and stand firmly in life. This is something that one has to demand absolutely, before anybody penetrates to the higher spiritual fields. In addition, the usual science would be able to attain tremendous knowledge if it is fertilised by spiritual science.

The carriage pushers of thinking who fancy themselves often as great practitioners do not have this practical thinking; they lack it. They are not able to lead back something to a simple, comprising thought. Spiritual science gives us this: it enables us to survey what is usually small and detailed in life, with big, comprising viewpoints. The human being thereby gets the survey because he is able to think from great viewpoints into the details; then he is led to real life praxis.

We can take Leonardo da Vinci as an example, who was a practitioner in many fields. He said, theory is the captain, and practice is the soldiers.—Who wants to be a practitioner without controlling the viewpoints of practical thinking is like someone who goes on board a ship without compass, he does not have the possibility to steer the ship correctly. Goethe showed repeatedly from his practical way of thinking how just scholarship gets by impractical thinking to infertile fantasising. There are people, who lead the outside world back to atoms, and others who lead them back to movements; others deny any movement. On the other hand, the most practical thinkers point to the fact that simplicity comes from the greatness of the worldview. Goethe's dictum is suitable, and we can put it before our eyes:

Some hostile may occur,
Keep quiet, remain silent;
And if they say
There is no movement,
Walk around right
Under their noses.

If there is talk of the practical significance of the invisible, particularly of the invisible in the human being, I would like to illustrate by a comparison what I meant. Those people are practical who turn their look, their view to the supersensible view of existence, and those are impractical who stop at the only exterior, at the mere physical. Is anybody, actually, the true practitioner who has a horseshoe-shaped iron as a magnet before himself and uses this thing for anything that appears useful to him by all appearances? On the other hand, is such a person not impractical in the true sense of the word, and practical only someone who says to himself: in this piece of iron something rests that makes a lot of higher, nobler application possible to me than the mere inspection allows to suppose.—This is, of course, only a comparison, because we are not allowed to compare the higher forces about which we speak today with any natural force. However, practical is only someone who chooses the internal forces from the things and can use the things corresponding to their true values. Compared with those who can be led by a certain practical sense one could quote Fichte's word of the practical significance of ideals. Fichte (Johann Gottlieb F., 1762–1814) tried to explain the determination of the human being using high ideals.

In the introduction to his lectures on The Vocation of the Scholar (1794), he protests that none who speaks from such high idealistic viewpoints knows what can be objected to it, namely, that ideals cannot be shown directly in practical life. Perhaps, those who put up these ideals know this better than the opponents do. “We state only that reality has to be assessed and modified according to them by those who feel sufficient strength in themselves. Assumed, they could also not convince themselves, they lose very little, after they are once what they are; and, besides, humanity loses nothing. It becomes thereby only obvious that one does not count on them in the plan of the improvement of humanity. This will continue its way without any doubt; the benevolent nature may provide for them rain and sunshine, wholesome food and undisturbed circulation of humours at the proper time and—clever thoughts as well!” I want to point to this in particular. We briefly want to imagine the invisible members of the human nature. Spiritual science speaks of these invisible members of the human nature, but not as of anything that is there, as of an adjunct of the visible, but it speaks just of the spiritual as of the creative of the visible.

An almost obvious example is the following: everybody—also someone who cannot see into in the workshop of spiritual life—should imagine the senses of shame and anxiety repeatedly, so that he learns to believe that the supersensible is the reason of the sensuous. What are they? They are soul experiences undoubtedly to someone who does not think complicatedly. Anything, we must say, is there that threatens us; the soul feels threatened. This expresses itself as sensations of fear. Indeed, we could state various physical mediations. This would be easy, of course, and the modern researcher would hardly be able to state anything that the spiritual scientist would not know, too. Nevertheless, the matter is that the blood is forced back from the surface of the body to the centre.

We have a material process resulting from a soul process. The same is the case with the sense of shame. Again, we have a rearrangement of the blood, a change of the circulation caused by something spiritual. What one sees here in microcosm and what one can observe to a bigger extent, if because of a sad event tears are shed shows that the soul can cause bodily processes. Today, of course, there are people under the influence of our not evidently but latently materialistic way of thinking who also assert materialistic views here. I have also quoted the sentence of a certain worldview: one cries not because one is sad, but one is sad because one cries. This sentence came, actually, from somebody who thought idealistically, but one interpreted it wrong.

These are full-grown materialistic ways of thinking. Who has retained a piece of healthy thinking from the materialistic basis of our time sees in such evident connections between physical facts and spiritual-mental facts something that can make him gradually understand that spiritual science must say from its point of view: everything material has a spiritual origin.

Thus, something mental forms the basis of that which we see in the human being, what we can seize with hands with him. It is not the influence of the physical but just the primal ground of the physical. We call that a physical body in the human being, which he has in common with all beings surrounding him, which he has in common with the mineral world. The next, supersensible human member is the etheric body or life body. It prevents the physical body to being a corpse during the whole life, to following the principles of the physical only. Plants and animals also have such an etheric body, which one can deduce by thinking of someone who thinks philosophically only. It is real to the clairvoyant like the physical body.

A spiritual way of thinking defends itself with pleasure to understand the human body as a machine, however, does not need to defend itself if one is not a “carriage pusher of thinking from within.” One can absolutely say, the human body is a complex mechanism if one wants to include the physical and chemical in the mechanic. However, behind any machine, a builder and preserver must be, so also here, and this is the etheric body or life body, that is a loyal fighter against decay. Only at death, it separates from the physical body, and then the physical body follows as a corpse its physical laws. Then it is a corpse. The etheric body is something more certain than the mere physical body.

If we keep on studying the human being, we get to another member of his being, which every human being could already realise if he said to himself, I face a human being, a physical body, and an etheric body. Is there nothing else included in this human being than what one can see from without, what physiology et cetera disclose to us? Oh, there is something else: the sum of emotions, sensations, desires and wishes, pains and sufferings, impulses and passions.

All that represents the astral body. Now one could say, nevertheless, one cannot imagine that these things form a concluded reality. However, the spiritual scientist can perceive this clairvoyantly. There the astral body exists as the physical body exists. Nevertheless, the healthy human mind could also already say to itself that such a thing as an astral body must be there. Why could it say that to itself? I want to give you an example where, so to speak, with hands is to be seized how the astral body works, actually. There are people who say when the human being enters the physical world; he is not yet as developed as later. The external science can determine that, indeed, the senses and their organs exist in the brain that, however, the connections of the single senses in the brain develop relatively late. One can really study how the connecting nerve cords develop from the hearing to the facial sphere and make the human being the thinker finally. So—the materialist concludes—one sees how the internal parts develop bit by bit and then the world of sensations, images, sufferings, joys, complexes of thought et cetera flashes in the human being.—Imagine this development of the human brain. The complex lines of thought, which solve the world riddles, develop bit by bit. Are we then allowed to call that a mere mechanism which has developed, which builds itself up?

One can also admire a marvellous construction, as for example that of a clock. However, he would be a fool who wanted to believe that the clock has originated by itself. Who is able to do something, can develop only what he is able to do. Someone who had seconds, minutes, the principles of the clock in himself has joined it; one has thought ahead what we then reflect. Is there nothing that joins these connecting cords in the brain in such a way that you become a thinker finally? I mean, a healthy thinking would have to realise that for that which develops a master builder must exist who joins the cords, so that you can become a thinker. We are loyal only to ourselves and to our healthy human mind if we say, an astral body has to have constructed the physical brain. In the first weeks, months, years of the child, the astral body constructs the instrument only, which is able later to solve the world riddles. Who does not believe this, acts just as anybody who wants to use a machine, but denies that a constructor was there who has built it. The time will already come when again healthy judgments prevail in the human being, when they say to themselves that first the spiritual master builder must be there if anything should originate. This master builder has been already there before the human being is born.

The third human member is this astral body, that which forms the basis of the material again. The fourth human member is the ego, which makes the human being the crown of creation. The human being has the physical body in common with all minerals, the etheric body with all plants, and the astral body with the animals. He rises above the three physical realms by the ego. Therefore, all religions have probably directed their attention to the fact that there is only one name, which differs from all other. There is one thing that can be never called from the outside: this is in us as our core. No name can come from without that signifies us. Therefore, “I” was in the old Hebrew religion the inexpressible name that was inexpressible for all others.

These are the four lower members of the human nature from which only one is visible. The three others are real, are the primal grounds of the real. Any member is a basic being and cause for the next lower body; the ego-bearer for the astral body, the astral body for the etheric body, the etheric body for the physical body. Any experience of the ego imprints itself on the astral body. Here all experiences of the ego express themselves. Any momentary imagining, judging and feeling originate in the human being that way.

What lives in the astral body, expresses itself, imprints itself on the etheric or life body, and thereby it becomes permanent, not momentary, but keeps itself in a certain way. Let us assume that we pass momentary judgment; we make a mental picture about this or that. If we form a mental picture repeatedly, it becomes a habitual mental picture. Because it becomes a habitual image, it imprints itself in the etheric body. What lives in our memory, what we keep in mind from day to day, lives in our etheric body or life body. The fact that we play a piano piece once is in our astral body; the fact that we acquire the talent, the habit of playing is in the etheric body. All habits are in the etheric body or life body. If we pass moral judgment, it is again an action of the astral body. If a certain direction of judging imprints itself on us by repeated judgments, the moral judgment becomes a permanent once, it becomes conscience. The moral judgment is an experience of the astral body; the conscience is an experience of the etheric body or life body. Thus, we see how by the interaction of the higher members with the lower ones the whole human life builds itself up from within outwardly.

As far as the human being is a mere physical being, he has the etheric body or life body in common with the plants. What allows the humours to ascend in the plants, what causes that they subsist, reproduce, this causes the same in the human being. However, on this etheric body or life body custom, skill, conscience is imprinted top-down. Something mental-spiritual is imprinted on the human beings top-down. The experiences of the higher members are transferred more and more to the lower members. It is important for the human being to know that the higher members work into the denser members. Thus, the human being can work into the lower members in healthy, practical way.

The human being can ruin again, what nature has given him. As with the plant only malformation could originate if the etheric body or life body did not regulate what goes forward, an internal malformation originates in the human being if he works wrong inside, from the ego on the lower members. The astral body must be penetrated by the experiences of the ego in a healthy way. Who does not admit that an astral body builds on the brain of the child will also not realise how important it is that the ego has a proper effect on the astral body. Who realises this, however, says to himself, you are able to keep on working where nature has stopped. If you allow the whole scale of sensations to take place in healthy way, this continues working on your physical body, on your brain, and thus you build up your physical body during your whole life.

How many human beings walk around today with writer's spasm? The human body is wonderfully constructed. The human being adjusts his hand with everything that he does to the world outdoors. This cooperation of the hand with the outside goes adrift in certain ways from him if he is not able to set his hand aglow, to invigorate it with his inner life. This is a similar process, as if one gets artificial teeth. It is essential that all that we can get as our own is set aglow and invigorated by our ego. You get trembling hands only if the hands go adrift from the remaining forces to some degree. These are matters which one takes into consideration most intensely again in a not so distant future, and then one will realise what it means to grasp the spirit of the human being again.

I want to make clear this at an example. We remain in our field. It will become apparent how that which happens in the spirit really seizes the human being and makes him suitable or unsuitable for life, practical or impractical. Let us take a person who is impractical for life because he suffers from certain sensations of anxiety, so that thereby nervousness originates. This word already sounds the whole sum of lacking practice. Any human being who does not control himself completely in any respect is characterised as nervous, or one uses the catchword of genetic predisposition if anything is absent or exists that makes the human being impractical for life. All these things do not originate from a careful observation of the real facts, but because one has no palate for the spiritual due to the materialistic way of thinking.

It is important to pursue whether in the first times of life, when the invisible works so intensely on the visible, everything proceeds properly and is not disturbed. What is omitted here cannot be corrected later. If something is not formed well enough, the manifold discrepancies originate in the whole life. The human being, who is not able to let harmonising experiences surge up and down in the astral body, will always make himself impractical for life in certain ways. Instead of searching for genetic predispositions of fear and anxiety, we should rather look for something that is formed by this or that experience which has a solidifying effect on the physical body. It could be, for example,—however, it needs not always be in such a way—that a considerable part of claustrophobia was caused possibly by a particular way of parenting in the human being. He does not get loose from this evil because he lacks the means to stir it up again. Imagine children who recognise all festivities, actually, all the year round, only because they are showered with presents! They receive more than they can destroy. This abundance of undeserved gifts immobilises certain striving forces, which would generate healthy self-assurance. Such a thing can slumber in the human being during the time when the external education fulfils him or a new occupation absorbs him; but this appears once in the form of claustrophobia.

One cannot realise this if one does not understand what it means that the astral body changes itself bit by bit into that which the human being is in his physical, discernible behaviour. On the other hand, we can find—if particular states of unsuitability appear anyhow—that something presses on his soul. He cannot say it, cannot confess it, and thinks to have to conceal it. Because the human being does not find the way to the word, it seizes the lower members and works on them. What a soothing effect experiences the human being if he can confess such a thing! Then he has the feeling, now it is no longer lying on my heart like a stone, and this feeling of relief works recovering. Confession is an important remedy in this respect. The denominations have known this well. There we realise how the invisible inside of the human being works on the visible. Even certain reasonable doctors already realise that one cannot cure unsuitability for practical life by systematic application of cold water (Kneipp cure), but in such a way that one has to induce a kind of confession, has to detach something from the human being if healing should take place.

We want to look at the reverse now. There are reasonable doctors who say to themselves, one has to turn to the soul of the human being if one wants to know how the human being becomes unsuitable in certain respects. These doctors know that joy and desire are remedies, that they work recovering, that they soften again, what is solidified and ossified, and bring it under our control. However, this is not enough, just as little as it is enough if anybody says, the concealed secret must be detached from the soul of the human being. They do not know that everything that is experience of the inside has a big significance even if it appears wrong. Should we cancel everything mysterious in the human nature because it appears wrong with some persons? Should we make the doctors father confessors, as it one demands here and there? It can also be infinitely recovering for the soul if it is able to draw the veil of secret about some things. A Persian saying says, one saves the time that one uses for silent reflection, before one says something, in relation to the time of remorse about that which one has said thoughtlessly! Goethe pronounced the word of the “obvious secret” not without reason. In everything sensuous that surrounds us, we can realise something mysterious, something that lies so deeply in the things and that one cannot pronounce; however, it still flows from soul to soul. Health spreads out if the human being can feel the secret of life that way.

Spiritual science maintains this secret of life. Indeed, it does not make it easy for the human beings to approach the things. It is not so comfortable to approach them. Spiritual science can only stimulate, only say, this and that exists. Then the human being has to approach and co-operate. It may be uncomfortable, but it is infinitely healthy. The innermost member of the human being is thereby stimulated; spiritual science works immediately on the ego. If we hear anything about the evolution of the planets, if to us is told about the invisible members of the human nature, what goes from life to life with the human being—with all that one appeals immediately to the ego. All these world-enclosing ideas do not remain dry ideas and abstractions. They emit warmth and bliss; warmth and bliss irradiate and penetrate the astral body of the human being. Contentment and bliss originate from that which spiritual science offers. What sets the human being aglow as warmth, as fire keeps moving to his life body. The forces of spiritual science itself penetrate all forces of the etheric body, and the etheric body transfers the forces again to the physical body, it transfers it as a skill, in such a way that, for example, the hand becomes dexterous and practical if the great, elated ideas of spiritual science flow into the physical body.

Spiritual science makes the brain a flexible, pliable tool, so that it can get away from prejudices. Spiritual science works strongly down until the physical body of the human being. Up to the practical movements, he can be immersed in spiritual science. I want to give you an example of that. It helps, indeed, if one makes gymnastics possible to the child. This is an exceptionally healthy exercise if one makes it properly. Already in the talk on education, I have drawn your attention to the fact that it is important to remain aware that the human being is not only a physical apparatus, but is spiritualised by higher members. One should be able to project oneself completely into doing gymnastics to share any emotion of the etheric and the astral bodies. I knew a gym teacher, who was a big theorist. He knew the human physical body to a hair's breadth. He also had to give theoretical physical education. It does not matter that one knows the physical exactly, but that he experiences an increase of the inner ease with any exercise. One should experience purposefully what should be the single exercise. Who has a living feeling, not only an abstract idea of the physical body knows that one can have a living feeling for everything that the child experiences, for example, while climbing up a ladder.

A sort of gymnastics is imaginable that works so harmoniously on the cooperation of the etheric and the physical bodies that the best basis is laid of a good memory in old age. In addition, that which takes action visibly is properly understood only if it is understood from spiritual science. We would have the best means against the dwindling memory in old age in gymnastics if one wanted to do physical education from spiritual science.

Spiritual science is no theory, nothing dogmatic, but bestows something living to life. Once one will realise that only by spiritual science the human being can become a true practitioner of life. Someone only is a practical person who can use this life who is not its slave. The human being should always control his outer nature with his invisible members. The human being becomes a practitioner only down to the last detail of his life if he is the guide of the bodily. That human being is a practical person who can understand out of a true understanding of his members what Fichte said, but what is often misunderstood. This will be the ideal of the human being if he controls the visible from his invisible again: “The human being can what he has to do; and if he says: I cannot, he does not want it.”

The only meeting with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900, German philosopher) belongs to the experiences I do not forget again. At that time, he was quite mad. The sight was very important. Imagine a human being, a man who has dealt with the question the whole morning which immediately suggests itself, and who has the wish to rest some time after dinner and to let go on the thoughts sounding in himself: he lay there this way. I had the impression of a healthy man, and, besides, he was already completely mad; he recognised nobody. His forehead was moulded like that of an artist and a thinker, and, nevertheless, it was the forehead of a maniac. A riddle faced me. Human beings of his kind of insanity would have had to look completely different. Only by means of spiritual science, one can explain this unusual.

The etheric body, the carrier of memory, is connected with the physical body during the whole life, but it is connected different with the different human beings. With some, the relation is not very solid, with others very close. Now Nietzsche's etheric body was very movable from the start. Such human beings can have two qualities: the one is an ingenious, easily movable mental force and imagination, the ability to connect widely separated concepts and to get a synopsis of widely divergent perspectives. Such persons are not as easily restrained as others are by the gravity of the physical body in the conditions given by life.

Before Friedrich Nietzsche had done his doctorate, he was appointed professor of Classics in Basel. From his teacher, Professor Ritschl (Friedrich Wilhelm R., 1806–1876), information was gathered. This answered: Nietzsche is able to do everything he wants. Thus, it happened that he did his doctorate when he already held a chair. Nietzsche had an agile mind. Such a human being does not live in ideas, which are palpable. He lives, so to speak, separated like by a wall from the everyday life.

However, something else is connected with such a mental disposition: he is condemned to a certain life tragedy. He hard finds the way to the immediate things of existence, he easily lives in that which cannot be seen by the eyes, be seized by the hands what can be observed in the everyday life but in that which humanity has acquired as spiritual goods. He lives in certain ways like separated by walls from the sufferings and joys of life. His look wanders into the vast, more in that which humanity has gained and created for itself, than in the everyday. Hence, it could occur that Nietzsche was in a special situation towards the civilisation of the nineteenth century.

Someone who surveys the civilisation of the second half of the nineteenth century sees that an immense jerk forward is done in the conquest of the physical world. We take the year 1858/59. It was the year, which brought the work of Darwin (Charles D., 1809–1882, English naturalist) of the origin of species by which the look of the human beings was banished completely in the physical concerning the evolution idea. This year also brought the work by which the matters of our fixed stars and the most distant sky space were conquered: the spectral analysis by Kirchhoff (Gustav Robert K., 1824–1887, physicist) and Bunsen (Robert Wilhelm B., 1811–1899, German chemist). Only since that time, it was possible to say, the substances, which are found on earth, are also found on the other planets. Then appeared the book about aesthetics by Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807–1887, 1846–1857: Aesthetics or the Science of Beauty) which wanted to found the science of beauty bottom up, while one had once explained beauty top down, from the idea. To complete the picture: that work appeared which wanted to force the social life into the only sensuous world, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx (1818–1883). Briefly, the time in which Nietzsche grew up was the time in which the human beings directed their look completely to the physical world.

Now imagine which forms all that has accepted in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century: think of Haeckel (Ernst H., 1834–1919, German naturalist) and other researchers who only targeted what presented itself to their sensuous eyes; think of everything that natural sciences and technology have performed in the nineteenth century. It appears to us compared with these currents like an escape of humanity to spirituality if at that time wide circles are seized by the philosophy of Schopenhauer (Arthur Sch., 1788–1860). At that time, the mere interest in Schopenhauer's philosophy shows that the human souls escaped to something that should grant spiritual satisfaction. We see one of the great spirits of the nineteenth century, Richard Wagner (1813–1883, composer), attempting to let spirituality flow again into civilisation.

In this cultural trend, Nietzsche positioned himself. How did he do this? The just mentioned persons positioned themselves creatively in it, and creating is something blissful. Working makes the human being young and fresh. This becomes apparent with Haeckel. Somebody who works on the microscope and other instruments and does research can make himself happy and rejuvenate in this work, he is able to do all that also light-heartedly, and he forgets the need for a spiritual world; in him something lives that can animate the human being, creative enthusiasm, which has something divine-spiritual. Nietzsche's destiny was this cultural trend. He was destined to take joy and sorrow from this cultural trend because he was not directly connected with the everyday life. He had the nagging feeling, how can one live with that which the modern civilisation offers? Nietzsche's heart was involved in everything with joy or sorrow. He lived through everything with his soul that happened in the nineteenth century.

We see two spirits intervening early in Nietzsche's life: Schopenhauer whom he got to know not personally who had a deep effect on him by his writings, and Richard Wagner with whom he was tied together by the most tender bond of friendship. Both spirits induced Nietzsche to become engrossed in the riddle of ancient Greece in the beginning of our culture. He had done deep looks in the Greek world, from the oldest time up to those periods which history illumines brighter. The Greek of the oldest time seems to be much closer to divinity than later, when he tries to show pictures of the gods in his pieces of art: he makes them human-like, raises the form of the human being to the ideal image. The Greek was not that way in primeval times. He felt everything vividly flowing into himself what was outdoors what blows in the storm and grumbles with the thunder, what streaks in the flash what as harmonising wisdom has set up the world outdoors. At that time, in his original music the Greek expressed this harmony and created it in his temple dances.

Nietzsche called the ancient Greek the Dionysian human being. The later Greek, the Apollonian human being, reproduced what the original Greek was. He stood there considering and expressed it in his pieces of art. At this development Nietzsche looked like at a riddle, because he had no knowledge of that primeval culture which was the basis of the Greek and even earlier cultures from which it had taken its force. An expression of that primeval culture was also, what was expressed as wisdom in the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries as myth creation and art. Nietzsche did not know this. He thought that everything was instinct, basic instinct with the ancient Greek. He knew nothing about that wisdom which was fostered by initiates originally in the mysteries, which then flowed into the world, illustrated in pieces of art and mystery plays. Nietzsche was not able to look into these mysteries, but he had a premonition of them. Hence, he felt worried, because he could not find the correct answer to his questions. In that primeval wisdom of the human being to which spiritual science goes back, he would have had to search the answer to his Dionysian human being and his Apollonian human being. He would have to get the solution of the riddle from the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries. Then he could have seen how art fosters the beholding, and how science and religion look for that which can penetrate the human heart with devoutness.

Religion, art, and science were not yet separated in the old mysteries from each other. They originated from one root. The ancient mysteries are this root. With the leading peoples of antiquity, they were fostered in secret sites efficiently and were developed to ritual acts. The descent of the primeval wisdom was represented to the neophyte in pictures. This remained concealed to Nietzsche; therefore, he could not find the coherence, which he searched. Only tragically, the development of the Greek spiritual life could present itself to him. He stills sees Aeschylus (525–456 BC), who was close to the mysteries, creating his drama penetrated with inner wisdom. However, he also sees Sophocles (497–406 BC) and in particular Euripides (480–406 BC) already creating their dramas which only show the exterior. He recognises that the Socratics find concepts that are far from the world sources and that they place themselves like considering beyond the world content in the universe. It seemed to him in such a way that in Socrates the world itself does no longer pulsate, but only the concepts of it, that he leads the Greek pulsating life to dry, sober abstraction. Nietzsche was painfully affected by the fact that Socrates put up the sentence that virtue is teachable. He understood it in such a way that the old Greek felt what he should do; he did not ask whether it is right or wrong. Only a time estranged to divinity could ask, can one learn what is good? Hence, Nietzsche considered Socrates as the person of the decline of Greek culture.

Schopenhauer appeared to Nietzsche as a human being who had an idea of that what led to the sources of existence. He built the bridge from the abstract world of human mental pictures to the deeper sources of existence pulsating in the will. This satisfied Nietzsche's pursuit of truth. Richard Wagner appeared to him as a person risen from the old Hellenism. It was blissful for Nietzsche to develop according to such an exceptional person who walked along beside him in flesh and blood. A substitute of that which the external world is to the other human beings was this friendship with Richard Wagner.

As a deposit of his world of thought in this time we have the writing The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, appeared in 1872, in which already the whole Nietzsche is included. There is already found the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Further Schopenhauer as Educator. Nietzsche writes empathically about Schopenhauer like someone who writes about his father. Then Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, it is regarded by everybody as the best writing about Richard Wagner.

No time is so closely related to philistines as the time of materialism. In no book, David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874, German theologian) expresses this connection so strongly as in the book The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1835/36). Nietzsche named and shamed this philistine attitude in his writing about David Friedrich Strauss. Nietzsche who longed for the re-erection of the Dionysian human being could be outraged against the philistine attitude of David Friedrich Strauss. David Friedrich Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer is a redeeming essay.

Then he did something as an academician. He had experienced the time without fire and enthusiasm of the academics. If anybody said, there can be new ideas, one can do this or that, then the others came who said: however, history shows us that nothing can develop by leaps and bounds, everything goes on quietly. One was afraid of what one called a leap in history. Nietzsche wrote a book in which he said, pluck up courage, be a human being, do not only look for history, have the courage to be independent and to act independently! Again a releasing book, of a comprising radicalism in its demand for emancipation from history. He expressed that historical mood is an obstacle of everything original in the impulses of the human beings.

Nietzsche lived up to 1876 in such a way. His development was in such a way that he stood far from the events in the world. The easy mobility of his etheric body caused this. In 1876, when Wagner was at the peak of his creating and had realised in the outside world what lived in his soul, Nietzsche discovered, what faces you does not correspond to the picture, which has lived in you.—This was the case simply because he had built something like a wall against the demands of the external realities.

He could not recognise in the outside what he had formed inside as mental pictures. There Nietzsche became confused. What made him confused? Wagner? Not really. Richard Wagner never made him confused, because he did not know the objective Richard Wagner at all. He was confused by his idea, which he had got of Wagner. Now Nietzsche became confused by the whole perspective, which had led him to Wagner. He was confused by any idealism. With the idealistic Wagner, he lost all ideals which humanity can generally spin out. Thus, the feeling originated in him: idealism and all contemplation about the spiritual is a lie, is untruthfulness, illusion. The human beings have deluded themselves about that what is real, while they have made pictures of the real to themselves. Nietzsche began to suffer from himself.

Now he is engrossed in opposite currents of the spiritual life, in the positive natural sciences and the branches, which are built up on these. He becomes acquainted with an interesting spirit, with Paul Rée (1849–1901, German philosopher) who had written a book about moral sensations and the origin of conscience. This work The Origin of the Moral Sensations, 1877) is typical for the last third of the nineteenth century in which is searched and worked according to the methods of natural sciences. It completely gets the origin of moral sensations and conscience out of the impulses and instincts of the human being. Paul Rée makes this wittily. Nietzsche is delighted by this worldview about which he says to himself, there any illusion is overcome, and one can understand human life only from that which is palpable. Now I feel all ideals like masks of desires and instincts. In Human, All Too Human, a book which appears in aphoristic form, he tries to show how basically all ideals do not lead beyond the human being, but are something that is rooted in the all too human, in the feeling and in the everyday. Nietzsche could never find the way to the everyday immediately. He did not know the general-human from practice. He wanted to experience it now from theory with all joys and sufferings. In addition, life praxis became theory to him. This was wonderfully expressed in Daybreak (1881). Everything appears to him not only disproved, but got cold, as put on ice.

With particular satisfaction, Nietzsche now studies Eugen Dühring's (1833–1921) Philosophy of Reality (1878). In it, he delights himself; however, he is not a parroter of it. He writes many, partly extremely disparaging remarks in his personal copy. However, he tries to experience emotionally what is brought forward there as positive science. The French morality authors who aim at assessing moral of life not by standards, but by events become a stimulating reading for him. This becomes his tragedy or also his bliss. These are the essentials that he lives through all that. It works different on him from those who had created these works. He must always ask himself, how does one live with these things?

Now, however, we see significant ideas originating to him from such conditions, ideas from which we must say that Nietzsche knocked at the gate of spiritual science, just as he had once stood before it with his Dionysian human being, guessing the mysteries. The gates were not opened to him. With one of these ideas, one can prove almost how it has originated. In Dühring's book A Course of Philosophy as a Strictly Scientific Worldview and Way of Life you find a strange passage. There Dühring tries to put the question whether it is possible that the same combination of atoms and molecules, which has been there once, returns one day in the same way.

During three weeks in which I have ordered Nietzsche's library, I myself have seen that he had marked this passage in this book and had added remarks. From then on, at first in the subconsciousness, the idea of the so-called everlasting return worked in him. This idea, which he developed more and more, has imprinted itself on Nietzsche's soul in such a way that it became a creed to him; he has familiarised himself with it that it became his tragedy. It expresses that everything that was there once returns in the same combination and with all details repeatedly, even if after long intervals. As well as we are sitting here now, we would come again heaps of times. This was a feeling, which belonged to the tragedy of his soul, the feeling: with all grief which now you experience you will always return.—Thus, we realise that Nietzsche has become the materialistic thinker by Dühring's idea of return—which Dühring rejects. For him there was only this return of the same a consequence of a materialistic idea.

We see Nietzsche's ideas crystallising from the cultural trend of the nineteenth century. Darwinism shows how the evolution of the imperfect to the perfect takes place how evolution advances from the simple living being to the developed human being. As for Nietzsche, it is not speculation; this becomes a source of bliss for him. It is a satisfaction for him to see the world in its development. However, he cannot stop. He says to himself, the human being has become; should he not develop further? Should the development be concluded with the human being if we see that imperfect beings have developed up to the human being? There we must look at the human being as a transition to a super-human.—Thus, the human being became to him a bridge between worm and super-human.

Nietzsche stood with his idea of the everlasting return with his whole feeling and thinking before the gate of the spiritual-scientific truth of reincarnation. He stood also with the idea of the super-human before the gate of spiritual science, which shows us that in every human being something lives that we have to understand as a divine essence of the human being. This essence is a kind of super-human if we are allowed to use the expression. When the human being has gone through many incarnations and has become more and more perfect, he will ascend to even higher degrees of existence.

Nietzsche knew nothing about all these concrete secrets of spiritual science. He knew nothing about that what we know if we look behind the sensuous, palpable. He could only emotionally grasp what lived in his soul, not with his ego. Instead of the portrayals of the spiritual facts that can fulfil us with bliss, instead of the portrayal of that world of facts which shows us how within the planetary development the human being ascends from stage to stage, all that lived with Nietzsche in the feeling, and sounds lyrically from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885). It is an enthusiastic portrayal of the guessed that he could not behold. Like a question appears to us his hymn on the super-human.

How could this thirsty soul have been satisfied? Only if it had got to know spiritual science as contents. Nietzsche had to bleed out emotionally in his longing for it. Only spiritual science could have brought him what he strove for without being able to grasp it. In the last book, which he wanted to call Will to Power, it is especially clear how he could come to no fulfilment of his soul with the desired spiritual contents. Compare everything that spiritual science says about the higher human being and his affiliation to spiritual worlds with the abstract will to power, which has, actually, no contents. Power is something quite abstract if it is not said what should have power.

Just this posthumous work Will to Power shows Nietzsche's vain and fateful striving that is so great in its notions. Again, you can observe the tragedy, how this striving for an unknown land grows into insanity. Just at the example of Nietzsche, you can see where the civilisation of the nineteenth century had to lead the deeper feeling personalities. Therefore, many people who guessed something beyond the material, the palpable and could not find it because they stopped with this civilisation had to bleed out. That is why Nietzsche's tragedy also shows a big piece of the tragedy of the nineteenth century. This tragedy appears in particular, if we realise how Nietzsche with a boldness which only a human being can have who is not firmly connected with his etheric body, with the inhibitions of the physical body, how Nietzsche criticises Christianity in his Antichrist (1895). For Christianity is that what he says a harsh but comprehensible and extremely urgent criticism. A lot of that which this Antichrist contains is exceptionally worth reading. Nevertheless, the whole standpoint of Nietzsche shows us how a mind must behave to whom all philosophy appears as nihilism, who wants to search the spirit from reality and cannot find this spirit in the modern form of Christianity. It will turn out more and more that humanity recognises the big impulses and the whole deepness of Christianity only by spiritual science, so that one can say, Christianity has been recognised up to now only to a lesser extent. Nietzsche did not have this consciousness; he did not recognise Christianity properly. Why could he not recognise it? Because he could not anticipate the course of development—in the sense of spiritual science. I want to show it with an example.

About 600 years before Christ, Buddha appeared whom one cannot admire and revere enough if one recognises him really. He grows up as a king's son, surrounded by all joys of life. Any grief is kept away from him. It is ensured that he never leaves the gardens of his palace. Nevertheless, once he comes out of the sanctified area of the palaces and temples. He meets an old man, a sick person, a dead person. He sees: age is suffering, illness is suffering, and death is suffering. He recognises that in every rebirth the sufferings must come again. The great truth of the spiritual life reveals itself to Buddha. Therefore, he teaches that one should give up his longing for re-embodiment to be merged in the peace of the spiritual world.

We look at Christ now. We reincarnate in the substances of the earth. Our task is to purify, to internalise and to spiritualise this substance gradually. We carry the fruits of our pilgrimage on earth up to the spirit, and connect them thereby with the spiritual existence. May the earth then be only a vale of tears, which one should leave? No, the earth was blessed, because Christ walked about it, because his body was built from the substances of the earth, and because He permeated the earth with his forces.—The first Christians spoke that way. The human being absorbs something of the Christ principle in every life, purifies himself thereby gradually. Rebirth is not suffering, because only thereby we become able to recognise illness, age, evil as tests, as a means of education of our soul to become good and strong. The soul, which soars this knowledge, is healthy and fosters its surroundings.

Today the fear of hereditary predisposition penetrates humanity. If the human being opened himself or herself to the Christ impulse again, the illnesses would be overcome. On Golgotha, the symbol of death became the symbol of redemption. Being separated from that what one loves is suffering. However, one can be connected with those whom one loves if one is inspired by the Christ principle. One learns bit by bit to experience this union as reality. The Christ principle transforms the sufferings described by Buddha. Overcoming the sufferings one can reach not only by turning away from life, but also by the transformation of the soul. At the sight of the corpse of the crucified, we realise the riddle of the everlasting life going through death.

Nietzsche regards Christianity just as the opposite of that, what lies in its concealed deepness and what should be brought to light by spiritual science. He bleeds out because he could not recognise this. Nietzsche's grief is the deepest, most painful longing for the sources of life. Because his spirit was not firmly tied to his physical body, he does not come to the right solution of the world riddles tormenting him. Thus, it could happen that he did not find the right answer to his question to life which spiritual science could have given him, that he passed by. When the tools of the physical body could no longer serve him, he cast it off, so to speak, he divests himself of the physical body that has become useless for the thinker, and he hovers over it as it were. Thus, he appears to the viewer looking at him as healthy, as someone who only wants to rest from intensive work of thought. In such a way, he lay there like a picture of the tragedy of modern materialistic science, which cannot recognise the spiritual.

The words written by Goethe after contemplating Schiller's skull can make a deep impression on the human soul. Goethe was present when Schiller's body was removed from its provisional grave and taken to the princely vault at Weimar. Holding Schiller's skull in his hands, Goethe believed he could recognise in the form and cast of this wonderful structure the whole nature of Schiller's spiritual being, and he was inspired to write these beautiful lines:

What greater gift can life on man bestow
Than that to him God-Nature should disclose
How solid to spirit it attenuates,
How spirit's work it hardens and preserves.³⁰

Anyone who understands Goethe's feelings on this occasion will easily turn his mind to all those phenomena where something inward is working to reveal itself in material form, in plastic shapes, as drawing, and so on. We have a most eminent example of this shaping, whereby an inner being reveals itself through outward form, in what we call human character. For human character gives the most varied and manifold expression to the direction and purpose of man's life. We think of human character as having a basic consistency. Indeed, we feel that character is inseparable from a person's whole being, and that something has gone wrong if their thinking, feeling and doing do not make up in some way a harmonious unity. We speak of a split in a man's character as evidence of a real fault in his nature. If in private life a man upholds some principle or ideal, and then in public life says something contrary to it or at least discrepant, we speak of a break in his character, of his inner life falling apart. And we know very well that this can bring a man into difficult situations or may even wreck his life. The significance of a divided character is indicated by Goethe in a remarkable saying that he assigns to Faust—a saying that is often wrongly interpreted by people who believe that Goethe's innermost intentions are known to them:

Two souls, alas, are pent within my breast,
To tear themselves apart, forever striving;
One, in pursuit of passions' crude delights,
Clings close with avid senses to the world;
The other, thrusting earthly dust away,
Aspires to rise to longed-for higher realms.³¹

This divided condition of the soul is often spoken of as though it were a desirable achievement, but Goethe certainly does not say so. On the contrary, the passage shows clearly how unhappy Faust feels in that period under the pressure of these two drives, one aspiring towards ideal heights, the other striving towards the earthly. An unsatisfying state of soul which Faust has to overcome—that is what Goethe is describing. It is wrong to cite this schism in human nature as though it were justified; it is something to be abolished by the unified character that we must always strive to achieve.

If now we wish to look more deeply into human character, the facts outlined in previous lectures must be kept in mind. We must remember that the human soul, embracing the inner life of man, is not merely a chaos of intermingled feelings, instincts, concepts, passions and ideals, but has three distinct members—the Sentient Soul, the lowest; in the middle the Intellectual Soul; and finally the highest, the Consciousness Soul. These three soul-members are to be clearly distinguished, but they must not be allowed to fall apart, for the human soul must be a unity. What is it, then that holds them together? It is what we call the Ego in its true sense, the bearer of self-consciousness; the active element within our soul which plays upon its three members as a man plays upon the strings of an instrument. And the harmony or disharmony which the Ego calls forth by playing on the three soul-members is the basis of human character.

The Ego is indeed something of an inner musician, who with a powerful stroke calls one or other soul-member into activity; and the effects of their combined influence, resounding from within a human being as harmony or disharmony, make up the real foundation of his character.

However, that is no more than an abstract description. If we are to understand how character comes out in people, we must enter somewhat more deeply into human life and the being of man. We must show how the harmonious or disharmonious play of the Ego on the three soul-members sets its stamp on man's entire personality as he stands before us, and how personality is outwardly revealed.

Human life—as we all know—alternates between waking and sleeping. At night, when a man falls asleep, his feelings, his pleasure and pain, his joys and griefs, his urges, desires and passions, his perceptions and concepts, his ideas and ideals, all sink down into indefinite darkness; and his inner life passes into an unconscious or subconscious condition. What has happened?

As we have often explained, when a man goes to sleep his physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while his astral body, including the Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, withdraw, as does the Ego. During sleep the astral body and Ego are in a spiritual world. Why does a man return every night to this spiritual world? Why does he have to leave behind his physical and etheric bodies? There are good reasons for it. Spiritual Science says that the astral body is the bearer of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, instincts, desires and passions. Yes, but these are precisely the experiences that sink into indefinite darkness on going to sleep. Yet is it asserted that the astral body and the Ego are in spiritual worlds? Is there not a contradiction here?

Well, the contradiction is only apparent. The astral body is indeed the bearer of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow, of all the inner experiences that surge up and down in the soul during waking hours, but in man as he is today, the astral body cannot perceive these experiences directly. It can perceive them only when they are reflected from outside itself, and for this to be possible the Ego and astral body must come back into the etheric and physical bodies at the time of awakening from sleep. Everything that a man experiences inwardly, his pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, is reflected by the physical and etheric bodies—especially by the etheric body—as from a mirror. But we must not suppose that this active process, which goes on every day from morning to evening, requires no effort to sustain it. The inner self of man, his Ego and astral body, his Consciousness Soul, Intellectual Soul and Sentient Soul, all have to work on the physical and etheric bodies, so that through the reciprocal interaction of his inner forces and his outer bodies the surging life of the daytime is engendered.

This reciprocal interaction involves a continual using up of soul-forces. When in the evening a man feels tired, this means that he is no longer able to draw from his inner life a sufficiency of the forces which enable him to work on his physical and etheric bodies. When he is nearing sleep and the faculty that required the most intensive play of his spirit into the physical, the faculty of speech, begins to weaken; when sight, smell, taste and finally hearing, the most spiritual of the senses, gradually fade away, because he is no longer able to draw on his inner forces to sustain them—then we see how these forces are used up through the day.

What is the origin of these forces? They come from the nightly condition of sleep. During the period between going to sleep and waking up the soul absorbs to the full the forces it needs for conjuring up before us all that we live through by day. During waking hours the soul can deploy its powers, but it cannot draw on the forces necessary for recuperation. Naturally, Spiritual Science is familiar with the various theories advanced by external science to account for the replenishment of forces used up by day, but we need not go into that now. Thus we can say that when the soul passes back from sleep into waking life, it brings from its spiritual home the forces which it devotes all day long to building up the soul-life which it conjures before us.

Now let us ask: When the soul goes off to sleep in the evening, does it carry anything with it into the spiritual world? Yes; and if we want to understand what this is, we must above all closely observe man's personal development between birth and death. This development is evident when in later years a man shows himself to be riper, richer in experience and wisdom learnt from life, while he may also have acquired certain capabilities and powers that he did not possess in his younger days.

A man does indeed receive from the outer world something that he transforms inwardly, as the following consideration clearly shows. Between 1770 and 1815 certain events of great significance for the development of the world took place. They were witnessed by the most diverse contemporaries, some of whom were unaffected by them, while others were so deeply moved that they became imbued with experience and wisdom and their soul-lives progressed to a higher stage.

How did this come about? It is best illustrated by a simple event in ordinary human life. Take the process of learning to write. What really happens before the moment when we are able to put pen to paper and express our thoughts in writing? A great deal must have happened—a whole series of experiences, from the first attempt to hold the pen, then to making the first stroke, and so on through all the efforts which lead at last to a grasp of the craft of writing. If we recall everything that must have occurred during months or years, and all we went through, perhaps by way of punishments and reproofs, until at last these experiences were transformed into knowing how to write, then we must say: These experiences were recast and remoulded, so that later on they appear like the essential core of what we call the ability to write.

Spiritual Science shows how this transformation comes about. It is possible only because human beings pass repeatedly through the condition of sleep. In daily life we find that when we are at pains to absorb something, the process of imprinting and retentions is considerably aided if we sleep on it; in that way we make it our own. The experiences we go through have to be united with the soul and worked on by the soul if they are to coalesce and be transformed into faculties. This whole process is carried through by the soul during sleep, and thereby our life is enhanced.

Present-day consciousness has little inkling of these things, but in times of ancient clairvoyance they were well known. An example will show how a poet once indicated in a remarkable way his knowledge of this transforming process. Homer, who can rightly be called a seer, describes in his Odyssey³² how Penelope, during the absence of her husband, Odysseus, was besieged by a throng of suitors. She promised them that she would give her decision when she had completed a robe she was weaving; but every night she undid the work of the day. If a poet wishes to indicate how a series of experiences, such as those of Penelope with her suitors, are not to merge into a faculty—in this case the faculty of decision—he must show how these experiences have to be unwoven at night, or they would unfailingly coalesce.

To anyone imbued with a typical modern consciousness these ideas may sound like hair-splitting, or they may seem to be imposing something arbitrary on the poet; but the only really great men are those, whose work derives from the great world-secrets, and many people today who talk glibly of originality and the like have no inkling of the depths from which the truly great achievements in the arts have been born.

If now we look further at the progress of human life between birth and death, we have to recognise that it is confined within certain narrow limits. We can indeed work at and enhance our faculties; in later life we can acquire qualities of soul which were lacking earlier on; but all this is subject to the fact that we can accomplish nothing that would require us to transform our physical and etheric bodies. These bodies, with their particular aptitudes, are there at birth; we find them ready-made. For example, we can reach a certain understanding of music only if we are born with a musical ear. That is a crude example, but it shows how transformation can be frustrated; in such cases the experiences can indeed be united with the soul, but we must renounce any hope of weaving them into our bodily life.

If, then, we consider human life from a higher standpoint, the possibility of breaking free from the physical body and laying it aside must be regarded as enormously wholesome and significant for our entire human existence. Our capacity to transform experiences into faculties is limited by the fact that every morning, on returning from sleep, we find our physical and etheric bodies waiting for us. At death we lay them aside and pass through the gate of death into a spiritual world. There, unhampered by these bodies, we can carry to spiritual completion those experiences between birth and death that we could not embody because of our corporeal limitations.

When we descend once more from the spiritual world to a new life on earth, then, and only then, can we take the powers we have woven into our spiritual archetype and give them physical existence by impressing them plastically into the initially soft human body. Now for the first time we can weave into our being those fruits of experience that we had indeed garnered in our previous life but could not then carry into physical embodiment. Seen in this light, death provides for the enhancement of life.

Moreover, this comparatively crude work that a man can do on his physical body, whereby he moulds into it what he could not impress on it in his previous life, is not the only possibility open to him. He is able also to imprint on his entire being certain finer fruits of foregoing lives.

When someone is born, his Ego and astral body, including his Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, are by no means featureless; they are endowed with definite attributes and characteristics brought from previous lives. The cruder work, whereby the fruits of past experiences are impressed on the plastic physical body, is accomplished before birth, but a more delicate work—and this distinguishes man from the animals—is performed after birth. Throughout childhood and youth a man works into the finer Organisation of his inner and outer nature certain determining characteristics and motives for action, brought by his Ego from a previous life. While the Ego thus impresses itself from within on its vehicles of expression, the fact of its activity and its way of working combine to form the character which a man presents to the world. Between birth and death the Ego works on the organs of the soul, the Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul, in such a way that they respond to what it has made of itself. But the Ego does not stand apart from the urges, desires and passions of the Sentient Soul. No, it unites itself with these emotions as though they were its own; and equally unites itself with the cognitions and the knowledge that belong to the Consciousness Soul.

So it is, that the harmony or disharmony that a human being has wrought in his soul-members is impressed by his Ego on his exterior being in his next earthly life. Human character, therefore, although it appears to us as determined and inborn, can yet be seen to be developing gradually in the course of his life.

With animals, character is determined entirely at birth; an animal cannot work plastically on its exterior nature. Man has the advantage of appearing at birth with no definite character manifest externally, but in the depths of his being he has slumbering powers brought from previous lives; they work into his undeveloped exterior and gradually shape his character, in so far as this is determined by previous lives.

Thus we see how in a certain sense man has an inborn character, but one that gradually develops in the course of life. If we keep this in mind, we can understand how even eminent personalities can go wrong in judging character. There are philosophers who argue that character is inwardly determined and cannot change, but that is a mistake. It applies only to attributes which derive from a previous life and appear as inborn character. Man's inward centre, his Ego, sends out its influence and gives a common stamp and character to every member of his organism. This character extends into the soul and even into the external limbs of the body. We see this inner centre pouring itself forth, as it were, shaping everything in accord with itself, and we feel how this centre holds the members of the human organism together. Even in the external parts of his physical body the imprint of a man's inner being can be discerned.

In this connection, an artist once gave wonderful expression to something which generally receives only theoretical attention. The work he produced portrays human nature at the moment when the human Ego, the centre which holds the organism together as a unity, is lost, and the limbs, each going its own way, strain apart in different directions. The work I mean seizes precisely this moment, when a man loses the foundation of his character, of his being as a whole. But this work, a great and famous one, has been very often misunderstood. Do not suppose that I am about to level cheap criticism at men for whose work I have the highest respect. But the fact that even great minds can make mistakes in face of certain phenomena, just when they are most earnestly striving for truth, shows how difficult the path to truth really is.

One of the greatest German authorities on art, Winckelmann,³³ was impelled by his whole disposition to err in interpreting the work of art known as the Laocoon.³⁴ His interpretation has been widely admired. In many circles it has been thought that nothing better could be said about this portrayal of Laocoon, the Trojan priest who, with his two sons, was crushed to death by serpents. Winckelmann, filled with enthusiasm for this example of the sculptor's art, said that here we are shown how the priest, Laocoon, whose every limb bespeaks his nobility and greatness, is torn with anguish, above all the anguish of a father. He is placed between his two sons, with the serpents coiled round their bodies. Conscious of the pain inflicted on his sons, he himself, as a father, is so agonised by it that the lower part of his body is contracted, as though pressing out the full degree of pain. He forgets himself, consumed with immeasurable pity for his sons.

This is a beautiful explanation of a father's ordeal, but if—just because we honour Winckelmann as a great personality—we look repeatedly and conscientiously at the Laocoon, we are obliged finally to say that Winckelmann must be mistaken, for it is not possible for pity to be the dominating motif in the scene portrayed. The father's head is aligned at such an angle that he cannot see his sons. Winckelmann's view of the group is quite wrong. The immediate impression we get from looking at the figures is that here we are witnessing the quite definite moment when the encircling pressure of the snakes has driven the human Ego out of Laocoon's body, and the separate instincts, deprived of the Ego, make their way into the physical body. Thus we see the head, the lower body and the limbs each taking its own course, not brought into natural harmony with the figure as a whole because the Ego is absent. The Laocoon group shows us, in external bodily terms, how a man loses his unified character when bereft of the Ego, the strong central point which holds together the members of his bodily organism. And if we allow this spectacle to work on our souls, we can come to experience the unifying element which naturally expresses itself in the harmonising of the limbs, and imprints on a man what we call his character.

But now we must ask: If it is true that a man's character is to some extent inborn—if the characteristics given by birth cannot by any effort be altered beyond a certain limit, as every glance at human life will tell us—is it then possible for a man to change his character in a certain way?

Yes, in so far as character belongs to the life of the soul and is not subject to the bodily limitations we encounter every morning on waking from sleep, and so can help to harmonise and strengthen the Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul and Consciousness Soul. To this extent there can be a development of character during a person's life between birth and death.

Some knowledge of all this is of special importance in education.

Essential as it is to understand the temperaments and the differences between them, it is necessary also to know something about human character and what can be done to change it between birth and death, even though it is in some measure determined by the fruits of a previous life. If we are to make good use of this knowledge, we must be clear that personal life goes through four typical periods of development. In my small book,³⁵ you will find further information on these stages; here I can only sketch them in outline.

The first period runs from birth up to the beginning of the change of teeth around the age of seven. It is during this period that external influence can do most to develop the physical body. During the next period, from the seventh year up to the onset of puberty at about the thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth year, the etheric body, particularly, can be developed. Then comes a third period when the lower astral body, especially, can be developed, until finally, from about the 21st year onwards, the time comes when a human being meets the world as a free, independent being and can himself work on the progress of his soul.

The years from 20 to 28 are important for developing the forces of the Sentient Soul. The next seven years up to the age of 35—these are all only average figures—are important for the development of the Intellectual Soul, especially through intercourse with the outer world.

All this may be regarded as nonsense by those who fail to observe the course of human life, but anyone who studies life with open eyes will come to know that certain elements in the human being are most open to development during particular periods. During our early twenties we are particularly well placed to bring our desires, instincts, passions and so on into relation with the impressions and influences received from our dealings with the outer world. We can feel our powers growing through the corresponding interaction between the Intellectual Soul and the world around us, and anyone who knows what true knowledge is, will realise that all earlier acquisitions of knowledge were no more than a preparation for this later stage. The ripeness of experience which enables one to survey and evaluate the knowledge one acquires is not attained, on average, before the thirty-fifth year. These laws exist. Anyone unwilling to recognise them is unwilling to observe the course of human life.

If we keep this in mind, we can see how human life between birth and death is structured. The work of the Ego in harmonising the soul-members, and its necessary endeavour to impress the fruits of its work on the physical body, will show you how important it is for an educator to know how the physical body goes through its development up to the seventh year. It is only during this period that influences from the outer world can be brought in to endow the physical body with power and strength. And here we encounter a mysterious connection between the physical body and the Consciousness Soul, a connection which exact observation can thoroughly confirm.

If the Ego is to gain strength, so that in later life, after the thirty-fifth year, it can permeate itself with the forces of the Consciousness Soul, and through this permeation can go forth to acquire knowledge of the world, it ought to encounter no boundaries in the physical body. For the physical body can set up the greatest obstacles to the Consciousness Soul and the Ego, if the Ego is not content to remain enclosed in the inner life but wishes to go out and engage in free intercourse with the world. Now since in bringing up a child during his first seven years we are able to strengthen the forces of his physical body, within certain limits, a remarkable connection between two periods of life is apparent. What can be accomplished for a child during these years by those who care for him is not a matter of indifference! People who fail to realise this have not learnt how to observe human life. Anyone who can compare the early years of childhood with the period after the thirty-fifth year will know that if a man is to go out into the world and engage in free intercourse with it, the best thing we can do for him is to bring him the right sort of influence during his early years. Anything we can do to help the child to find joy in immediate physical life, and to feel that love surrounds him, will strengthen the forces of his physical body, making it supple, pliant and open to education. The more joy, love and happiness that we can give the child during his early years, the fewer obstacles and hindrances he will encounter later on, when the work of his Ego on his Consciousness Soul should enable him to become an open character, associating in free give-and-take with the outer world. Anything in the way of unkindness pain or distressing circumstances that we allow the child to suffer up to his seventh year has a hardening effect on his physical body, and this creates obstacles for him in later life. He will tend to become a closed character, a man whose whole being is imprisoned in his soul, so that he is unable to achieve a free and open intercourse with the world and the impressions it yields.

Again, there are connections between the etheric body and the second period of life, and therefore with the Intellectual Soul. The play of the Ego on the Intellectual Soul releases forces which can either endow a man with courage and initiative or incline him to cowardice, indecision, sluggishness. Which way it goes depends on the strength of the Ego. But when a man has the best opportunity to use the Intellectual Soul for strengthening his character through intercourse with the world, between the ages of 28 and 35, he may encounter hindrances in his etheric body. If during the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year we supply the etheric body with forces that will prevent it from creating these hindrances in later life, we shall be doing something for his education that should earn his gratitude.

If during the period from seven to fourteen in a child's life we can stand towards him as an authority, and as a source of truth whom he can trust, this is particularly health-giving. Through this relationship, we, as parents or teachers, can strengthen his etheric forces so that in later life he will encounter the least possible obstacles in his etheric body. Then he will be able, if his Ego has the disposition for it, to become a man of courage and initiative. If we are aware of these hidden connections, we can have an enormously health-giving influence on human beings while they are growing up.

Our chaotic education has lost all knowledge of these connections; they were known instinctively in earlier times. It is always a pleasure to see that some old teachers knew of these things, whether by instinct or by inspiration. Rotteck's old World History, for example: it was to be found in our fathers' libraries and it may now be out of date here and there, but if we approach it with understanding we encounter a quite individual method of presentation which shows that Rotteck, who taught history in Freiburg, had a way of teaching which was the very reverse of dry or insipid. We have only to read the Foreword, which is quite out of the ordinary in spirit, to feel: here is a man who knows that in addressing young people of this age—from 14 to 21, when the astral body is developing—he must bring them into touch with the power of great, beautiful ideals. Rotteck is always at pains to show how we can be inspired by the great thoughts of the heroes and to kindle the enthusiasm that can be felt for all that men and women have striven for and suffered in the course of human evolution.

This approach is entirely justified, for the influence thus poured into the astral body during these years is of direct benefit to the Sentient Soul, when the Ego is working to develop a person's character through free intercourse with the world. All that has flowed into the soul from high ideals and enthusiasm is imprinted on the Sentient Soul and embodied accordingly in character.

Thus we see that because the physical, etheric and astral bodies are still plastic in young people, this or that influence can be impressed on them through education, and this makes it possible for a man to work on his character in later life. If education has not helped him in this way, he will find it difficult to work on his character and he will have to resort to the strongest measures. He will need to devote himself to deep meditative contemplation of certain qualities and feelings in order to impress them consciously on his soul. He must try, for example, to experience inwardly the content of those religious confessions which can speak to us as more than theories. He must devote himself again and again to contemplation of those great philosophies in the widest sense which in later life can lead through our thoughts and feelings into the great, all-embracing cosmic secrets. If we can immerse ourselves in these secrets, ever and again willingly devoting ourselves to them; if through daily prayer we make them part of ourselves, then through the play of the Ego, we can re-mould our characters in later life.

In this connection the essential thing is that the qualities acquired by and embodied in the Ego are imprinted on the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul. Generally speaking, man has little power over his external body. We have seen how he encounters a boundary in his physical body, with its innate pre-dispositions. Nevertheless, observation shows that in spite of this limitation, man can do some work on his physical body between birth and death.

Who has not noticed that a man who devotes himself for a decade to knowledge of a really deep kind—knowledge that does not remain grey learning but is transformed into pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow, thus becoming real knowledge and uniting itself with the Ego—who has not noticed that such a man's physiognomy, his gestures, his entire behaviour have changed, showing how the working of the Ego has penetrated right into his external physique!

However, the extent to which the outer body can be influenced by powers acquired between birth and death is very limited. For the most part man has to resign himself to keeping them for his next earthly life.

On the other hand, the various attributes brought over from previous lives can be enhanced by working on them between birth and death, if the faculty for doing so has been acquired.

Thus we see how character is not confined to the inner life of the soul, but penetrates into a man's external physique and limbs. It finds expression, first, in his gestures; second, in his physiognomy; and third, in the plastic formation of the skull, the origin of what we call phrenology.

How, then, does character achieve this outward expression in gesture, physiognomy and bone-formation? The Ego works formatively first of all in the Sentient Soul, which embraces all the instincts, desires, passions—in short, everything that belongs to the inner impulses of the will. The note sounded by the Ego on this member of the soul is manifest externally as gesture, and this play of gestures, springing from a man's inner being, can tell us a great deal about his character.

When the Ego is active chiefly in the Sentient Soul, the note it sounds there resonates in the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul, and this, too, is evident in gesture. The coarser elements of the Sentient Soul come to expression in gestures connected with the lower part of the body. If, for instance, a man pats his stomach with a feeling of satisfaction, we can see how his character is bound up with his Sentient Soul, and how volitions connected with his higher soul-members come to expression hardly at all.

When, however, the activity of the Ego resonates in the intellectual Soul, we can often observe a gesture related to the organ which serves the Intellectual Soul as its chief means of outer expression. Speakers who have the so-called “breast-tone of conviction” are given to striking themselves over the heart. They are men who speak with passion and are not concerned with objective judgment. Here we have the passionate character who lives entirely in the Sentient Soul but has so strong an Ego that his emotions resonate in the Intellectual Soul; we recognise him by his expansive attitudes. For example, there are popular speakers who thrust their thumbs into their waistcoats and swell out their chests when they are facing an audience. Far from being objective, they speak directly out of the Sentient Soul, putting into words their personal egoistic feelings and reinforcing them with this gesture—thumbs in waistcoat.

When the note struck by the Ego in the Sentient Soul resonates in the Consciousness Soul, we see a gesture bearing on the organ which gives the Consciousness Soul its chief outer expression. If a person finds it particularly difficult to bring his inner feelings to the point of reaching a decision, he will lay a finger on his nose—a gesture indicating how hard it is for him to fetch up a decision from the depth of his Consciousness Soul.

When someone lives chiefly in the Intellectual Soul, this is apparent in his physiognomy and facial expression. The experience of the Intellectual Soul lies closer to man's inner life and is not subject to the outer pressure under which he might sigh like a slave. He feels it to be more his own property, and this is reflected in his face. If a man is indeed capable of living in the Intellectual Soul, but presses down its content into the Sentient Soul, if any judgment he forms gets hold of him so strongly that he glows with enthusiasm for it, we can see this expressed in his sloping forehead and projecting chin. If something is actually experienced in the Intellectual Soul and only resonates in the Sentient Soul, this is expressed in the lower part of the face. If a man achieves the special virtue of the Intellectual Soul, a harmony between inner and outer, so that he neither secludes himself in inward brooding nor depletes his inner life by complete surrender to outer impressions, and if his Ego's work in the shaping of character is accomplished chiefly through the Intellectual Soul, then all this will be manifest in the middle part of his face, the external expression of the Intellectual Soul.

Here we can see how fruitful Spiritual Science can be for the study of civilisations: we are shown how successive characteristics are imprinted on successive peoples. Thus the Intellectual Soul made its imprint particularly on the ancient Greeks, among whom we can discern the beautiful harmony between inner and outer that is the characteristic manifestation of the Intellectual Soul. And here, accordingly, we find the Greek nose in its perfection. True it is that we cannot fully understand these things unless we relate them to their spiritual background.

Again, when someone carries the content of the Intellectual Soul into the realm of cognition and experiences it in the Consciousness Soul, the outward sign of this is a projecting forehead, as though the working of the Ego in the Intellectual Soul were flowing up into the Consciousness Soul.

If, however, someone lives in close unity with his Ego, so that the character of the Ego is impressed on the Consciousness Soul, he can then carry the note sounded by the Ego in his Consciousness Soul down into his Intellectual Soul and his Sentient Soul. This goes with a higher stage of human development. Only the Consciousness Soul can be permeated by high moral and aesthetic ideals and by great, wide-ranging conceptions of the world.

All this has to come to life in the Consciousness Soul, but the forces engendered by the Ego in the Consciousness Soul on this account can penetrate down into the Sentient Soul, where they are fired with enthusiasm and passion and with what we may call the inner warmth of the Sentient Soul, This comes about when a man can glow with enthusiasm for some knowledge he has gained. Then the noblest aspiration to which man can rise at present is carried down into the Sentient Soul. And the Sentient Soul itself is enhanced when permeated by forces from the Consciousness Soul. But what the Ego can accomplish for a character—ideal through its work in the Consciousness Soul may encounter obstacles caused by inborn pre-dispositions, so that it cannot be impressed on the physical body. Then we have to practise resignation; the work of the Ego in the Consciousness Soul may give rise to a noble quality of soul, but this cannot come to expression in the physical body during that single life-time. But the ardent passion for high moral ideals that a person has experienced in the Sentient Soul can be taken through the gate of death and carried over into his next life as a most powerful formative force. We can see how this comes to expression in the contours of the skull, showing that what a man has made of himself penetrates into his very bones.

A study of the contours of the skull can indeed throw some light on character, but always in a strictly individual context. It is absurd to suppose that phrenology can lay down general schemes and typical principles that will be universally valid. Everyone has a phrenology that applies to himself alone, for his skull is shaped by forces derived from his previous life, and in every individual this must be recognised. Only abstract theorists addicted to diagrams would think of founding a phrenology on general principles. Anyone who knows about the formative forces that work into man's very bones would speak only of recognising their effects in individuals. The formation of the skull is different with everyone and can never be accounted for in terms of a single earthly life. Here we touch on what is called reincarnation, for in the contours of the skull we can discern what a man has made of himself in previous lives. Here reincarnation becomes a palpable fact. We need only know where to read the evidence for it.

Thus we see how the effects of human character have to be followed from their origin all the way into the hardest structures, and then human character stands before us as a wonderful riddle. We have begun to describe how the Ego impresses character into the forms of the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul. Then we saw how this work by the Ego has results which make their mark on man's external physique and are manifest in gesture and physiognomy and even in the bones. And since man is led from birth to death and on again to a new birth, we saw how his inner being works on the outer, impressing character both on the inner life and on the physical body, which is an image of the inner life. Hence we can very well understand the deep impression made on us by the Laocoon, where we see the bodily character failing asunder into the several limbs; we see, as it were, the character, which belongs to the very essence of man, vanishing in the outward gestures of this work of art. Here we have plain evidence of the working of inner forces in the material realm, and of how the dispositions brought from earlier lives are determining factors in any given life; and we see how the spirit, by breaking life asunder, brings to expression in a new life the character acquired as the outcome of a previous one.

We can now enter into Goethe's feelings when he held Schiller's skull in his hand and said: In the contours of this skull I see how the spirit sets its stamp on matter. This form, full of character, calls up for me the voice that I heard sounding through Schiller's poems and in the words of friendship he so often spoke to me. Yes, I see here how the spirit has worked in the material realm. And when I contemplate this piece of matter, its noble forms show me how previous lives prepared the radiance that shone out so powerfully for me from Schiller's mind.

So we are led to repeat as our own conviction the words written by Goethe after contemplating Schiller's skull:

What greater gift can life on man bestow
Than that to him God-Nature should disclose
How solid to spirit it attenuates,
How spirit's work it hardens and preserves.

• 30. From the poem “Bei Betrachtung von Schillers Schädel”, 1826.
• 31. Faust I, 11.1112–1117.
• 32. Cf. 19th Book, 1.137ff.
• 33. Johann Joachim Winkelmann, 1717–68. Cf. his “Geschichte der Kunst im Altertum”, part 11.
• 34. Agesander, a Rhodian sculptor, is mentioned by Pliny as the creator, together with Polydorus and Athenodorus, of the Laocoon group, which dates from the period 42–21 B.C. Now in the Vatican.
• 35. For his concept of asceticism see The World as Will and Representation, Book IV. Particularly from par. 68.