The Rudolf Steiner Archive

For reasons I will not now mention, I will postpone the more esoteric lecture I had intended to give today, to the end of this course, and speak to you now about something else.

A certain amount of astonishment may have been caused when it was said yesterday that if we want to get at the realities, we must think, for instance, of thought being behind solid, earthy phenomena, and courage behind all that is of the nature of air. There is a significance from the point of view of medical history in having our attention drawn to the fact that thought is to be connected with all that is solid, earthy, all that stands before us with definite contours. For this leads us to say to ourselves that thought—thought as a force—is not to be connected with the watery, with the circulation of fluids in the human organism. Neither is thought to be connected with the airy and the warmth nature in man. We have spoken of the conception we must have of the air and the warmth in the cosmos. Within the human being, too, all these things are present, but in a particular form. Within the human being it is like this—only that which has contours, including that which, although it may be soft and pliable, has, nevertheless, the character of solidity, only this may be thought of as corresponding to thought. We have said that behind the fluid, or the watery element which confronts us in the physical world, we have to think of something spiritual—namely, something that is of the nature of feeling.

This element of feeling within the human organism must be thought of in a special way. We usually think of subjective feeling in this connection; we think of feeling that is connected with the psychical and bodily constitution of the human being. But within the human being, feeling is not merely this direct experience; feeling has an up-building activity within the human being. The watery or fluid body, as a formation of the universal, cosmic fluidity, contains feeling as its very essence. This etheric activity that works within the fluid body must be understood, but it cannot be understood by the same kind of knowledge that we apply to something that is outside the human being, because the substances and processes within the human organism do not work in the same way as they do in the external environment. The moment we come to the fluid organism—when we have to do with a part of the human organization which is in fluid circulation, although there are vascular organs within it—in that moment the knowledge forces which can be applied to what is outside the human being in the physical world are no longer adequate.

That is why medicine lost its knowledge of the fluid man—that was the last of the higher members of which knowledge was lost. One may say that up to the middle forties of the nineteenth century, medicine still had an inkling of the existence of this fluid man. People spoke of the humors, of the circulation of the fluids, of the mixture and the separation of the fluids. Medicine was not confined to the physiology and pathology of cells but actually perceived the combinations and separation of fluids. In the nineteenth century, of course, it was all tradition, but this tradition led back to the time before the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when men had not only tradition but also actual knowledge—knowledge in the form in which we today wrestle for in Anthroposophy and should be able to reach in imagination. Knowledge in those days had, it is true, an illusionary character, but men had instinctive imaginations. It was known that the human organism cannot be understood by mere sense perception and cogitation; it was known that thinking and sense observation could only be applied to those parts of the organism which have firm contours, and that knowledge of the circulation of the fluids in the watery man must be gained through imagination. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that the perception of this fluid man was lost. Perception of the fluid man can only come again when we attain to imaginations in full consciousness.

Let us go over what has been said, once again. When the bony system is building itself up from out of the human organism taken as a totality, when the human being is, as it were, crystallizing into the skeleton—this is not a good way of expressing it, but you will understand what I mean—cosmic thoughts are weaving in him. The organs that have definite outlines have these outlines only because they are subject to the same forces to which the building of the bones is subject. It is only the bony structure in the physical sense that is of the nature of thought, and the other organs with definite outlines have been built up out of the etheric world by an activity of thought. Inasmuch as they have definite outlines and contours, an activity of the nature of thought has been working. The forms in the human organism of which physiology and pathology speak are the result of an activity that is of the nature of thought.

But this is only one member of the human organization, and it must fall out of the human organization if one does not rise to imagination. It is imagination that can lead us to the fluid man, to the way in which the muscles are formed out of the fluidity and how the being of man pours into the muscles. Muscles appear to be solid, but this is mere semblance.

Imagination is indispensable if one wants to comprehend the uniting of the solid nature of the bony structure with the fluid nature of the blood into what has the semblance of another solid structure—muscle.

We must therefore realize: Thought, which is of course, supported by physical perception, can in reality, only grasp the bony system, and apart from the bony system everything else that thought may say about the human being is fantasy.

We must ascend from thinking to imagination. With imagination we can grasp the nature of the fluid man and understand how this fluid man shoots into the muscular system. The fundamental nature of the muscles can only be grasped by imagination. Why is this? You see, if you apply thoughts, you cannot help applying, too, those laws which are discovered by thought, namely, mechanical laws. You apply the laws of statics and dynamics, and this is possible with the bony system. But just try to apply statics and dynamics to the muscular system and see how you get on! Try to calculate from the laws of statics how you can crush a cherry pit, or a peach pit, by biting it. Try to find out by an experiment how much weight of pressure is necessary to crush this cherry stone. Some—not all of us perhaps—try to bite them! But try to reckon out whether, according to the laws of mechanics, a muscle is capable of crushing a cherry pit. Thought alone will never help you to understand the muscular system. It is quite impossible. The moment we come to the muscles, the principles of mechanics become futile. We must be able to pass over to a form of knowledge that can leave the laws of mechanics behind and which grasps the whole picture of the muscles through imagination. Ordinary gravity is non-existent here. For the moment you come to the watery element you have to do with pure buoyancy.

In the things that you do with your etheric body, you have nothing to do with weight but with what overcomes weight to a great extent. Even this will make you realize that quite a different form of knowledge must be applied to the muscular system. This form of knowledge is imagination. The muscular system is comprehended through imagination—though there are transitions everywhere. It is not possible to understand the muscular system unless we conceive of it as a structure that has not arisen in the same way as the bony system. It has taken shape, as it were, through a coagulation of blood. This is just as inadequate an expression as when I say that the bony system crystallizes, but it is a comparatively correct picture. Suppose you take some bone—the radius or the ulna, or upper arm—and apply the laws of leverage to it. This is quite all right. But while you can understand by the laws of leverage and other laws of mechanics what goes on in the radius or upper arm, just think whether these laws help you to understand what is going on in a muscle. Your mental pictures here must all become mobile, must be transformed. The essential characteristic of imagination is that it can always yield and give way and so embrace the substance of things that have their being in the process of metamorphosis. And this is the characteristic of the muscle; the muscle has its life in its metamorphosis. In contrast to the bones to which the laws of mechanics can be applied, the muscle is just as mobile as the pictures of metamorphosis—say pictures, not thoughts—which we have in imagination.

In the bony system we have the solid, earthy man; in the muscular system we have the fluid man, the watery man.

At the stage of inspiration, above imagination, we come to the airy man, to what is aeriform within the human being. In inspiration we approach a mode of cognition that very much resembles the hearing of musical tones, melodies. Inspiration has nothing any longer to do with concepts but with something that is like the cognition, the realization of music. Music must not always be heard; inasmuch as it is spiritual, it can also be felt, experienced. All inspiration has, fundamentally, something musical about it. It is a strange fact that the form of the inner organs of man, of those organs which really provide for the growing organization during life in nourishment, breathing, etc., that none of these organ forms can be explained by any laws of mechanics. Not even by imaginative knowledge are they to be explained. It is just nonsense to try to explain the form of the lungs, of the liver, through their position, through the lie of the cells or through weight. Just try to discover if anyone has succeeded in explaining the form of the liver or the lung and you will find that there is nobody. For these organs, which look after the life that is coming into being during earthly life, are present, in germ, at a very early stage, although later on they are much metamorphosed. They are all of them the outcome of the formative forces of the air.

Modern science says: Air is composed of oxygen, nitrogen and a few other substances. The aeriform substance is more or less uniform, only differentiated through inner mechanical movement, such as can be observed in wind. But the air that is described by physics today does not exist, in reality. The air that surrounds our earth is permeated throughout with formative forces. We breathe in these formative forces together with the physical substantiality of the air. Once our organs are complete and we breathe in the air, these formative forces coincide, as it were, with the form of the lung and are not particularly significant except for the purposes of growth. But during the embryonic period, while there is a physical isolation from the external air—then these formative forces of the air work by way of the body of the mother. They build up the lungs and the other organs, with the exception of the muscles and bones. All the inner organs that are to receive life are built up out of the formative forces of the air.

What happens here can be compared—although the comparison is a crude one—to the Chladnic sound figures. Plates covered with fine dust are secured at some point, a violin bow is drawn across the edge of the plate, and then the dust forms itself into certain patterns according to how the violin bow is drawn across the plate. The figures in the dust are formed out of the formative forces produced in the air. So too, the inner organs of man are formed out of the universal formative forces of the air. The lung is formed out of the breathing forces, also the other organs, only the other organs are formed more or less indirectly, the lungs directly. This fact, that the organs are built out of the formative forces of the air, is only to be grasped through inspiration. What has been built out of the air, formed out of the air, has something of the nature of music about it, just as the musical element is at the basis of the Chladnic sound figures.

Much of what modern physiology says is so fundamentally false that one sometimes is embarrassed to say what is correct, so greatly does it differ from what is stated in the ordinary way. In acts of hearing, all the organs of the human being, not only the inner organs of hearing, vibrate together with the air. The whole man vibrates, if only slightly; and the ear is not the organ of hearing just because it vibrates but because it brings to consciousness what is present in the rest of the organism. There is a great but also a subtle, delicate distinction in saying that man hears through the ear, or through the ear is brought to consciousness what has been heard. The human being is built out of sound, although not from sound that is actually heard. Inspiration is required for comprehension of the inner organs. The organization of man's inner organs, of the aeriform man, must be understood by means of inspiration. It is really not to be wondered at that real understanding of the inner organs of man was already lost in days of antiquity, for inspiration was lost and inspiration is the only means whereby the inner organs can be understood. They can be taken from the corpse and diagrams can be made of them, but they cannot be understood by this means.

You see, therefore, that the whole human organism stands really towards the background of the physical world. After reading my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, people always get the picture: Here is the physical world and behind it, the spiritual world, in stages or degrees. We reach the nearest spiritual world through imagination, a further spiritual world through inspiration and a further world through intuition. But people do not picture to themselves that of all that is within the human being, the bony system alone is built up by the elementary spirits, whereas the muscular system is built up by spiritual beings of a higher hierarchy. This must be known and understood. A man must be able to reach these beings through imagination if he is to understand the muscles.

To understand the inner organs, still higher spiritual beings must be reached through inspiration. The inner structure of a skeleton, too, can only be truly understood with inspiration. Just think of the following. A modern scientist investigates a plant by analyzing its substance by the methods current today. But this is by no means the plant in its reality. The plant is built up from out of the cosmos, as I said yesterday. It is only the root that is built up from earthly forces. The whole form of the plant is a spiritual reality, a super-sensible reality; this super-sensible reality is then filled with matter. And a man who merely examines this physical matter in the plant is like someone who has a document in front of him that is wet with ink, that he has covered with sand to dry and who then imagines that the sand is the essential thing of the document. The document is covered with this sand and then it is scratched away and the man says: I am examining the sand and I read what the document contains out of the sand. This, more or less, is the way in which people explain the root of a plant, whereas in reality the root is spiritual, filled with physical substance in its framework. So too, the human organs merely receive physical substance.

The reality is that only the bony system is physical; the muscles are etheric, the organs are astral.

If we can attain true intuition we get to the warmth man, the organization that is a space of warmth, inwardly differentiated. The human being actually experiences himself in warmth; his relationship to warmth is not the same as to carbon or nitrogen. Warmth is within him and the human being is within it when he experiences warmth.

The experience of warmth is intense and real and a modern man cannot deny that he has it, whereas he has no inkling of the fact that he experiences air, water, earth. He has no inkling of this because he has grown out of these experiences. Understanding of the warmth involves the application of intuition to the human organization, but it is the delicate differentiations of the warmth in the forms of the organs themselves which have to be perceived and experienced. When intuition can be applied to the warmth organism through the whole body, this form of cognition leads, not, in this case, to an understanding of the inner organs as such, but to the activity of these inner organs. The activity of the inner organs must be grasped by an understanding of the organization within the warmth ether. Every other kind of knowledge is incapable of bringing about understanding of the activity of the organs. The activity of the warmth ether, of the warmth man, must be cognized by intuition.

It will not do simply to think: There is the physical world and one must acquire imagination, inspiration and intuition in order to attain the other worlds. The other worlds are actually present; the etheric world is present in the muscular system, the astral world in the organs and the devachanic world, the spirit world, is present in the warmth man. The spiritual is always around us; it is actually present. Man is a spirit and this spirit is merely filled with physical substance. To say that man is a physical being is an illusion; man in himself is a spirit who actually reaches up into the higher world through his warmth organization.

That is why it is so odd that spiritualists should sit around a table and address themselves to spirits who are far, far inferior to those eight or ten people who are sitting around the table without knowing that they are spirits! This is a truth that must be taken very, very deeply to heart, and then progress can be made.

If through initiation we have grasped the nature of this wonderful activity from organ to organ which goes on in the warmth ether, we find that there are two kinds of warmth. The warmth ether is a quite special element. When any process calls forth a change in the warmth ether, there is always a counter-working. There is always action and reaction with streamings of warmth. The warmth ether is differentiated within itself. There is always a coarser etheric substance which runs counter to a more delicate one.

Suppose you are in a room that is comfortably warm. You make it warmer—so warm that you cannot stand it. That is not merely a physical condition but also a condition of the life of soul. The more delicate warmth is experienced by the soul. The experience of warmth is really always twofold; there is the warmth that we experience psychically and the warmth in which we live, the warmth that is outside the soul; there is the warmth that is within our warmth organism and the warmth that is external to us. Warmth is of the nature of the soul. We can therefore speak of a physical warmth and a soul warmth.

If we pass on to the inner organs, to the aeriform man, where inspiration is needed, here we have the airy element in its main form. Whereas the finer warmth works within warmth, in the aeriform there works light. Intuition reveals warmth within warmth; warmth remains warmth when it is differentiating itself within itself. But this is not the case with air. The real air is not the fantastic air of the physicists which surrounds our earth like another skin. The real air is inconceivable without some condition of light—for darkness is also a condition of light. Light and air belong together; light is an active, organizing force in the whole airy organism. Here we come still further into the realm of soul. There is not only external light but also metamorphosed inner light which permeates the whole human being, which lives in him. The light lives within him together with the air.

Equally, the chemical forces (chemism) are within the human being, together with the water, with the fluid element. Water conceived as physical water, the water of the physicists, is pure fantasy. To picture the fluid element within the human being without the chemical forces is just like picturing a human organism without a head. It can be drawn without a head and the life of soul can be entirely eliminated, but then there is no longer any reality. If you cut the head away from your body, the body cannot live, it is no longer an organism. In the same way, the fluid nature in man is not what the physicists fantastically describe as water. Just as the organism, with the head, forms one whole, so is the fluid organism bound up with the chemical forces. The solid or earthy in the human organism only exists in statu nascendi. Like the water in the human being, it is immediately transformed. Within the human being the earthy is bound up with life.

The physical body and its corresponding etheric body form one whole; they are one unit, seen from two sides. We have the ether stages: warmth, light, chemical forces, life—and we have the physical stages: warmth, air, water, earth. When we give an abstract description of the ethers we give the first place to the warmth ether; when we start from the fluid or solid as the lowest ether, then the highest ether is the life ether. But when we describe the human being we say that the warmth man, the inner activity of the organs, is known by means of intuition. As we descend to the coarsest stage, from the warmth to the earthy in the physical organism, we ascend, in the etheric body, from warmth into life. What does this mean? Think of it. It means that the human being really reverses his own attributes, or qualities. He expends the warmth ether only upon the warmth organism, the light ether upon the airy organism, the chemical ether upon the fluid organism, the life ether upon his solid organization. If you really grasp this, then you cannot think as people ordinarily think. If you insist upon thinking along the ordinary lines, you can, in reality, grasp only the bony system, the earthy human being. It is necessary for you to pass over from ordinary thinking to an inner comprehension of the world, as I have said before.

The fact that medical science has a certain peculiarity is connected with these things. Medical knowledge was an outstanding part of the ancient mysteries where man had real insight into the treatment of a sick human being. The physicians were trained in the mysteries—they were not merely medical men, but they were also sages, wise men who looked after the religious cults. It is natural that the physician should have kept his knowledge secret, as was the case with all mystery knowledge. For you see, if a man wants to know something, he must clothe this knowledge in thoughts; otherwise he floats about in indefiniteness. The picture that comes in imagination, what is heard spiritually (inspiration) and also what is beheld in intuition must all be clothed in thoughts. In ancient times it was known that medical knowledge must be clothed in thoughts. But by clothing it in thoughts it is deprived of some of its efficacy. I am touching here upon deep matters. It cannot be denied that the knowledge of remedies in a sense takes away their power and a really serious physician must deny himself the use of these therapeutic measures which he uses for his patients; he must deny himself and use, for himself, other kinds of healing. Please think about this last sentence and you will realize, in a much deeper sense than before, that the physician must personally cultivate the mood of helping. He must deny himself the healing forces which he applies to his patients. If a man ascribes the efficacy of a remedy merely to the chemical forces, if he imagines that remedies work like steam in a locomotive, he is not submitting to these spiritual laws. But the moment it is realized that the human being reaches up into the spiritual, it will never be doubted that spiritual laws are at the basis of what is contained in the different remedies. In its real essence, medicine is the most wonderful means of education towards selflessness. To demand that therapy should be taught as mechanics or similar subjects are taught is a crude and coarse misunderstanding. The laws of mechanics can, of course, be applied to the human being, but that is valid then to humanity as a whole. And the physician's work is entirely individual. If a physician has a really profound knowledge of some remedy, it is necessary for him, to a certain extent, to deny healing himself by means of this remedy. This is the great education towards selflessness. I will indicate sometime how the physician can help himself. But you must understand in your hearts what underlies these facts. If you take seriously and earnestly what I have said, it will become a world necessity to introduce into medicine not egoism but altruism. Altruism, selflessness, is the basic principle of medicine. Medical morality is not something that has been invented but proceeds from heavenly laws, from laws which the cosmos itself has formed in order to create remedies which follow its own laws.

The more earnestly a communication like this is taken, the more it will be able to contribute to an understanding of the real basis of all remedies.

We will spend the first part of the time today in answering questions which do not belong to the general category of which I have already spoken. We will then continue the theme of yesterday's lecture in order, tomorrow, to come to the esoteric conclusion.

Most of the questions fit into what I have said to you in general. There are only a few questions which call for a specific answer and we will take these more or less at random.

Question: Are there definite exercises for strengthening the so-called magnetic healing forces, and what are these exercises?

This, of course, necessitates a few words about the nature of the forces of magnetic healing. The magnetic healing forces are forces which play, essentially, between the etheric body of the one person and the etheric body of the other. You must picture to yourselves that the efficacy of what goes by the name of healing magnetism is based on the following—suppose somebody has a very strong character, that is to say, it is possible for him to unfold his will very strongly. Indications can be given to such a person. I can, for instance, say to him when he is suffering from some illness or other; every morning at eleven o'clock you should think about the sun; think that the sun warms your head first, and then that the warmth of your head passes to your upper arm, lower arm, hands, so that your own power is strengthened; then, when you have strengthened your own power, try to make a clear mental picture of what you feel about your illness, in order, then, through the power of your will, to get rid of it. This procedure may help, when the illness is not connected with damage to a specific organ, whereby the damage can naturally extend itself to all four parts of the elemental body: the solid, fluid, aeriform, and warmth elements. Although I do not say that it will invariably help, for there is always something problematic about these things.

Through the indications given him, the astral body of the patient has been stimulated. The indication which he has put into practice, this picturing of the sun, the warmth in his head, and so on, which has still further strengthened his will—this has worked upon his astral body. The astral body has worked upon his etheric body and the etheric body in turn has worked in a healing way on his physical body and has been able to adjust, to nullify the trouble which is not a deep, organic one. It cannot be said that such healing can only occur in what modern medicine calls “functional” disturbance in contrast to organic disturbance where there is an actual disturbance of the organs themselves. This difference is, as a matter of fact, quite inexact. It is impossible to say where functional disturbances cease and organic disturbances begin. In functional diseases there are always slight organic disturbances as well, only these latter cannot be proved by the crude methods of physiology and pathology today. In a case like that which I have described, we are not applying the forces of magnetic healing, but we are calling upon the patient's power to heal himself and this method, when it can be used, is the best, under all circumstances. We thereby strengthen the patient's will, as we make him well.

The following is also possible. Out of our own astral body, without the patient exerting his own will, we can influence our own etheric body in such a way that our own etheric body works upon the etheric body of the patient in the same way as, in the previous case, the astral body worked. It is in this that healing magnetism consists. The magnetic healer does this unconsciously; he influences his own etheric body with his astral body. Instinctively, he can then so direct the forces he unfolds that as he passes them on to the patient they strengthen the patient's forces. You must realize that if it is to be a question of healing, the magnetic healer must use means that are able, somehow, to bring it about. If we have a patient who is weak, of whose will we can expect nothing, the forces of healing magnetism may sometimes be applied. But I want to say, with emphasis, that magnetic healing forces are pretty problematical and are not equally useful in all cases. The instinctive faculty of activating one's own astral body in order thereby to influence one's own etheric body and then work over into the etheric body of the patient—this instinctive faculty is an individual one. There are people in whom it is strong, others in whom it is weak, others who do not possess it at all. There are people who are, by nature, magnetic healers—certainly there are. But the important thing is this, that the faculty is, as a rule, of limited duration. The natural magnetic healers have this magnetism, as it is called. When they begin to apply it, it may work very well; after a time it begins to wane, and later on it often happens that magnetic healers, after this faculty has died down in them, go on acting as if they still had it, and then charlatanism begins.

This is the precarious element when magnetic healing becomes a profession. This kind of healing really cannot be made into a profession. That is what must be said about it. The process of magnetic healing—when a person has the faculty for it—is only unconditionally effective when it is carried out with genuine compassion for the patient, a compassion that goes right down into one's organism. If you practice magnetic healing with a real love for the patient, then it cannot be done as a profession. If real love exists it will always be able to lead to something good, if no trouble arises from another side. But it can only be done on occasions, when karma leads us to a person whom we are able, out of love, to help; then the outer sign may be a laying on of the hand, or a stroking and then what is happening is that the astral body is passing on its forces to the etheric body which then works upon the ether body of the other person.

Something must still be said from another aspect about what goes on here. The healing always proceeds from the astral body, either from the patient's own astral body or from the astral body of the magnetizer. The reverse is the case in therapy where medicaments are used. When you give medicaments you introduce into the physical body substances which then work partly upon the inner forces and partly upon the rhythm of the physical body in such a way that the etheric body of the patient is influenced. The healing always proceeds from the etheric body. If you influence the etheric body from the astral body—which is a psychical healing—this lies in the realm of magnetic healing and is somewhat problematic, having a humanitarian, social element in it, something to do with the relations of one human being to another. Rational therapy must proceed from intervention by means of medicaments which proceed from the physical body and pass into to the etheric body. Always, however, the healing proceeds from the etheric body. It is a complete illusion that the physical body, when it has become ill, can itself bring about any healing. The physical body has, precisely, the basis of illness within it, and the cause of healing must always come from the etheric body.

Question: What relationships are there between the heart and the uterus and its position on the one hand, and experiences of the soul such as pain or joy, on the other?

There are direct relationships. In the first place, even though they are not in physical contact, heart and uterus belong together as closely as sun and moon. Sun and moon belong together in such a way that both of them throw the same light on an object. Sometimes the sun throws the light directly, at other times by the indirect way of passing first to the moon and being reflected back from there. The organ of the heart contains direct impulses for the human organism. It is the organ of perception for the blood circulation which goes on in the normal organism. The uterus is so constituted that it is the organ of perception for the circulation that comes about after fertilization. That is its purpose. It is just like the moon reflecting the sun's light; the uterus reflects what the heart perceives in the blood circulation; it radiates it back. They belong together as sun and moon inasmuch as what these organs perceive are like direct and reflected influences. When a human being is once in existence, he needs the heart forces; when he first begins to develop he needs reflected heart force and this comes from the uterus.

These organs, together with certain others—lungs bring it more down to the etheric-physical body—these organs, heart and uterus, are, physically, nothing else than that which, seen from the spiritual, is the soul nature of the human being. Perhaps I may put it as follows—suppose you develop imaginative cognition. When you have developed imaginative cognition and look at a human being, you actually get the picture of sun and moon when you look at heart and uterus. That is the corresponding spiritual reality which the human being experiences in his soul. There is a real correspondence between what goes on in the heart and in the uterus—goes on, that is, in the half-unconscious region of the soul, for generally speaking, the life of soul is otherwise influenced by thoughts. A delicate process is unveiled in imaginative cognition, namely, an intimate connection of heart and uterus. But those who can only observe a little, can see how, half-consciously or half-unconsciously, shall I say, the activity of the heart develops under the influence of the physical environment. A person whose life is such that he constantly
receives shocks through his profession, let us say, has in his subconsciousness an exact counterpart in his life of soul of the heart activity which is there set up, and this reflects itself—in the case of woman—in the uterus. We can then see how what takes place there is transferred to the constitution of the embryo.

Question: Here is a question that is difficult to answer because it must either be answered superficially, that is to say as a mere communication, or one must go into it thoroughly. The question is: How does the wearing of pearls and precious stones work upon individual organs?

There is an effect, certainly, but the effect can only be judged when one is able to look into the spiritual world; the effect has to be judged according to the individual. It can quite well be said, for example: Sapphire works upon a certain temperament, upon a choleric temperament, but really only in an individual case. There certainly are effects but to answer the question completely one would have to enter into deeper things than is possible today.

Question: This next question: “How can one get insight into karma in cases of individual illness?” can only be answered out of what I have said in the lectures.

Much will have resulted from what has been said and much will come out of what I still have to say.

Question: Here is another: Are there favorable connections between the degree and length of time of the post-mortem processes of decay (Verwesungsvorgänge = processes of decay) and the destiny of the individual in the spiritual world?

There are really no connections which would have any significance for us as human beings. The process of decay is not, of course, the purely physical process which it is usually considered to be by chemistry. There is something deeply spiritual connected with it. This was felt in the days of the old, instinctive knowledge. It was said: The innermost kernel, or essence, of a thing is the real or essential being (Wesen) and the prefix ver always means the movement towards something. If, for example, you say, “to have a sudden rapid movement (zucken),” that is a movement. But if you say verzücken, that is the tendency, the movement towards a sudden rapid movement. If you say verwesen (to decay), this means a movement towards Wesen, towards real being, a rising into real being.

Man is not an entirely self-enclosed being. Spiritual beings work and create in him. Spiritual beings are within our physical, etheric and astral bodies. It is only in the ego organization that we are free. These spiritual beings within the physical, etheric, and astral bodies are bound up with what happens in the physical body after death. The question of cremation and decay is closely connected with this. But all these things are bound up with human karma. One can only say this: So far as the individual human being as such is concerned the question is really not of very great importance.

Question: Has a post-mortem examination any influence on the destiny of the dead from a certain point of time after death?

It has no influence at all upon the destiny of the dead.

Most of the questions have been answered in the lectures. But here is still one that has a certain importance.

Question: Are the healing faculties possessed by a physician of a purely personal nature or are they affected by community, that is to say, not only by connections between physician and patient but by community among physicians? Is it conceivable that the individual physician could acquire, through such community, powers that cannot be his if he works all by himself? Does not this happen, for example, in the communities of priests?

This is certainly the case, as it is with all communities of human beings. Forces can flow to an individual from every community of human beings, only the community must be real—it must be felt, experienced. What I have described to you and shall do more clearly still tomorrow is of such a nature that it can build a community among you in connection with us here, even if for the present we can only communicate by means of correspondence. It is meant to unite you in such a way that when you are alone, you will feel that forces flow to you not only by way of the intellectual, but also by way of the spirit.

Question: Is there any value in iris diagnosis, graphology, chiromancy?

The ideal would be that you should be able to observe the general state of a human being from a small piece of his finger nail which you cut off. This is quite possible—a very great deal can be learned from this. Equally you can learn a great deal from one hair of a human being. But here you must remember how different, how individual is the hair of each person. Some of you are fair, some of you have black hair. What underlies this? Those of you who are dark have in the blackness of the hair an iron process which is going on in the hair. Blondeness comes from a sulfur process which is particularly strong in those people who have red hair. These things are of the very greatest interest. I have actually known people of whom it could be said that they were really fiery, with their bright red hair. A very strong sulfur process is present here, whereas in black hair there is a comparatively strong iron process. You must remember that this emanates from the whole human organism. A person who has red hair is always producing something that is a highly combustible substance—sulfur—and his hair is permeated with it. The other person who has black hair secretes iron—a substance that is not combustible but of a different character. This reveals a deep-seated difference between the two people in their whole organization. In individual cases, much can be learned about the whole human being from the kind of hair he has.

If this is so, why should it not be possible to learn about a person from the constitution of his iris? But you must remember that a very high form of knowledge is required for these things, not the nonsensical knowledge which the diagnosticians possess about the iris. That, of course, is dilettantism. The way to real knowledge of these things which rest on true foundations comes only at the end, just as the way to astrology comes only at the last stages of spiritual knowledge. Before that stage has been reached, astrology is terrible dilettantism. The same applies to chiromancy and graphology.

For graphology, genuine inspiration is necessary. The way a human being writes is entirely individual. At the very most there are indications, but they are quite crude. Inspiration is necessary before anything about a human being can be deduced by graphology. The strange thing about graphology is that from the handwriting of a person we can more or less get at the condition he was in seven years previously. Anyone, therefore, who wants to know something about a person as he is now, will have to take a circuitous path; he gets at the inner conditions which were there seven years previously and then, if he has the necessary vision, from what he perceives of seven years ago, he can arrive at a more fundamental knowledge than would otherwise be possible. So, you see, something can actually be accomplished.

As it is with the hair and the iris, so it is with chiromancy. For that you must have inspiration—not the superficial principles that are customarily given. A very special talent which someone or other may possess is necessary in order to be able to get to the bottom of the lines in the hand. The lines are, it is true, closely connected with the development of a human being. You need only compare your own hands and look at the lines in the left hand and in the right. Even in ordinary life there is a difference, for one person writes with his right hand, another with his left. With inspiration we can read the karma of a person from the lines in his left hand. In the right hand one usually sees the personal capacities and industriousness which a person has acquired during this life. His destiny has fashioned this earth life and his capacities lead him on into the future. None of these things is without foundation, but it is exceedingly dangerous to represent them in public because here we come to a region where seriousness and charlatanism border very closely upon each other.

At the end of the lecture yesterday, I said that out of the very nature of the world processes, medicine must be bound up with deep-seated morality of the soul. For I told you that real, true knowledge of a medicament to a certain extent deprives the knower himself of the power of this medicament; there is something in the knowledge of the medicament which excludes from the knower the possibility of being healed by its means. Naturally, the purely chemical working is not excluded, but that is not real knowledge. Just think of the following—the muscular system of man is understood through imagination, as I said yesterday. We learn to know what is working in a muscle when we attain to pictorial, imaginative cognition. But if we want to know what has a healing effect in some organ that is of the nature of a muscle, then the therapeutic knowledge must also be imaginative. True knowledge of an inner organ is of the nature of inspiration; that is the real knowledge; it is not chemical knowledge. If you really know that some medicament works upon the muscular system in a certain way, then you have this knowledge through imagination. Yes, but imaginative knowing is not like the knowing which we usually visualize today. The latter kind of knowing does not go very deeply into the human being. It really exists only in the head, whereas imaginative knowing simultaneously takes hold of the muscular system. Therapeutic knowledge that is also imaginative is of such a nature that you actually feel this knowledge in your muscles. What matters is that you shall take these things in real earnestness.

In order that you may fully understand, I want to say something paradoxical on this subject, but the paradox here happens to be the truth. My Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has been little understood because people have not known how to read it. They have read it just as they would read any other book. But the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is not the same as other books. It weaves in thoughts, but in thoughts that are truly experienced. Abstract, logical thoughts such as are current in science today are experienced in the brain. The thoughts to which I have given expression in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—and here comes the paradox—are experienced by one's whole being, in the bony system. And let me say something still stranger. It has happened—only people have not noticed it because they did not connect the two things—it has happened that when people have really understood this book that often in the course of reading, and especially when they have finished the book, they have more than once dreamed of skeletons. This is connected in the moral sphere, with the position of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in regard to the freedom of the world.

Freedom, or spiritual activity, consists in this: that from out the bones the muscles are moved in the external world. The unfree person follows his impulses and instincts; the free person directs himself in accordance with the demands and exigencies of the world which he must first love. He must acquire a relationship to the world. This expresses itself in the imagination of the bony system. Inwardly, it is the bony system that experiences the thoughts when they are truly experienced. They are experienced with the whole being, with the whole of the earthy man. Thoughts, then, that are truly experienced, are experienced with the bony system. There have been people who wanted to paint pictures after reading my books and they have shown me all kinds of things. They have wanted to bring the thoughts in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity into the form of pictures. If one really wants to paint what it contains, one would have to produce dramatic scenes, performed by human skeletons. Free spiritual activity is something in which we must get rid of everything that is purely instinctive; similarly, what a person experiences when he has the thoughts of free spiritual activity is something in which he must unburden himself of his flesh and blood; he must become a skeleton, he must become of the earth. The thoughts must become earthy in the true sense. This means that one must free oneself by dint of hard work.

I mention this in order that you may realize that even ordinary thoughts generate something that lays hold of the whole being of man.

If we pass on from thoughts to imagination, we experience imagination in the muscular system. Inspiration is experienced when we experience our own inner organs. When it is a matter of inspirations, however, we must not forget the saying: Naturalia non sunt turpia (the natural is not despicable). For under certain circumstances, the most wonderful inspirations are experienced with the kidneys or with other organs in the lower part of the body.

Higher knowledge, therefore, is something that involves the whole being of man, and those who have no knowledge of imaginations and inspirations do not know that the activity of imagination is a labor that is quite like physical labor because it puts a strain on the very muscles. Real imagination is like actual physical labor. There is a relationship between physical labor and imagination. If I may be allowed to say something personal, I have always found that imagination was helped a great deal by the fact that when I was a boy, I used to hack wood, dig potatoes, work with a spade, sow seed, and such things. I do not want to blow my own trumpet by saying this, but to have done these things did help to exert the muscles and so made imagination easier. If you have exerted the muscles in youth, imagination will be easier for you in later life. But remember this: movements that do not involve exertion, that are not real labor, are of no use, play is of no use at all for imagination. I am not saying anything against play in itself, for you need only read what I say about educational subjects to find that I have nothing whatever against play. What imagination does is to bring the resting muscle—for this must naturally take place while the muscle is at rest—to bring the resting muscle to an experience that is similar to actual physical labor.

If you embark on the medical path in association with us here, you will learn about these strange things and you will realize that the knowledge of these therapeutic matters takes hold of your muscular system; and this will be of significance in your own karma.

Let us take a specific case. I will construct quite an idealistic one—the true therapy of smallpox. Real smallpox calls up a very strong inspiration, with intuition as well. And the knowledge that comes to you here, when you are real therapists in this domain, works much more strongly upon you—when it is real knowledge—does a vaccination; in a different sense it works much more strongly, and in studying the therapy of smallpox as a physician you will bring about a kind of healing in yourself in advance, prophylactically, and will therefore be able, when you understand the connection, to go among smallpox patients without fear, and full of love.

Of course all these things have their other side too. As I have said, if the knowledge of a medicament is a true imaginative or inspired knowledge, then the healing forces are there; it need not even be one's own imagination, it may be that of someone else. In itself it has healing forces. Even to have the idea of a medicament has an effect, and it works. But it works only so long as you are without fear. Fear is the opposite pole to love. If you go into a sick room with fear, none of your therapeutic measures will help. If you can go into a sick room with love, without thought of yourself, if you can direct the whole of your soul to those whom you have to heal, if you can live in love, in your imaginative and inspired knowledge, then you will be able to place yourselves within the process of healing not as a knower who is a bearer of fear, but as a knower who is a bearer of love.

Thus medicine is impelled into the realm of the moral not only from without but also from within. This is true to a high degree in the sphere of medicine, as it is true in all spheres of spiritual knowledge. Courage must be developed. I have told you that courage is all around us. Air is an illusion; it is courage that is everywhere around us. If we are really to live in the world in which we breathe, we need courage. If we are timid or cowardly, if we do not live together with the world but exclude ourselves from it, we breathe only in semblance. What is above all things for medicine is courage, the courage to heal. It is indeed so: if you confront an illness with the courage to heal, this is the right orientation which in ninety percent of cases leads you right. These moral qualities are most intimately connected with the process of healing.

Thus it should be as I have said: A first course for medical students should consist in creating a basis through knowledge of nature and of the being of man, knowledge of the cosmos as well as of man. Then, in a second course, there would come the esoteric deepening, the deepening of esoteric knowledge of the working of the healing forces, so that medicine would be regarded as I described in the fourth lecture and will speak of again tomorrow. A final course would aim at bringing therapy into connection with the development of the true moral faculties of the physician. If such a final course were able to produce these moral qualifications, then diseases would become, for the physician, the opposite of what they are for the patients; they would become something that he loves—not, of course, in order to be enhanced and cultivated so that the patient may remain ill as long as possible—but loved because illness only acquires its meaning when it is healed. What does this mean?

To be healthy means to have the so-called 'normal' qualities of soul and spirit within one; to be ill, to have some illness, however, also means that one is being influenced by some spiritual quality. I know, of course, that learned men of the modern age will say, on hearing this: "Ah, now comes the old doctrine of being possessed." Yes, but it is really a question whether the old doctrine of being possessed is worse than the new. Which is worse—to be possessed by spirits or by bacilli? It is a matter there of examining the relative values. Modern physicians with their theories acknowledge the fact of such "possession"—only their mentality is more suited to preach a materialistic kind of possession.

The truth is that when a person has an illness, he has a spiritual quality within him which, in the ordinary course of his life, is not present. Yet it is a spiritual quality. Here again I must voice a paradox. I am going to speak now of a reality in connection with the Zodiac: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Now there is a colossal difference between these upper seven constellations and the five lower constellations. If you can reach to imagination, you get a picture of a male being in the cosmos for these seven upper constellations, and the picture of a female being for the five lower constellations. So that in imaginative vision, male-female in an enclosed serpent form is spread over the Zodiac.

Nobody can have this imagination without going through the following experience. Think of the illness of smallpox which reveals itself in physical symptoms. But suppose you were able to do the following: picture to yourselves a person suffering from smallpox who in his astral body and ego organization had the power today to draw out the whole illness and to experience it only in the astral body and in the ego, so that in that moment his physical and etheric bodies would be well. Suppose such a thing were hypothetically possible. What I have said cannot actually happen, but if you want to have this imagination you must do the same thing as I have described as a hypothetical case, without your physical body and etheric body having smallpox. In the astral body and ego organization, free from the physical and etheric bodies, you must experience the illness of smallpox. In other words: you must experience, spiritually, a spiritual correlate of physical illness. The illness of smallpox is the physical image of the condition in which ego organization and astral body are when they have such an imagination. You will realize now that in smallpox there is proceeding, but in this case from the human being himself, the same influence out of which, in spiritual knowledge, the heavenly imagination comes.

You see, my dear friends, how closely illness is related to the spiritual life—not to the physical body; illness is closely related to the spiritual life. Illness is the physical imagination of the spiritual life and because the physical imagination is in the wrong, because it ought not to imitate certain spiritual processes—therefore that which in the spiritual world may be something very sublime, is, under certain circumstances, illness in the physical organization.

In trying to understand the nature of illness we must say to ourselves: Were it not possible for certain spiritual beings to be brought down into a realm where they do not rightly belong, then these beings would not be present even in the spiritual world. The close relationship of true spiritual knowledge with illness is clear from this. When we have spiritual knowledge we have knowledge of illness. If one has a heavenly imagination such as that of which I spoke, one knows what smallpox is, because it is only the physical projection of what is experienced spiritually. And so it is, really, with all knowledge of illness. We can say: If heaven, or indeed hell, take too strong a hold of the human being, he becomes ill; if they only take hold of his soul or his spirit, he becomes wiser, or cleverer, or a seer.

These are things which you must inwardly digest, my dear friends, and then you will realize what the task of Anthroposophy is in connection with medicine, for Anthroposophy reveals the true, divine archetypes of the illnesses which are their demonic counterparts. But this can lead you more and more deeply to the recognition that what is necessary today as a reform of medical study is to be sought in the domain of Anthroposophy.

It is, of course, only possible to give aphoristic indications here of what will have to be communicated in detail as time goes on, if your connection with the movement at the Goetheanum is to be continued in any real way.

It must be emphasized, above all, that in the very nature of things, one cannot heal in opposition to karma. The fundamental attitude of the physician must be that no healing is possible if it runs counter to karma. In his will-to-heal, the physician's attitude must, from the very outset, tend in two directions. First of all, there must be the unconquerable will that karma be fulfilled. The physician needs this above all for himself, for as you have heard, in a sense, he loses, so far as he himself is concerned, the effect of what he uses for his patients. It can, of course, be transformed so that it will also be effective for him, but all you need to know, in the first place, is what I have already said on this subject. The physician, too, is naturally subject to karma so far as his own health and illness are concerned. But when the proper attitude is present, when therapeutic knowledge penetrates deeply into the human soul, it can be said that the consciousness of karma becomes more and more an actual revelation of karma.

Karma has its two sides. You must regard karma in such a way that you relate your destiny to the earthly life immediately preceding the present one. Karma, in this aspect, is the expression of what the previously earthly lives have brought. But you have also to think of karma in the fifth or sixth subsequent earthly life, in the fifth or sixth life following the present one. Then you will have the results of what is happening now. If you carry this thought to its conclusion, you will realize that karma, too, is in the becoming, that what is happening now adds one thing or another to karma. It can also be said that here and there our deeds may give a turn to karma. Nobody who understands karma can ever be a fatalist.

The one direction of the physician's attitude is, therefore, towards karma. This leads to a sense of security and sureness in life, gives a firm standpoint. The other direction, however, is this; that the will-to-heal must always be present. This will must never, under any circumstances, weaken. It must be at work in therapy all the time, so that it can be truly said that everything possible is being done, even when one is of the opinion that the patient is incurable. You must suppress this opinion and do everything possible about healing. I merely indicate this, aphoristically.

What we have to do today is to deepen, in the esoteric sense, those things that may result in the awakening of soul forces in medical study. The content of the esoteric teaching must assume a particular form, must become a special activity, for the physician. The physician will not be able to content himself with looking at things as they are looked at in ordinary life. This is just what ordinary science does. Science does not call upon forces of soul which are not applied in ordinary life; on the contrary, science throws all its weight upon the side of not calling upon such forces. But the ordinary, current view of life does not enable us to know that some substance or process in the world contains healing forces. The healing forces are only revealed by things when we approach them with certain awakened powers of soul. It will be for you, step by step, to awaken these powers of soul in order that things may speak to you in such a way that in your work as physicians you are able to help human beings by their means. What is of importance is that what I have said to you about the attitude of the physician shall be infinitely deepened in your souls.

I will take a simple subject, to begin with, and treat it in the way in which it ought to be treated in medical study. It will seem aphoristic here, but when there is time, it will be developed.

Think of the form that is revealed to you in the bony skull. We can take this bony skull and draw it. Look at its form and contrast this form with what is revealed to you by a long bone—let us say the thigh bone. These bones are not quite on their own, for manifold physical forces play around the bony skull; equally manifold forces play around the long bones. But the reality of a long bone will only be revealed to you if you study it in connection with the whole universe.

Just think of a long bone. Its forces are such that they pass through its length, and when the human being assumes his true earthly posture, they actually go down to the central point of the earth. But that is not the essential. The essential thing about a long bone is that it introduces these forces into the connection that exists between the central point of the earth and the moon. Therefore whatever is placed in the body like the long bone of the thigh or the bone of the upper arm, or a muscle lying in a similar position, is really inserted into the forces which connect the earth with the moon. You can picture it like this. Here you have the earth. (See diagram below.)

Forces stream up to the moon from the earth and these forces include everything that is involved, let us say, in the position in which the thigh is when the human being is standing or walking.

On the other hand, everything that has a position like that of the skull-covering is membered into the Saturn movement. In the skull there are the rotatory forces which belong to Saturn. So that we can say: The human being is formed from below upwards through the connection between earth and moon. He is rounded off, finished off, by the rotatory forces of Saturn. But these two kinds of forces are counter to each other. In the forces which are contained in the connection between earth and moon there lies everything that gives the human being his plastic form, everything that builds him, plastically. One might say: There is a secret sculptor in these forces; whereas the other forces give rise to a perpetual process of demolition, in which the substances which build up the human being plastically are again disintegrated or dispersed. When you cut a nail, you with your scissors are in the Saturn forces; when you eat, this takes you into the realm of the forces working between earth and moon. All these latter forces are up-building forces. All the other forces pulverize the human being. In this interaction between pulverization and plastic up-building live the soul of man and the spirit of man. Therein they manifest themselves.

All that is connected with the etheric body of man both in the outer world and within man himself is connected with these peripheric forces. Silver is connected, in a certain respect, with the forces of up-building. So that when you notice in a human being that the up-building forces are being overpowered by the forces of demolition, you can as a rule correct this by means of some medicament derived from silver. But if you notice that the up-building forces are rampant, that they are maintaining the human being too strongly within his form, hindering as it were the process of pulverization, you will have recourse to the remedies that come from Saturn, from lead. When we know how the human being is built up, we begin to see how we must act.

What we have to do is find our way into this kind of perception. You see, my dear friends, the true world, the world of the spirit, has always been said, and rightly said, to lie on yonder side of a threshold. The human being lives on this side of a threshold. He has to pass over this threshold in order to attain true knowledge, true insight into the constitution of the world. Speaking generally, it is dangerous for the human being to cross this threshold without preparation. For if he carries with him into the spiritual world on yonder side of the threshold his ordinary sense-perception, permeated with thoughts as in ordinary life, he calls forth illusion, downright illusion before his spiritual eyes, because he then judges things on yonder side of the threshold just as he does here, in the physical world. Therefore there stands at the threshold that spiritual being from whom we learn that quite different concepts are necessary when we cross the threshold, that illusions paralyze our life if we pass over into the spiritual world with the ordinary concepts derived from the world of the senses. This Guardian of the Threshold warns us that we must first acquire the ideas that are needed in the spiritual world. People as a rule do not believe that the concepts which correspond to facts in the spiritual world are so very different from those which are suitable in the physical world. In the physical world, for example, the part is always smaller than the whole. This is an axiom. But it is not so in the spiritual world. There, the part is always greater than the whole.

We understand this from an example drawn from the being of man. If we think of a force which the human being has within him when, for instance, he is building up his body out of mineral matter and then think of the nexus of forces which one part of him contains, then, in the face of the cosmos, that which forms the organ—which is the part—is essentially greater than the whole human being. It is not easy at once to visualize the maxim that the part is greater than the whole because you are accustomed to the sense-world; but in face of the super-sensible world it is absolutely true. We must attain to the insight that in the spiritual world the part can be greater than the whole. Our laws of mechanics and physics do not hold for the super-sensible world, rather precisely the opposite. Here, in the material world, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. In the spiritual world, it is the longest, because there, if we go in the straight direction, we have the most obstacles to overcome. Every other direction is shorter, there, than the straight one.

We must be absolutely clear that if we want to enter the spiritual world, ideas and concepts are needed that are quite contrary to what is a matter of course in the physical world. Courage is required so that we shall not enter into the spiritual world in confusion. We must have courage enough to pass over the spiritual threshold, over the abyss. If we cross over to the spiritual world, if we pass the Guardian of the Threshold and reach the spiritual world yonder in the soul and spirit, in astral body and ego, consciously, then all is well. But if we do not pass through this experience in the ego and astral body, illusion arises and when this illusion shoots back upon the human being, illness is the result. Whenever a man is ill, he really has the Guardian of the Threshold within him, but in a kind of demonic counterpart.

There again I come to the demonic element of which I already had to speak. When we look at a human being with ordinary perception, all his members are intermixed. On the one side there is the ego and the astral body of the man; on the other side there is the etheric body and the physical body. All seems to be intermixed when we look at him with ordinary sight. And what is essential above all is to learn to distinguish what is of the soul in a human being from what is of the body. When the soul is in the body, and you are looking at a human being, the soul does not appear as it really is. Indeed and in truth the soul is light. You must learn more and more to realize that the human soul, when we behold it in its absence from the body, is light. It belongs to what surrounds us as the etheric elements—it belongs to the light. The human soul belongs entirely to the realm of light. We see it rightly when we see it within light.

On the other hand, the body belongs to heaviness. I have shown how heaviness is overcome, how the brain becomes much lighter than its external weight. But the physical body, in the form in which we perceive it, belongs to heaviness. Just as through chemical analysis you get hydrogen and oxygen out of water, so, if you want to behold man in his true being, you must member him into the soul with its power of radiance and the body with its might of heaviness. These two realities—the soul with its power of radiance, and the body with its might of heaviness—are interwoven in confusion when they are looked at with physical eyes. And because they are thus interwoven in confusion, we cannot see in the body, or in the human being as a whole, the essential nature of the illness. By so adjusting your soul that you can observe the human being in such a way that you see how the nature of the illness is revealed, then, gradually, when you look at lead, or silver, you will realize what healing forces are contained in these substances.

But you must take your medical life in tremendous earnestness. You must take the meditative life with such strength into your soul that through this meditative life you grasp the world differently. And that is why I want to give you now words which, if they are added to the others (see Lecture Four) and truly meditated upon, will bring you into the same relation with particular substances which these substances themselves have to the healthy and the sick human being. You must let the words, which I am now going to write on the board, awaken your souls to the realization that what you see of the human being in ordinary life is not the reality. When you vitalize your souls with what lies in these words, then you will perceive the truth, the true reality of the human being.

What I have said up to now will help you, in a general way, to understand the human being in his relation to the cosmos. Today I should like to give you something that will help you to meditative knowledge of, say, a tiny piece of gold. I hammer it into a thin leaf and when I look through it I see green. In its green appearance it awakens, not from mere vague analogy, the same inner experience as green meadows, the green plant covering of the earth; it does indeed awaken this experience if I look at the gold leaf with deeper forces of soul. If then I really steep myself, with all my forces of soul, in the tiny, shimmering piece of gold, the opposite power of soul is awakened. Then, as well as the green shimmering gold—as I look now towards it and now away from it—a whole world comes to me, a whole world shimmers towards me in a kind of pale bluish-red light. And in that moment I know that the whole world is present in that tiny piece of gold. This little piece of gold which, to begin with, has a green shimmer, is, in reality, a whole sphere. Every tiny piece of gold is a center of a whole sphere and I learn to live and weave in the bluish-red, the bluish-violet colors of a sphere. And then, if you learn to know other qualities of gold you will realize their living connection. For instance, you will experience, but fundamentally and basically, the known quality of gold, namely, that it will not combine with oxygen. Then, you will say to yourselves: The human being lives through having oxygen; he lives through perpetually working in oxygen. In the etheric body, as you know, everything is different. The etheric body is related to what is not anchored in the physical body. Gold is related to the etheric body because it refuses to be combined with oxygen. So that by virtue of this very quality, gold works as a healing power in the etheric body for what oxygen, for example, may give rise to in the physical body. For this reason, gold is, as it were, a remedy that works from the center of the human being.

Through this impression of radiance in the pale bluish-red light, you get at the inner truth of the saying: “Gold is sun; gold is wholly sun.” This one piece of gold reveals to you that in cosmic space, gold is the sun, and that this gold-sun is related to your etheric body.

But this means that you are led to those qualities of a substance that are needed in therapy. But you will only really come to this realization by taking the following meditation, not as mere words, but in all earnestness, and as an unceasing challenge to the soul:

See in thy Soul
Power of Radiance;
Feel in thy Body
Might of Heaviness!

Schau in deiner Seele
Leuchtekraft,
Fühl in deinem Körper
Schweremacht.

But this must be a real exercise. You must practice with the aim of making your soul into something that really streams out into space and is like light, the power of radiance; and you must practice with the aim of making your body into something that through its own inner heaviness is connected with the inner being of the earth. You must have a real inner experience of this tremendous contrast, and then you separate your soul and body, as they should be separated. The verse continues:

In Power of Radiance
Rays the Spirit-I.

In der Leuchtekraft
Strahlet Geistes-Ich.

The human “P” rises up as an inner experience in the soul. It is a picture that you must understand. In the soul that is streaming out, radiating out into the universe, the “I” unfolds. To these words you must add:

In Might of Heaviness
God-Spirit wells.

In der Schweremacht
Kraftet Gottes-Geist.

The men of earlier times spoke, not merely in trivial analogy, but as something in profound correspondence with truth, of the human being, the human body, as being a temple of the Godhead. Just as it is true that the “I” is the ruler within the soul when the soul is conscious, so it is also true that the Divine, the Godhead, is the ruler in the body. You may not really speak of your body as your own, for the body is not of man, but of God. It is so indeed. The body of man grows out of the Divine forces. To man belongs only the soul that is within that body. In the instrument that is your body you must see the temple of God. It is of tremendous importance to know this:

In Power of Radiance [of the soul]
Rays the Spirit-I;
In Might of Heaviness
God-Spirit wells.

In der Leuchtekraft [der Seele]
Strahlet Geistes-Ich
In der Schweremacht
Kraftet Gottes-Geist.

The Divine Spirit is mighty in the human body, just as the “I” is mighty in the human soul. And now comes the important thing:

Yet shall not
Power of Radiance
Lay hold of
Might of Heaviness.

Doch darf nicht
Leuchtekraft
Ergreifen
Schweremacht.

When the human being is asleep it is clear to you that his soul is separated from his body. He has separated soul and body. During sleep the soul has not got hold of the body. But in waking life, too, the condition must be such that although the ego and astral body come down in the physical and etheric bodies, there must be an inner separation, and inner apartness between the power of radiance and the might of heaviness. Chemical combination between the power of radiance and the might of heaviness must not arise; these two powers must be inwardly separate. They must not mingle with each other mechanically nor be inwardly united in any way. The might of heaviness of the body, the power of radiance of the soul must work side by side, the former downwards, the latter upwards, within the same space. For that reason, the following words are important.

Yet shall not
Power of Radiance
Lay hold of
Might of Heaviness,
Nor may
Might of Heaviness
Permeate
Power of Radiance.

Doch darf nicht
Leuchtekraft
Ergreifen
Schweremacht
Und auch nicht
Schweremacht
Durchdringen
Leuchtekraft.

The last two lines merely express the opposite of the first two. That which our external, sense-knowledge continually mixes together, must, in reality, be separate within the human being. When you look at the human being with knowledge that comes from the senses, everything is intermixed; and if the human being were indeed what he appears to be to ordinary perception, he would be ill all the time. The human being can be healthy, but our material perception of him is a condition of illness. As we see him, the human being is perpetually ill, but such perception is, of course, Maya, illusion. In his true being, a man must never be as we see him. In his true being of man, power of radiance and might of heaviness must not be intermingled. They must be inwardly separate from each other. There must be nothing of what happens in water, where hydrogen and oxygen enter into a chemical combination with each other and, in themselves, really disappear. This is what ordinary sense-perception does; it has had the bad taste to adopt chemical ideas and to look at the human being as if he were a combination of the power of radiance and the might of heaviness. These two are separate and must so remain—just as if in water, hydrogen and oxygen were separate, although united.

For when Power of Radiance seizes
Might of heaviness,
And when Might of Heaviness enters
Power of radiance,
Then in World-confusion Soul and Body
Bind each other
Unto Perdition.

Denn fasset Leuchtekraft
Die Schweremacht
Und dringet Schweremacht
In Leuchtekraft,
So binden in Welten-Irre
Seele and Körper
In Verderbnis sich.

In perdition is illness. You must take this in full seriousness, so seriously that it forms your body that you can really look at the human being according to the power of radiance and might of heaviness and that you have the feeling when they take hold of one another, they are enemies. In illness they do lay hold of one another. When the power of radiance lays hold of the might of heaviness (weight), bodily illnesses arise; when the might of heaviness presses into the power of radiance, the so-called mental illnesses arise. Just think of it—in the body lives the Divine Spirit. If the power of radiance seizes upon the might of heaviness, the human being is wrongly appropriating the Divine within him.

If you learn to think about these things with the moral impulses that are necessary, to feel them deeply and then to will with what you have felt, you gradually begin to perceive the things and processes of the world in such a way that when the power of radiance has laid hold of the might of heaviness you realize how you can separate the power of radiance from the might of heaviness through something that gives support to the etheric body from out of the astral body, through some substances or else through some process in the human being. If you really feel these things, you will also understand the healing forces of curative eurythmy. The healing power in curative eurythmy is something that reckons very specially with the cosmic forces in the process of healing. When you do exercises with the consonants in curative eurythmy, you are within the moon forces. When you unfold the powers of the vowels in curative eurythmy you are within the Saturn forces. Through these two kinds of forces in curative eurythmy the human being feels his way directly into the cosmos.

Therapy, of course, is the essential thing in medicine, but there can be no therapy without absolutely useful diagnosis. Suppose we are able to confirm that the formative principle is too strong in a human being, that this formative power is coming from salts or carbohydrates which he cannot keep within bounds; there is too much form in him. If you really observe the more delicate workings of the organism—and the symptoms may be only very subtle—you will find that vowels in curative eurythmy which work against form will have an extraordinarily favorable effect.

Or suppose a child shows a slight tendency to stuttering. I am not, of course, going to make any dilettante statements about stuttering being due to this or that cause; naturally, all kinds of things may be wrong and so be the cause of it. But whatever the trouble may be, in cases of stuttering a predominating formative force is present, and therefore vowel exercises in curative eurythmy will be good, carried out in the sequence that is natural in the being of man, the true manifestation of the being of man. So that much can be achieved with children who have a tendency to stuttering by taking the vowel sequence: A(ah), E(ay), I(ee), 0, U, in curative eurythmy provided one has the necessary patience and love.

If you think about all these things, my dear friends, you will realize the importance of regarding the esoteric principles which I gave you a few days ago and have given today, as a kind of morality in medical study. By morality I mean the feeling of being bound to a duty, the feeling of being obliged, through meditation, to bring the soul into the necessary and lasting attunement for facing the world in the true and right way. If lectures could be given you for a whole year, a great deal could be said in detail and this would be of concrete use to you in practice. But as in these lectures we could only make a beginning, it has been of very particular importance to speak of the development of the medical and therapeutic powers which lie within the human being—to place these powers within your reach. For if, with these esoteric hints, you go to your medical studies, you will see that things become different. Maybe they will become more difficult. If someone of a rather dull intellect (and education makes the intellect dull today) takes up medical studies, a certain inner persistence will carry him through the first and second years and help to master things if, as the result of social circumstances, he feels a moral whip behind him. But he does not become a physician in the real sense. He becomes a person whom society appoints to play the part, but he does not become a physician.

If you let these things work upon you, a more delicate force of soul will develop in you. And in many respects the physiology, psychology and pathology on which medical science is based today will cause you pain. It will really be as though you were being offered stones instead of bread. But you yourselves will, nevertheless, be able to get something out of these stones. What is offered to you will, after all, not be without purpose. It will not be easy for you to learn. There must inevitably be difficulties, for the world with its materialism is still mighty and we must, in some way, find our place in it. Having found this place, it is for us to work our way beyond it. Thus we must certainly become physicians in the way the world demands and then medical studies must be permeated with what can be given from here.

Therefore let me say once again that opportunity will be given for you to link yourselves with us here in the way I have indicated. You must have complete confidence in the way in which the medical section of the Goetheanum will be led by me in association with Dr. Wegman. It is precisely medicine, as it can be pursued here, that can show you how human life can really be experienced—strange as this expression is. Therefore when you are once again out in the world and one thing or another occurs to you, write your wishes and your hearts' desires and an answer will be given to everybody in the monthly circular letter. And in this way—which is, to begin with, the only practicable one—external medical studies will be able to be permeated with what can be given here.

You see, there are extraordinarily few people yet—and they can only be the young ones really—who are able to build the bridge between the spiritual aims of Dornach and the materialistic science that holds sway in the outside world. At the present time it can only be a few, and really only those who are still at the stage of their studies. Why?

I once had to give a lecture about a particular chapter of therapy which was attended by medical students and also a professor, a professor of medicine. I was able to watch this man. He came to the lecture thinking that he would find confirmation of his belief that it would be the usual kind of superficial twaddle talked of by quacks. I was able to make a real study of metamorphosis in watching this professor, for on the one side he was inwardly resisting, but on the other side he was astonished. He was obliged to come to the conclusion that it was not rubbish, but naturally he could not say “Yes” to it, because it completely contradicted what he had regarded for decades as being true and correct. I spoke to him after the lecture and it emerged that he was saying to himself: “I would prefer to keep out of all that.” He could not have gone as far as this if he had really thought it nonsense.

If he had thought it nonsense he would easily have kicked it away in the usual manner. He thought he could kick it away, too, but in reality he could not, and the very most that one could have hoped for from a professor was that he should have said to himself: “I would prefer to keep out of all that.” One could not expect more than this. But a young person must have quite a different attitude. A young person has no antecedents and he, therefore, is still able to absorb things which can lead to the healing of humanity. And if this happens, my dear friends, it will really come to pass that gradually perhaps more quickly than we thinkGoetheanum spirituality will enter into medicine.

But what must happen first is that these things shall be continued with real earnestness, and that you go on doing as Dr. Wegman has told me you have done—that you go on coming to her to make the link in full confidence with the true kind of medical studies and with those things that must flow as time goes on, into the materialistic medicine of today. You can do much for yourselves and also much for the world and for sick humanity if you do not regard what you have now heard as something merely transitory, but as a starting-point for that with which such a good beginning has been made. In this sense we will remain united, my dear friends, remain so united that the center to which you adhere here in Dornach, at the Goetheanum, can work in the world, through you. That is what I wanted to say to you as a kind of warning. Then things will go well and much will be added to what we have spoken of here. It may be an ideal in your life of feeling, but it can become, in very truth, life. And as such we will maintain it, my dear friends.

Today our guests from further afield who have already arrived make up the majority of those present at this opening performance of eurythmy. There is no need for me to speak particularly about the nature of eurythmy, for our friends know about this from various writings which have appeared in print. But especially since we are gathering once more for an anthroposophical undertaking I should like to introduce this performance with a few words.

In the first instance eurythmy is that art which has originated entirely from the soil of Anthroposophy. Of course it has always been the case that every artistic activity which was to bring something new into civilization originated in super-sensible human endeavour. Whether you look at architecture, sculpture, painting, or the arts of music or poetry, you will always find that the impulses visible in the external course of human evolution are rooted in some way in occult, super-sensible ground, ground we may seek in connection with the Mysteries. Art can only flow into human evolution if it contains within it forces and impulses of a super-sensible kind. But the present-day view of art arises in the main from the entirely materialistic tendency in thinking which has seized hold of Europe and America since the fifteenth century. And though a certain kind of scientific knowledge can flourish in this materialism, anything genuinely artistic cannot. True art can only come forth out of spiritual life.

Therefore it is as a matter of course that a special art has arisen out of the spiritual life of the Anthroposophical Movement. It is necessary to understand that art must be born out of the super-sensible realm through the mediation of the human being. Considering the descending scale stretching from the super-sensible realm down to externally perceptible phenonema, you find the faculty of Intuition at the top, at the point where—if I may put it like this—the human being merges with the spirit. Inspiration has to do with the capacity of the human being to face the super-sensible on his own, hearing it and letting it reveal itself. And when he is able to link what he receives through Inspiration so intensely with his own being that he becomes capable of moulding it, then Imagination comes about.

In speech we have something which makes its appearance in an external picture, though it is an external picture which is extraordinarily similar to Inspiration. We might say that what we bear in our soul when we speak resembles Intuition; and what lies on our tongue, in our palate, comes out between our teeth and settles on our lips when we speak is the sense-perceptible image of Inspiration.

But where is the origin of what we push outwards from our inner soul life in speech? It originates in the mobile shape of our body, or I could say in our bodily structure in movement. Our ability to move our legs as well as our arms and hands and fingers is what gives us as little children our first opportunity to sense our relationship with the outside world. The first experience capable of entering into the consciousness of our soul is what we have in the physical movement of arms, hands and legs. The other movements are more connected with the human being. But the limbs which we stretch out into the space around us are what gives us a sense of the world. And when we stretch out our legs in a stride or a leap, or our arms to grasp something, or our fingers to feel something, then whatever we experience in doing this streams back to us. And as it streams back, it seizes hold of tongue, palate and larynx and becomes speech.

Thus in his organism the human being is through movement an expression of man as a whole. When you begin to understand this you sense that what in speech resembles Inspiration can descend into Imagination. We can call back something that is a gift to our limbs, to our tongue, our larynx and our palate and so on, we can recall it and let it stream back, asking: What kind of feelings, what kind of sensations stream outwards in our organism in order to create the sound Ah? We shall always discover that an Ah arises through something which expresses itself in one way or another in the air, through a particular movement of our organs of speech; or an Eh in optical axes crossing over, and so on. Then we shall be able to take what has streamed out in this way and become a sound or element of speech, and send it back into our whole being, into our human being of limbs, thus receiving in place of what causes speech to resemble Inspiration something else instead, something which can be seen and shaped and which therefore resembles Imagination.

So actually eurythmy came into existence when what works unconsciously in the human being to transform his capacity for movement into speech is subsequently recalled from speech and returned to the capacity for movement. Thus an element which belongs to Inspiration becomes an element belonging to Imagination.

Therefore an understanding of eurythmy is closely linked with discovering through eurythmy how Intuition, Inspiration and Imagination are related. Of course we can only show this in pictures, but the pictures speak clearly.

Consider, dear friends, a poem living in your soul. When you have entirely identified yourself inwardly with this poem and have taken it into yourself to such an extent and so strongly that you no longer need any words but have only feelings and can experience these feelings in your soul, then you are living in Intuition. Then let us assume that you recite or declaim the poem. You endeavour, in the vowel sounds, in the harmonies, in the rhythm, in the movement of the consonants, in tempo, beat and so on, to express in speech through recitation or declamation what lies in those feelings. What you experience when doing this is Inspiration. The element of Inspiration takes what lives purely in the soul, where it is localized in the nervous system, and pushes it down into larynx, palate and so on.

Finally let this sink down into your human limbs, so that in your own creation of form through movement you express what lies in speech; then, in the poem brought into eurythmy, you have the third element, Imagination.

In the picture of the descent of world evolution down to man you have that scale which human beings have to reascend, from Imagination through Inspiration to Intuition. In the poem transformed into eurythmy you have Imagination; in the recitation and declamation you have Inspiration as a picture; and in the entirely inward experience of the poem, in which there is no need to open your mouth because your experience is totally inward and you are utterly identified with it and have become one with it, in this you have Intuition.

In a poem transformed into eurythmy, experienced inwardly and recited, you have before you the three stages, albeit in an external picture. In eurythmy we have to do with an element of art which had from inner necessity to emerge out of the Anthroposophical Movement. What you have to do is bring into consciousness what it means to achieve knowledge of the ascent from Imagination to Inspiration, and to Intuition.

The shorthand report ends here. The eurythmy performance began after a few more words on the actual programme.

The Christmas Foundation Conference was opened on 24 December. It had been preceded during the course of the year by a number of general meetings of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland at which the problems needing an early solution were discussed. The discussions had been particularly lively during the conference of delegates from the Swiss branches of 8 December 1923,²⁰ and preparatory meetings had also taken place on 22 April and 10 June. A good many representatives of non-Swiss groups had been present as early on as the general meeting of the Verein des Goetheanum²¹ on 17 June. These non-Swiss representatives had arrived in large numbers for the international meeting of delegates from 20 to 22 July,²² which had been devoted to the problems of rebuilding the Goetheanum and establishing it on a firm financial footing.

Dr Steiner had agreed to be present at these consultations but was not prepared to take the chair. His opinion had been sought quite a number of times, and he had emphasized above all the need for a moral basis. Rudolf Steiner und die Zivilisations-aufgabe der Anthroposophie contains many of the contributions he gave on that occasion. In the minutes of the meeting of 22 April we find the following:

‘Let me add a few words, not as a statement but simply in the realm of feeling, to what has been said so far today.

‘What we would look forward to in the outcome of the recent meeting in Stuttgart,²³ and also of today's meeting—and I hope similar meetings in other countries will follow—is that they should take a definite positive course, so that something positive can genuinely emerge from the will of the meeting. Mention has been made of the way the Anthroposophical Society is organized. But you see it has to be said that what marks the Anthroposophical Society is the very fact that it is not organized in any way at all. Indeed, for the most part the membership has wanted to have nothing to do with any organizing whatever, even on a purely human level. This was manageable to a certain degree up to a particular moment. But in view of the conditions prevailing now it is impossible to carry on in this way. It is necessary now to bring about a situation in which at least the majority of the membership can represent the affairs of the Society in a positive way, or at least start by following them with interest.

‘The other day I was asked what I myself expect from this meeting. I had to point out that it is now necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to set itself a genuine task, so that it can take its place as something, with its own identity, that exists beside the Anthroposophical Movement; the Society as such must set itself a task. Until this task has emerged, the situation we have been speaking about today will never change. On the contrary, it will grow worse and worse. The organization of the opposition exists and is a reality. But for the majority of members the Anthroposophical Society is not a reality because it lacks a positive task which could arise out of a positive decision in the will. This was the reason for calling the meetings in Stuttgart and here. In Stuttgart the delegates meeting could not decide on a task for the Society. Instead it sought a way out in the suggestion that the membership of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany should be divided into two parts in the hope that out of the mutual relationship between these two Societies something might gradually develop of a kind that was not forthcoming from the delegates meeting. Today's meeting should have the great and beautiful aim of showing how the Anthroposophical Society can be set a positive and effective task which can also win the respect of those on the outside. Something great could come about today if those present would not merely sit back and listen to what individuals are putting forward so very well, as has happened so far, but if indeed out of the Society itself, out of the totality of the Society a common will could arise. If it does not, this meeting, too, will have run its course to no purpose and without result.

‘I beg you, my dear friends, not to break up today without a result. Come to the point of setting a task for the Anthroposophical Society which can win a certain degree of respect from other people.’

The Christmas Foundation Conference for the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society was opened at 10 o'clock on the morning of 24 December. Dr Steiner greeted those present and introduced the lecture by Herr Albert Steffen on the history and destiny of the Goetheanum.

• 20. Reports of these meetings will be included in GA 259. See Note 2.
• 21. See Rudolf Steiner Aufbaugedanken und Gesinnungsbildung, Dornach 1942. To be included in the Complete Works in the series ‘Zur Geschichte der anthroposophischen Bewegung und Gesellschaft’ (The History of the Anthroposophical Movement and Society).
• 22. Report to be included in GA 259. See Note 2.
• 23. See Rudolf Steiner Awakening to Community, op cit.

Allow me to announce the commencement of our Christmas Conference for the Founding of the General Anthroposophical Society. We shall in future always be of the heartfelt opinion—you will come to feel the definite rightness of this—that it will be significant for the development of the Anthroposophical Society to find its centre and its home here on Swiss soil in the manner expressed in the Statutes which I shall be suggesting to you.

The Society will in no way manifest any kind of a national character, but we shall always remain aware that we have been accepted here by our dear Swiss friends as a kind of guest in the realm of ideals, and we shall forever know how to respect this in a suitable way. Both privately and also in various public statements to our friends, I have often sought to show the importance of the fact that we have taken our place here on Swiss soil with our Goetheanum and with everything that seeks to be an Anthroposophical Society. This alone, my friends, is sufficient justification for the appearance of our dear friend Albert Steffen as the first speaker during our Christmas Foundation Conference. Of course he will speak here as a member and fellow founder of this Anthroposophical Society. But everything we feel especially in connection with the fact that the Goetheanum, as the central point of the Anthroposophical Society, stands here on Swiss soil, will be expressed symbolically when you now permit me to request Herr Albert Steffen—our dear and much respected friend, the distinguished poet whose presence among us may be counted as such great good fortune—to speak the first words of this our gathering.

Albert Steffen's lecture on the history and destiny of the Anthroposophical Society is published in the Supplement to Das Goetheanum 1924, Nos. 2, 3 and 6.

DR STEINER:

My dear Herr Steffen!

With your words that are so warm and so filled with beautiful love you have given us a wonderful prelude to our gathering here. We could not have had a more beautiful prelude than the words you have spoken to us out of an anthroposophical heart of such warmth. I am quite sure that your kind words will shine over all our gatherings and meetings like a radiant star, and that we shall owe you most cordial gratitude for the feeling in our hearts which will endure throughout the period of our gathering, engendered by the words you have spoken to us on this first morning. We may be certain of ever feeling warmly enveloped within the marvellous land of Switzerland if an attitude of mind so truly Swiss continues to surround us with an atmosphere as beautiful as that now moving among us. Your words are founded indeed on a truly Swiss attitude of mind. I know that I speak from the bottom of every heart, now that our discussions are about to begin, when I offer you, dear friend Steffen, the most cordial thanks for the wonderful way in which you have provided the prelude for what is to take place over the next few days. To you come the warmest thanks from the heart of every one here present.

We begin our Christmas Conference for the founding of the Anthroposophical Society in a new form with a view of a stark contrast. We have had to invite you, dear friends, to pay a visit to a heap of ruins. As you climbed up the Goetheanum hill here in Dornach your eyes fell on our place of work, but what you saw were the ruins of the Goetheanum which perished a year ago. In the truest sense of the word this sight is a symbol that speaks profoundly to our hearts, a symbol not only of the external manifestation of our work and endeavour on anthroposophical ground both here and in the world, but also of many symptoms manifesting in the world as a whole.

Over the last few days, a smaller group of us have also had to take stock of another heap of ruins. This too, dear friends, you should regard as something resembling the ruins of the Goetheanum, which had become so very dear to us during the preceding ten years. We could say that a large proportion of the impulses, the anthroposophical impulses, which have spread out into the world over the course of the last twenty years made their initial appearance in the books—perhaps there were too many of them—of our publishing company, the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag in Berlin. You will understand, since twenty years of work are indeed tied up in all that can be gathered under the heading ‘Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag,’ that all those who toiled to found and carry on the work of this publishing company gave of the substance of their hearts. As in the case of the Goetheanum, so also as far as the external aspect of this Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag is concerned, we are faced with a heap of ruins.²⁴ In this case it came about as a consequence of the terrible economic situation prevailing in the country where it has hitherto had its home. All possible work was prevented by a tax situation which exceeded any measures which might have been taken and by the rolling waves—quite literally—of current events which simply engulfed the publishing company.

Frau Dr Steiner has been busy over the last few weeks preparing everything anchored in this Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag for its journey here to the Goetheanum in Dornach. You can already see a small building²⁵ coming into being lower down the hill between the Boiler House and the Glass House. This will become the home of the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, or rather of its stock of books, which in itself externally also resembles a heap of ruins.

What can we do, dear friends, but link the causes of these heaps of rubble with world events which are currently running their course? The picture we see at first seems grim. It can surely be said that the flames which our physical eyes saw a year ago on New Year's Eve blazed heavenwards before the eyes of our soul. And in spirit we see that in fact these flames glow over much of what we have been building up during the last twenty years.

This, at first, is the picture with which our souls are faced. But it has to be said that nothing else at present can so clearly show us the truth of the ancient oriental view that the external world is maya and illusion. We shall, dear friends, establish a mood of soul appropriate for this our Christmas Foundation Conference if we can bring to life in our hearts the sense that the heap of ruins with which we are faced is maya and illusion, and that much of what immediately surrounds us here is maya and illusion.

Let us take our start from the immediate situation here. We have had to invite you to take your places in this wooden shed.²⁶ It is a temporary structure we have hurriedly put up over the last two days after it became clear how very many of our friends were expected to arrive. Temporary wooden partitions had to be put up next door. I have no hesitation in saying that the outer shelter for our gathering resembles nothing more than a shack erected amongst the ruins, a poor, a terribly poor shack of a home. Our initial introduction to these circumstances showed us yesterday that our friends felt the cold dreadfully in this shed, which is the best we can offer. But dear friends, let us count this frost, too, among the many other things which may be regarded as maya and illusion in what has come to meet you here. The more we can find our way into a mood which feels the external circumstances surrounding us to be maya and illusion, the more shall we develop that mood of active doing which we shall need here over the next few days, a mood which may not be negative in any way, a mood which must be positive in every detail. Now, a year after the moment when the flames of fire blazed skywards out of the dome of our Goetheanum, now everything which has been built up in the spiritual realm in the twenty years of the Anthroposophical Movement may appear before our hearts and before the eyes of our soul not as devouring flames but as creative flames. For everywhere out of the spiritual content of the Anthroposophical Movement warmth comes to give us courage, warmth which can be capable of bringing to life countless seeds for the spiritual life of the future which lie hidden here in the very soil of Dornach and all that belongs to it. Countless seeds for the future can begin to unfold their ripeness through this warmth which can surround us here, so that one day they may stand before the world as fully matured fruits as a result of what we want to do for them.

Now more than ever before we may call to mind that a spiritual movement such as that encompassed by the name of Anthroposophy, with which we have endowed it, is not born out of any earthly or arbitrary consideration. At the very beginning of our Conference I therefore want to start by reminding you that it was in the last third of the nineteenth century that on the one hand the waves of materialism were rising while out of the other side of the world a great revelation struck down into these waves, a revelation of the spirit which those whose mind and soul are in a receptive state can receive from the powers of spiritual life. A revelation of the spirit was opened up for mankind. Not from any arbitrary earthly consideration, but in obedience to a call resounding from the spiritual world; not from any arbitrary earthly consideration, but through a vision of the sublime pictures given out of the spiritual world as a modern revelation for the spiritual life of mankind, from this flowed the impulse for the Anthroposophical Movement.²⁷ This Anthroposophical Movement is not an act of service to the earth. This Anthroposophical Movement in its totality and in all its details is a service to the divine beings, a service to God. We create the right mood for it when we see it in all its wholeness as a service to God. As a service to God let us take it into our hearts at the beginning of our Conference. Let us inscribe deeply within our hearts the knowledge that this Anthroposophical Movement desires to link the soul of every individual devoted to it with the primeval sources of all that is human in the spiritual world, that this Anthroposophical Movement desires to lead the human being to that final enlightenment—that enlightenment which meanwhile in human earthly evolution is the last which gives satisfaction to man—which can clothe the newly beginning revelation in the words: Yes, this am I as a human being, as a God-willed human being on the earth, as a God-willed human being in the universe.

We shall take our starting point today from something we would so gladly have seen as our starting point years ago in 1913.²⁸ This is where we take up the thread, my dear friends, inscribing into our souls the foremost principle of the Anthroposophical Movement, which is to find its home in the Anthroposophical Society, namely, that everything in it is willed by the spirit, that this Movement desires to be a fulfilment of what the signs of the times speak in a shining script to the hearts of human beings.

The Anthroposophical Society will only endure if within ourselves we make of the Anthroposophical Movement the profoundest concern of our hearts. If we fail, the Society will not endure. The most important deed to be accomplished during the coming days must be accomplished within all your hearts, my dear friends. Whatever we say and hear will only become a starting point for the cause of Anthroposophy in the right way if our heart's blood is capable of beating for it. My friends, for this reason we have brought you all together here: to call forth a harmony of hearts in a truly anthroposophical sense. And we allow ourselves to hope that this is an appeal which can be rightly understood.

My dear friends, call to mind the manner in which the Anthroposophical Movement came into being. In many and varied ways there worked in it what was to be a revelation of the spirit for the approaching twentieth century. In contrast to so much that is negative, it is surely permissible to point emphatically here to the positive side: to the way in which the many and varied forms of spiritual life, which flowed in one way or another into the inner circles of outer society, genuinely entered into the hearts of our dear anthroposophical friends. Thus at a certain point we were able to advance far enough to show in the Mystery Dramas how intimate affairs of the human heart and soul are linked to the grand sweep of historical events in human evolution. I do believe that during those four or five years—a time much loved and dear to our hearts—when the Mystery Dramas were performed in Munich,²⁹ a good deal of all that is involved in this link between the individual human soul and the divine working of the cosmos in the realms of soul and spirit did indeed make its way through the souls of our friends.

Then came something of which the horrific consequences are known to every one of you: the event we call the World War. During those difficult times, all efforts had to be concentrated on conducting the affairs of Anthroposophy in a way which would bring it unscathed through all the difficulties and obstacles which were necessarily the consequence of that World War.

It cannot be denied that some of the things which had necessarily to be done out of the situation arising at the time were misunderstood, even in the circles of our anthroposophical friends. Not until some future time will it be possible for more than a few people to form a judgment on those moods which caused mankind to be split into so many groups over the last decade, on those moods which led to the World War. As yet there exists no proper judgment about the enormity which lives among us all as a consequence of that World War. Thus it can be said that the Anthroposophical Society—not the Movement—has emerged riven from the War.

Our dear friend Herr Steffen has already pointed out a number of matters which then entered into our Anthroposophical Society and in no less a manner also led to misunderstandings. Today, however, I want to dwell mainly on all that is positive. I want to tell you that if this gathering runs its course in the right way, if this gathering really reaches an awareness of how something spiritual and esoteric must be the foundation for all our work and existence, then those spiritual seeds which are everywhere present will be enabled to germinate through being warmed by your mood and your enthusiasm. Today we want to generate a mood which can accept in full earnestness that external things are maya and illusion but that out of this maya and illusion there germinates to our great joy—not a joy for our weakness but a joy for our strength and for the will we now want to unfold—something that can live invisibly among us, something that can live in innumerable seeds invisibly among us. Prepare your souls, dear friends, so that they may receive these seeds; for your souls are the true ground and soil in which these seeds of the spirit may germinate, unfold and develop. They are the truth. They shine forth as though with the shining of the sun, bathing in light all the seeming ruins encountered by our external eyes. Today, of all days, let us allow the profoundest call of Anthroposophy, indeed of everything spiritual, to shine into our souls: Outwardly all is maya and illusion; inwardly there unfolds the fullness of truth, the fullness of divine and spiritual life. Anthroposophy shall bring into life all that is recognized as truth within it.

Where do we bring into life the teaching of maya and of the light of truth? Let us bring it into life above all during this our Christmas Conference. Let us during this our Christmas Conference make the shining forth of the universal light—as it shone before the shepherds, who bore within them only the simplicity of their hearts, and before the kingly magi, who bore within them the wisdom of all the universe—let us make this flaming Christmas light, this universal light of Christmas into a symbol for what is to come to pass through our own hearts and souls!

All else that is to be said I shall say tomorrow when what we shall call the laying of the Foundation Stone of the Anthroposophical Society takes place. Now I wish to say this, my dear friends. In recent weeks I have pondered deeply in my soul the question: What should be the starting point for this Christmas Conference, and what lessons have we learnt from the experiences of the past ten years since the founding of the Anthroposophical Society?

Out of all this, my dear friends, two alternative questions arose. In 1912, 1913 I said for good reasons that the Anthroposophical Society would now have to run itself, that it would have to manage its own affairs, and that I would have to withdraw into a position of an adviser who did not participate directly in any actions. Since then things have changed. After grave efforts in the past weeks to overcome my inner resistance I have now reached the realization that it would become impossible for me to continue to lead the Anthroposophical Movement within the Anthroposophical Society if this Christmas Conference were not to agree that I should once more take on in every way the leadership, that is the presidency, of the Anthroposophical Society to be founded here in Dornach at the Goetheanum.

As you know, during a conference in Stuttgart³⁰ it became necessary for me to make the difficult decision to advise the Society in Germany to split into two Societies, one which would be the continuation of the old Society and one in which the young members would chiefly be represented, the Free Anthroposophical Society.

Let me tell you, my dear friends, that the decision to give this advice was difficult indeed. It was so grave because fundamentally such advice was a contradiction of the very foundations of the Anthroposophical Society. For if this was not the Society in which today's youth could feel fully at home, then what other association of human beings in the earthly world of today was there that could give them this feeling! Such advice was an anomaly. This occasion was perhaps one of the most important symptoms contributing to my decision to tell you here that I can only continue to lead the Anthroposophical Movement within the Anthroposophical Society if I myself can take on the presidency of the Anthroposophical Society, which is to be newly founded. You see, at the turn of the century something took place very deeply indeed within spiritual events, and the effects of this are showing in the external events in the midst of which human beings stand here on earth.

One of the greatest possible changes took place in the spiritual realm. Preparation for it began at the end of the 1870s, and it reached its culmination just at the turn of the century. Ancient Indian wisdom pointed to it, calling it the end of Kali Yuga. Much, very much, my dear friends, is meant by this. And when in recent times I have met in all kinds of ways with young people in all the countries of the world accessible to me, I have had to say to myself over and over again: Everything that beats in these youthful hearts, everything which glows towards spiritual activity in such a beautiful and often such an indeterminate way, this is the external expression for what came to completion in the depths of spiritual world-weaving during the last third of the nineteenth century leading up to the twentieth century. My dear friends, what I now want to say is not something negative but something positive so far as I am concerned: I have frequently found, when I have gone to meet young people, that their endeavours to join one organization or another encountered difficulties because again and again the form of the association did not fit whatever it was that they themselves wanted. There was always some condition or other as to what sort of a person you had to be or what you had to do if you wanted to join any of these organizations.

This is the kind of thing that was involved in the feeling that the chief disadvantage of the Theosophical Society—out of which the Anthroposophical Society grew, as you know—lay in the formulation of its three tenets.³¹ You had to profess something. The way in which you had to sign a form, which made it look as though you had to make some dogmatic assertion, is something which nowadays simply no longer agrees with the fundamental mood of human souls. The human soul today feels that anything dogmatic is foreign to it; to carry on in any kind of a sectarian way is fundamentally foreign to it. And it cannot be denied that within the Anthroposophical Society it is proving difficult to cast off this sectarian way of carrying on. But cast it off we must. Not a shred must be allowed to remain within the new Anthroposophical Society which shall be founded. This must become a true world society. Anyone joining it must feel: Yes, here I have found what moves me. An old person must feel: Here I have found something for which I have striven all my life together with other people. The young person must feel: Here I have found something which comes out to meet my youth. When the Free Anthroposophical Society was founded I longed dearly to reply to young people who enquired after the conditions for joining it with the answer which I now want to give: The only condition is to be truly young in the sense that one is young when one's youthful soul is filled with all the impulses of the present time.

And, dear friends, how do you go about being old in the proper sense in the Anthroposophical Society? You are old in the proper sense if you have a heart for what is welling up into mankind today both for young and old out of spiritual depths by way of a universal youthfulness, renewing every aspect of our lives.

By hinting at moods of soul I am indicating what it was that moved me to take on the task of being President of the Anthroposophical Society myself. This Anthroposophical Society—such things can often happen—has been called by a good many names. Thus, for example, it has been called the ‘International Anthroposophical Society’. Dear friends, it is to be neither an international nor a national society. I beg you heartily never to use the word ‘international society’ but always to speak simply of a ‘General Anthroposophical Society’ which wants to have its centre here at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

You will see that the Statutes are formulated in a way that excludes anything administrative, anything that could ever of its own accord turn into bureaucracy. These Statutes are tuned to whatever is purely human. They are not tuned to principles or to dogmas. What these Statutes say is taken from what is actual and what is human. These Statutes say: Here in Dornach is the Goetheanum. This Goetheanum is run in a particular way. In this Goetheanum work of this kind and of that kind is undertaken. In this Goetheanum endeavours are made to promote human evolution in this way or in that way. Whether these things are ‘right’ or ‘not right’ is something that must not be stated in statutes which are intended to be truly modern. All that is stated is the fact that a Goetheanum exists, that human beings are connected with this Goetheanum, and that these human beings do certain things in this Goetheanum in the belief that through doing so they are working for human evolution.

Those who wish to join this Society are not expected to adhere to any principle. No religious confession, no scientific conviction, no artistic intention is set up in any dogmatic way. The only thing that is required is that those who join should feel at home in being linked to what is going on at the Goetheanum.

In the formulation of these Statutes the endeavour has been made to avoid establishing principles, so that what is here founded may rest on all that is purely human. Look carefully at the people who will make suggestions with regard to what is to be founded here over the next few days. Ask yourselves whether you can trust them or not. And if at this Foundation Meeting you declare yourselves satisfied with what wants to be brought about in Dornach, then you will have declared yourselves for something that is a fact; then you will have declared yourselves to be in tune with something that is a fact. If this is possible, everything else will follow on. Yes, everything will run its course. Then it will not be necessary for the centre at Dornach to designate or nominate a whole host of trustees; then the Anthroposophical Society will be what I have often pointed to when to my deep satisfaction I have been permitted to be present at the founding of the individual national Societies.³² Then the Anthroposophical Society will be something that can arise independently on the foundation of all that has come into being in these national Societies. If this can come about, then these national Societies will be truly autonomous too. Then every group which comes into being within this Anthroposophical Society will be truly autonomous.

In order to reach this truly human standpoint, my dear friends, we must realize that especially in the case of a Society which is built on spiritual foundations, in the way I have described, we shall come up against two difficulties. We must overcome these difficulties here, so that in future they will no longer exist in the way they existed in the past history of the Anthroposophical Society.

One of these difficulties is the following: Everyone who understands the consciousness of today will, I believe, agree that this present-day consciousness demands that whatever takes place should do so in full public view. A Society built on firm foundations must above all else not offend this demand of our time. It is not at all difficult to prefer secrecy, even in the external form, in one case or another. But whenever a Society like ours, built on a foundation of truth, seriously desires secrecy, it will surely find itself in conflict with contemporary consciousness, and the most dire obstacles for its continuing existence will ensue. Therefore, dear friends, for the General Anthroposophical Society which is to be founded we cannot but lay claim to absolute openness.

As I pointed out in one of my very first essays in Luzifer-Gnosis,³³ the Anthroposophical Society must stand before the world just like any other society that may be founded for, let us say, scientific or similar purposes. It must differ from all these other societies solely on account of the content that flows through its veins. The form in which people come together in it can, in future, no longer be different from that of any other society. Picture to yourselves what we can shovel out of the way if we declare from the start that the Anthroposophical Society is to be entirely open.

It is essential for us to stand firmly on a foundation of reality, that is on the foundation of present-day consciousness. This will mean, dear friends, that in future we shall have to handle our lecture cycles in a manner that differs greatly from that to which we have been accustomed in the past. The history of these lecture cycles represents a tragic chapter within the development of our Anthroposophical Society. They were first published in the belief that they could be retained within a given circle; they were printed for the members of the Anthroposophical Society. But we have long been in a situation in which our opponents, so far as the public declaration of the content is concerned, are far more interested in the cycles than are the members of the Society themselves. Do not misunderstand me; I do not mean that the members of our Society do not work inwardly with the lecture cycles, for they do. But their work is inward, it remains egoistic, a nice Society egoism. The interest which sends its waves out into the world, the interest which gives our Society its particular stamp in the world, this interest comes towards the cycles from our opponents. It has been known to happen that as little as three weeks after its publication a lecture cycle is already being quoted in the worst kind of publication brought out by the opposition. To continue in our old ways as regards the lecture cycles would be to hide our head in the sand, believing that because everything is dark for us everything must be dark in the outside world too.

That is why I have been asking myself for years what can be done about the cycles. We now have no alternative but to put up a moral barrier in place of the physical barrier we tried to erect earlier on, which has meanwhile been breached at all manner of points.

In the draft of the Statutes I have endeavoured to do just this. In future all the cycles, without exception, are to be sold publicly, just like any other books. But suppose, dear friends, there was a book about the integration of partial differential equations. For a great many people such a book is very esoteric indeed. I am probably not wrong in assuming that among those of you gathered here in these two rooms today there is only an extremely small esoteric circle of individuals who might fruitfully concern themselves with the integration of partial differential equations, or of linear differential equations. The book, however, may be sold to anybody. But supposing someone who knows nothing of partial differential equations and is incapable of differentiating or integrating anything at all, someone who knows nothing about logarithms, were to find a textbook on the subject belonging to one of his sons. He would look inside it, see rows and rows of figures but not understand a thing. Then suppose his sons were to tell him that all these figures were the street numbers of the houses in every city in the world. He might well think to himself: What a useful thing to learn; now if I go to Paris I shall know the street number of all the different houses.

As you see, there is no harm in the judgment of someone who understands nothing of the matter, for he is a dilettante, an amateur. In this instance life itself draws the line between the capacity to judge and the lack of capacity to judge.

Thus as regards anthroposophical knowledge we can at least try to draw the line morally and no longer physically. We sell the cycles to all who wish to have them but declare from the start who can be considered competent to form a valid judgment on them, a judgment by which we can set some store. Everybody else is an amateur as far as the cycles are concerned. And we also declare that in future we shall no longer take any account of judgments passed on the cycles by those who are amateurs. This is the only moral protection available to us. If only we carry it out properly, we shall bring about a situation in which the matters with which we are concerned are treated just as are books about the integration of partial differential equations. People will gradually come to agree that it is just as absurd for someone, however learned in other spheres, to pass a judgment about a lecture cycle as it is for someone who knows nothing of logarithms to say: This book about partial differential equations is stuff and nonsense! We must bring about a situation in which the distinction between an amateur and an expert can be drawn in the right way.

Another very great difficulty, dear friends, is the fact that the impulses of the Anthroposophical Movement are not everywhere thoroughly assessed in the right way. Judgments are heard here and there which absolutely deny the Anthroposophical Movement by seeing it as something that is parallel to the very things it is supposed to replace in human evolution. Only a few days ago somebody once again said to me: If you speak to such and such a group of people about what Anthroposophy has to offer, even those who work only in the practical realm accept it so long as you don't mention Anthroposophy or the threefold social order by name; you have to disown them. This is something that has been done by a great many people for many years, and it could not be more false. Whatever the realm, we must stand in the world under the sign of the full truth as representatives of the essence of Anthroposophy. We must be aware that if we are incapable of doing so we cannot actually further the aims of the Anthroposophical Movement. Any veiled representation of the Anthroposophical Movement leads in the end to no good.

Of course everything is individual in such matters. Not everything can be made to conform to a single pattern. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean.

Take eurythmy. As I said yesterday before the performance, eurythmy is drawn and cultivated from the very depths of Anthroposophy. We have to be aware that, imperfect though it still is, it places something in the world which is entirely new, something original which can in no way be compared with anything else that may seem to resemble it in the world today. We have to muster enough enthusiasm for our cause to enable us to exclude any external, superficial comparisons. I know how a sentence like this can be misunderstood, but nevertheless I say it to you in this circle, my dear friends, for it expresses one of the fundamental conditions required for the prospering of the Anthroposophical Movement within the Anthroposophical Society.

Similarly, I have sweated much blood lately—I speak symbolically, of course—over the new form of recitation and declamation which Frau Dr Steiner has developed in our Society. As with eurythmy, the nerve-centre of this form of declaiming or reciting is what is drawn and cultivated from the very depths of Anthroposophy, and it is with this nerve-centre that we must concern ourselves. This nerve-centre is what we have to recognize and there is no point in believing that the result can be improved by taking on board any bits and pieces which might also be good, or even better, belonging to similar methods elsewhere. It is of this absolutely new, this primary quality that we must be aware in all the realms of Anthroposophy.

Now a third example: A realm in which Anthroposophy can be especially fruitful is that of medicine. Yet Anthroposophy will quite definitely remain unfruitful in the realm of medicine, especially therapy, if the tendency persists to represent matters within the field of medicine in the Anthroposophical Movement in a manner which meets with the approval of those who represent medicine in the ordinary way today. We must carry Anthroposophy courageously into every realm, including medicine. Only then will we make progress in what eurythmy ought to be, in what recitation and declamation ought to be, in what medicine ought to be, not to mention many other different fields living within our Anthroposophical Society, just as we must make progress with Anthroposophy itself in the strict sense of the term.

Herewith I have at least hinted at the fundamental conditions which must be placed before our hearts at the beginning of our Conference for the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society. In the manner indicated it must become a Society of attitudes and not a Society of statutes. The Statutes are to express externally what is alive within every soul.

So now I would like to proceed to the reading³⁴ of the draft of the Statutes^A which go in the direction I have thus far mentioned in brief.

STATUTES OF THE ANTHROPOSOPHICAL SOCIETY’

‘1. The Anthroposophical Society is to be an association of people whose will it is to nurture the life of the soul, both in the individual and in human society, on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.’

‘2. The persons gathered at the Goetheanum in Dornach at Christmas, 1923, both the individuals and the groups represented, form the nucleus of the Society. They are convinced that there exists in our time a genuine science of the spiritual world and that the civilization of today is lacking the cultivation of such a science. This cultivation is to be the task of the Anthroposophical Society. It will endeavour to fulfil this task by making the anthroposophical spiritual science cultivated at the Goetheanum in Dornach the centre of its activities, together with all that results from this for brotherhood in human relationships and for the moral and religious as well as the artistic and cultural life in the human being.’

Note, my dear friends, how we are thus building not on principles but on human beings, on those human beings who are gathered together here. And what will those who join later declare? That they are essentially in agreement with these people as regards what is stated here. So all abstractions are avoided and the Anthroposophical Society is built on human beings.

‘3.The persons gathered in Dornach as the nucleus of the Society’—you see how it is the individual people who are important—‘recognize and endorse the view of the leadership at the Goetheanum: “Anthroposophy, as fostered at the Goetheanum, leads to results which can serve every human being as a stimulus to spiritual life, whatever his nation, social standing or religion. They can lead to a social life genuinely built on brotherly love. No special degree of academic learning is required to make them one's own and to found one's life upon them, but only an open-minded human nature.” ’

This means that the results can be understood by all human beings who approach with an open-minded soul.

The matter is different—this is expressed next—as regards the research which leads to the results in question. A strict distinction must be made as regards this research. So the text continues:

‘ “Research into these results, however, as well as competent evaluation of them, depends upon spiritual-scientific training, which is to be acquired step by step. These results are in their own way as exact as the results of genuine natural science. When they attain general recognition in the same way as these, they will bring about comparable progress in all spheres of life, not only in the spiritual but also in the practical realm.” ’

‘4. The Anthroposophical Society is in no sense a secret society, but is entirely public. Anyone can become a member, without regard to nationality, social standing, religion, scientific or artistic conviction, who considers as justified the existence of an institution such as the Goetheanum in Dornach, in its capacity as a School of Spiritual Science.’

As you see, even here, where the requirements for becoming a member are exactly defined, we have been careful to make it clear that someone desiring to become a member must consider as justified the existence not of the Goetheanum, but merely ‘of an institution such as the Goetheanum in Dornach, in its capacity as a School of Spiritual Science.’ You must thoroughly consider every turn of phrase in these draft Statutes. They are brief. Statutes ought to be brief, and not fill a whole tome. But you will see that the effort has been made to phrase every sentence in a manner which speaks out of direct consciousness.

‘The Anthroposophical Society rejects any kind of sectarian activity. Party politics it considers not to be within its task.’

We need this sentence because numerous misunderstandings were brought about during the years when we were promoting the idea of the threefold social order. The misunderstandings arose out of a lack of clarity in the attitude of many of our members. The impression was frequently given that Anthroposophy wanted to become involved in the political affairs of the world—something that has never been and never can be the case—because many of our friends approached the political parties regarding the threefold idea. This was an error on their part right from the start.

‘5. The Anthroposophical Society sees the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach as a centre for its activity. The School will be composed of three classes.’

Please do not be alarmed by these three classes, my dear friends. These three classes existed originally in the Anthroposophical Society,³⁵ though in a different form, up to the year 1914.

‘Members of the Society will be admitted to the School on their own application after a period of membership to be determined by the leadership at the Goetheanum. They enter in this way the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science. Admission to the Second or Third Class takes place when the person requesting this is deemed eligible by the leadership at the Goetheanum.’

‘6.Every member of the Anthroposophical Society has the right to attend all lectures, performances and meetings arranged by the Society, under conditions to be announced by the Vorstand.’

‘7. The organizing of the School of Spiritual Science is, to begin with, the responsibility of Rudolf Steiner, who will appoint his collaborators and his possible successor.’

I can tell you now that I intend in future to divide this School of Spiritual Science into separate Sections under the leadership of suitable persons whom I shall appoint. These suitable persons, who will be the leaders of the Sections of the School of Spiritual Science, will at the same time be advisory members of the Vorstand which is to be formed and about which I shall be speaking shortly.

‘8. All publications of the Society shall be public, in the same sense as are those of other public societies. The publications of the School of Spiritual Science will form no exception as regards this public character;’—in future, the lecture cycles will be entitled: Publications of the School of Spiritual Science—‘however, the leadership of the School reserves the right to deny in advance the validity of any judgment on these publications which is not based on the same training from which they have been derived. Consequently they will regard as justified no judgment which is not based on an appropriate preliminary training, as is also the common practice in the recognized scientific world. Thus the publications of the School of Spiritual Science’—this is what the cycles will be in future—‘will bear the following note: “Printed as manuscript for members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, ... Class.” No one is considered competent to judge the content, who has not acquired—through the School itself or in a manner recognized by the School as equivalent—the requisite preliminary knowledge. Other opinions will be disregarded, to the extent that the authors of such works will not enter into a discussion about them.’

Everyone can buy the works. But valid judgments can only be made by those who belong to the Class mentioned in the note ‘Printed as manuscript for members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, ... Class’.

‘9.The purpose of the Anthroposophical Society will be the furtherance of spiritual research; that of the School of Spiritual Science will be this research itself. A dogmatic stand in any field whatsoever is to be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society.’

‘10.The Anthroposophical Society shall hold a regular General Meeting at the Goetheanum at the beginning of each year, at which time the Vorstand shall present a full report with accounting. The agenda for this meeting shall be communicated by the Vorstand to all members, together with the invitation, three weeks before the meeting.’

Resolutions can of course be made about this.

‘The Vorstand may call special meetings and fix the agenda for them. Invitations to such meetings shall be sent to members three weeks in advance. Motions proposed by individual members or groups of members shall be submitted one week before the General Meeting.’

We shall have to add a passage here stating that special meetings may also be called at the request of the membership.

‘11. Members may join together in smaller or larger groups on any basis of locality or subject.’

From the point of view of the General Society this paragraph encompasses every group, including each national group. The General Society is neither international nor national but simply human in the widest sense; all the subdivisions are therefore groups. By this means we can bring into the Anthroposophical Society a life that is genuinely based on freedom, and also, wherever it wants to come into being, a life that is autonomous. We cannot make progress in any other way.

‘The headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society is at the Goetheanum. From there the Vorstand shall bring to the attention of the members or groups of members what it considers to be the task of the Society.’

My dear friends, this sentence is especially important because it expresses what the Vorstand considers itself to be. It does not consider itself to be an elected body. It considers itself to be a group of people which says: Here at the Goetheanum we want to do something and we shall communicate about the different things we do with those who so wish, either individuals or groups; we shall recognize as a member every individual or every group who can accept these Statutes and be in agreement with them.

In doing this, the Vorstand declares that it places itself within the Society in the freest manner possible: it wants nothing else but to be a group of people with initiative for the cause of Anthroposophy. To live fully in initiative for the cause of Anthroposophy will have to be the heart's blood of this Vorstand. It is not a representative of people in the abstract; it is a representative of the anthroposophical cause here at the Goetheanum. Its task is to represent the cause of Anthroposophy here at the Goetheanum. And to declare one's membership of a society for which this Vorstand wants to have meaning means to join in the promotion of the cause of Anthroposophy. The membership and the Vorstand, and their relationship with one another, is thought of as being quite generally human in an entirely free way in the future. We have not achieved this as yet; we must make it obvious to all the world. Then there will be no more criticisms like that expressed by Leisegang³⁶ to the effect that a self-appointed Vorstand, not accountable to anybody, not elected anywhere, has been in existence for the last ten years. From the start we must stress forcefully that an election as such is impossible in the Anthroposophical Society and that only initiative is possible. Let us return to the Vorstand:

‘The Vorstand communicates with officials elected or appointed by the various groups.’

How these come into being is a matter for the statutes of the different groups. For us here it will merely be a matter that on a basis we shall create we shall want to communicate with trust with these officials.

‘Admission of members will be the concern of the individual groups; the certificate of membership shall, however, be placed before the Vorstand in Dornach, and shall be signed by them out of their confidence in the officials of the groups. In general, every member should join a group. Only those for whom it is quite impossible to find entry to a group should apply directly to Dornach for membership.’

‘12. Membership dues shall be fixed by the individual groups; each group shall, however, submit ... for each of its members to the central leadership of the Society at the Goetheanum.’

I have put dots here, though I already have an opinion which I may well voice if it comes to it. But for the moment I have put dots so that the matter may be as broadly considered as possible before tomorrow's discussions. For money is something we shall need here too. I have often indicated that idealism cannot take the form of saying: Oh, horrible ahrimanic money; let us not contaminate our ideals with it; our ideals should be as free from it as they possibly can be! The left fist clutches the purse-strings while the right hand is raised on high for the ideals. Alas, the uncomfortable gesture of putting that right hand into the left pocket is sometimes necessary; if the ideals are to be upheld, small sacrifices are necessary.

‘13. Each working group formulates its own statutes, but these must not be incompatible with the Statutes of the Anthroposophical Society.’

‘14. The organ of the Society is Das Goetheanum, which for this purpose is provided with a Supplement containing the official communications of the Society. This enlarged edition of Das Goetheanum will be supplied to members of the Anthroposophical Society only.’

This paragraph is of particular concern to me because wherever I go members with a good capacity to judge have been saying to me: We never seem to hear what is going on in the Anthroposophical Society. By instituting this journal we shall be able to conduct a careful correspondence which will more and more come to be a correspondence belonging to each one of you, and through it you will be able to live right in the midst of the Anthroposophical Society.

Now, my dear friends, in case after due consideration you should indeed come to agree with my appointment as President of the Anthroposophical Society, I still have to make my suggestions as to the membership of the Vorstand with whom I should actually be able to fulfil the tasks which I have indicated very briefly here.

So that the affairs of Anthroposophy can be truly and properly administered, members of the Vorstand must be people who reside here in Dornach. So far as my estimation of the Society is concerned, the Vorstand cannot consist of individuals who are situated all over the place. This will not prevent the individual groups from electing their own officials autonomously. And when these officials come to Dornach, they will be taken into the meetings of the Vorstand as advisory members while they are here. We must make the whole thing come to life. Instead of a bureaucratic Vorstand scattered all over the world there will be officials responsible for the individual groups, officials arising from amongst the membership of the groups; they will always have the opportunity to feel themselves equal members of the Vorstand which, however, will be located in Dornach. The work itself will have to be taken care of by the Vorstand in Dornach.

Moreover, the members of the Vorstand must without question be people who have devoted their lives entirely, both outwardly and inwardly, to the cause of Anthroposophy. So now after long deliberations over the past weeks I shall take the liberty of presenting to you my suggestions for the membership of the Vorstand:

I believe there will nowhere arise even the faintest hint of dissension but that on the contrary there will be in all your hearts the most unanimous and fullest agreement to the suggestion that Herr Albert Steffen be appointed as Vice-president. (Lively applause)

This being the case, we have in the Vorstand itself an expression of something I have already mentioned today: our links, as the Anthroposophical Society, with Switzerland. I cannot express my conviction more emphatically than by saying to you: If it is a matter of having a Swiss citizen who will give all his strength as a member of the Vorstand and as Vice-president, then there is no better Swiss citizen to be found.

Next we shall have in the Vorstand an individual who has been united with the Anthroposophical Society from the very beginning, who has for the greater part built up the Anthroposophical Society and who is today active in an anthroposophical way in one of the most important fields: Frau Dr Steiner. (Lively applause)

With your applause you have said everything and clearly shown that we need have no fear that our choice in this direction might not have been quite appropriate.

A further member of the Vorstand I have to suggest on the basis of facts arising here over recent weeks. This is the person with whom I at present have the opportunity to test anthroposophical enthusiasm to its limits in the right way by working with her on the elaboration of the anthroposophical system of medicine: Frau Dr Ita Wegman. (Lively applause)

Through her work—and especially through her understanding of her work—she has shown that in this specialized field she can assert the effectiveness of Anthroposophy in the right way. I know that the effects of this work will be beneficial. That is why I have taken it upon myself to work immediately with Frau Dr Wegman on developing the anthroposophical system of medicine.³⁷ It will appear before the eyes of the world and then we shall see that particularly in members who work in this way we have the real friends of the Anthroposophical Society.

Another member I have to suggest is one who has been tried and tested in the utmost degree for the work in Dornach both in general and down to the very last detail, one who has ever proved herself to be a faithful member. I do believe—without intending to sound boastful—that the members of the Vorstand have indeed been rightly selected. Albert Steffen was an anthroposophist before he was even born, and this ought to be duly recognized. Frau Dr Steiner has of course always been an anthroposophist ever since an Anthroposophical Society has existed. Frau Dr Wegman was one of the very first members who joined in the work just after we did in the very early days. She has been a member of the Anthroposophical Movement for over twenty years. Apart from us, she is the longest standing member in this room. And another member of very long standing is the person I now mean, who has been tried and tested down to the very last detail as a most faithful colleague; you may indeed be satisfied with her down to the very last detail: Fräulein Dr Lili Vreede. (Applause)

We need furthermore in the anthroposophical Vorstand an individual who will take many cares off our shoulders, cares which cannot all be borne by us because of course the initiatives have to be kept separate. This is someone who will have to think on everyone's behalf, for this is necessary even when the others—again without intending to sound boastful—also make the effort to use their heads intelligently in anthroposophical matters. What is needed is someone who, so to speak, does not knock heads together but does hold them together. This is an individual who many will feel still needs to be tried and tested, but I believe that he will master every trial. This will be our dear Dr Guenther Wachsmuth who in everything he is obliged to do for us here has already shown his mastery of a good many trials which have made it obvious that he is capable of working with others in a most harmonious manner. As time goes on we shall find ourselves much satisfied with him. I hope, then, that you will agree to the appointment of Dr Guenther Wachsmuth, not as the cashier—which he does not want to be—but as the secretary and treasurer. (Applause)

The Vorstand must be kept small, and so my list is now exhausted, my dear friends. And the time allotted for our morning meeting has also run out. I just want to call once more on all our efforts to bring into this gathering above all the appropriate mood of soul, more and yet more mood of soul. Out of this anthroposophical mood of soul will arise what we need for the next few days. And if we have it for the next few days we shall also have it for the future times we are about to enter for the Anthroposophical Society. I have appealed to your hearts; I have appealed to the wisdom in you which your hearts can fill with glowing warmth and enthusiasm. May we sustain this glowing warmth and this enthusiasm throughout the coming meetings and thus achieve something truly fruitful over the next few days.

There are two more announcements to be made: This afternoon there will be two performances of one of the Christmas Plays, the Paradise Play. The first will take place at 4.30. Those who cannot find a seat then will be able to see it at 6 o'clock. Everybody will have a chance to see this play today.

Our next meeting is at 8 o'clock this evening when my first lecture on world history in the light of Anthroposophy will take place.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 10 o'clock we shall gather here for the laying of the Foundation Stone of the Anthroposophical Society, and, following straight on from that will be the Foundation Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society.

The meeting of General Secretaries and delegates planned for this afternoon will not take place because it will be better to hold it after the Foundation Meeting has taken place. It will be tomorrow at 2.30 in the Glass House lower down the hill, in the Architects' Office. That will be the meeting of the Vorstand, the General Secretaries and those who are their secretaries.

If Herr Abels could now come up here, I would request you to collect your meal tickets from him. To avoid chaos down at the canteen there will be different sittings and we hope that everything will proceed in an orderly fashion.

• 24. See Marie Steiner's Foreword. In Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht 1926, No.39, she remarked in a footnote: ‘To avoid misunderstandings it should be said that the impression of a heap of rubble was gained entirely from the impossible tax burdens in Germany, the delays in customers' payments and the daily increase in the rate of monetary devaluation. Added to this was the sight of everything packed into a pile of crates. The company's intrinsic worth was such that under normal conditions it soon began to flourish once more.’
• 25. See Erich Zimmer Rudolf Steiner als Architekt von Wohn- und Zweckbauten (Rudolf Steiner. An Architect of Dwellings and other Buildings with Specific Purposes), Stuttgart 1971.
• 26. It had been necessary to enlarge the carpentry workshop in order to accommodate the influx of participants.
• 27. See Rudolf Steiner Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der ersten Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904–1914 (On the History and from the Content of the Esoteric School 1904–1914). GA 264.
• 28. See the lecture given in Berlin on 3 February 1913 ‘Das Wesen der Anthroposophie’ in Schickalszeichen auf dem Entwicklungswege der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft to be included in the Complete Works in the series ‘Zur Geschichte der anthroposophischen Bewegung und Gesellschaft’.
• 29. Rudolf Steiner's four Mystery Dramas were first performed during the years 1910 to 1913. See Rudolf Steiner Four Mystery Plays, Steiner Book Centre, Toronto, 1973.
• 30. Meeting of Delegates at the end of February 1923. See Note 23.
• 31. The three objects of the Theosophical Society are:
  
  1. To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour.
  2. To encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy and science.
  3. To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man.
• 32. See Note 2.
• 33. See Rudolf Steiner's essay ‘Lebensfragen der theosophischen Gesellschaft’ (Existential Questions for the Theosophical Society) in Luzifer-Gnosis. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1903–1908. (Luzifer-Gnosis. Collected Essays 1903–1908). GA 34.
• 34. Rudolf Steiner had had the suggested Statutes printed and distributed to every participant. See Facsimile 2, Page V–VIII.
• A. See facsimiles of the manuscript draft and also the printed Statutes given to each participant (See facsimile 1, facsimile 2, pages I–VIII
• 35. See Note 27.
• 36. This refers to criticism of Anthroposophy expressed by Hans Leisegang (1890&8211;1951), lecturer at Leipzig University, in his book Die Geheirnwissenschaften (The Occult Sciences), Stuttgart 1924.
• 37. See Rudolf Steiner/Ita Wegman Fundamentals of Therapy. An Extension of the Art of Healing through Spiritual Knowledge, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1983. GA 27.

DR STEINER greets those present with the words:

My dear friends!

Let the first words to resound through this room today be those which sum up the essence of what may stand before your souls as the most important findings of recent years.^A

Later there will be more to be said about these words which are, as they stand, a summary. But first let our ears be touched by them, so that out of the signs of the present time we may renew, in keeping with our way of thinking, the ancient word of the Mysteries: ‘Know thyself.’

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

Soul of Man !
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

My dear friends! Today when I look back specifically to what it was possible to bring from the spiritual worlds while the terrible storms of war were surging across the earth, I find it all expressed as though in a paradigm in the trio of verses your ears have just heard.^B

For decades it has been possible to perceive this threefoldness of man which enables him in the wholeness of his being of spirit, soul and body to revive for himself once more in a new form the call ‘Know thyself’. For decades it has been possible to perceive this threefoldness. But only in the last decade have I myself been able to bring it to full maturity while the storms of war were raging.³⁸ I sought to indicate how man lives in the physical realm in his system of metabolism and limbs, in his system of heart and rhythm, in his system of thinking and perceiving with his head. Yesterday I indicated how this threefoldness can be rightly taken up when our hearts are enlivened through and through by Anthroposophia.

We may be sure that if man learns to know in his feeling and in his will what he is actually doing when, as the spirits of the universe enliven him, he lets his limbs place him in the world of space, that then—not in a suffering, passive grasping of the universe but in an active grasping of the world in which he fulfils his duties, his tasks, his mission on the earth—that then in this active grasping of the world he will know the being of all-wielding love of man and universe which is one member of the all-world-being.

We may be sure that if man understands the miraculous mystery holding sway between lung and heart—expressing inwardly the beat of universal rhythms working across millennia, across the aeons of time to ensoul him with the universe through the rhythms of pulse and blood—we may hope that, grasping this in wisdom with a heart that has become a sense organ, man can experience the divinely given universal images as out of themselves they actively reveal the cosmos. Just as in active movement we grasp the all-wielding love of worlds, so shall we grasp the archetypal images of world existence when we sense in ourselves the mysterious interplay between universal rhythm and heart rhythm, and through this the human rhythm that takes place mysteriously in soul and spirit realms in the interplay between lung and heart.

And when, in feeling, the human being rightly perceives what is revealed in the system of his head, which is at rest on his shoulders even when he walks along, then, feeling himself within the system of his head and pouring warmth of heart into this system of his head, he will experience the ruling, working, weaving thoughts of the universe within his own being.

Thus he becomes the threefoldness of all existence: universal love reigning in human love; universal Imagination reigning in the forms of the human organism; universal thoughts reigning mysteriously below the surface in human thoughts. He will grasp this threefoldness and he will recognize himself as an individually free human being within the reigning work of the gods in the cosmos, as a cosmic human being, an individual human being within the cosmic human being, working for the future of the universe as an individual human being within the cosmic human being. Out of the signs of the present time he will re-enliven the ancient words: ‘Know thou thyself!’

The Greeks were still permitted to omit the final word, since for them the human self was not yet as abstract as it is for us now that it has become concentrated in the abstract ego-point or at most in thinking, feeling and willing. For them human nature comprised the totality of spirit, soul and body. Thus the ancient Greeks were permitted to believe that they spoke of the total human being, spirit, soul and body, when they let resound the ancient word of the Sun, the word of Apollo: ‘Know thou thyself!’

Today, re-enlivening these words in the right way out of the signs of our times, we have to say: Soul of man, know thou thyself in the weaving existence of spirit, soul and body. When we say this, we have understood what lies at the foundation of all aspects of the being of man. In the substance of the universe there works and is and lives the spirit which streams from the heights and reveals itself in the human head; the force of Christ working in the circumference, weaving in the air, encircling the earth, works and lives in the system of our breath; and from the inmost depths of the earth rise up the forces which work in our limbs. When now, at this moment, we unite these three forces, the forces of the heights, the forces of the circumference, the forces of the depths, in a substance that gives form, then in the understanding of our soul we can bring face to face the universal dodecahedron with the human dodecahedron. Out of these three forces: out of the spirit of the heights, out of the force of Christ in the circumference, out of the working of the Father, the creative activity of the Father that streams out of the depths, let us at this moment give form in our souls to the dodecahedral Foundation Stone which we lower into the soil of our souls so that it may remain there a powerful sign in the strong foundations of our soul existence and so that in the future working of the Anthroposophical Society we may stand on this firm Foundation Stone.

Let us ever remain aware of this Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, formed today. In all that we shall do, in the outer world and here, to further, to develop and to fully unfold the Anthroposophical Society, let us preserve the remembrance of the Foundation Stone which we have today lowered into the soil of our hearts. Let us seek in the threefold being of man, which teaches us love, which teaches us the universal Imagination, which teaches us the universal thoughts; let us seek, in this threefold being, the substance of universal love which we lay as the foundation, let us seek in this threefold being the archetype of the Imagination according to which we shape the universal love within our hearts, let us seek the power of thoughts from the heights which enable us to let shine forth in fitting manner this dodecahedral Imagination which has received its form through love! Then shall we carry away with us from here what we need. Then shall the Foundation Stone shine forth before the eyes of our soul, that Foundation Stone which has received its substance from universal love and human love, its picture image, its form, from universal Imagination and human Imagination, and its brilliant radiance from universal thoughts and human thoughts, its brilliant radiance which whenever we recollect this moment can shine towards us with warm light, with light that spurs on our deeds, our thinking, our feeling and our willing.

The proper soil into which we must lower the Foundation Stone of today, the proper soil consists of our hearts in their harmonious collaboration, in their good, love-filled desire to bear together the will of Anthroposophy through the world. This will cast its light on us like a reminder of the light of thought that can ever shine towards us from the dodecahedral Stone of love which today we will lower into our hearts.

Dear friends, let us take this deeply into our souls. With it let us warm our souls, and with it let us enlighten our souls. Let us cherish this warmth of soul and this light of soul which out of good will we have planted in our hearts today.

We plant it, my dear friends, at a moment when human memory that truly understands the universe looks back to the point in human evolution, at the turning point of time, when out of the darkness of night and out of the darkness of human moral feeling, shooting like light from heaven, was born the divine being who had become the Christ, the spirit being who had entered into humankind.

We can best bring strength to that warmth of soul and that light of soul which we need, if we enliven them with the warmth and the light that shone forth at the turning point of time as the Light of Christ in the darkness of the universe. In our hearts, in our thoughts and in our will let us bring to life that original consecrated night of Christmas which took place two thousand years ago, so that it may help us when we carry forth into the world what shines towards us through the light of thought of that dodecahedral Foundation Stone of love which is shaped in accordance with the universe and has been laid into the human realm.

So let the feelings of our heart be turned back towards the original consecrated night of Christmas in ancient Palestine.

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men.
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine Christ-Sun !
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In conscious
Willing.

This turning of our feelings back to the original consecrated night of Christmas can give us the strength for the warming of our hearts and the enlightening of our heads which we need if we are to practise rightly, working anthroposophically, what can arise from the knowledge of the threefold human being coming to harmony in unity.

So let us once more gather before our souls all that follows from a true understanding of the words ‘Know thou thyself in spirit, soul and body’. Let us gather it as it works in the cosmos so that to our Stone, which we have now laid in the soil of our hearts, there may speak from everywhere into human existence and into human life and into human work everything that the universe has to say to this human existence and to this human life and to this human work.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being:
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones!
Let there ring out from the heights
What in the depths is echoed
And in the echo of the depths
The secret of the heights, resounding
Speaks:
Ex Deo nascimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul:
Through the spirits: Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai,
Let there be fired, ye spirits, from the East
What through the West is formed,
And the fire of the East,
As it receives form from the West
Speaks:
In Christo morimur.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light:
Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi !
Let there be prayed from the depths
What in the heights will be granted,
And when it is rightly understood
How it rings forth from Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi,
When from the depths is prayed
What in the heights can be answered,
Then speaks it through the world:
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.
The spirits of the elements hear it
In East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it.

My dear friends, hear it as it resounds in your own hearts! Then will you found here a true community of human beings for Anthroposophia; and then will you carry the spirit that rules in the shining light of thoughts around the dodecahedral Stone of love out into the world wherever it should give of its light and of its warmth for the progress of human souls, for the progress of the universe.

• A. In the 1985 German edition, from which this translation is made, the verses spoken here and in the subsequent sessions are given as shown in the shorthand report. See the Note on the Verses.
• B. At this point, and again in the final words of this meeting at which the Foundation Stone was laid in members' hearts, Rudolf Steiner changed for a moment from the formal mode of address to the more intimate ‘Du’. (Tr.)
• 38. For the first time in the public lecture in Berlin on 15 March 1917 in Rudolf Steiner Geist und Stoff, Leben und Tod (Spirit and Matter, Life and Death). GA 66, and in the chapter ‘Die physischen und die geistigen Abhängigkeiten der Menschenwesenheit’ ‘Physical and Spiritual Dependencies of the Being of Man’ in Rudolf Steiner Von Seelenrätseln (Of the Riddles of the Soul) GA 21.

Dr. Steiner greets those present with the words:

My dear friends!

Allow me forthwith to open the Foundation Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. My first task is to announce the names of the General Secretaries who will speak on behalf of the national Societies:

America, the United States: Mr Monges.
Austria: On behalf of the Council: Count Polzer.
Belgium: Madame Muntz.
Czechoslovakia: Dr Eiselt, Dr Krkavec.
Denmark: Herr Hohlenberg.
England: Mr Collison.
Finland: Herr Donner.
France: Mademoiselle Sauerwein.
Germany:
on behalf of the Council: Dr Unger.
on behalf of the Free Anthroposophical Society: Dr Büchenbacher.
Holland: Dr Zeylmans van Emmichoven.
Honolulu: Madame Ferreri.
Italy: On behalf of the Council:
Baroness de Renzis, Rome,
The Duke of Cesaro, Fräulein Schwarz, Milan.
Norway: Herr Ingerö.
Sweden: Fräulein Henström.
Switzerland: Herr Steffen.

Secondly I have to read to you a telegram which has arrived: ‘Please convey to the gathering our cordial greetings and best wishes for a good outcome, in the name of Sweden's anthroposophists.’

Before coming to the first point on the agenda I wish to ask whether in accordance with the rules of procedure anyone wishes to comment on the agenda?

No-one.

Then let us take the first point on the agenda. I call on Herr Steffen, who will also be speaking as the General Secretary of the Society in Switzerland, within whose boundaries we are guests here.

Albert Steffen speaks:

He concludes by reading a resolution of the Swiss delegates:

The delegates of the Swiss branches have decided to announce publicly today, on the occasion of the Foundation Meeting, the following resolution:

‘Today, on the occasion of the Foundation Meeting of the General Anthroposophical World Society in Dornach, the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland wishes to express its gratitude and enthusiasm for the fact that the Goetheanum, which serves the cultural life of all mankind, is to be built once again in Switzerland. The Swiss Society sees in this both good fortune and great honour for its country. It wishes to verify that it will do everything in its power to ensure that the inexhaustible abundance of spiritual impulses given to the world through the works of Rudolf Steiner can continue to flow out from here. In collaboration with the other national Societies it wants to hope that the pure and beneficial source may become accessible to all human beings who seek it.’

Dr. Steiner: My dear friends, in the interest of a proper continuation of the Meeting it seems to me sensible to postpone the discussion on announcements such as that we have just heard to a time which will arise naturally out of the proceedings.

For the second point on the agenda I now wish to call for the reports to be given by the various Secretaries of the various national Societies. If anyone does not agree with this arrangement of the agenda, please raise your hand.

It seems that no-one disagrees, so let us continue with the agenda. Will the different General Secretaries please come to the platform to speak to our friends. I first call on the General Secretary for the United States of America, Mr Monges, to speak.

Mr Monges gives his report.

Dr. Steiner: I would now like to call on the General Secretary for Belgium, Madame Muntz, to speak.

Madame Muntz expresses her thanks for this honour, declares herself in agreement with all the statements that have been made and wishes the Meeting all the best.

Dr. Steiner: I now call on the General Secretary for Denmark, Herr Hohlenberg, to speak.

Herr Hohlenberg reports.

Dr. Steiner: I now call on the representative of the Council in Germany, Dr Unger, to speak.

Dr. Unger reports on the work of the German national Society. He concludes with words which have been recorded in the short-hand report:

At present we require in some aspects a rather comprehensive structure to accommodate this Society. This will have to be brought into full conformity with the Statutes presented here by Dr. Steiner for the founding of the General Society. We declare that the Anthroposophical Society in Germany will incorporate every point of these Statutes into its own Statutes and that these Statutes as a whole will be given precedence over the Statutes or Rules of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. In addition I have also been especially called upon to express deep gratitude to Dr. Steiner for taking on the heavy obligations arising out of the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society. Out of all the impressions gained from this Conference, the question will have to be asked whether every aspect of the work done in a large Society such as that in Germany can participate in and wants to participate in what is wanted by Dornach. Ever since Dr. Steiner took up residence in Dornach, ever since there has been work going on in Dornach, it has always gone without saying that what took place in Dornach was seen as the central point of all our work. Whatever else needs to be said about the work of the Society in Germany will be better brought forward during the further course of our gatherings. Let me just say, however, that in recent months we have begun a very intensive public programme. Hundreds of lectures of all kinds, but particularly also those arising out of a purely anthroposophical intention, have been given, especially in the southwestern part of Germany, even in the smallest places. All those who have participated, and there are many, agree without reservation that even in the smallest places there is a genuine interest in Anthroposophy, that everywhere hearts are waiting for Anthroposophy, and that wherever it is clearly and openly stated that the speaker stands on the soil of the spiritual research given to the world by Dr. Steiner it is really so that people feel: I am reminded that I have a soul and that this soul is beginning to be aware of itself once more. This is the case in all human souls, even those found in the smallest places, so we may look with confidence towards continuing our work in future.

Dr. Steiner: I now call on the representative of the Free Anthroposophical Society in Germany, Dr Büchenbacher, to speak.

Dr Büchenbacher reports and concludes with the words: I would like to express our feeling of deepest gratitude to Dr. Steiner for taking upon himself the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society. This gives us the will and the courage to work with what strength we have on the general stream of forces of the Anthroposophical Society. We express our profoundest thanks to him for having done this deed. And we request that the Free Anthroposophical Society for its part may be permitted to work according to its capacity towards the fulfilment of the tasks which Dr. Steiner has set it.

Dr. Steiner: May I now call on the General Secretary of the English Anthroposophical Society, Mr Collison, to speak.

Mr Collison reports.

Dr. Steiner: I now call on the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in Finland, Herr Donner, to speak.

Herr Donner reports.

Dr. Steiner: I now call on the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in France, Mademoiselle Sauerwein, to speak.

Mademoiselle Sauerwein reports.

Dr. Steiner: I now call on the Dutch General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society, Dr Zeylmans van Emmichoven, to speak.

Dr Zeylmans van Emmichoven reports.

Dr. Steiner: May I ask you to remain in your seats for a few more moments, dear friends. First of all, even during this Conference forgetfulness has led to the accumulation of a number of items of lost property. These have been gathered together and may be collected by the losers from Herr Kellermüller on their way out.

Secondly, the programme for the remainder of today will be as follows: At 2.30 there will be a meeting of the Vorstand with the General Secretaries, and any secretaries they may have brought with them, down in the Glass House, in the Architects' Office. This meeting will be for the Vorstand, the General Secretaries, and possibly their secretaries, only.

At 4.30 there will be a performance of the Nativity Play here.

Because of a eurythmy rehearsal my evening lecture will begin at 8.30.

I now adjourn today's meeting of members till tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. I shall then have the pleasure of calling on the representative of Honolulu, Madame Ferreri, to speak, and representatives of other groups who did not speak today. The meeting is now adjourned till tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.

Dr. Steiner answers questions from the officials of the Societies on the various Paragraphs of the Statutes.

To a question on Paragraph 11 regarding the admission of individual members who do not wish to join a particular group he answers as follows:

This Paragraph would only come into consideration if it proves entirely impossible to bring these efforts to a satisfactory conclusion. Only then should individuals or groups apply for membership direct to Dornach. Efforts must first be made to join the relevant national Society and only if this fails for some reason would we admit an individual or a group here in Dornach.

Herr Hohlenburg asks what is meant by: ‘Only for those for whom it is quite impossible to find entry to a group.’

Dr. Steiner: The Statutes are phrased in such a way as to include everything in as few words as possible. Perhaps it is necessary to clarify the sentence ‘Only those for whom it is quite impossible to find entry to a group should apply directly to Dornach for membership’ by adding that this refers not only to the group not agreeing to admit the individual but also to the individual finding it inwardly impossible to join the group. Thus for instance a person who is convinced that he cannot thrive in a particular group can, if all efforts fail, become a member in Dornach. Here in Dornach we for our part shall of course endeavour to convince the individual to join a group. When I was writing down this sentence I was thinking not only of external obstacles coming from the group but also of obstacles arising out of an individual's convictions.

Herr Hohlenburg: Are all those who are already members to have their membership confirmed?

Dr. Steiner: This will be desirable if only for the reason that we are having proper membership cards printed to replace the old, not very beautiful membership cards, and every member will enjoy seeing a membership card which is somewhat larger and which commands a certain degree of respect. Therefore it would be good to send a circular to the individual groups letting them know that all the old membership cards can be exchanged for new ones.

Mademoiselle Sauerwein asks: If a number of members in a particular country want to form themselves into a group and elect a new officer who is not an officer of the national group, would they be allowed to do this or not?

Dr. Steiner: Of course nobody can be denied this right. All that can be done is to make efforts to prevent it, but nobody can be denied the right to form groups which would, of course, not be the national group but simply a private group. It would not be possible for it to be the national group because, of course, the national group already exists, does it not? But this cannot be included in the Statutes. The Statutes must contain the principles. But it can be included in By-Laws which we shall still have to elaborate.

Herr Donner wants to ask whether a group which does not want to be affiliated with the national Society in its own country can instead be affiliated with the Society of another country.

Dr. Steiner: In principle this would not be impossible. To exclude this on principle would be too great an infringement of the freedom of the individual members. We cannot exclude this possibility, but we would have to make efforts not to let such a situation arise in which a group in one country joins the Society of another country; if such a group were not to join the national Society, then it would join directly in Dornach. This could come about as a matter of usage. It cannot be excluded on principle. For instance it would not be possible to prevent a group coming into being in France and registering with the German Society. We would not be able to prevent this.

Madame Muntz: Should we make efforts to bring it about that individuals who do not live in Belgium and yet do belong to our group apply for membership in their own countries, or not?

Dr. Steiner: In cases where they have done this from sympathy, this is all right. Cases where those in question have sympathies in a particular direction might as well be allowed to remain. But for the future it would be preferable for this not to happen. We need not take up a pedantic position; there is no need for this, but we do need something that can give us a certain degree of support.

Dr. Unger: There are quite a number of people in South America who are members of the German Society and who have expressed their wish to remain so. Arrangements are, however, being made for a Society to be formed among the different groups. I have been asked to bring to this meeting the need expressed there that a South American Society should be planned. For the moment they wish to remain attached to Germany, and the method of transferring these groups will gradually come about.

Dr. Steiner: The configuration of the Society being what it is, it is of course the case that from the administrative point of view everything will have to be taken into consideration not in a bureaucratic way but in a way that is necessitated by human factors. Take Paragraph 14 of the Statutes: ‘The organ of the Society is Das Goetheanum, which for this purpose is provided with a Supplement containing the official communications of the Society. This enlarged edition of Das Goetheanum will be supplied to members of the Anthroposophical Society only.’ Would you not agree that this implies that if the South American groups belong to Germany they would be supplied with Das Goetheanum not by us here but that it would be sent to them from Germany? Similar situations are still likely to arise. Here we are of the opinion that things should not remain confined to paper. The things that are written in the Members' Supplement are things which every member wants to know as quickly as possible. So I think it would be a good thing for groups which exist outside their national groups to join directly in Dornach so that anthroposophical life can flourish as much as possible without having to make all kinds of detours.

Dr Wachsmuth informs the meeting that the South American Society had written a letter just before Christmas, having heard about the new decisions. He reads a statement from them.

Herr Leinhas: I have had a similar letter. It arrived only a few days ago, and I have been asked for the moment to represent the national Society, which is to have its seat in Rio.

Dr. Zeymans Van Emmichoven:In point 5 mention is made of the three Classes of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach: ‘Members of the Society will be admitted to the School on their own application.’ I should like to ask whether the national Societies have anything to do with this or whether this is a purely personal matter for each member.

Dr. Steiner: What is contained in point 5 will be a matter for the Goetheanum in Dornach as far as the overall leadership is concerned. Everything that belongs to the configuration of this School of Spiritual Science will have to be taken in hand by the leadership at the Goetheanum in Dornach. Among the things that will have to be dealt with will of course be the matter of making contact not only with officers but also with members who are doing certain work in one place or another. Members of the First, Second and Third Class of the Goetheanum will be everywhere, having been nominated by the Goetheanum. How they are chosen will depend entirely on the individual case, for it will be essentially an esoteric matter, but an esoteric matter which is handled in a modern way. Once things have got going it will become apparent that there will be members in the different national Societies who belong to one of the Classes of the Goetheanum. For these the Goetheanum will nominate their own leadership in the different countries, so that matters are territorially delimited and do not expand boundlessly. This matter, then, will be handled essentially by the leadership at the Goetheanum; I shall describe it in more detail as our Conference progresses. Point 7 also refers to this matter: ‘The organizing of the School of Spiritual Science is, to begin with, the responsibility of Rudolf Steiner, who will appoint his collaborators and his possible successor.’

To begin with, I intend to set up, in addition to the three Classes, Sections which will be in charge of the different fields of research. For example there will be a Section for General Anthroposophy, another for what used to be called in France Belles-Lettres, a Section for Natural Science, for Education, for Art, for the various realms of art. Each Section will have a Section Leader and together these will constitute the leadership of the School of Spiritual Science. The members of the different Classes will be scattered all over the place; they will be members, for their pupilship is their own private affair. This is an independent institution which the national Societies will undertake to protect and guard as a matter of course.

Fräulein Henström: In Sweden, as far as I know, more than a third of the members have not joined a branch. In small villages this is natural, but there are a good many in Stockholm who do not wish to belong to the groups. They believe that they can work more freely if they stand by themselves and study the lectures alone. There are a good many of us who understand how important it is to stand firmly together and that it is therefore necessary for members to get to know one another personally. I think it is quite impossible if members refuse to conform to the groups and I wondered whether some encouragement could not be given from Dornach to bring about an improvement in this direction.

Dr. Steiner: We shall make every effort towards encouraging members in the different countries to join the main groups, which in most countries will mean the national Society. But we do not want to exert any pressure by means of some statute or other. We do not want to exert any pressure from Dornach in any direction, but we shall make every effort to help people understand, so that for instance in Sweden any members who live in an isolated situation, even if they want to remain isolated as far as their way of living is concerned, can nevertheless join the Stockholm Society or the national Society.

Fräulein Henström: I too would not want any compulsion to be brought to bear.

Dr. Steiner: We shall certainly endeavour to bring about an understanding of this matter.

Mr Monges enquires about the point of view and the manner in which the General Secretaries in the different countries are selected and whether this shall be a democratic procedure or what else?

Dr. Steiner: This is a further matter which I would not wish to lay down in any way by means of statutes for the various groups all over the world. I can well imagine, for example, that there are national Societies who will most certainly want to employ democratic procedures. I can also imagine that there will be others who will want to be thoroughly aristocratic in their approach, agreeing with the wishes of a particular individual upon whom they confer the task of nominating the other officers and so on. Thus I rather assume that the, shall I say, somewhat aristocratic method I have adopted with regard to appointing the Vorstand may well be imitated. In some quarters, however, this method may be regarded as highly undesirable, and in those quarters the democratic method could be used. An election is naturally all the easier the smaller the group in question, whereas I consider elections in a gathering as large as ours today to be totally meaningless. It is impossible to nominate and elect anybody in a situation where there is to start with so little mutual recognition. So in this gathering such a procedure would not be possible. But I can well imagine that a democratic institution of some kind might come into being in one place or another. In a general way, however, I do not find this question to be of paramount importance as a matter of principle. If on the one hand the selection is made by means of an election that is thoughtless, then the Societies will not flourish. They will come to nought if someone is simply nominated so that the election may be settled in a hurry, as is the case with political elections. Nothing can come of this in our circles.

The matter will be different, though, if consideration is given to those who have already earned some merit, or done certain work, or if their way of working has been observed. In such cases a majority is likely to come about quite naturally. But if the antecedents are all set for some kind of election, I do not believe that amongst us, since our main concern is for the work, some kind of democracy could prevent this work. In other words, in practice there will be little difference between democracy and aristocracy. We might try this out over the next few days. We could ask whether the Vorstand I have suggested would be elected or not. This would give us a democratic basis, for I do consider their election to be a necessary condition, otherwise I myself would also have to withdraw! Freedom must reign, of course. But, dear friends, I too must have freedom. I cannot allow anything to be imposed on me. Anyone who is expected to carry out a function must have freedom above all else. Is this not so? Thus I rather assume that what I have just said will be born out everywhere, for the most part. Whether democracy or aristocracy is the method, the Society will not look much different.

Mr. Monges: We in America are very political.

Dr. Steiner: If Dornach is permitted to have its say to a certain extent, then everything will work out satisfactorily.

Fräulein Schwarz: It was said some time ago that members of the old Theosophical Society cannot become anthroposophists, that is they cannot belong to the Anthroposophical Society. Will this continue to be the case or not?

Dr. Steiner: Who said that? I certainly never said such a thing! Never. The decision as to whether a person shall be admitted or not has to be taken individually in each case. I have always expressly stated that it matters not a jot whether someone belongs to a carpenters' club, or an insurance company, or a scientific research society, or the Theosophical Society. The only thing that matters is the human being. I have never said that the stamp of membership of any other society presents an obstacle for joining the Anthroposophical Society. Of course there might be individual cases in which membership of the Theosophical Society could present an obstacle. It is naturally questionable whether Mrs Besant³⁹ or Mr Leadbeater,⁴⁰ should they apply for membership of the Anthroposophical Society, would be admitted or not. So the question might arise in individual cases. But as a matter of principle it can have no validity whatsoever; otherwise we would come down to principles which would not be in keeping with a society that is to be formed in the modern style.

The Duke of Cesaro brings up a question regarding the number of votes allotted to members. There was once some unpleasantness in a national section of the old Theosophical Society, for example; and the solution had been to break up the whole group in order to gain more votes. Such things ought no longer to be possible.

Dr. Steiner: As you say, Your Grace, it is desirable that such things should not happen. But on the other hand there are certain difficulties involved in fixing the number of members at the lower end. There you come up against the question: How many members should there be in a group? So far we have had quite a definite view on this. But problems might now arise in this connection: Should we perhaps put everything pertaining to matters of modern usage into Paragraph 3, so that everything esoteric is contained in Paragraph 3, or should we name the number of members a group ought to contain? In the latter case the minimum number would be seven, because only seven can yield a true majority. In the case of three and five there can of course be a seeming majority. But those who understand the nature of the human being know that with a majority of two to one arrived at amongst three members, or of three to two arrived at when there are five members, the one who makes the seeming majority does not count properly. Not until you can have four to three can you arrive at a possible majority, which results if on the one side you have three and on the other side one third more. This then makes a true majority possible. So the minimum number would be seven members. I would not object to including this number here, but I did consider that these Statutes are more likely to be respected in the eyes of the world if we refrain from including things like the number seven. I therefore think, Your Grace, that your suggestion would be better included in the By-Laws, which would mean that in practice this is how the matter would be handled. This is probably the solution for us in this case.

Professor Dr.Maurer: I want to ask whether it might not be possible to curtail the other Paragraph as well, as regards the Classes. Perhaps it would be preferable not to launch this aspect on the public. I rather fear that all kinds of historical and other parallels might once again be dredged up and possibly used against us.

Dr. Steiner: Take Paragraph 5 as it is formulated here and ask yourself whether it could not be applied to any university just as it stands. As it stands it is applicable to any university and cannot possibly cause any offence. Everything else will be a matter of how we handle it.

Professor Dr.Maurer: Yes, I agree it is applicable, but there are other points which are open to attack. Taken in its usual sense it could remind people of something which did exist historically.

Dr. Steiner: Historically it was never the custom to speak of ‘Classes’, only of ‘Degrees’.

Professor Dr.Maurer: Nevertheless people will immediately jump to the wrong conclusion and I merely wanted to prevent the incidence of such mistaken and warped conclusions.

Dr. Steiner: It would be the greatest possible mistake to include anything in our Statutes arising from any conclusion. We cannot avoid having misunderstandings attached to what we do. But anyone interpreting Paragraph 5 wrongly must really want to do so. We cannot prevent this. Paragraph 5 is phrased in such a way that absolutely nobody can say anything other than that in this School of Spiritual Science in Dornach there are three Classes, just as if in Freiburg there were a university with four medical classes, a four-year course. The description in Paragraph 5 accords exactly with the pattern of universities in the outside world, so there is not the smallest opportunity for objection that could be seized with any even seeming justification. The same applies to the way the affairs of the School are conducted. You know that at a university it is the leadership who decide whether a student is ready to move on to the next year or not.

Professor Dr.Maurer: This has not always been the case. In the faculties of philosophy it was never a matter of moving up to the next class; this did not happen at Strasbourg under Professor Windelband⁴¹ or anywhere else for that matter. You simply presented yourself and were accepted. Naturally what you gained from the lectures depended on your abilities. Nowadays I agree that in the interest of the students a certain amount of grading has been introduced. I only wanted to draw attention to this matter because our opponents will immediately point it out.

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly not the case that a medical student who has just arrived at the university will be allowed to attend the special classes on anatomical medicine. There are proper classes for this, are there not. I do not believe that he would be allowed to attend immediately.

Professor Dr.Maurer: No, of course not.

Dr. Steiner: In the case of the philosophical faculty there are good reasons which have come about historically. A justification can certainly always be found for these things. Originally there was no such thing as a philosophical faculty at the universities. The three faculties were those of theology, medicine, and jurisprudence. These three faculties were always graded into classes. The philosophical department was at the basis of all three. First you attended the faculty of philosophy. This is where you started, whether you wanted to study theology, jurisprudence or medicine. Then you moved up from this faculty of philosophy into the different faculties. From then on you moved up in classes. I do not believe that it is any different in other countries. So if you take our Constitution to be the general anthroposophical and philosophical faculty, then advancing on from there you have the three Classes. The set-up is absolutely identical with that of a university. I have taken the utmost care to ensure that it shall be absolutely indisputable. In universities, though, the faculty of philosophy gradually developed into a faculty in its own right. More and more lectures were given till the whole situation degenerated into anarchy and chaos. No one entering the faculty of philosophy has any idea what lectures he ought to attend, indeed he can go to lectures he cannot understand at all. This is a chaotic situation that has arisen at the universities.

What we have written down here corresponds exactly to what was customary at universities, in Vienna for instance, up to the year 1848. This is entirely indisputable. And I believe that this is the case to this day in Paris; and also in Italy there are universities which still conduct matters in this way. At German universities there are certain things which have developed chaotically. But what we have written down here is absolutely indisputable. If we were to do these things without including them in our Statutes—and do them we must, otherwise Paragraph 8 about the lecture cycles would also have to be modified—we would immediately find ourselves in another situation which would not serve our purposes at all. This Paragraph must stand as it is and so must Paragraph 8. Of course we can consider requests for changes regarding details, but a complete suppression of the School with its three Classes would not be acceptable.

Professor Dr. Maurer: I quite see that it will be necessary to move up Class by Class. I was merely concerned that it might give our opponents something on which they could seize.

Dr. Steiner: The only change that could be considered would be to say: ‘The Anthroposophical Society sees the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach as the centre for its activity. The School will be composed of three classes after the manner of other universities.’ If you wish to include this we can certainly do so.

Baroness de Renzis: Should the report on our work in Italy and the direction it is taking be given now, or are we to discuss the Statutes only?

Dr. Steiner: I would request you to speak tomorrow about the work in Italy.

Baroness de Renzis wishes to ask a question about the direction the work is taking in general.

Dr. Steiner: I would ask you to give your report tomorrow.

Baroness de Renzis: Ought we to announce the anthroposophical character of any undertaking or initiative arising out of our Movement from the start, thus provoking the danger of having it rejected, or should we endeavour to disseminate an anthroposophical understanding within public opinion without throwing down the challenge of it being judged and rejected? It is necessary to decide this so that we know what is to determine the attitude of our groups in the future.

Dr. Steiner: It is of course not the word ‘Anthroposophy’ itself that matters but there are other things that do matter. Take the following example. Medicine is a case in point. It is today not possible to take medicine beyond the point it has now reached, which is not far enough, without starting to speak of the etheric body of the human being, and also of the astral body and the ego-organization, for it is here that the real causes of illness lie. So it is necessary simply to place before the world the substance of what Anthroposophy contains. We have gained some extremely instructive experience in this matter. Frau Dr Wegman has run courses with me in London, Vienna and The Hague.⁴² One of these took place at Dr Zeylmans' Dutch institute. I have given lectures to doctors in which I spoke quite directly of anthroposophical matters. At appropriate moments I have spoken about the astral body, the etheric body and so on. In doing this it is barely relevant what terminology is used. In some instances one feels it is more appropriate to name the etheric body and in others it is better to use different words in describing it. For example when you want to speak of the etheric body you can say: The effects on the physical substances which come not from the centre of the earth but from the periphery of the universe. Only those who have not fully come to grips with their subject matter are tied to a specific terminology, is this not so? We have found that when we speak in this way people can make something of what we say. They know that this is something new making its appearance in the world. If you avoid speaking clearly, all people can say is: Well, here is another opinion about the effect of this or that medicament on the human organism; it has been held before and was then replaced by another; now here is yet another opinion. They cannot distinguish whether a clinical report or a clinical dissertation comes from some external source or from us. But if we want to bring what can really lead us to the centre of the illness, then we cannot avoid speaking about the etheric body and so on, even if we use different terminology. Then people know what is what. We go furthest when we act in this way. It is not in the first instance a matter of the actual name of Anthroposophy; what matters is nowhere to shy away from whatever is necessary to explain something properly. If you try to dress Anthroposophy up in ‘this is what the parson says too’, then people have no idea what you are getting at. I myself once proved this point. I gave a course of twelve lectures in Vienna⁴³ ranging over every aspect of Anthroposophy including its practical applications. If you read this cycle today you will not find a single mention of the word Anthroposophy. It is perfectly possible for there to be occasions when it is inappropriate to use the word Anthroposophy. This is for sure. For me what matters is the actual subject itself, the spirit of the subject. You have no idea how many well-meaning people have come to me saying: People dread the expression ‘etheric body’; could we not say ‘the functional element in the human organism’? But this is a meaningless expression. To speak of the etheric body you have to distinguish between the physical body in which all the forces are related to gravity, the mechanical pull of gravity, and the etheric body in which all the forces can be related to the periphery, to all that is ever in weaving movement. This is the difference. The ‘functional element in the human organism’ refers to the function and not to this fundamental contrast. So these well-meant suggestions that come, often from outsiders, cannot be taken into account.

Baroness de Renzis: Is it sufficient to speak of the ‘essence’ of things?

Dr. Steiner: It is not necessary to throw the actual word ‘Anthroposophy’ at people, but if asked whether you are an anthroposophist it would be quite a good thing if you did not say: No!

We shall continue this meeting tomorrow. We must try to make sure that we have enough breathing space during this Conference.

• 39. Annie Besant, 1847–1933. From 1907, following the death of the Founder-President H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society.
• 40. Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1847–1934. Influential colleague of Annie Besant. Inspired the founding of the order ‘Star of the East’.
• 41. Wilhelm Windelband, 1848–1915. Philosopher, 1882–1903 professor in Strasbourg.
• 42. See lectures in London on 2 and 3 September, Vienna on 2 October and The Hague on 15 and 16 November 1923 in Rudolf Steiner Spiritual Science and the Art of Healing, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London 1950. GA 319.
• 43. See Rudolf Steiner The Tension between East and West, Hodder & Stoughton, London 1963. GA 83.

Dr. Steiner:

My dear friends!

We are in the middle of the reports by the General Secretaries and the representatives of the groups working in all kinds of places outside Dornach. In a moment we shall continue with these reports. But first I would like to speak a few words in the midst of these reports, words to which I am moved by what has been said in such a satisfactory way by these speakers. From what we have been told we may gather how very devoted is the work being carried on out there. We may add what we were told yesterday to the names I allowed myself to mention the day before. There, too, despite the ruins on which we stand, we may see what can encourage us during this Conference not to be pessimistic in any way but rather to strive actively for a genuine optimism.

During this Conference we must everywhere, in every realm, consider the activity of building-up rather than the activity of dismantling. So today, early on in the Conference, I want to suggest that we give it a certain definite direction. During the meetings of members over the next few days there will of course be opportunities for discussing various matters. But today, early on, I want to say the following: As we saw in the necessary content of the Statutes, we have to connect total openness with the Anthroposophical Society. Anything less, dear friends, is not permitted by the signs of the times. The present age can no longer tolerate any tendency towards secrecy. This presents us with a fundamental problem which we shall have to solve.

By this I do not mean that we shall have to discuss it a great deal during the Conference, for it is in our hearts that this fundamental problem will have to be solved. We must be absolutely clear about the fact that our Society, before all others, will be given the task of combining the greatest conceivable openness with true and genuine esotericism.

At first under the obstacles and hindrances of those terrible years of the war, but then also through all kinds of inner difficulties, we have indeed experienced the establishment of this problem in every direction. Indeed lately no meeting within the Anthroposophical Society has taken place which lacked, as it were, the backdrop—though unnoticed by many—of this problem: How can we combine full openness with the profoundest, most serious and inward esotericism? To achieve this it will be necessary to banish from our gatherings in the future anything which smacks in any way of the atmosphere of a clique. Anthroposophy does not need the atmosphere of a clique. When hearts truly understand Anthroposophy they will beat in unison without the need for heads to knock together. If we solve this purely human problem of letting our hearts sound in harmony with one another without the need for our heads to knock together, then from the human side we shall have done everything necessary, also in the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society, to prepare for the achievement of the things that have been depicted.

We must achieve these things; we must reach the point at which we can feel in all our deeds that we are connected with the spiritual world. This is the very aspect which must be different in the Anthroposophical Society from any other possible association in the present time. The difference must be that out of the strength of Anthroposophy itself it is possible to combine the greatest conceivable openness with the most genuine and inward esotericism. And in future this esotericism must not be lacking even in the most external of our deeds. There is in this field still a lot to learn from the past ten years.

What I am saying is also related to our responsibilities. Consider the following, my dear friends: We stand in the world as a small Society, and this Society has a peculiar destiny at present. Even if it wanted to, it could not reject this characteristic of openness which I have been emphasizing so strongly. It would be unable to reject it. For if out of some leaning of sympathy we were to decide today to work only inwardly with our groups, which would of course be very nice, if we were not to concern ourselves with the public at large, we would discover that there would soon be an increasingly inimical concern for us on the part of the public. The more we fail to concern ourselves with the signs of the times, the more will be the inimical concern for us on the part of everything that can possibly be against us. Only if we find the path, only if with courage we find the straight path to what we should do shall we succeed in navigating the ship of the Anthroposophical Society through the exceedingly stormy waves which surge and break around it. What we should do is the following: As a small Society we face the world, a world—you know the one I mean—which actually does not love us. It does not love us. This is a fact we cannot alter. But on the other hand there is no need to do anything on purpose to make ourselves unpopular. I do not mean this in a superficial sense but in a deeper sense of which I speak from the foundations of occult life. If we ask ourselves over and over again what we must do to make ourselves better liked by this circle or by that circle in the world, by any circle which does not like us today; if we keep asking ourselves how we should behave in this field or in that field so as to be taken seriously here or there; if we do this, we shall most certainly not be taken seriously. We shall only be taken seriously if at every moment in whatever we do we feel responsible towards the spiritual world. We must know that the spiritual world wants to achieve a certain thing with mankind at this particular moment in historical evolution; it wants to achieve this in the most varied realms of life, and it is up to us clearly and truly to follow the impulses that come from the spiritual world. Though this might give offence initially, in the long run it is the only beneficial way. Therefore we shall also only come to terms among ourselves if at every opportunity we steep ourselves in whatever impulses can come out of the spiritual world.

So now, having given these indications, which I shall bring to completion over the next few days, I once more want to repeat before you at least a part of those words which were spoken to you yesterday in accordance with the will of the spiritual world. May they stand as an introduction in our souls again today as we enter into our discussions.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling in depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.
Soul of Man!

Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

We can work rightly with words such as these, which are heard coming from the Cosmic Word, if we arrange them in our own soul in such a way that they cannot depart from us again. And it will be possible for them to be so arranged if, amongst all that has resounded, you first highlight that part which can give you the rhythm. Dear friends, let me write down here first of all the part that can indicate the rhythm:

In the first verse: Spirit-recalling,
in the second verse: Spirit-awareness,
in the third verse: Spirit-beholding.

Contemplate this in its rhythmical connection with what is brought about in the human soul which is called upon, the human soul which is called upon by itself, through the words:

Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I—,

consider the rhythm linked with ‘spirit-awareness’ when you hear:

Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I—,

and the rhythm linked with ‘spirit-beholding’ when you hear:

On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing—.

Take in this way each phrase so that it can only stand as I have written it here. Take what comes rhythmically out of the Cosmic Rhythm: ‘own I within God's I’, ‘own I in the World-I’, ‘own I in free willing’. And take what rises up from ‘comes to being’ to ‘unite’ to ‘bestow’, where there is the transition to moral feeling. Feel the connection with ‘spirit-recalling’, ‘spirit-awareness’ and ‘spirit-beholding’. Then you will have in the inner rhythm what it is during these few days that the spiritual world is bringing to us to raise our hearts, to illumine our thinking, to give wings and enthusiasm to our willing.

I now have a telegram to read to you: ‘Christmas greetings, best wishes, Ethel Morgenstierne.’ And now may I ask the representative of Honolulu, Madame Ferreri, to speak.

Madame Ferreri reports.

Dr. Steiner: May I now ask the representative of Italy, Baroness de Renzis, to speak.

Baroness de Renzis reports.

Dr. Steiner: May I perhaps suggest that certain questions raised here, such as that of accepting applications for membership on the basis of correspondence only, and similar matters, shall be discussed later when we consider the Statutes.

Dr. Steiner: The Duke of Cesaro will also give a report concerning Italy on behalf of the Novalis Group in Rome.

The Duke of Cesaro reports.

Dr. Steiner: Now may I ask Fräulein Schwarz to speak on behalf of the other Italian group.

Fräulein Schwarz reports on behalf of the group in Milan.

Dr. Steiner: Now would the representative of the work in Yugoslavia, Herr Hahl, please speak.

Herr Hahl reports.

Dr. Steiner: May I ask the representative of the Norwegian Society, Herr Ingerö, to speak.

Herr Ingerö speaks.

Dr. Steiner: Now may I ask the representative of the Council of the Austrian Society, Count Polzer, to speak.

Count Polzer speaks.

Dr. Steiner: Now may I ask the representative of the group in Porto Alegre in Brazil, Dr Unger, to speak.

Dr. Unger: Allow me in a few words to carry out a commission which I was most delighted to accept. For quite some time we have been corresponding with friends over there, mostly from Germany, who had emigrated and had begun to work there anthroposophically. Herr Brandtner in particular has been writing lately. He has made great efforts to get something going in Porto Alegre. And connected with this, work is also going on in other South American towns which will gradually be co-ordinated so that independent centres from which to work may be set up there too. For this purpose Herr Mayen from Breslau was asked by the friends over there to go out, first of all to Rio. He will gradually take on work in a number of towns. I have been particularly asked to give voice to the sympathetic interest of the friends over there. Everything that comes to us from over there expresses the most intimate interest in all that has to do with Dornach and whatever continues to come from Dornach. As often as possible someone comes to Europe and we hope most fervently that anthroposophical life may soon start to blossom there in the most intensive way. Just as I bring greetings from our friends over there, so I hope that when I report back to Porto Alegre I may also be permitted to send them from here our good wishes for the prospering of the work in Porto Alegre.

Dr. Steiner: May I now ask the representative of the Swedish Anthroposophical Society, Fräulein Henström, to speak.

Fräulein Henström reports.

Dr. Steiner: May I now ask the representative of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society, Herr Aeppli, to speak.

Herr Aeppli reports.

Dr. Steiner: May I now ask the representative of the Council in Czechoslovakia, Dr Krkavec, to speak.

Dr. Krkavec reports.

Dr. Steiner: May I now ask the other representative of the Council in Czechoslovakia, Dr Eiselt, to speak.

Dr Eiselt reports.

Dr. Steiner: This brings the reports to a close. I believe I may be allowed to say that you are all, with me, exceedingly grateful to those who have given them. For they enable us to see that we have a foundation on which to base our new work, since now we know how much truly great, devoted and varied work is being done and has already been done in the Anthroposophical Society.

Now I should like to move on to the third point on our agenda, consideration of the Statutes. First the Statutes must be read out. Though you all have a copy, I would nevertheless like to ask that they be read out once more, so that we can then commence the discussion of each point. Would Dr Wachsmuth now please read the Statutes in accordance with point three of our agenda.

Dr. Wachsmuth reads out the Statutes of the Anthroposophical Society.

Dr. Steiner: As you will have gathered from various remarks I have made, it would be really good if on the one hand our meeting could be allowed to run as freely as possible amongst its individual members. However, on the other hand, if a proper discussion is to take place, it is necessary for us to be quite strict in conducting the debate. So please take this not as pedantry but as a necessity applicable to any gathering. Today we have run out of time, so I would ask you that we continue this meeting tomorrow after Dr Wachsmuth's lecture. Tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock Dr Wachsmuth will give his lecture. Then we shall break for a quarter of an hour before continuing the meeting. At this meeting I should like to conduct the proceedings as follows. Not in order to be pedantic but so that we can be as efficient as possible there will first be a kind of general debate on the Statutes, a debate in which first of all the whole attitude, meaning and spirit of the Statutes in general is discussed.

Then I shall ask you to agree to the Statutes in general, after which we shall open a detailed debate in which we take one Paragraph at a time, when contributors will be asked to speak only to the Paragraph under consideration. There will then be a concluding debate leading to the final adoption of the Statutes. This is how I would ask you to proceed tomorrow when we discuss the Statutes.

Now I have to announce that our Conference continues this afternoon with a eurythmy performance at 4.30 and my lecture at 8 o'clock this evening. Tomorrow at 10 o'clock we shall hear Dr Guenther Wachsmuth's lecture in the field of natural science about the face of the earth and the destiny of man. Then after a quarter of an hour's break we shall continue with this meeting.

I also have several more announcements to make. As I had to stress earlier, before we began our meeting, it is quite difficult, because there are so many of us—and it is of course wonderful that there are so many dear friends here—to hold this gathering together. You cannot tell, just by coming to the meetings, how difficult it is. Of course we are deeply sorry that the primitive quarters here are causing such discomfort and so many problems for our dear friends. Nevertheless, I have to ask that in future not more than three seats are held by any one person. I have to say this because it has happened that whole rows of seats have been held by a single person, and this has led to innumerable discussions with those who have come in later.

Then I should like to remind you of the wish we expressed earlier that the two front rows be reserved for those dear friends who are either disabled or deaf or need special consideration for any other reason. If there are any seats left in these two rows, which is sure to be the case, then please leave them free for the General Secretaries of the different countries and for the secretaries who might be accompanying them. It will become necessary in the next few days to have the General Secretaries together here where they can be seen rather than scattered all over the hall.

Thirdly I would perhaps like once more to ask our Dornach friends—truly I have nothing personal against them—to take their seats next door in the ‘summer villa’.⁴⁴ I know it is most inhospitable in this rainy and snowy weather, but all we can do is ask our Dornach friends to put up with the rain so that the friends from further afield can sit here in the hall away from the rain.

Also I would like to mention that from today the upper canteen will be open in the evening for those friends who are quartered in the dormitories or other inhospitable places, so that they may have somewhere to go that is heated. Food and drink will not be served then, but I hope that the conversations that can take place there will be all the more stimulating and encouraging. So although it will not be possible to quench hunger and thirst, it will be possible to keep as warm as may be in the evenings after my lecture until 11 o'clock at night.

Furthermore I want to draw your attention to the following: Mr Pyle in the most admirable way has modelled a very fine money-box⁴⁵ which he has had produced. You will find these money-boxes outside the doors. If you look at them carefully you will find that the beautiful forms tempt you to want to own such a money-box yourselves. They are for sale, so you can buy one and take it home and put something in it every day. When it is full you can use what you have collected to put towards the re-building of the Goetheanum, or for any other purposes related to the Goetheanum. Let me point out that even if you only put in 10 Rappen every day—think what you might spend this on each day—by the end of the year you will have saved quite a tidy sum. I can see my respected friends here are already working out how much! You will find that it will be a worthwhile amount. But I don't want to encourage you to put in only 10 Rappen. I would rather you put in whatever amount you consider proper, or whatever you feel obliged to put in even if you don't think it proper.

Those who find it difficult for one reason or another to take a money-box home with them will see that similar money-boxes have been set out here into which they may put something. Naturally if you do not have your own money-box to take home, it would be a good thing if you could delve deeply into your purse while you are here, so that these money-boxes may be filled. We shall have no trouble in seeing to it that they are rapidly emptied.

Finally I would please ask that spectators at the Christmas Plays refrain from booking their seats for the evening lectures.

You see, without all these many wishes—let us not call them prohibitions—we shall be unable to keep the Conference going in an orderly manner.

Now, my dear friends, I adjourn this meeting until the appointed hour tomorrow.

• 44. This designation for the extension built on to the carpentry workshop for the occasion of the Christmas Conference referred to ‘the chilly draught which blew there permanently’ (Ernst Lehrs Gelebte Erwartung, Stuttgart, 1979).
• 45. On the basis of a pencil drawing by Rudolf Steiner.