The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In beginning this our last lecture I can assure you that much still remains to be discussed and that in this course of lectures we have touched only the fringe of this subject which covers a wide field. I can only hope that it will not be the last time that we shall speak together here on kindred subjects, and it must suffice if I have introduced this subject with only the briefest indications, since detailed discussion at this present moment would otherwise create further complications.

Like a golden thread running through the last few lectures was the idea that Teutonic mythology contains something which, in imaginative form, is connected in a remarkable way with the knowledge derived from the spiritual research of our time. Now this is also one of the reasons why we may hope that the Folk Spirit, the Archangel, who directs and guides this country (Norway) will imbue modern philosophy and modern spiritual research with the capacities he has developed over the centuries and that henceforth modern spiritual research will be fertilized by uniting with the life-forces of the entire people.

The further we penetrate into the details of Teutonic mythology, the more we shall realize—and this applies to no other mythology—how wonderfully the deepest occult truths are expressed in the symbols of this mythology. Perhaps some of you who have read my Occult Science—an Outline or have heard other lectures which I was able to give here will recall that once upon a time in the course of Earth-evolution an event occurred which we may describe as the descent of those human souls who, in primeval times before the old Lemurian epoch, for very special reasons rose to other planets, to Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, and that these souls in the late Lemurian epoch and throughout the Atlantean epoch, after the hardening forces of the Moon had left the Earth endeavoured to incarnate in human bodies whose capacities had gradually been developed and perfected under Earth conditions. These Saturn-, Jupiter-, Mars-, Venus-, and Mercury-souls then descended upon Earth and this descent can still be verified today in the Akashic Records. During the Atlantean epoch the air of Atlantis was permeated with watery mists and through these mists those on Earth beheld with the old Atlantean clairvoyance the descent of these souls out of the Cosmos. Whenever new beings descended from spiritual heights into the still soft, plastic and pliant bodies of that time, this was understood to be the external manifestation of souls descending out of the Cosmos, out of the atmosphere, out of planetary spheres, in order to incarnate in earthly bodies.

These earthly bodies were fructified by that which poured down from spiritual heights. The memory of this event has survived in the imaginative conceptions of Teutonic mythology and has persisted so long that it was still extant amongst the Southern Germanic peoples at the time when Tacitus wrote his “Germania”. No one will understand the account Tacitus gives of the Goddess Nerthus unless he realizes that this event actually took place.¹ He relates that the chariot of the Goddess Nerthus was driven over the waters. Later on this survived as a solemn ritual; formerly it had been a matter of actual vision. This Goddess offered the human bodies that were suitable to the human souls descending from the planetary spheres. That is the mystery underlying the Nerthus myth and it has survived in all that has come down to us in the older sagas and legends which give intimations of the birth of physical man. Njordr who is intimately related to the Goddess Nerthus is her masculine counterpart. He is said to represent the primeval memory of the descent of the psycho-spiritual beings who in olden time had risen to planetary heights and who, during the Atlantean epoch, had come back and incarnated in human bodies.

In my pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood, you can read how miscegenation and contact between different peoples have played a significant role at certain periods. Now not only the mixture of peoples and their interrelationships which led to the introduction of foreign blood, but also the psychic and spiritual development of the Folk Spirits have played a decisive part. The vision of that descent has been preserved in the greatest purity in those sagas which arose in former times in these Northern regions. Hence in the Sagas of the Vanir you can still find one of the oldest recollections of this descent. Especially here in the North, the Finnish tradition still preserves a living memory of this union of the soul-and-spirit which descended from planetary spheres with that which springs out of the body of the Earth and which Northern tradition knows as Riesenheim (Home of the Giants). That which developed out of the body of the Earth belongs to Riesenheim. We realize, therefore, that Nordic man was always aware of spiritual impulses, that he felt within his gradually evolving soul the workings of this old vision of the Gods which was still natural to man here when, in those ancient times, the watery mists of Atlantis still covered the region. Nordic man felt within him some spark of a God who was directly descended from those divine-spiritual Beings, those Archangels who directed the union of soul-and-spirit with the terrestrial and physical. People believed and felt that the God Freyr and his sister Freyja who were once upon a time specially favoured Gods of the North, had originally been those angelic Beings who had poured into the human soul all that this soul required in order to develop further upon the physical plane those old forces which they (the people) had received through their clairvoyant capacities. Within the physical world, the world limited to the external senses, Freyr was the continuer of all that had hitherto been received in a clairvoyant form. He was the living continuation of forces clairvoyantly received. He had therefore to unite with the physical-corporeal instruments existing in the human body itself for the use of these soul-forces, which then transmit to the physical plane what had been perceived in primeval clairvoyance. This is reflected in the marriage of Freyr with Gerda, the Giant's daughter. She is born out of the physical forces of earthly evolution itself. The descent of the divinespiritual into the physical is still mirrored in these mythological symbols. The figure of Freyr portrays in a remarkable way how Freyr makes use of that which enables man to manifest on the physical plane that for which he has been prepared through his earlier clairvoyance. The name of his horse is Bluthuf, indicating that the blood is an essential factor in the development of the ‘I’. A remarkable magic ship is placed at his disposal. It could span the sky or be folded up to fit into a tiny box. What is this magic ship? If Freyr is the power which transmits clairvoyant forces to the physical plane, then this magic ship is something peculiarly his own: it symbolizes the alternation of the soul in day and night. just as the human soul during sleep and until the moment of waking spreads out over the Macrocosm, so too the magic ship spreads its sails and is then folded up again into the cerebral folds to be stowed away in that tiny box—the human skull. You will find all this portrayed in a wonderful way in the mythological figures of Teutonic mythology.

Those of you who probe more deeply into these matters will be gradually convinced that what has been implanted, ‘injected’ into the mind and soul of this Northern people by means of these symbols or pictures is no flight of fancy, but actually stems from the Mystery Schools. Thus in the guiding Archangel or Folk Spirit of the North, much of the old education through clairvoyant perception has survived, much of that which may unfold in a soul which, in the course of its development on the physical plane, is associated with clairvoyant development.

Although not apparent from the external point of view today, the Archangel of the Germanic North had within him this tendency, and thanks to this tendency he is particularly fitted to understand modern Spiritual Science and to transform it in the appropriate manner to satisfy the inherent potentialities of the people. You will therefore appreciate why I have said that the soul of the Germanic peoples in particular is best fitted to understand what I could only indicate briefly in the public lecture which I gave here on the Second Coming of Christ.

Spiritual research today shows us that after Kali Yuga has run its course (which lasted for 5,000 years, approximately from 3,100 BC to AD 1,899) new capacities will appear in the isolated few who are specially fitted to receive them. A time will come when individuals will be able, through the natural development of the new clairvoyance, to perceive something of what is announced only by Spiritual Science or spiritual research. We are told that in the course of the next centuries, increasing numbers of people will be found in whom the organs of the etheric body are so far developed that they will attain to clairvoyance, which today can only be acquired through training. How are we to account for this? What will be the nature of the, etheric body in those few who develop clairvoyance? There will be some who will receive clairvoyant impressions, and I should like to describe to you a typical example. A man performs some act and at the same time feels himself impelled to observe something. A sort of dream vision arises in him which at first he does not understand. But if he has heard of Karma, of how world-events conform to law, he will then realize, little by little, that what he has seen is the karmic counterpart of his present deeds made visible in the etheric world. Thus the first elements of future capacities are gradually developed.

Those who are open to the stimulus of Spiritual Science will, from the middle of the twentieth century on, gradually experience a renewal of that which St. Paul saw in etheric clairvoyance as a mystery to come, the ‘Mystery of the Living Christ’. There will be a new manifestation of Christ, a manifestation which must come when human capacities develop naturally to the point when the Christ can be seen in the world in which He has always been present since the Mystery of Golgotha and in which He can also be experienced by the Initiate. Mankind is gradually growing into that world in order to be able to perceive from the physical plane that which formerly could be perceived only in the Mystery Schools from the perspective of the higher planes.

Nevertheless, occult training is still a necessity. It always presents things in a different light to those who have not undergone occult training. But occult training will, by the transformation of the physical body, show the Mystery of the Living Christ in a new way—as it will be able to be seen etherically from the perspective of the physical plane by a few isolated individuals at first, and later by increasing numbers of people in the course of the next three thousand years. The Living Christ perceived by St. Paul, the Christ who is to be found in the etheric world since the Mystery of Golgotha, will be seen by an ever-increasing number of people.

The manifestations of the Christ will be experienced by man at ever-higher levels. That is the mystery of the evolution of Christ. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha it was intended that man should comprehend everything from the perspective of the physical plane. It was therefore necessary that he should be able to see Christ on the physical plane, to receive tidings of Him and to bear witness to His dominion on that plane. But mankind is designed to progress and to develop higher powers. He who believes that the manifestation of Christ will be repeated in the form which was valid nineteen hundred years ago can have little understanding of the development of mankind. The manifestation of Christ took place on the physical plane because, at that time, the forces of man were adapted to the physical plane. But those forces will evolve, and in the course of the next three thousand years Christ will be increasingly understood by the more highly developed souls on Earth.

What I have just said is a truth which has long been communicated to a select few from within the esoteric schools and it is a truth that today must pervade the teachings of Spiritual Science in particular, because Spiritual Science is intended to be a preparation for that which is to come. Mankind is now ready for freedom and self-knowledge and it is highly probable that those who proclaim themselves to be the pioneers of the Christ-vision will be denounced as fools on account of their message to mankind. It is possible for mankind to sink still deeper into materialism and to spurn that which could become a most valuable revelation for mankind. Everything that may happen in the future is to a certain extent subject to man's volition; consequently he may miss what is intended for his salvation. It is extremely important to realize that Spiritual Science is a preparation for the new Christ-revelation.

Materialism holds a twofold danger. The one which probably stems from the traditions of the West, is that everything that the first pioneers of the new Christ-revelation will announce in the twentieth century from out of their own vision will be dismissed as a figment of the imagination, as the height of folly. Today materialism has invaded all spheres. It is not only ingrained in the West, but has also invaded the East. There, however, it assumes another form. One consequence of oriental materialism might well be that mankind will fail to recognize the higher aspects of the Christ-revelation. And then will follow what I have often spoken of here, and which I must repeat again and again, namely, that materialistic thinking will have a purely materialistic conception of the manifestation of Christ. It might well be that, under the influence of spiritual-scientific truths, people might venture to speak of a future manifestation of Christ and yet believe that He will appear in a physical body. The result would simply be another form of materialism, a continuation of what has already existed for centuries.

People have always exploited this false materialism. Indeed certain individuals declared themselves to be the new Messiah. The last well-known case occurred in the seventeenth century, when a man called Sabbatai Zevi of Smyrna announced that he was the new Messiah. He made a great stir. Not only those who lived in his immediate environment made pilgrimages to visit him, but also people from Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, Italy and North Africa. Everywhere Sabbatai Zevi was regarded as the physical incarnation of a Messiah. I do not propose to relate the human tragedy that befell the personality of Sabbatai. In the seventeenth century no great harm was done. At that time man was not really a free agent, although he could recognize intuitively—which was a kind of spiritual feeling—what was the truth. But in the twentieth century it would be a great misfortune if, under the pressure of materialism, the manifestation of Christ were to be taken in a materialistic sense, implying that one must look for His return in a physical body. This would only prove that mankind had not acquired any perception of, or insight into the real progress of human evolution towards a higher spirituality.

False Messiahs will inevitably appear and, thanks to the materialism of our time, they will find popular favour like Sabbatai in the seventeenth century. It will be a severe test for those who have been prepared by Spiritual Science to recognize where the truth lies, to know whether the spiritual theories are really permeated by a living, spiritual feeling or whether they are only a disguised form of materialism. It will be a test of the further development of Spiritual Science whether Spiritual Science will develop a sufficient number of people who are able to understand that they must perceive the spirit in the spirit, that they must seek the new manifestation of Christ in the etheric world, or whether they will refuse to look beyond the physical plane and expect to see a manifestation of Christ in the physical body. Spiritual Science has yet to undergo this test. There is no doubt that nowhere has the ground been better prepared to recognize the truth on this very subject than in Scandinavia where the Northern mythology flourished.

The twilight of the Gods embraces a significant vision of the future, and I now come to a theme which I have already touched upon. I have already told you that in a folk community which has so recently left its clairvoyant past behind it, a clairvoyant sense is also developed in its guiding Folk Spirit in order that the newfound clairvoyance can again be understood. Now if a people experiences the new epoch with new human capacities in the region where Teutonic mythology flourished, then this people must realize that the old clairvoyance must assume a different form after man has undergone development on the physical plane. The old clairvoyance was temporarily silenced; man lost for a while the vision of the world of Odin and Thor, of Baldur and Hodur, of Freyr and Freyja. But this world will return again in an epoch when other forces meanwhile have been at work upon the human soul. When man gazes out into the new world with the new etheric clairvoyance he will realize that the forces of the old Gods no longer avail. If the old forces were to persist, then the counter-forces would range themselves against that force whose function in olden times was to develop man's capacities to a certain level. Odin and Thor will be visible again, but now in a new form. All the forces opposed to Odin and Thor, everything which has developed as a counter-force will once again be visible in a mighty tableau. But the human soul would not progress; it would not be able to resist injurious influences if it were subject solely to the forces known to the old clairvoyance. Once upon a time Thor endowed man with an ego. This ego has been developed on the physical plane, has evolved out of the Midgard Snake which Loki, the Luciferic power, has left behind in the astral body. That which Thor was once able to give and which the human soul transcends, is in conflict with that which proceeds from the Midgard Snake. This is depicted in Nordic mythology as the conflict between Thor and the Midgard Snake. They are evenly matched, neither can prevail. In the same way Odin wrestles with the Fenris Wolf and does not prevail.² Freyr, who, for a time, moulded the human soul-forces, had to succumb to that which had been given from out of the Earth forces themselves to the ‘I’, which meanwhile had been developed on the physical plane. Freyr was overcome by the flaming sword of Earth-born Surtur.

All these details which are set down in the Twilight of the Gods will find their counterpart in a new etheric vision which’ in reality points to the future. But the Fenris Wolf, symbol of the relics of the old clairvoyance, will live on in the future. There is a very deep truth concealed in the fact that the struggle between the Fenris Wolf and Odin still persists. There will be no greater danger than the tendency to cling to the old clairvoyance which has not been permeated with the new forces, a danger which might tempt man to remain content with the manifestations of the old astral clairvoyance of primeval times, such as the soul pictures of the Fenris Wolf. It would again be a severe trial for the future prospects of Spiritual Science, if, perhaps in the domain of Spiritual Science itself, there should arise a tendency to all sorts of confused, chaotic clairvoyance, an inclination to value clairvoyance illuminated by reason and spiritual knowledge less highly than the old, chaotic clairvoyance which is denied this prerogative. These dark and confusing relics of the old clairvoyance would wreck a terrible vengeance. Such clairvoyance cannot be challenged by that which itself stemmed from the old clairvoyant gift, but only by that which, during the period of Kali Yuga, has matured in a healthy way in order to give birth to a new clairvoyance. The power given by the old Archangel Odin, the old clairvoyant powers, cannot save man; something very different must supplant them. These future powers however, are known to Teutonic mythology; it is fully aware of their existence. It knows that the etheric form exists in which shall be embodied what we are now to see again—Christ in etheric form. He alone will succeed in banishing the dark and impure clairvoyant powers which would confuse mankind if Odin should not succeed in overcoming the Fenris Wolf which symbolizes the atavistic clairvoyance. Vidar who has been silent until now will overcome the Fenris Wolf. We learn of this too in the Twilight of the Gods.

Whoever recognizes the significance of Vidar and feels him in his soul, will find that in the twentieth century the power to see the Christ can be given to man again. Vidar who is part of the heritage of Northern and Central Europe will again be visible to man. He was held secret in the Mysteries and occult schools—the God who should await his future mission. Only vague intimations of his image have been given. This may be seen from the fact that a picture has been found in the vicinity of Cologne and no one knows whom it represents. But it is clearly a likeness of Vidar.

Throughout the period of Kali Yuga were acquired the powers which shall enable the new men to see the new manifestations of Christ. Those who are called upon to interpret from the signs of the times what is to come are aware that the new spiritual investigation will re-establish the power of Vidar who will banish from the hearts and minds of men all the dark and confusing relics of the old clairvoyance and will awaken in the human soul the new clairvoyance that is gradually unfolding.

When the wondrous figure of Vidar shines forth to us out of the Twilight of the Gods we realize that Teutonic mythology gives promise of future hope. We feel ourselves to be inwardly related to the figure of Vidar, the deeper aspects of whose being we are now striving to understand. We hope that those forces which the Archangel of the Teutonic world can contribute to the evolution of modern times will be able to provide the core and living essence of Spiritual Science. One part only of the development of mankind and the spirit—one part of a greater whole—has been realized for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; another part has yet to be accomplished. Those members of the Nordic peoples who feel within them the elemental and vital energies of a young people will best be able to contribute to this development. This will to some extent be implanted in the souls of men; but they themselves must be prepared to make a conscious effort. In the twentieth century one may fall by the wayside because man must to a certain extent have free choice in determining his goal which must not be pre-determined. It is therefore a question of having a proper understanding of the goal ahead. If, then, Spiritual Science reflects the knowledge of the Christ Being, and if we start from a true understanding of this Being whom we look for in the very core of the European peoples themselves, if we set our future hopes on this understanding, then we shall not be motivated by any kind of personal predilection or temperamental predisposition.

It has sometimes been said that the name we give to the greatest Being in the evolution of mankind is of no consequence. He who recognizes the Christ Being will not insist on retaining the name of Christ. If we understand the Christ Impulse in the right way we would never say: a Being plays a part in the evolution of mankind, in the life of the peoples of the West and the East and this Being must conform to man's predilections for a particular truth. Such an attitude is not compatible with the teachings of occultism. What is compatible with occult teachings is that the moment one recognizes that this Being should be given the name of Buddha, we should unhesitatingly abide by our decision irrespective of whether we agree with it or not. Fundamentally it is not a question of sympathy or antipathy, but of the factual truth.

The moment the facts are open to other interpretations we should be prepared to act differently. Facts and facts alone must decide. We have no wish to introduce Orientalism and Occidentalism into what we look upon as the life-blood of Spiritual Science; if we should discover in the realm of the Nordic and Germanic Archangels a source of potential nourishment for true Spiritual Science, then this will not be the prerogative of a particular people or tribe in the Germanic countries, but of the whole of humanity. What is given to all mankind must be given; it may, it is true, originate in a particular region, but it must be given to the whole of humanity. We do not differentiate between East and West. We accept with deep gratitude the surpassing grandeur of the primeval culture of the holy Rishis in its true form. We accept with gratitude the Persian culture, the Egypto-Chaldean and Graeco-Latin cultures, and with the same objectivity we also accept the cultural heritage of Europe. We are compelled by the needs of the situation to present the facts as they really are.

If we incorporate the total contributions which each religion has made to the civilizing process of mankind into what we recognize to be the common property of mankind, then the more we do this, the more we are acting in accordance with the Christ principle. Since this principle is capable of further development we must abandon the dogmatic interpretation of the early centuries and millennia when the initial stages of the Christ principle were only imperfectly understood. We do not look to the past for future guidance. We do not seek to perpetuate the Christ of the past; we are chiefly concerned with what can be investigated by means of spiritual perception. To us the essential element in the Christ-principle does not belong to the past—however much tradition may insist upon this—but to the future. We endeavour to ascertain what is to come. We do not rely so much on historical tradition which was fundamental to the Christ Impulse at the beginning of the Christian era; we do not attach much importance to the external and historical approach. After Christianity has passed through its growing pains, it will develop further. It has gone forth into foreign lands and sought to convert the people to the particular Christian dogmas of the age. But we profess a Christianity which proclaims that Christ was active in all ages and that we shall find Him where so ever we go, that the Christ-principle is the highest expression of Anthroposophy. And if Buddhism acknowledges as Buddhists only those who swear by Buddha, then Christianity will be the faith that swears by no prophet because it is not subject to a religious Founder attached to a particular people, but recognizes the God of all mankind.

Every Christian knows that the focal point of Christianity is a Mystery which became manifest on the physical plane at Golgotha. It is the perception of this Mystery which leads to the new vision I have described. We may also be aware that the spiritual life at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was such that the Mystery could only be experienced in the form it was experienced at that time. We refuse to submit to dogmas, even those of a Christian past. If a dogma should be imposed upon us, irrespective of its source, we would reject it in the name of the true Christ-principle. However many may try to force the historical Christ into the Procrustean bed of a confessional creed, however many may declare that our vision of the future Christ is mistaken, we shall not allow ourselves to be led astray when they declare that He must be after this or that fashion, even when it comes from the lips of those who ought to know who Christ is. Equally, the idea of the Christ Being should not be limited or circumscribed by Eastern traditions, nor be coloured by the dogmas of Oriental dogmatism. What is taught out of the true sources of occultism concerning the evolution of the future must be free and independent of all tradition and authority.

It is a source of wonder to me how much agreement there is amongst the people assembled here. Those, not of Norse extraction, who have come here, have repeatedly said to me in the last few days how free they feel in their relations with the people of the Scandinavian North. It is proof, if proof were needed, that we are able, though some may not be conscious of it, to understand each other at the deepest levels of spiritual knowledge and that we shall understand each other, especially in those matters I emphasized at the last Theosophical Congress in Budapest and which I repeated during our own General Meeting in Berlin when we had the great pleasure of seeing friends from Norway amongst us. It would be disastrous for Spiritual Science if he who cannot yet see into the spiritual world were obliged to accept in blind faith what he is told. I beg of you now, as I begged of you in Berlin, never to accept on authority or on faith anything I have said or shall say. Even before one has reached the stage of clairvoyance it is possible to test the results of clairvoyant vision. I beg of you not to accept as an article of faith whatever I have said about Zarathustra and Jesus of Nazareth, about Hermes and Moses, Odin and Thor, and about Christ Jesus Himself, nor to accept my statements as authoritative. I beseech you to abjure the principle of authority, for that principle would be deleterious to our Movement.

I am sure, however, that when you begin to reflect objectively, when you say, “We have been told so and so; let us investigate the records accessible to us, the religious and mythological documents, let us check the statements of the natural scientists”, you will realize how right I am. Avail yourselves of every means at your disposal, the more the better. I have no qualms. All that is given out of Rosicrucian sources can be tested in every way. Armed with the most materialistic criticism of the Gospels, verify what I have said about Christ Jesus; verify it as thoroughly as possible by all the means at your command on the physical plane. I am convinced that the more thoroughly you test it, the more you will find that what has been given out of the sources Of the Rosicrucian Mystery will correspond to the truth.

I take it for granted that the communications given out from Rosicrucian sources will be tested rather than believed, tested not superficially by the superficial methods of modern science, but ever more conscientiously. Take the latest achievements of natural science with its Most recent techniques, take the results of historical and religious research, it is all one to me. The more you test them, the more you will find them confirmed from this source. You must accept nothing on authority. The best students of Spiritual Science are those who take what is said as a stimulus in the first place and test it by the facts of life itself. For in life too, at every stage of life, you can test what is given out from the sources of Rosicrucianism. It is far from my intention in these lectures to lay down dogmas and claim that the facts are such and such and must be believed. Verify them by an exchange of views with people of able and active mind and you will find confirmation of what has been said as a prophetic indication of the future manifestation of Christ. You need only open your eyes and verify it objectively; we make no appeal to belief in authority. This need to test everything received from Spiritual Science should become a kind of basic attitude permeating our whole approach.

I should like to impress upon you, therefore, that it is not anthroposophical to accept a statement as dogma on the authority of this or that person; but it is truly anthroposophical to allow oneself to be stimulated by Spiritual Science and to verify what is communicated by life itself. Then, whatever Might colour in any way a truly anthroposophical view will cease to exist. Neither Eastern nor Western predilections must be allowed to colour our view. He who speaks from the point of view of Rosicrucianism accepts neither Orientalism nor Occidentalism; both appeal to him equally. The inner nature of the facts alone determine their truth. He must bear this in mind, especially at such an important moment as this when we have indicated the Folk Spirit who rules over the Northern lands. Here dwells the Teutonic mythological Spirit; even though his presence is not felt, his influence is more widely diffused in Europe than one imagines. If a conflict were to arise between the peoples of the North it could not arise because one people disputed the contributions to the common weal. Each people must practice self-knowledge and ask itself: how can I best contribute to the common weal? Then, that which leads to the collective progress of all, to the common welfare of mankind, will be harvested. The sources of what we are able to contribute lie in our individual characteristics. The Teutonic Archangel will bring to the whole field of culture in the future what he is most fitted for in accordance with the capacities he has acquired which we have already outlined. By virtue of this inherent power he is able to ensure that what could not yet be presented in the first half of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch may play its part in the second half, namely, that spiritual element which we were able to recognize in a germinal, prophetic form in the Slav philosophy and in the national sentiment of the Slavonic peoples. This preparatory stage lasted for the first half of the fifth post-Atlantean age. At first, all that could be achieved by way of philosophy was a highly sublimated spiritual perception. This must then be grasped and permeated by the vital energies of the people so that it may become the common property of all mankind and may be realized in all aspects of our earthly life. Let us try to come to an understanding on this subject, for then this somewhat dangerous theme will have caused no great harm if all who are assembled here from the North, South, East, West and Centre of Europe feel that this theme is really important for the whole of humanity, that the larger nations no less than the smaller isolated groups have each their appointed mission and have to contribute their share to the whole. Often the smallest national fragments have most important contributions to make because it is given to them to preserve and nurture old and new motifs in the soul-life. Thus, even though we have made this dangerous topic the subject of our lectures, it will serve to foster the basic sentiment of a community of soul amongst all those who are united under the banner of Anthroposophical thought and feeling and of Anthroposophical ideals.

Only if we should still react out of sympathy and antipathy, if we have no clear understanding of the essence of our Anthroposophical Movement, could misunderstandings arise from what has been said. But if we have grasped the underlying spirit of these lectures, then the ideas presented may also help us to make the firm resolution to harbour the high ideal—each from his own standpoint and from his own background—to contribute to the common goal that which is inherent in our mission. We can best achieve this through our individual initiative and our natural predisposition. We can best serve mankind if we develop our particular talents so as to offer them to the whole of humanity as a sacrifice which we bring to the progressive development of culture. We must learn to understand this. We must learn to understand that it would not redound to the credit of Spiritual Science, if it did not contribute to the evolution of man, Angel and Archangel, but were to support the convictions of one people at the expense of another. It is no part of Spiritual Science to assist in imposing the confessional beliefs of one continent upon another continent. If the religious teachings of the East were to prevail in the West, or vice versa, that would be a complete denial of Anthroposophical teaching. What alone accords with Anthroposophical teaching is that we should unselfishly dedicate the best that is in us, our sympathy and compassion, to the well being of all mankind. And if we are self-contained, and live, not for ourselves but for all men, then that is true Anthroposophical tolerance. I had to add these words by way of explanation for this somewhat delicate subject might otherwise offend national susceptibilities.

Spiritual Science, as we shall realize more and more clearly, will bring an end to the divisions of mankind. Therefore now is the right moment to learn to know the Folk Souls, because the province of Spiritual Science is not to promote antagonism between them, but to call upon them to work in harmonious cooperation. The better we understand this, the better students of Spiritual Science we shall be. On this note we shall end for the time being the course of lectures given here. For the knowledge we gather must ultimately find an echo in our feelings and our thinking and in the Anthroposophical goal we set before us. The more we practice this in our lives, the better Anthroposophists we are.

I have found that many of those who have accompanied us to Oslo have received a most favourable impression which they hasten to express in the words, “how much at home we feel here in the North!” And if higher spiritual forces are to be awakened in mankind, which we shall certainly see realized in the future, then to use the words of Vidar, the Aesir who has been silent until now, he will become the active friend of cooperative work, of cooperative endeavour, for which purpose we have all assembled here. With this object in view let us take leave of one another after having been together for a few days, and let us always remain together in spirit with this intention. Irrespective of where we students of Spiritual Science come from, whether from near or far, may we always meet together in harmony, even when we discuss amongst ourselves the particular characteristics of the peoples inhabiting the various countries of the Earth. We know that these are only the several tongues of flame which will mount together into the mighty flame upon the altar—the united progress of mankind—through the Anthroposophical view of life which lies so close to our hearts and is so deeply rooted in our souls.

• 1. Chapter 40 of Germania. See also the lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Basle, 12.xii.1916, entitled Christmas at a Time of Grievous Destiny. The Festivals and their Meaning. Vol. 1. Christmas. (Rudolf Steiner Press).
• 2. On the day of Ragnarok (the Twilight of the Gods) Odin is swallowed up by the Fenris Wolf. For the relation between Odin and the Fenris Wolf, see >Appendix.

My dear brothers and sisters! Since the Christmas Conference an esoteric impulse goes through the entire Anthroposophical Society, and those members of the Anthroposophical Society who have recently taken part in the general members' lectures will have noticed just how this esoteric impulse flows through all that is worked on within the Anthroposophical Movement and through all that is still to be worked on.

This was a necessity, a necessity which above all has been given out of the spiritual world, from which certainly flow the revelations which should live in the Anthroposophical Movement. It was a necessity which arose out of the spiritual world.

With this, however, an imperative emerged, in particular out of the spiritual world, out of which the revelations flow which should live in the Anthroposophical movement. This emerged out of the spiritual world. This imperative was fashioned as a specific kernel for Anthroposophical esoteric life, to make a kernel for true esoteric living. Thereby the imperative was given in a certain measure to build a bridge over to the spiritual world itself.

The spiritual world in a certain sense revealed itself in having to fashion such a school. For an esoteric school cannot be made out of human caprice, or what people might call human idealism. Rather this Esoteric School must be the body of something flowing out of spiritual life itself, so that in all that happens in such a school, it presents itself as the external expression what happens from an activity specifically in the supersensible, in the spiritual world itself. In this fashion this esoteric school could not have been made without having surveyed the will, which frequently has been brought forth in members' lectures, the will which since the last third of the nineteenth century has actually been guiding human spiritual affairs, the Will of Michael.

This Michael Will is one of those forces which in the course of time has intervened out of the spiritual world in sequence ever and again in the cycles of human destiny. When we look back in time at evolution, we find that this same Michael Will, which we can also call the Michael Regency, was active in the spiritual affairs of humanity, in the great questions of civilization, before the Mystery of Golgotha during the time of Alexander. Then what had been brought forth in Greece through the Mysteries, both the underworld Chthonic and the celestial Mysteries, that this was to be carried abroad into Asia, carried abroad into Africa. Whenever and wherever the Will of Michael has dominion, a cosmopolitan spirit is always present. The differentiations among people on earth are overcome in an era of Michael.

After this deeply significant activity, linked with the spreading of Aristotelianism and of Alexandrianism, which was an activity of Michael, after this followed other activities linked with Oriphiel.¹ After the Oriphiel-linked activity came the Anael activity, the Zachariel activity, then the significant Raphael activity, then the Samael activity, then the Gabriel activity, which extended into the nineteenth century. Since the late seventies of the nineteenth century, we stand once again under the sign of Michael's regency. It is beginning, but the Michael-Impulses must flow in, and can certainly become clear to you, my brothers and sisters, through the general members' lectures, Michael-Impulses must flow in a conscious way into all genuine, rightfully constituted esoteric work.

And through all that is connected with the impulse of the Christmas Conference, through all that has been brought forth, is the possibility of this being the kernel of the Anthroposophical Movement’s forming an esoteric school to be seen as the esoteric school inspired and guided by Michael himself. Thereby it rightfully stands its ground in our time as a spiritual institution. And a person must feel, a person who would rightfully become a member of this school, that this must become a part of one’s life in deepest sincerity. And a person who would rightfully become a member of this school must feel not merely belonging to an earthly community, but also to a supersensible community, whose leader and guide is Michael himself. As a consequence, what is communicated here should not be taken as my word, but rather in so far as it is the content of the lesson it should be taken as that which Michael has to make known esoterically in this age to those who feel themselves belonging to him. Therefore, what these lessons contain will be the Michael communication for our era.

And thereby, since it is that, the Anthroposophical Movement will contain its specific spiritual vigor. To this end it is necessary that what may be called membership in this school will be acquired with utmost sincerity. It is still necessary, my dear brothers and sisters, fundamentally and deeply necessary, that in an ever more earnest way, it is necessary to point to the holy sincerity with which the school must be taken up.

Here within this school, it must be said once again, and ever and again, that in Anthroposophical circles much too little seriousness prevails for what actually flows through the Anthroposophical Movement, and, at least among the esoteric members of this esoteric school, a kernel of humanity will be drawn forth, which will gradually rise to the necessary earnest sincerity. Therefore, it is necessary that the leadership of this school really reserves to itself the responsibility to recognize only those as rightful, worthy members of the school who, in every detail of their lives, would be worthy representatives of Anthroposophical endeavors, and the decision as to whether or not that is the case must rest with the leadership of the school.

Do not see this, my dear brothers and sisters, as a limitation of freedom. The leadership of the school must have freedom and be free to recognize who belongs to this school and who does not, just as much as each of you will freely choose whether or not to belong to this school. But it must throughout be an idealistic spiritual freely-borne pact, so to speak, that will be made between the members of the school and the leadership. In no other way could the esoteric development be considered healthy, and especially in no other way worthy of the actuality of this esoteric school standing under the immediate impact of the potency of Michael himself.

The leadership of the school must, in the strictest sense of the word, manage what has just been said. That it does so may become evident to you, my dear friends, through what has taken place since the relatively brief existence of the school, that eighteen to twenty expulsions have occurred, because the earnest serious quality which is essential to the school was not adhered to.

Conscientious care of the mantric maxims, so that they do not fall into unauthorized hands, is the first obligation, but also to actually be a worthy representative of Anthroposophical affairs.

I need only mention a few facts in order to indicate how little, in actuality, the Anthroposophical Movement is grasped fully in earnest, how little earnestness penetrates the Anthroposophical Movement. I have mentioned this to some of you individually. It has happened that members of the school have reserved their seats here with the blue certificates which give them the right to be present in the school. It has happened in the Anthroposophical Society that whole piles of News Sheets, intended only for members, have been found in the tram running from Dornach to Basel. I could enlarge this list in the greatest variety of ways. Again and again, it happens that the most dumbfounding incidents occur as a result of the lack of seriousness. Even things which are taken seriously in everyday life, as soon as the same things practiced seriously in ordinary life are practiced within the Anthroposophical Movement, they are not taken seriously.

These are all matters which must be taken into account in relation to the firm structure which this school must have. Therefore, these things must be said, for if one fails to pay attention to these matters, one cannot worthily receive the revelations from the spiritual world which are given here in this school. At the close of each lesson attention is expressly drawn to the fact that the individuality of Michael himself is present while the revelations of the school are being given, and this is confirmed through the Sign and Seal of Michael.

All these things must live in the hearts of the members. Dignity, profound dignity, must prevail in everything, even to what connects one’s thoughts to the school. For in all of this there can live only what today an esoteric streaming through the world should carry. And all this is included in the responsibilities each individual has.

The mantric maxims written here on the board can only be possessed, in the strictest sense of the word, by those who have the right to participate in the school. If a member of the school is prevented on some occasion from taking part in the lessons in which mantric verses are given, another member who has received these verses in the school can communicate the verses. In every single case, however, for every single person to whom the verses are to be given, permission must be requested either from Frau Dr. Wegman or from myself. When permission has been given for one person it then remains in effect. But for every other person permission must again be requested from Frau Dr. Wegman or from me. This is not an administrative regulation, it is something which is demanded, in the strictest sense, by the rules of occult life. For it must be understood that every act of the school must remain connected with the school's leadership, and this begins with the fact that one requests permission if something is to occur which belongs to the sphere of responsibility of the school. Not the one who is to receive the mantras should request permission, but the one who transmits them, according to the procedures which I have just described. If someone writes down anything during the lesson, other than the mantric verses, something which has been said, that person is obligated to keep it only eight days and then to burn it.

All these things are not arbitrary regulations, but are connected with the occult fact that esoteric matters are only effective when they are encompassed by a certain attitude of heart and mind, which those who are recognized as responsible members of the school have. The mantras lose their effectiveness when they come into unauthorized hands. This rule is so firmly inscribed into the world's order that the following incident once occurred and a whole series of mantras became ineffective, which had been current within the Anthroposophical Movement.

It was possible for me to give to a number of people some mantric verses. I gave the mantras also to a certain person. This person had a friend who was clairvoyant to a certain degree. It then came about, as both friends were sleeping in the same room, that the clairvoyant friend, during the time that the other was merely repeating the mantra in his mind, the clairvoyant read it mentally and then misused it by giving it to others as coming from him. One first had to investigate the incident, which then brought to light why the mantras in question became ineffective for all those who possessed them.

You may not, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, take these matters lightly, because the rules of esoteric life are strict, and no one who has committed such a mistake should excuse himself with the thought that he couldn't help himself. If someone lets a mantra pass through his head in thought, and someone else observes this clairvoyantly, the one who thinks the mantra certainly cannot do anything about this. But the events occur, nevertheless, according to an iron law of necessity.

I mention this incident in order that you may see how little arbitrariness is involved in these matters, and to show how in these matters there is contained what is read directly from the spiritual world, what corresponds with the habits and customs of the spiritual world. Nothing is arbitrary in what takes its course in a rightfully constituted esoteric school. And there should ray out from the esoteric school into the rest of the Anthroposophical Movement that earnest quality about which we have spoken. Only then will this school be for the Anthroposophical Movement what it should be. But it will be necessary to be honest with oneself, and acknowledge that one acts sometimes out of personal motives, and if so, one should not dress the matter up as if it were inspired by devotion to the Anthroposophical Movement. Naturally, I certainly don't intend to say that nothing should occur out of personal motives, for it is a matter of course that people today must be personal. But then it is necessary that in what is personal the truth must be acknowledged. For instance, if someone travels here to Dornach for personal pleasure, he or she should therefore admit this and not make out otherwise. There's nothing wrong with traveling to Dornach for personal pleasure! Indeed, it is, by the way, very good when one comes here. But one should admit the personal pleasure and not dress it up as pure devotion to spiritual life.

I mention this, but I might equally well have chosen a different example, which might be closer to reality, for it is, in fact, true that when most of our friends travel to Dornach, the readiness to sacrifice, the spirit of sacrifice, is indeed involved, and that in this particular example, the traveling to Dornach, in at least some degree, untruthfulness played a role. But I chose this example precisely because of the fact that it hits home least and is thus less hurtful. If I had chosen other examples, the basic quite calm mood of soul, a truly serene mood in the hearts and souls of all those who are sitting here, would have been less likely to rise to the occasion.

After this introduction I would like to start with the verse which is both the beginning and the end of what comes before you here as the declaration of Michael, which contains what is spoken to all human beings who have an unencumbered sense for it, by all things and beings in the world, if one listens to what is said with the soul. For everything that lives in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, that sparkles down from the stars, that works into our soul from the realm of the hierarchies, from all that crawls on the earth worm-like, that moves living upon the earth, out of all that speaks in rock and spring, in forest and field and mountains and thunder and clouds and lightning, out of all this spoke to the open-minded human being in the past, speaks to him in the present, will speak in all futures:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

The last lesson concluded, my dear brothers and sisters, following the final admonitions that the Guardian of the Threshold imparts before crossing the yawning abyss of being, with the Guardian of the Threshold having spoken weighty, human-heart-moving words:

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being

Weighty, portentous, significant experiences have entered our hearts, through all that the Guardian of the Threshold has spoken at Michael's behest. All that he has spoken was spoken in order to prepare us for the demeanor which we must have, when after the door is opened, we cross over the yawning abyss of existence, where one does not go by walking with earthly feet, where one only goes by flying with the soul, when the soul out of a spiritual attitude, out of spiritual love, out of spiritual feeling grows wings.

So now, my dear brothers and sisters, will be described what the human being experiences when he stands beyond the yawning abyss of existence. The Guardian of the Threshold instructs, “Turn around and look back! Until now you have looked toward what appeared to you a black, night-bedecked darkness, concerning which you had to surmise that it will become bright and will illumine the source of your own self. I allowed it, on the occasion of the last admonitions, so says the Guardian of the Threshold, I allowed it to grow brighter, at first very gently. First you feel light dawning around you. But turn around, look back!”

As one who has crossed the yawning abyss of being now turns around and looks back, he beholds his person of earth, what he is during physical incarnation, over there in that part of existence which he has left, that now lies yonder in the province of the earth. He beholds his own person of earth over there. He has entered and embodies himself with his spirit-soul being in spirit existence. The earthly sheath, the earthly formation, now stands over yonder. It stands yonder in that region in which we were at first with our entire human being, where we have seen all that crawls below and flies above, where we have seen the sparkling stars, the warm sun, where we have seen what lives in wind and weather, and where we have stood, knowing that in all of this, despite all that is so majestic that rays out and gives light in the sun, despite all its beauty and greatness, there in the field of sense-existence, where we have stood and said to ourselves that our own human being's essence is not within it, that you must seek beyond the yawning abyss of existence, in what from the other, from the sense-bound side appears to you as black, night-bedecked darkness.

The Guardian of the Threshold has shown us in the three beasts what we actually are. Now there is described how, within the darkness which is growing bright, which is beginning to lighten up, we should begin by looking back on what we are as human beings in the sense-world, together with what was formerly our only world in sense-bound earth existence.

Now the Guardian of the Threshold points in a very definite way to the one who stands over there as the earth-person, who is ourself, in earth existence, that being to whom we must return again and again, into whom we must penetrate over and over again when we step forth from the spiritual world and enter into the duties of our work on earth, when we return to earth existence. For we may not become dreamers and light-headed enthusiasts. We must return, in every respect, to earthly life and obligations. For this reason, the Guardian of the Threshold directs us to look on the person who stands over yonder, who we ourselves are, in such a way that he makes us attentive, at first, to who and what this person is. [An outline of the human form was drawn on the blackboard.] The human being is aware that he perceives the outer world through the senses [the eye is drawn] which are localized, primarily, in the head and that he perceives his thinking through the activity of his head.

But the Guardian of the Threshold now remarks, “Look inside this head.” It is as if you look into a dark cell, for you do not see the light which is working within it. But the truth is that what you carried within you as thinking over there in the sense world is the mere appearance of reality, is mere picture-images, not much more than mirror-pictures.

The Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us to be very conscious of this fact, but also to be conscious of the fact that what lives in earthly thinking only as appearance, as we learned in earlier lessons, is the corpse of living thinking, in which we lived in the spiritual-soul world before we descended into this earth-existence. In that existence thinking was alive. Now, thinking rests as dead thinking, as the semblance of thinking, in the coffin of our body. All thinking which we make use of in the sense world is dead thinking. It was alive before we descended to earth.

What did this thinking make? It first made all that, which within the top of the body, within the head, within this dark cell, so it shows itself for sensory appearance, all that is light-making being.² The brain, which sits there inside as the supporting pillar of thinking, has been made out of living thinking. [The interior of the head, yellow, was drawn on the blackboard.] And living thinking it is that first makes the supporting pillar for our semblance of thinking on earth.

Look at the convolutions of the brain, look at all you bear within you in the dark cell of the head, which makes earthly thinking possible for you, my brothers and sisters. Look behind that thinking, which is only appearance in the cabinet of the head, and you will then discover how into what here above is felt as thinking [drawing, red arrows] there streams the force of willing, there pours up into thinking the force of willing, so that each thought is irradiated by will. It can be felt how the will flows into thinking.

We look back thus from beyond the threshold and see how that other human being, who we ourselves are, has streaming out of the body into the head the willing’s undulations, willing at work, and eventually, if we follow it back in time, traveling as far as our former incarnations on earth, at work over here from past worlds into the present incarnation are thought-undulations which build our head, finally passing over into the appearance of thinking here in this incarnation.

Therefore, we should be stout and strong,³ the Guardian of the Threshold says to us, and imagine the dead thinking thrown out into world-nothingness, for it is mere appearance. And the willing which arises there we should regard as that which from former earth-incarnations crosses over to dwell and move and work and make⁴ us finally into a thinker. There, within [see drawing, yellow] are the formative world-thoughts.⁵ These formative world-thoughts first take effect, that we can have intrinsically human thoughts.

Therefore, the first word of the Guardian of the Threshold after he has allowed us to cross the threshold, after he has informed us that the door is opened, that we can become a true human being, therefore the first word which he there speaks is:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

The first words that we hear over there, as we look back upon the form, the gestalt which we ourselves are, which stands here before our soul's gaze, which we direct back from over there: [The heading and the first verse with the underlined words were written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian is heard in the gradually brightening darkness:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Then the Guardian of the Threshold adds to this, and one must exert oneself in order to hear it. Just imagine yourself looking back at what you yourself are, who stands over yonder, then turn again and look into the darkness and try with all possible inner imaginative force of memory, as when you retain an after-image, a physical after-image held in your eye, try with maximum force to sketch there something like a kind of gray outline form of what you have seen over yonder, but avoid making a sketch of anything else other than a gray outline. [Drawing continued.]

There then appears, if one succeeds in seeing this gray outline-figure, there

appears behind this gray outline the image of the moon [the sickle moon is drawn, yellow] with the gray silhouette in front of it.

If one is now able to maintain inner quiet, one sees in the distance the moon. The gray silhouette becomes something that is both over there and at the same time arises within one. If we practice in this way, again and again, we feel approaching the spirit-form of the head, which one has yonder, not the physical form, but the spirit-form of the head, which we have over there, then will the person feel coming toward him what karma brings him from former incarnations on earth [yellow arrow to the right of the sickle moon].

Therefore, in meditating, you should meditate on the image I have drawn here in gold, the sickle moon with this arrow. Let the mantra run, let it play out, then bring up the image as a reminder for what can gradually lead one to become familiar with what emerges in force from prior lives on earth.

As a second step the Guardian of the Threshold instructs with a more forceful gesture, pointing to what lives as feeling in the person over there, who we ourselves are, and he admonishes us to correctly see this feeling as a dream dawning. And in the act, we will see feeling, which in spite of this person over there is made much more real than is thinking, for thinking is appearance, yet feeling is half real. However, we see the feeling of the day-person unfolding in dream pictures that are louder, purer, and we learn to know through the observation, that feeling as seen from the spirit, and in the spirit, is dreaming.

But what kind of dreaming is feeling? In this feeling the person dreams not alone the individual person, but therein dreams the whole surrounding world-consciousness.⁶ Our thinking is ours alone, therefore it is also only appearance. Our feeling is something in which the world to some extent lives. World-consciousness is within it.

Now we must look to acquiring the greatest possible restfulness of heart, which the Guardian admonishes us to do. If we acquire the greatest possible restfulness of heart, so that we can extinguish what moves and lives as feeling in dream pictures, just as dreaming is extinguished in deep sleep, then we come upon the truth of feeling and can see personal feeling interwoven with world living that is present in spirit around us. And then the true spirit-person appears to us, which lives and moves in the body, initially in its half-existence. Emerging from the sleeping feeling appears to us the person. We feel ourselves over there on the other side of the Threshold in this way, on the other side of the yawning abyss of existence in our essence as a human being, since feeling has fallen asleep and world-creative might has appeared around us, might that lives in feeling. Therefore, the Guardian admonishes us:

Look into feeling's wafting of soul,
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

[The second stanza was written on the board and compared with the first.]

Look into

Here [in the first verse] it was behind, here it is into [into was underlined]. Every word is significant in mantric verses.

feeling’s wafting of soul,

Here it is thinking, here feeling, here sensory-light, here wafting of soul. Wafting is much more real than light’s appearance.

[In the second verse feeling's was underlined but not wafting of soul.]

How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;

Here it says Willing ascends from bodily depths, and here Living streams from world afar.

[In the second verse Living was underlined.]

Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;

It progresses. Here [in the first verse] there is let flow through the strength of your soul. Here [in the second verse] one must let human feeling waft away. [waft away was underlined.]

And world living shall come alive

There [in the first verse] it was willing, which is still within the person. Here

As human-being's-power.

The progression is in contrast to world-thought-creating. [In the second verse human being's power was underlined.]

The Guardian of the Threshold instructs us to look back once again on the form, the gestalt that stands over there, the one we ourselves are in earth existence, and once again we should take up the gray image, but now take it up in such a way that we retain it, after having turned away from ourselves, and in our soul-life we turn it in a circle, so that it persists as we turn it. We shall find that when we rotate the image in this way in a circle, the sun appears, in its appearance behind the silhouette turning in the circle. [drawing, red]. In this experience we become aware how in the moment we are drawn out of spiritual worlds into physical earth consciousness, our etheric body has drawn itself together out of the world ether. Therefore, just as the previous picture belongs to the first verse [The drawing of the gray silhouette and the first verse were numbered 1.], we should add this picture to the second verse [The red drawing of the rotating image and the second verse were numbered 2.].

Then the Guardian of the Threshold directs us to our willing, that acts in our limbs. He sternly makes us aware that everything connected with the will is sleeping in us when we are awake. For just as the thought works downward, as I explained last time and therefore may say today, just as the thought warms downward into the limb’s movement, just so willing emerges, which becomes clear in spiritual discernment, in spiritual observation. This is hidden from ordinary consciousness just as life is hidden in sleep. Now we are to look, and from the start, to behold willing within our limbs sunk in deep sleep. There willing sleeps. The limbs sleep. This we should have as a firm thought in mind. For then, when we have this, we are able to realize how thinking, that is the origin of willing in earthly man, sinks down into the limbs. Then it becomes light in the human being. Willing becomes bright. It wakes up. When we first see it in its sleeping condition, we find that it awakens when thinking sinks downward and light streams upward from below, light which is indeed none other than the forces of gravity. Feel in your legs, feel in your arms the force of gravity when you just let everything hang down. That is what streams upward, what unites itself with the downward streaming thinking. We see human willing transforming itself into its reality and thinking appearing as what, in a mysterious, magical way ignites the will in man. This is, in actuality, the magical activity, the magical effect of thinking, which the will carries out. There is magic. This we now realize. The Guardian of the Threshold says:

Look over willing's bodily-working

in the surrounding aura

How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

[This third verse, with certain words underlined, was now written on the board.]

Look over willing's bodily-working
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

To that, imagine the Guardian of the Threshold again beckoning us to look down at what is over there, who we ourselves are, to retain an image, but this time not to turn round but rather to allow this image to sink into the earth beneath the form that stands there. We look over there. There stands over there, who we ourselves are. We form the image for ourselves and form within us the powerful force to look downward, as though a lake were there and we would see this image by looking down and under, so that we see it now as if within the earth, but not as a reflected image, but as an upright picture.

We imagine the earth, [The arc was drawn.] with the third verse. [This drawing and the third verse were numbered 3.] We imagine the earth, how its gravity-forces ascend, how the gravity-forces shine into the limbs, feet, and arms [arrows]. In what we perceive later we have a foreshadowing of how the gods work together with human beings between death and a new birth, in order to fulfill karma.

It is this about which the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us, when he speaks to us for the first time after we have crossed the yawning abyss of existence:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Look into feeling's wafting of soul,
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

Look over willing's bodily working,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

Always, the circle closes. Again, we look back upon the point from which we set out, hearing out of all beings and all processes of the world:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

With his communication, Michael is present in this rightly constituted school. His presence is confirmed by his sign, which should have dominion over all that will be given in this school [The Michael sign was drawn on the blackboard.], and it is confirmed through his seal which he has impressed upon the esoteric striving of the Rosicrucian School, which lives symbolically in the threefold maxim Ex Deo Nascimur, In Christo Morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus. And as Michael impresses his seal, the first sentence is spoken in this gesture [The lower seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], the second sentence in this gesture [The middle seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], and the third sentence in this gesture [The upper seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.].

The first gesture signifies [Beside the lower seal gesture was written:]

I honor the Father.

It lives silently while we speak the Ex Deo Nascimur. The second gesture signifies [Beside the middle seal gesture was written:]

I love the Son

It lives silently while we speak the In Christo Morimur. The third gesture signifies [beside the upper seal gesture was written:]

I unite with the Spirit

It lives silently in the sign, that there is Michael's Seal, as we speak the Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

And so is confirmed today’s Michael proclamation substance through the Sign and Seal of Michael. [The Michael sign was made and with the three seal gestures was spoken:] Ex Deo Nascimur, In Christo Morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

I have to announce that the course for theologians will take place tomorrow at 10:45. The speech formation and dramatic course at 12 o'clock. In the afternoon at 5 there will be a eurythmy presentation, and at 8 o'clock in the evening, or, if the eurythmy finishes late, at 8:15 or 8:30, the members' lecture.

The Guardian is heard in the gradually brightening darkness:

Look behind thinking's sensory light
How in the darkened spirit cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Look into feeling's wafting of soul
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

Look over willing's bodily working,
How into sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus
I honor the Father
I love the Son
I unite with the Spirit

• 1. In a notebook of Rudolf Steiner, dated August 18, 1924, under morning lecture, Torquay, appears an entry about the different epochs: 1979–1510 Gabriel (Moon), 1510–1190 Samael (Mars), 1190–850 Raphael (Mercury), 850–500 Zachariel (Jupiter), 500–150 Anael (Venus), 150–200 Oriphiel (Saturn).
• 2. lichtschaffendes Wesen
• 3. stark
• 4. herüberwellt und webt und wirkt und macht
• 5. schaffenden Weltgedanken
• 6. Weltendasein

Speech Exercises:

Children chiding
Chaffinch chirping
Choking chimneys
Cheerfully chattering

Children chiding and fetching
Chaffinch chirping switching
Choking chimneys hitching
Cheerfully chattering twitching

Beach children chiding and fetching
Reach chaffinch chirping switching
Birches choking chimneys hitching
Perches cheerfully chattering twitching

RUDOLF STEINER: The “ch” should be sounded in a thoroughly active way, like a gymnastic exercise.¹

The following is a piece in which you have to pay attention both to the form and the content.

From “Galgenlieder” by Christian Morgenstern:

The Does’ Prayer

The does, as the hour grows late,
Med-it-ate;
Med-it-nine;
Med-i-ten;
Med-eleven;
Med-twelve;
Mednight!
The does, as the hour grows late,
Meditate,
They fold their little toesies,
the doesies.²

RUDOLF STEINER: Now we will continue our talk about the plant world.

Various contributions were offered by those present.

RUDOLF STEINER: Later there will be students in the school who will study the plant kingdom on a more scientific basis, in which case they would learn to distinguish mosses, lichens, algae, monocotyledons, dicotyledons, and so on. All children, who in their youth learn to know plants according to scientific principles, should first learn about them as we have described—that is, by comparing them with soul qualities. Later they can study the plant system more scientifically. It makes a difference whether we try first to describe the plants and then later study them scientifically, or vice versa. You can do much harm by teaching scientific botany first, instead of first presenting ideas that relate to the feeling life, as I have tried to show you. In the latter case the children can tackle the study of scientific botanical systems with a truly human understanding.

The plant realm is the soul world of the Earth made visible. The carnation is a flirt. The sunflower an old peasant. The sunflower’s shining face is like a jolly old country rustic. Plants with very big leaves would express, in terms of soul life, lack of success in a job, taking a long time with everything, clumsiness, and especially an inability to finish anything; we think that someone has finished, but the person is still at it. Look for the soul element in the plant forms!

When summer approaches, or even earlier, sleep spreads over the Earth; this sleep becomes heavier and heavier, but it only spreads out spatially, and in autumn passes away again. The plants are no longer there, and sleep no longer spreads over the Earth. The feelings, passions, and emotions of people pass with them into sleep, but once they are there, those feelings have the appearance of plants. What we have invisible within the soul, our hidden qualities—flirtatiousness, for example—become visible in plants. We don’t see this in a person who is awake, but it can be observed clairvoyantly in people who are sleeping. Flirtation, for example, looks like a carnation. A flirt continually produces carnations from the nose! A tedious, boring person produces gigantic leaves from the whole body, if you could see them.

When we express the thought that the Earth sleeps, we must go further: the plant world grows in the summer. Earth sleeps in the summer and is awake during winter. The plant world is the Earth’s soul. Human soul life ceases during sleep, but when the Earth goes to sleep its soul life actually begins. But the human soul does not express itself in a sleeping person. How are we going to get over this difficulty with children?

One of the teachers suggested that plants could be considered the Earth’s dreams.

RUDOLF STEINER: But plants during high summer are not the Earth’s dreams, because the Earth is in a deep sleep in the summer. It is only how the plant world appears during spring and autumn that you can call dreams. Only when the flowers are first beginning to sprout—when the March violet, for example, is still green, before flowers appear, and again when leaves are falling—that the plant world can be compared to dreams. With this in mind, try to make the transition to a real understanding of the plant.

For example, you can begin by saying, “Look at this buttercup,” or any plant we can dig out of the soil, showing the root below, the stalk, leaves, blossoms, and then the stamens and pistil, from which the fruit will develop. Let the child look at a plant like this. Then show a tree and say, “Imagine this tree next to the plant. What can you tell me about the tree? Yes, it also has roots below of course; but instead of a stalk, it has a trunk. Then it spreads its branches, and it’s as if the real plants grew on these branches, because many leaves and flowers can be found there; it’s as if little plants were growing on the branches above. So, we could actually look at a meadow this way: We see yellow buttercups growing all over the meadow; it is covered with individual plants with their roots in the Earth, and they cover the whole meadow. But when we look at the tree, it’s as if someone had taken the meadow, lifted it up, and rounded it into an arch; only then do we find many flowers growing very high all over it. The trunk is a bit of the Earth itself. So we may say that the tree is the same as the meadow where the flowers grow.

“Now we go from the tree to the dandelion or daisy. Here there is a root-like form in the soil, and from it grows something like a stalk and leaves, but at the top there is a little basket of flowers, tiny little blossoms close together. It’s as though the dandelion made a little basket up there with nothing in it but little flowers, perfect flowers that can be found in the dandelion-head. So we have the tree, the little ‘basket-bloomers,’ and the ordinary plant, a plant with a stalk. In the tree it’s as though the plants were only high up on the branches; in the compound flowers the blossom is at the top of the plant, except that these are not petals, but countless fully-developed flowers.

“Now imagine that the plant kept everything down in the Earth; suppose it wanted to develop roots, but that it was unsuccessful—or perhaps leaves, but could not do this either; imagine that the only thing to unfold above ground were what one usually finds in the blossom; you would then have a mushroom. At least, if the roots down below fail and only leaves come up, you would then have ferns. So you find all kinds of different forms, but they are all plants.”

Show the children the buttercup, how it spreads its little roots, how it has its five yellow-fringed petals, then show them the tree, where the “plant” only grows on it, then the composite flowers, the mushroom, and the fern; do not do this in a very scientific way, but so that the children get to know the form in general.

Then you can say, “Why do you think the mushroom remained a mushroom, and why did the tree become a tree? Let’s compare the mushroom with the tree. What is the difference between them? Take the tree. Isn’t it as though the Earth had pushed itself out with all its might—as though the inner being of the tree had forced its way up into the outside world in order to develop its blossoms and fruits away from the Earth? But in the mushroom the Earth has kept within itself what usually grows up out of it, and only the uppermost parts of the plant appear in the form of mushrooms. In the mushroom the ‘tree’ is below the soil and only exists as forces. In the mushroom itself we find something similar to the tree’s outermost part. When lots and lots of mushrooms are spread over the Earth, it is as though you had a tree growing down below them, inside the Earth. And when we look at a tree it is as though the Earth had forced itself up, turning itself inside out, as it were, bringing its inner self into the outer world.”

Now you are coming nearer to the reality: “When you see mushrooms growing you know that the Earth is holding something within itself that, in the case of a growing tree, it pushes up outside itself. So in producing mushrooms the Earth keeps the force of the growing tree within itself. But when the Earth lets the trees grow it turns the growing-force of the tree outward.” Now here you have something not found within the Earth during summer, because it rises out of the Earth then and when winter comes it goes down into the Earth again. “During summer the Earth, through the force of the tree, sends its own force up into the blossoms, causing them to unfold, and in winter it draws this force back again into itself. Now let us think of this force, which during the summer circles up in the trees—a force so small and delicate in the violet but so powerful in the tree. Where can it be found in winter? It is under the surface of the Earth. What happens during the depth of winter to all these plants—the trees, the composite flowers, and all the others? They unfold right under the Earth’s surface; they are there within the Earth and develop the Earth’s soul life. This was known to the people of ancient times, and that was why they placed Christmas—the time when we look for soul life—not in the summer, but during winter.

“Just as a person’s soul life passes out of the body when falling asleep, and again turns inward when a person wakens, so it is also for the Earth. During summer while asleep it sends its sap-bearing force out, and during winter takes it back again when it awakens—that is, it gathers all its various forces into itself. Just think, children, our Earth feels and experiences everything that happens within it; what you see all the summer long in flowers and leaves, the abundance of growth and blossom, in the daisies, the roses, or the carnations—this all dwells under the Earth during winter, and there it has feelings like you have, and can be angry or happy like you.”

In this way you gradually form a view of life lived under the Earth during winter. That is the truth. And it is good to tell the children these things. This is something that even materialists could not argue with or consider an extravagant flight of fancy. But now you can continue from this and consider the whole plant. The children are led away from a subjective attitude toward plants, and they are shown what drives the sap over the Earth during summer heat and draws it back again into itself in winter; they come to see the ebb and flow in plant life. In this way you find the Earth’s real soul life mirrored in plants. Beneath the Earth ferns, mosses, and fungi unfold all that they fail to develop as growing plants, but this all remains etheric substance and does not become physical. When this etheric plant appears above the Earth’s surface, the external forces work on it and transform it into the rudiments of leaves we find in fungi, mosses, and ferns. But under a patch of moss or mushrooms there is something like a gigantic tree, and if the Earth cannot absorb it, cannot keep it within itself, then it pushes up into the outer world.

The tree is a little piece of the Earth itself. But what remains underground in mushrooms and ferns is now raised out of the Earth, so that if the tree were slowly pushed down into the Earth everything would be different, and if it were to be thus submerged then ferns, mosses, and mushrooms would appear; for the tree it would be a kind of winter. But the tree withdraws from this experience of winter. It is the nature of a tree to avoid the experience of winter to some extent, but if I could take hold of a fern or a mushroom by the head and draw it further and further out of the Earth so that the etheric element in it reached the air, then I would draw out a whole tree, and what would otherwise become a mushroom would now turn into a tree. Annual plants are midway between these two. A composite flower is merely another form of what happens in a tree. If I could press a composite flower down into the Earth it would bear only single blossoms. A composite flower could almost be called a tree that has shot up too quickly.

And so we can also find a wish, a desire, living in the Earth. The Earth feels compelled to let this wish sink into sleep. The Earth puts it to sleep in summer, and then the wish rises as a plant. It is not visible above the Earth until it appears as a water-lily. Down below it lives as a wish in the Earth, and then up above it becomes a plant.

The plant world is the Earth’s soul world made visible, and this is why we can compare it with human beings. But you should not merely make comparisons; you must also teach the children about the actual forms of the plants. Starting with a general comparison you can then lead to the single plant species.

Light sleep can be compared with ordinary plants, a kind of waking during sleep with mushrooms (where there are very many mushrooms, the Earth is awake during the summer), and you can compare really sound deep sleep with the trees.

From this you see that the Earth does not sleep as people do, but in one part it is more asleep and in another more awake; here more asleep, there more awake. People, in their eyes and other sense organs, also have sleeping, waking, and, dreaming side by side, all at the same time.

Now here is your task for tomorrow. Please make out a table; on the left place a list of the human soul characteristics, from thoughts down through all the emotions of the soul—feelings of pleasure and displeasure, actively violent emotions, anger, grief, and so on, right down to the will; certain specific plant forms can be compared with the human soul realm. On the right you can then fill in the corresponding plant species, so that in the table you have the thought plants above, the will plants below, and all the others in between.

Rudolf Steiner then gave a graphic explanation of the Pythagorean theorem and referred to an article by Dr. Ernst Müller in Ostwald’s magazine for natural philosophy, Annalen der Naturphilosophie, entitled “Some Observations on a Theory of Knowledge underlying the Pythagorean theorem.”

In the drawing, the red parts of the two smaller squares already lie within the square on the hypotenuse. By moving the blue and the green triangles in the direction of the arrows, the remaining parts of the two smaller squares will cover those parts of the square on the hypotenuse still uncovered.

You should cut out the whole thing in cardboard and then you can see it clearly.³

• 1. The original German exercise (which appears in the appendix) uses the “pf ” sound; the “ch” sound has been substituted in the English version.
• 2. Max Knight, trans., University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964.
• 3. The Pythagorean theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. For another brief discussion of the Pythagorean theorem in teaching see Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood: Introductory Talks on Waldorf Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995, pp. 85–90.

The basis for the text: The course was taken down in short-hand by the professional shorthand writer Helene Finckh (1883–1963) and then written out in longhand. The Stuttgart lecture of October 28, 1922, which is included as the eighth lecture, was probably taken down by participants. There is no shorthand report.

For the first edition (manuscript of lectures 1–6) the material was arranged by the curative eurythmist Elisabeth Baumann-Dollfus.

For the second edition (manuscript of lectures 1–6, with the addition of lecture 7) the first publication was revised by Isabella de Jaager.

For the third edition (first edition in the complete works) the publisher, Dr. Hans W. Zbinden, used Helene Finckh's original shorthand notes as a reference.

The present (fourth) edition is an unaltered impression of the third edition, the only additions being the summary of the contents and the subject index.

Concerning lectures 7 and 8:

The lecture of April 18, 1921, which was included as the seventh lecture of this course, was given in connection with the so-called second doctors' course and is contained in the volume “The Spiritual Scientific Aspect of Therapy”. In that context Rudolf Steiner refers to this lecture by saying “After a short pause we shall continue by going more in the direction of eurythmy.”

The lecture given in Stuttgart on October 28, 1922, and which has been included in this course as the eighth lecture, was given in connection with the “Medical Week” held in Stuttgart from October 26–28, 1922, (see “Anthroposophical Approach to Medicine”). The lecture has been published in the present volume only, however.

How the course came about and the ladies to whom the abbreviations “Frau B. and Frl. W.” refer:

Frau B. is Elisabeth Baumann-Dollfus (1895–1947) who actively participated in the development of eurythmy as from the summer of 1913. Later on she was the first eurythmy teacher at the Independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart, and she was an active member of the curative eurythmy course.

Frl. W. is Erna van Deventer, née Wolfram (1894–1976), one of the first eurythmists, and, together with Elisabeth Baumann, an active member of the curative eurythmy course. In a memorial essay of the year 1961 in the periodical “Blätter für Anthroposophie” she makes the following reference to it:

“I have two rather faded pieces of paper in front of me; one is a small drawing of the curve of Cassini and the other is a postcard dated February 1921 from Dr. Roman Boos¹ in Dornach. Two modest pieces of paper, and yet they are almost the only visible testimonies of the events that led up to the curative eurythmy course that Dr. Steiner gave in Dornach in the Spring of 1921 alongside the second doctors' course.

If I want to go back in memory to the time when Dr. Steiner gave the first therapeutic eurythmy exercises I have to go much further back than 1921. As early as 1915 and even earlier Dr. Steiner gave me, and probably other eurythmy teachers too, in answer to our questions, various eurythmy exercises for speaking, and hints for using in special cases we had encountered in towns all over Germany. The expression curative eurythmy did not even exist then, and Dr. Steiner called these exercises “therapeutic” eurythmy and said that these arose out of the Greek Mysteries. This remark will perhaps show how earnest Dr. Steiner was even at that time about healing by means of eurythmy movements, and it will also show how deeply it was impressed upon the consciousness of us still very young teachers that “healing” is connected with “holy”, and that our movements in this therapeutic eurythmy would really have to be carried by “the will to heal” if we wanted to achieve any success with this therapy. (Dr. Steiner did not coin the expression “the will to heal” until later; it was actually on the occasion of our asking him for advice, in 1923–24, whereupon he entered into our problems and gave the course for young medical students.)

Anyone who worked with Dr. Steiner in any way will remember that everything he gave was in answer to a question, a wish, or sometimes even a vague aspiration that came his way. It was the same with curative eurythmy. For instance two children with speech defects were brought to him, and he gave what we would later on have called “curative eurythmy exercises”. In 1919 I met a child with curvature of the spine. Dr. Steiner entered into my questions very thoroughly and gave me the help I warned. I could give lots more examples like this. Yet at the same time I myself was also learning, in the course of giving lessons, to observe people, and I learnt to unite the various phenomena I observed in a person, and to become aware of how many people actually in the numerous eurythmy courses round about were in need of help.

... During those years I often met Elisabeth Baumann-Dollfus, who was also one of the first eurythmists, and a deep love for the work we shared united us for many years. In 1919, after the end of the First World War, we encountered one another again when the Waldorf School was being founded. So we began to exchange our experiences, she being a teacher at the Waldorf School where she worked with Dr. Schubert's remedial class, and I being a eurythmist who in the course of the year gave eurythmy courses in almost all the big towns in Germany, and I had the privilege when I was in Stuttgart of standing in for Frau Baumann at the Waldorf School when she was ill. We each had much joy in the other, because we were aware of our common bond. We were both searching for the same thing, and what were we looking for? The healing element in or behind eurythmy!

This was one of the threads of destiny that hound us together. The other one was my engagement and marriage to H.A.R. van Deventer, who was himself a doctor, and who approached eurythmy from a background of medicine with the same enthusiasm that we approached medicine from a background of eurythmy. And what gave rise to it? The natural science course in Stuttgart at Christmas 1920/21.

Frau Baumann and I went to this course—more as visitors really—since we could not understand a lot of what Dr. Steiner was saying, and as eurythmists we hardly even belonged to that enlightened gathering of students and scholars! But—even if we did not understand it all with our intellect—our enthusiasm for the astronomical drawings made up for it. And one day Dr. Steiner drew something on the blackboard that made us fall on top of one another and nearly jump into the air, and that was the curve of Cassini.

This was the external occurrence that we needed to make us aware that the paths of the stars and the flow of forces within us, both sprang from the same source! For this curve of Cassini that Dr. Steiner was now describing in connection with natural science and astronomy, why, we eurythmists knew it too! As early as 1915, in the White Room of the old Goetheanum, Dr. Steiner had given four to six eurythmy teachers a series of lessons, and on this occasion he taught us “children's forms, good for children and young people from the age of three to eighty, to stop their thoughts scattering”. Those were his words, and one of these forms was the curve of Cassini, to the words “We will seek one another, we feel near one another, we know one another well”.

In 1915 we young people did not have the least idea why he gave this form as a pedagogical exercise, in fact we hardly knew the “Why” of any of the eurythmy teaching material—and to be honest do we know it that much better today? And yet it should be our task to pass not only the exercises but also the “Why” on to our successors. The only way to do this seems to be that in the eurythmy of the future we must separate truth from error, and the source of eurythmy from a watering down of it.

This experience of “recognizing” such an apparently insignificant form was what drew me to Elisabeth Baumann and what caused her and my husband to sit together for hours discussing the problem “If this form which Dr. Steiner was illustrating in the natural science course is so important for both macrocosmic man and microcosmic man, then does not everything given us in eurythmy come from the same source, and should it not be applicable for healing?” For just as with the curve of Cassini, we had also over the years learnt about the cosmic and the human healing effect of vowels, for instance AUM. Our experience of the curve of Cassini was really only the corner-stone of the building of our surmises and experiences in the realm of eurythmy!

But how was it to be done? How were we to acquire a knowledge of “therapeutic eurythmy”? What we knew up till then—Elisabeth Baumann and I—were only small building stones that Dr. Steiner had given us on occasion. Through the fact that my husband supported us in our ideas, as a doctor—he had done quite a lot of eurythmy himself and could understand and support our endeavours from both the medical and the eurythmic side—this gave us courage to ask Dr. Steiner whilst he was still in Stuttgart whether he would like to teach us a kind of therapeutic eurythmy in a systematic way just like he had taught us ordinary eurythmy. Dr. Steiner was very kind, looked at us somewhat astonished at our bold plans, and said he would discuss the matter further with my husband in Holland, and then we would hear.

And thus it happened. Dr. Steiner was in Holland at the beginning of 1921, and as my husband had a strong connection with our work through his medical studies, he had a good deal of opportunity to talk with Dr. Steiner. Frau Baumann was in Stuttgart at the time and I was in Breslau, but we had both set down our wishes very clearly in writing and sent them to my husband (He was still my fiance then). At any rate I)r. Steiner asked him one day in Holland “Do you actually have some eurythmists who would really put their backs into therapeutic eurythmy?”—to which my husband replied “Yes indeed, two at present, Frau Baumann and my future wife”. “Then we can start with it” said Dr. Steiner, and instructed my husband to do the necessary organizing.

This brings me back to the beginning, for the little drawing was the “curve of Cassini” which came from an evening's discussion with Dr. Steiner, and the faded postcard from Roman Boos was his announcement from Domach to say that the “Curative Eurythmy Course” (Dr. Steiner had now coined the name) was due to take place in Dornach at the beginning of April, along with the second doctor's course, that was also due to be given then.

In an article for the periodical “Beiträge zu einer Erweiterung der lleilkunst nach Geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen” (1971, volume 4) headed “Curative Eurythmy: 1921–71. Its Origins, Development and Task” she describes the following:

During the second doctors' course, from April 12 to 17, 1921, Dr. Steiner gave the curative eurythmy course in six lectures, for doctors, and also for eurythmists who had been training for more than two years. Not one of us could imagine what the course would be like! Dr. Steiner stood on the platform, and Frau Baumann and 1, sitting on two chairs in front of it, felt very uncomfortable, for we had instigated the situation, and in the meantime, from February till April, we had heard no word from Dr. Steiner as to how he would establish this new branch of medical science with the likes of us, who had not the slightest preparatory training in the realm of medicine!

We certainly did not have the necessary knowledge for curative eurythmy work—would it not have been much more practical and sensible for Dr. Steiner to have chosen a small group of doctors for this work? Or did Frau Baumann and I, being eurythmists, really bring something with us out of our past that seemed important to him? In the instructions he gave me shortly after the course, about the training necessary for curative eurythmy, I had my answer.

He answered our question by saying “The prerequisite for the curative eurythmy profession is that you first of all know the whole foundation of artistic eurythmy, in theory and practice. You must he capable of performing a dramatic poem on the stage, for example “der Zauberlehrling” (sorcerer's apprentice) by Goethe, and carry out all the eurythmic indications for word meaning and sentence construction, with all the forms and postures you have learnt. Not until you have mastered all the aspects of artistic eurythmy are you ready to change over to curative eurythmy. He made it clear to us that we would first of all have to master all the possibilities of artistic eurythmy, be able to find them in the cosmos as the forces of the planets and the fixed stars, then in their reflection in human speech and music, then through movements of the human body itself, and in this way we would get to know the human being, that is, ourselves, as beings who reflect macrocosm and microcosm in our own body. Not until we had grasped our situation and task would we be able to advance from the periphery of eurythmy to the centre of the healing aspect of eurythmy. Yet “first of all you must know the periphery, and then you can move on to the centre of man!” What a perspective for us, who had already been actively engaged in artistic and pedagogical eurythmy for eight years, though more in a practical way, and by learning from doing it rather than filling it with our consciousness. The vowels, consonants, parts of speech, rhymes—how much more significant they now appeared to be!

...What a eurythmist should know was also clearly defined by Dr. Steiner telling me what and how I would have to learn from my husband's textbooks, the “Spalteholz”² and the textbook by Professor Broesicke³ of Breslau.

Dr. Steiner told us this shortly after the curative eurythmy course, so that it was with a deep feeling of responsibility that we took our departure from Dornach.

• 1. Head of the Dornach administration at that time.
• 2. Prof. W. Spatcholz of the University of Leipzig, February 1914
• 3. Prof. Dr. Gustav Broesicke, Breslau 1920

A teacher: We need to discuss hiring new teachers.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, we have the personnel problem. The problem is that our present shop teacher has not done what we expected, so we need to think of a replacement. We probably do not need to go into the details. I am not certain to what extent you are familiar with the problem that he could not handle the large classes. He has said that the children in the upper grades did not do the work. You can see that, since the children in the upper grades did not finish what they should.

He found it difficult to work in that area. What I have seen indicated that he does not have sufficient practical talent so that the children could not do their work well because he himself did not have an eye for what the craft demanded. Many of the projects remained at the level of tinkering and were not what they should have been. The children did not learn how to work precisely with him. In the gardening class, the work remained with each child having a small garden where each did what he or she wanted, with the result that it was more like a number of small children’s gardens than a school garden.

The worst thing was that he simply had no heart for his work. His main interest is in studying, but what we actually needed, namely, someone who could teach gardening thoroughly, did not occur. From my perspective, there is nothing else to do other than look for a better teacher. I don’t believe he is able to really bring the artistic into the shop instruction. As things have developed, it is impossible to keep him on the faculty. He doesn’t seem able to find his way into the spirit of the school.

A teacher: Since we brought him here, we should, of course, find a way to take care of him so that he does not become an enemy of the school when we remove him from the faculty.

Emil Molt: I will see that he is taken care of in some way. A teacher: I need to say that I don’t quite understand all this. He certainly gave considerable effort to finding his way into the spirit of the school. He definitely handled my children well and in the gardening class, my class also did well. He will find his way into the artistic aspect.

Dr. Steiner: That will be difficult. What I said about the artistic was in connection with the shop instruction. He will hardly find his way into that.

A teacher: He has the best will, and it will be difficult for him to understand. During the holidays he wants to learn cabinetmaking better and also shoemaking.

Marie Steiner: There is something trusting about him. Dr. Steiner: There is no doubt that he likes to work with children, and that he is serious about it, but there are some things lacking. When I saw certain things that occurred, I had to conclude that it was impossible to leave this work to him.

A teacher: Is there a reason we would need to get rid of him or could we employ him somewhere else, for example in the library? Dr. Steiner: It is certainly difficult to make a clear decision. I think it will be difficult for him to find his way into the real spirit of the school because he hasn’t the spirit in him.

It is certainly possible to carry someone along, but do you really believe that he could do the shop class alone permanently? He could never teach all of the shop classes. Possibly he could teach the four lower classes if we had a teacher for the upper grades. I have my doubts whether he has the spiritual capacity to handle the upper grades in shop. I have watched how he works, and it is really quite nice for the younger children if they put themselves to it. However, for later, when a certain feeling for the craft is necessary, it is a question whether he can gain that feeling. This is very difficult, and we would need to change our thinking if he were to remain. My impression is that this is the general opinion of the faculty.

He has poetic ambitions, but he imagines himself to be much better than he is. He has a wonderful amount of goodwill. I feel sorry for him because I think he will probably develop a lot of resentment. It is always difficult when someone brings a certain personal quality to things when they work at the school. He injects a personal note into everything and is not as objective as he should be. He wants to be someone who becomes a Waldorf teacher, he wants to be a poet. He wants the children to trust him. All of the characteristics he has certainly bring out sympathy for him. We will need to find another position for him. Nevertheless, it would remain difficult since he does not understand certain things about the spirit of the Waldorf School, particularly the shop class. In an area where objectivity is necessary, it is very difficult when sympathy plays a role. All that leads off the path.

Is there some possibility that we could resolve the situation by having him in the lower four grades? That would be desirable, but we would end up with a huge budget. The school is getting bigger.

Emil Molt: We don’t have the money to give him a soft job. As we saw recently, we must count every penny. What we need to do is to take care of him somewhere in the company so that he is not harmed, and we don’t hurt him.

Dr. Steiner: We certainly must take care of him, but we will need to see how to do that. A difficult situation.

We can objectively say that he was not fit for the task. He does not have an artistic feel. I don’t think he would find his way into the subject. As I said, it would hurt nothing if he took the lower grades and someone else, the upper classes. Often, that is the best way and the children will simply work. Later, when they need to show what they can do, things will be better. There is certainly nothing to object to for the lower grades, but for the upper classes, he simply will not do.

A teacher: Do you intend to have one person do it all?

Dr. Steiner: That is a budget question. In the shop class, we must stretch to the limit. It would be best if we strongly developed shop. If we had a good shop teacher, we could start in the sixth grade, but it is a different situation in the gardening class. That needs someone who really understands the subject. If we had two teachers, I would prefer that each would give shop in one year and gardening in the other.

We must realize that if we retain him, other difficulties will arise in the school.

I had the impression that was the opinion of the whole faculty. At the beginning, I thought this was already decided, but now I see that is not so. It is good we have discussed the matter so that we all understand it.

A teacher: Isn’t it possible to see that someone is inadequate for a position earlier?

Dr. Steiner: I already noticed it some time ago, and mentioned it at Christmas and in February. I didn’t go into it then because it is so difficult for me, but it comes up so often, namely, that we shut people out. Recently, there have been many times when the situation seemed to have improved.

Well, there is nothing left to do other than look for another solution. We will need to find another solution.

A teacher: In any event, we will need to find a first-rate shop teacher. It would be possible to have him as an assistant to the main teacher. Some time ago, Mr. X. wanted to take over the shop class.

Dr. Steiner: I already said that it would be best if someone who is one the faculty would learn how to make shoes. I didn’t think we should employ a shoemaker. The instruction in shop must come from the faculty, but suddenly Y. was there. It was only fleetingly mentioned to me, and it was certainly not intended that he completely take over the teaching of shop.

A teacher: He sort of grew into the faculty without a decision that he should become a part.

Dr. Steiner: Now we’re rather caught in the situation. We shouldn’t allow such things to happen. Recently when we were talking, I was quite surprised that someone who was not at all under consideration for the faculty was at the meeting. Those who are not on the faculty should not be at the meetings.

A teacher: I certainly think we can take him on as an assistant. Dr. Steiner: It would be too much for one teacher to do the gardening and the shoemaking, but then we would have to be able to pay him.

Emil Molt: I would say that budget considerations should be subordinate to the major considerations.

Dr. Steiner: It was certainly not harmful that he was there, but the harm may first arise when he is left out. He has become a teacher in a way I have often encountered in Stuttgart. If you ask how they reach their position, you find out that people have simply pushed their way in. They suddenly appear. I don’t understand how people move up. It is certainly true that we cannot continue in that way.

You need to realize, Mr. X., that one thing builds upon the other. As we decided, you were to create the shop instruction. Mr. Molt asked if we could consider Y. as an assistant for you, then, suddenly, he was sitting here in the faculty. He was never under consideration as a teacher for the Waldorf School. We can see that clearly because he is an employee of the Waldorf-Astoria Company that they sent over. Thus, there was not the least justification for him to be on the faculty.

A teacher: I don’t think we can work intimately if someone is here who does not belong.

Dr. Steiner: If he is already here, we can’t do that. If he has been teaching the subject and if other difficulties did not arise, we could not say that Y. is no longer on the faculty.

A teacher: It was a mistake to let him in.

A teacher: Yes, but we were the ones who made the mistake.

Dr. Steiner: The Waldorf School will pay for it. Just as people have made mistakes in the Anthroposophical Society, and in spite of the fact that people make these same mistakes time and again, I was the one who had to suffer. I had to suffer for each person we threw out. It is clear that in this case, the Waldorf School will have to suffer, but I think it is better that it suffer outwardly rather than within.

Following further discussion:

Dr. Steiner: Well, we will just have to try to keep him if there is no other way.

[After further discussion on the next day, of which there are no notes, Y. was told that he would no longer work in the Waldorf School.]

Dr. Steiner: It is certainly not so that we will include every specialty teacher in the faculty. The intent is that the inner faculty includes the class teachers and the older specialty teachers, and that we also have an extended faculty.

A teacher: My perspective is that we should include only those whom Dr. Steiner called to the faculty, and thus that someone’s mere presence in some position does not mean that he or she will automatically be part of the faculty.

A teacher: Who should be on the faculty?

Dr. Steiner: Only the main teachers, those who are practicing, not on leave, should be on the faculty. In principle, the faculty should consist of those who originally were part of the school and those who came later but whom we wish had participated in the course last year. We have always discussed who is to be here as a real teacher. If someone is to sit with us, he or she must be practicing and must be a true teacher.

Berta Molt: Well, then, I don’t belong here, either.

Dr. Steiner: You are the school mother. That was always the intent. Mrs. Steiner is here as the head of the eurythmy department and Mr. Molt as the patron of the school, that was always the intent from the very beginning.

If we have discussed it, then there is not much to say. That was the case with Baravalle. He was here as a substitute, but we discussed that. It was also clear that he would eventually come into a relationship to the school, because he would eventually be a primary teacher.

We still have the question of whom to consider as a teacher.

A teacher: Must the new teacher be an anthroposophist, or can it be someone outside?

Dr. Steiner: That is something I do not absolutely demand, we have already discussed it.

I propose that we talk with Wolffhügel regarding the shop class and see if he wants to take it. I think that Wolffhügel would be quite appropriate. That would be really good. He is a painter and works as a furniture maker. That would be excellent.

Now we need know only which of the new teachers should attend our meetings. Of course, Wolffhügel should.

I was only in the handwork class a few times, but once I had to ask myself why a child did not have a thimble on. I have always said that we must get the children accustomed to sewing with a thimble. They should not do it without a thimble. We cannot allow that.

We cannot know ahead of time whether a teacher can keep the children quiet. Often we can know that, I think, but we can also experience some surprises. You just don’t always know.

We need two teachers for the first grade. For the 1B class, I would propose Miss Maria Uhland and for the 1A class, Killian. I think we should hire them provisionally and not bring them into the faculty meetings.

We then have Miss von Mirbach for the second grade, for the third grade, Pastor Geyer, for the fourth grade, Miss Lang, for the fifth grade, Mrs. Koegel. Dr. Schubert will have the weaker children, the remedial class, and Dr. von Heydebrand, the sixth grade.

We still need someone. Baravalle would be good for the second sixth-grade class. I think we should take him. He can also do his doctoral work here.

Dr. Kolisko will take over the whole seventh grade.

I also think we should do the eighth and ninth grades as we did the seventh and eighth. How did that work?

A teacher: We took the classes in alternating weeks. Our impression is that if we alternate it daily, we would not know the class well enough.

Dr. Steiner: Then your perspective is that it is better to teach for a week, better than alternating daily?

A teacher: The reason why we two did not know our classes very well is unclear to me. The fact is that I knew the children the least of all our colleagues. Could you perhaps say what the problem was?

Dr. Steiner: That will not be better until you are more efficient in regard to the subject matter and how you treat it. You felt under pressure. You had, in general, too little contact with the children and lectured too much.

Dr. Steiner: School begins on the thirteenth. Now that we have more teachers, we need to discuss the classes again. Do you have a plan here? We could go according to that.

A final decision is made about who will be the main teacher for each class.

Dr. Steiner: The first thing we need to talk about is the remedial class. We definitely need it, but the question is, who can do it? I would be happy if Dr. Schubert could take over the remedial class. Don’t you think you would just die if you could no longer have your old class?

Dr. Schubert: Did I do poorly?

Dr. Steiner: No, the children are quite lively. I think that Dr. Kolisko should step in for Dr. Schubert in history for the upper three grades.

I would also like to see if Dr. Schwebsch could give a kind of aesthetics class, a class in art for the upper three grades, eighth, ninth, and tenth. Thus, we would add Dr. Schwebsch to the three main lesson teachers for the upper classes, and he would teach aesthetics. We already spoke of that to an extent. That would not continue indefinitely, but would merge into other teaching in a few weeks. The four of you would then rotate.

A teacher: That would mean that one of us would be free for a period of time.

Dr. Steiner: That does not matter since the upper grades need that. We need to speak about the foreign languages.

They discuss how to divide the modern languages.

Dr. Steiner: Dr. Schubert should take over the younger children for Latin and Greek, and I would ask Dr. Röschl to take over the remaining Latin and Greek classes. I will say something more about that later.

A teacher: Isn’t it better to place the students in Latin and Greek by class?

Dr. Steiner: With the confusion we now have, we can do that only slowly. Our goal could be to achieve some balance by the age of sixteen or seventeen. I would like to talk about that tomorrow at 2 o’clock. The teachers who are no longer responsible for Latin could help in the teachers’ library.

Today there was some talk about hiring a librarian, something I consider pure nonsense. If you work at it, you could finish the entire library. I think it would be silly. I could keep the whole thing in order with three hours a week. We need to consider how we can save some time. I think it would be a good idea if the faculty took that up. We can’t create a library and then hire a librarian who will need at least a palace. That talk is pure fantasy. Someone like Dr. R. would cost 30,000 Marks, money we could save if you would spend some of your free time in the library. I think that would be best and most efficient.

The theology course will take place in Dornach from September 26 until October 10. Hahn, Uehli, Ruhtenberg, and Mirbach will attend, and thus the independent religious instruction will not take place. We will have to teach something else in their place. It would be interesting if, for example, Dr. Schwebsch is free during that period, and if he could do something appropriate for the children concerning history or art history. It could also be something else.

I would now like to hear what else has been happening.

A teacher: What should we read in the seventh grade?

Dr. Steiner: We cannot hold the whole class back simply because there are a few new children. Those who are less advanced will not be able to read A Christmas Carol.

A new teacher: I think Dickens is much too difficult for this grade. Could we obtain a textbook for teaching language?

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against using a textbook, but all of them are bad. The class does not have one book that unites them. Look for a textbook, and show it to me when I come back.

With regard to Dickens, I do not agree. The seventh grade can certainly read him. You could also choose some other prose, that was only given as an example. There are a number of good students’ editions. Of course, you’ll have to use something appropriate to the students’ age.

A teacher: In other schools, we began Dickens in the tenth grade.

Dr. Steiner: Find some texts you feel you can work with.

A teacher: I would be grateful if you would say something about rhythm and verse.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to hold a course about individual topics in teaching. Why can’t you find anything reasonable?

A teacher: I cannot say precisely.

Dr. Steiner: The children need to learn the poetic meter and rhyme that you know. They should understand the relationship of the individual meters to the pulse and breathing rhythms. That is the goal. I can hardly believe you cannot find anything. We cannot say that all books are bad. You can make them good by using them.

A teacher: I would like to ask a question about algebra. I think it would be good if we gave the children homework. It is certainly clear in this case that the children should do some problems at home.

Dr. Steiner: We need to emphasize what results from a good pedagogy. One basic principle is that we know the children do the homework, and that we never find that they do not do it. You should never give children homework unless you know they will bring the solved problems back, and that they have done them with zeal. A liveliness needs to come into the work, and we need to encourage the children so that their inner attitude is not paralyzed. For example, you should do it so that when you have covered some material, and you want to assign them some work in connection with it, you say, “Tomorrow I will do the following arithmetic operations.” Then wait and see if the children prepare the work at home. Some will be interested enough to do it and then others will become interested. You should bring it about that the children want to do what they need to do in school. What you need to do from day to day should come from what the children want to do.

A teacher: Can we also give homework such as multiplication problems and so forth?

Dr. Steiner: Only in that way. It’s the same story in the other subjects, and together we would then have a great deal of homework.

A teacher: I also wanted to ask what we could do following mathematics.

Dr. Steiner: Afterward, when the children are tired, you could go on to something simpler. You could do something like what you had originally thought of as homework.

A teacher: I have not had the impression that even the most strenuous things in mathematics tire the children.

Dr. Steiner: In spite of that, we should not keep the children under the same stress for two hours.

You could help the children or give them a hint that they should do this or that at home. But do not demand it.

A teacher: Could you give me some help in teaching aesthetics?

Dr. Steiner: These are fourteen- to sixteen-year-old children. Through examples, I would try use art itself to give them the concept of beauty. Look at the metamorphosis of beauty through the various style periods: Greek beauty, Renaissance beauty, and so forth. It is particularly important for children at that age that you bring a certain concrete form to what is otherwise abstract. If you study the aesthetics of people like Vischer and Carrière, all that is simply chaff in regard to concepts. On the other hand, you ennoble the children regarding ideals if you can give them an understanding of what is beautiful or what is great. What is comedy and how does music or poetry achieve it? The child’s soul cannot take in generalized concepts in this period. For that reason, at that age you must include such things as what it means to declaim and recite.

At the time when I was lecturing about declamation and recitation, I discovered that most people do not even know there is a difference. If you take the way you should speak Greek verses, then you have the archetype of reciting, because what is important is the meter, how things are extended or contracted. When the important point is the highs and lows, and that is what you need to emphasize, for instance, in The Song of the Niebelungs, then you have declamation. I showed that through an example, that there is a radical difference between the first form of Goethe’s Iphigenia, that he later reworked into a Roman form. The German Iphigenia should be declaimed and the Roman, recited.

A teacher: If we are to integrate our work with that of Dr. Schwebsch, I would like to ask approximately how much time we should allow for teaching aesthetics?

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to allow equal times. In that way, the German class would be less work.

We need to have somewhat different concepts. Think about the Austrian college preparatory schools. They have eight periods of Latin in the fifth grade. That is the result of terribly inefficient teaching. We, of course, must limit that. The Austrian schools have only very few periods of mathematics. Three in the 4th, 5th, and sixth grades and two in the seventh and eighth. If you work in these periods so that you correctly distribute the material you have to cover during the time available, the children will get the most from your instruction. These are children of fifteen or sixteen years of age.

Thus, in geometry, if you can see that the children have the basic concepts, including the law of duality and perspective geometry, so that the children are perplexed and amazed and have some interest in what you say about some of the figures, then you will have achieved everything that you can.

Have you begun with descriptive geometry yet?

A teacher: I have done the constructions with a point and a line, Cavalieri’s perspective and shadow construction, so that the children have an idea of them. Now we are only doing shadow construction. Then, we will do technical drawing. We have done relatively little of that.

Dr. Steiner: Then, you should do mechanical drawing including trajectory, simple machines, and trigonometry. Trajectory is better if you treat it with equations. Do the children understand parabolic equations? If you develop concrete examples, then you do not need to go into detail there. From a pedagogical perspective, the whole treatment of a trajectory is only so that the children learn parabolic equations and understand parabolas. The coinciding of reality with mathematical equations is the goal you need to strive for.

“Philosophy begins with awe,” is partially incorrect. In teaching, awe must come at the end of a block, whereas in philosophy, it is at the beginning. You need to direct the children toward having awe. They need something that will completely occupy them. They need to understand that it is something that, in the presence of its greatness, even Novalis would fall to his knees.

I would particularly like to remind all of you who are involved with drawing to study Baravalle’s dissertation thoroughly. I have attempted to mention it several times. Copies were available at the conference. Baravalle’s dissertation is extremely important for aesthetics. You should all study it. Baravalle’s dissertation could have a very deep effect, particularly in the handwork class. There is certainly a great deal in it that would help in understanding how a collar or a belt should be shaped.

Things like this from Baravalle—now don’t let this go to your head—things like this dissertation have a fundamental importance for Waldorf teachers, since they show how to pictorially present mathematical ideas and thus make them easier. That is something we could extend. What he has done for forms could be done in a similar way for colors or even tone. You could find a number of helpful ideas about Goethe’s thoughts about the world of tone in my last volume of the Kürschner edition. The table contained there is very informative. Certainly the theory of color could be treated in the same way.

A teacher: It may be possible to create a parallel in the moral and perceptible side of tones. Color perception follows the order of the spectrum. Everything in the blue range corresponds to sharps, and the remainder, to flats.

Dr. Steiner: That would be an interesting topic.

A teacher: In looking at both spectra, there is a certain parallel between them.

Dr. Steiner: The thought is nearly correct, but we must avoid simple analogies.

I would like to say something more that will hopefully strike an anthroposophical chord with you. I said that it would be a good idea to study Baravalle’s dissertation. I would like to mention that there is an occult significance in enlivening instruction when a lively interest exists for the work done by members of the faculty.

This is extremely important. The entire faculty is enlivened when you take an interest in some original work by a colleague. That is also a basic thought of many of the various school programs, but it has been corrupted. Each year discussion of the program should be published, but the whole faculty should be concerned with it. The fact is that the spiritual forces within the faculty carry the faculty through a communal inner experience. We should not try to do things individually, the whole should participate. Of course, here, through lively presentation, there is a significant general interest. However, there is an assumption that many others are also hiding their work. I would like to remind you to make that work fruitful for others as well.

A teacher: Sometime ago we spoke about a gymnastics teacher.

Dr. Steiner: Mr. Baumann told me we could no longer consider the business regarding a gymnastics teacher because we have no rooms. When we have room, then Englert will be here.

A teacher: He wrote that he could not do that. He is now in Norway.

Dr. Steiner: We haven’t the slightest need in the next half-year. He will need to wait until something else occurs. We will need to make an effort that the boys get better. We cannot say anything about gymnastics since Baumann is not here.

Dr. Steiner: The conference was such a success that it far exceeded our expectations. It was really quite a success. Only the members’ meeting on Sunday, September 4, was poor. It was the worst thing imaginable. The meeting of the local threefold groups was still worse. I had thought that just those people would bring new life into Anthroposophy. We should have been able to see that on Sunday. You can be certain that a great deal was wanted. People were sitting in all the corners having small meetings, but the whole was lost. It would have been better had it all been visible at the surface. Hopefully, further development will be better.

Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Work

Rudolf Steiner is one of those figures who appear at critical moments in human history, and whose contribution places them in the vanguard of the progress of mankind.

Born in Austria in 1861, educated at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, where he specialized in the study of mathematics and science, Steiner received recognition as a scholar when he was invited to edit the well-known Kurschner edition of the natural scientific writings of Goethe. Already in 1886 at the age of twenty-five, he had shown his comprehensive grasp of the deeper implications of Goethe's way of thinking by writing his Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung (Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's Conception of the World). Four years later he was called to join the group of eminent scholars in residence at Weimar, where he worked with them at the Goethe-Schiller Archives for some years. A further result of these activities was the writing of his Goethes Weltanschauung (Goethe's Conception of the World) which, together with his introductions and commentary on Goethe's scientific writings, established Steiner as one of the outstanding exponents of Goethe's methodology.

In these years Steiner came into the circle of those around the aged Nietzsche. Out of the profound impression which this experience made upon him, he wrote his Friedrich Nietzsche, Ein Kampfer gegen seine Zeit (Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter Against his Time), published in 1895. This work evaluates the achievements of the great philosopher against the background of his tragic life-experience on the one hand, and the spirit of the nineteenth century on the other.

In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. His thesis dealt with the scientific teaching of Fichte, and is further evidence of Steiner's ability to evaluate the work of men whose influence has gone far to shape the thinking of the modern world. In somewhat enlarged form, this thesis appeared under the title, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft (Truth and Science), as the preface to Steiner's chief philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, 1894. Later he suggested The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity as the title of the English translation of this book.

At about this time Steiner began his work as a lecturer. This activity was eventually to occupy the major portion of his time and was to take him on repeated lecture tours throughout Western Europe. These journeys extended from Norway, Sweden and Finland in the north to Italy and Sicily in the South, and included several visits to the British Isles. From about the turn of the century to his death in 1925, Steiner gave well over 6,000 lectures before audiences of most diverse backgrounds and from every walk of life.

First in Vienna, later in Weimar and Berlin, Steiner wrote for various periodicals and for the daily press. For nearly twenty years, observations on current affairs, reviews of books and plays, along with comment on scientific and philosophical developments flowed from his pen. Finally, upon completion of his work at Weimar, Steiner moved to Berlin in 1897 to assume the editorship of Das Magazin fur Litteratur, a well-known literary periodical which had been founded by Joseph Lehmann in 1832, the year of Goethe's death.

Steiner's written works, which eventually included over fifty titles, together with his extensive lecturing activity brought him into contact with increasing numbers of people in many countries. The sheer physical and mental vigor required to carry on a life of such broad, constant activity would alone be sufficient to mark him as one of the most creatively productive men of our time.

The philosophical outlook of Rudolf Steiner embraces such fundamental questions as the being of man, the nature and purpose of freedom, the meaning of evolution, the relation of man to nature, the life after death and before birth. On these and similar subjects, Steiner had unexpectedly new, inspiring and thought-provoking things to say. Through a study of his writings one can come to a clear, reasonable, comprehensive understanding of the human being and his place in the universe.

It is noteworthy that in all his years of work, Steiner made no appeal to emotionalism or sectarianism in his readers or hearers. His scrupulous regard and deep respect for the freedom of every man shines through everything he produced. The slightest compulsion or persuasion he considered an affront to the dignity and ability of the human being. Therefore, he confined himself to objective statements in his writing and speaking, leaving his readers and hearers entirely free to reject or accept his words.

Rudolf Steiner repeatedly emphasized that it is not educational background alone, but the healthy, sound, judgment and good will of each individual that enables the latter to comprehend what he has to say. While men and women eminent in cultural, social, political and scientific life have been and are among those who have studied and have found value in Steiner's work, experience has shown repeatedly that his ideas can be grasped by the simplest people. His ability to reach, without exception, all who come to meet his ideas with the willingness to understand, is another example of the well-known hallmark of genius.

The ideas of Rudolf Steiner address themselves to the humanity in men and women of every race and of every religious and philosophical point of view, and included them. However, it should be observed that for Steiner the decisive event in world development and the meaning of the historical process is centered in the life and activity of the Christ. Thus, his point of view is essentially Christian, but not in a limited or doctrinal sense. The ideas expressed in his Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache und die Mysterien des Altertums (Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity), 1902, and in other works, especially his cycles of lectures on the Gospels (1908-1912), have brought to many a totally new relationship to Christianity, sufficiently broad to include men of every religious background in full tolerance, yet more deeply grounded in basic reality than are many of the creeds current today.

From his student days, Steiner had been occupied with the education of children. Through his own experience as tutor in Vienna and later as instructor in a school for working men and women in Berlin, he had ample opportunity to gain first-hand experience in dealing with the needs and interests of young people. In his Berlin teaching work he saw how closely related are the problems of education and of social life. Some of the fundamental starting-points for an educational praxis suited to the needs of children and young people today, Steiner set forth in a small work titled Die Erziehung des Kindes vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswssenshaft (The Education of the Child in the Light of the Science of the Spirit), published in 1907.

Just forty years ago, in response to an invitation arising from the need of the time and from some of the ideas expressed in the essay mentioned above, Rudolf Steiner inaugurated a system of education of children and young people based upon factors inherent in the nature of the growing child, the learning process, and the requirements of modern life. He himself outlined the curriculum, selected the faculty, and, despite constant demands for his assistance in many other directions, he carefully supervised the initial years of activity of the first Rudolf Steiner Schools in Germany, Switzerland and England. The story of the successful development of the educational movement over the past forty years cannot be told here. However, from the opening of the first Rudolf Steiner School, the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany, to the present time, the success of Rudolf Steiner Education sometimes referred to as Waldorf Education) has proven the correctness of Steiner's concept of the way in which to prepare the child for his eventual adult role in his contribution to modern society, existence in seventeen countries of the world, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, and South America.

In 1913, at Dornach near Basel, Switzerland, Rudolf Steiner laid the foundation of the Goetheanum, a unique building erected in consonance with his design and under his personal supervision. Intended as the building in which Steiner's four dramas would be performed, the Goetheanum also became the center of the Anthroposophical Society which had been founded by students of Rudolf Steiner in 1912. The original building was destroyed by fire in 1922, and subsequently was replaced prepared by Rudolf Steiner.

Today the Goetheanum is the world headquarters of General Anthroposophical Society, which was founded at Dornach at Christmas, 1923, with Rudolf Steiner as President. Audiences of many thousands come there each year to attend performances of Steiner's dramas, of Goethe's Faust (Parts I and II in their entirety), and of plays by other authors, presented on the Goetheanum stage, one of the finest in Europe. Eurythmy performances, musical events, conferences and lectures on many subjects, as well as courses of study in various fields attract people to the Goetheanum from many countries of the world, including the United States.

Among activities springing from the work of Rudolf Steiner are Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening, which aims at improved nutrition resulting from methods of agriculture outlined by him; the art of Eurythmy, created and described by him as “visible speech and visible song”; the work of the Clinical and Therapeutical Institute at Arlesheim, Switzerland, with related institutions in other countries, where for the past thirty years the indications given by Rudolf Steiner in the fields of Medicine and Pharmacology have been applied; the Homes for Children in need of special care, which exist in many countries for the treatment of mentally retarded children along lines developed under Steiner's direction; the further development of Steiner's indications of new directions of work in such fields as Mathematics, Physics, Painting, Sculpture, Music Therapy, Drama, Speech Formation, Astronomy, Economics, Psychology, and so on. Indeed, one cannot but wonder at the breadth, the scope of the benefits which have resulted from the work of this one man!

A full evaluation of what Rudolf Steiner accomplished for the good of mankind in so many directions can come about only when one comprehends the ideas which motivated him. He expressed these in his writings, of which the present volume is one. Taken together, these written works comprise the body of knowledge to which Steiner gave the name, the science of the spirit, or Anthroposophy. On page 249 of this book he writes of the benefits of this science of the spirit:

“When correctly understood, the truths of the science of the spirit will give man a true foundation for his life, will let him recognize his value, his dignity, and his essence, and will give him the highest zest for living. For these truths enlighten him about his connection with the world around him; they show him his highest goals, his true destiny. And they do this in a way which corresponds to the demands of the present, so that he need not remain caught in the contradiction between belief and knowledge.”

Many of the thoughts expressed in this book may at first appear startling, even fantastic in their implications. Yet when the prospect of space travel, as well as modern developments in technology, psychology, medicine and philosophy challenge our entire understanding of life and the nature of the living, strangeness as such should be no valid reason for the serious reader to turn away from a book of this kind. For example, while the word “occult” or “supersensible” may have undesirable connotations for many, current developments are fast bringing re-examination of knowledge previously shunned by conventional research. The challenge of the atomic age has made serious re-evaluation of all knowledge imperative, and it is recognized that no single area of that knowledge can be left out of consideration.

Steiner himself anticipated the reader's initial difficulties with this book, as he indicates on page 112: “The reader is requested to bear with much that is dark and difficult to comprehend, and to struggle toward an understanding, just as the writer has struggled toward a generally understandable manner of presentation. Many a difficulty in reading will be rewarded when one looks upon the deep mysteries, the important human enigmas which are indicated.”

On the other hand, a further problem arises as a result of Steiner's conviction regarding the purpose for which a book dealing with the science of the spirit is designed. This involves the form of the book as against its content. Steiner stressed repeatedly that a book on the science of the spirit does not exist only for the purpose of conveying information to the reader. With painstaking effort, he elaborated his books in such a manner that while the reader receives certain information from the pages, he also experiences a kind of awakening of spiritual life within himself. Steiner describes this awakening as “...an experiencing with inner shocks, tensions and resolutions.” In his autobiography he speaks of his striving to bring about such an awakening in the readers of his books: “I know that with every page my inner battle has been to reach the utmost possible in this direction. In the matter of style, I do not so describe that my subjective feelings can be detected in the sentences. In writing I subdue to a dry mathematical style what has come out of warm and profound feeling. But only such a style can be an awakener, for the reader must cause warmth and feeling to awaken in himself. He cannot simply allow these to flow into him from the one setting forth the truth, while he remains passively composed.” (The Course of My Life, p. 330)

In the present translation, therefore, careful effort has been made to preserve as much as possible such external form details as sentence and paragraph arrangement, italics, and even some of the more characteristic punctuation of the original, regardless of currently accepted English usage.

The essays contained in this book occupy a significant place in the life-work of Rudolf Steiner. They are his first written expression of a cosmology resulting from that spiritual perception which he described as “a fully conscious standing-within the spiritual world.” In his autobiography he refers to the early years of the present century as the time when, “Out of the experience of the spiritual world in general developed specific details of knowledge.” (Op. cit. pp. 326, 328.) Steiner has stated that from his early childhood he knew the reality of the spiritual world because he could experience this spiritual world directly. However, only after nearly forty years was it possible for him to transmit to others concrete, detailed information regarding this spiritual world.

As they appear in the present essays, these “specific details” touch upon processes and events of extraordinary sweep and magnitude. They include essential elements of man's prehistory and early history, and shed light upon the evolutionary development of our earth. Published now for the first time in America, just a century after Darwin's Origin of the Species began its transformation of Man's view of himself and of his environment, these essays clarify and complement the pioneer work of the great English scientist.

Rudolf Steiner shows that the insoluble link between man and cosmos is the fundamental basis of evolution. As man has participated in the development of the world we know today, so his achievements are directly connected with the ultimate destiny of the universe. In his hands rests the freedom to shape the future course of creation. Knowledge of his exalted origins and of the path he followed in forfeiting divine direction for the attainment of his present self-dependent freedom, are indispensable if man is to evolve a future worthy of a responsible human being.

This book appears now because of its particular significance at a moment when imperative and grave decisions are being made in the interests of the future of mankind.

Paul Marshall Allen
Englewood, New Jersey
June 1959

The decision to construct the first Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland was made in May, 1913, when Rudolf Steiner visited the future building site. Construction began within a few weeks and the exterior of the building was completed in April, 1914. Work on the interior proceeded at a slower pace and lasted through World War I (1914-1918). In 1914, Rudolf Steiner had begun a scaled-down model of the Christ sculpture that was later to be installed in the Goetheanum.. As the work on the sculpture itself began, he frequently explained its significance in his lectures.

One of Rudolf Steiner's lecture tours, May 6 through May 18, 1915, took him to Vienna, Prague and Linz. In all three cities he stressed that the Christ figure in the sculptured group would have to be portrayed as a being in equipoise between the polar forces of Lucifer and Ahriman and that this being was symbol of, and model for, man's own existence here on earth. The Linz lecture, which is here translated, presents the group in a world-historical context and relates the significance of the Lucifer-Christ-Ahriman configuration to the events surrounding World War I. Steiner sees a parallel between Christ's central, but equalizing position and Central Europe's mission in World War I. He implies that Germany's and Austria's militarism and political intransigence alone did not lead to war against the world powers in the East (Russia) and the West (France, England and, since 1917, the United States). According to Steiner, World War I was the earthly expression of a struggle between luciferic forces in the East and ahrimanic forces in the West, and it was Central Europe's destiny to mediate between these forces.

The fundamental polarization of East and West that Rudolf Steiner saw emerging more than six decades ago is now a political reality. While most historians today concede that World War II was in part caused by the circumstances surrounding World War I, few would accept Rudolf Steiner's statement from his Linz lecture that World War I was “destined by the European karma” or, to state it more concretely, that it was unavoidable. If the war could not have been avoided, then the question of who was to blame or who caused it is, as Steiner says, irrelevant. Based on this position, Steiner suggests that only one question has relevancy: “Who could have prevented the war?<” This question seems to contradict Steiner's statement that World War I was destined by the European karma. A quick glance at the historical record may help to clarify what Steiner meant.

In suggesting that the Russian government and possibly England, could have prevented the war, Steiner simply deals with possibilities outside the realm of what had to happen according to European karma. Russia's instigation of the two Peace Conferences in the Hague (1899 and 1907) was indeed self-serving and hypocritical, for it was Russia that, in 1914, mobilized its armed forces without considering British proposals for peace negotiations. Under these circumstances and considering the political immaturity of the German leadership, it was not surprising that the German Kaiser and his generals over-reacted to the Russian mobilization and interpreted it as a declaration of war. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Czar Nicholas II, who were cousins, frantically exchanged telegrams in which one beseeched the other to preserve the peace, but to no avail. The war machinery was already overheated by the forces of chauvinism and materialism so that even from this vantage point Steiner was correct in maintaining that war was unavoidable.

Regarding the possibility of preventing the war, a glance at the major Western powers involved in the controversy, and at Germany, reveals the following historical facts. France, for thirty years an ally of Russia, did nothing to prevent the war because she did not attempt to delay the hasty Russian mobilization. Her representatives said later that France regretted the Russian action, but there seems little doubt that France was more interested in presenting herself as the innocent victim of an attack. On the other hand, England's foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, could have prevented the war if he had taken earlier measures to discourage Germany's militarists from asserting themselves in their country, but in view of the English tradition and the English Constitution, this was probably not possible. Finally, the confusion in Germany itself was caused by a lack of understanding of who had legitimate authority to make decisions. Eventually, the political decisions were made by generals who managed to spread the belief that the fatherland was in peril and that Germany herself was not the attacker, but the attacked. Thus, theoretically, any one of these three powers could have prevented the war but that, as Rudolf Steiner points out in the lecture, is not the real issue.

Furthermore, the war did not emerge out of a French or Russian moral conviction that was responsive to German militarism. Rather, the goal of crushing German militarism emerged well after the war had begun. The war could be interpreted, in this sense, to be inevitable because it was not generated from a goal, but exploded and then developed its goals. In this war of attrition, materialism camouflaged itself with nationalistic sentiment and strove for absolute expression and triumph.

It is against such a background of perplexity and misguided fervor that Rudolf Steiner's message to Central Europeans must be read. In rejecting the question of who had caused the war, Steiner dismissed as equally irrelevant the question of who was to blame for materialism. Materialism was there, as was Ahriman. Steiner admonished the Central Europeans to counterbalance materialism by adopting a spiritual perception of life and by striving for an encounter with the Christ.

This profound spiritual responsibility that Steiner put on the Germans in 1915 was disregarded and the challenge passed by. After World War I it was not the Christ, but Adolf Hitler who, under the guise of “savior,” emerged as Germany's Nemesis and was thus catapulted into a central position. When Hitler was finally destroyed, Central Europe broke up into two parts, one of which disappeared behind the Iron Curtain, while the other aligned with the West.

As it stands today, Rudolf Steiner's call to instate the Christ in His central position has yet to be fully received and responded to not only by the people living in what is left of Central Europe, but also in the rest of the world.

Some day when the building in Dornach that is dedicated to the spiritual sciences is completed, it will contain, in a significant spot, a sculpture dominated by three figures. In the center of this group a figure will tower as if it were the manifestation of what I would call the most sublime human principle ever to unfold on earth. Hence, one will be able to experience this representation of the highest human principle in the evolution of the earth-the Christ, who in the course of this evolution lived three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. A special task in the portrayal of this Christ figure will be to make two ideas visible. Firstly, it will be important to show how the being that we are concerned with dwells in a human body. Secondly, it must also become apparent how this human body, in every facial expression and in every gesture reflects a magnificent degree of spiritual refinement, which descended with the Christ from cosmic and spiritual heights into this body in its thirtieth year. Then there will be the remaining two figures of the group, one to the left and the other to the right of the Christ figure, if that is the proper name for the figure that I have just sketched. This Christ figure is placed in such a way that it seems to be standing in front of a rock that towers noticeably at His left side, with its peak extending over His head. On top of the rock there will be another figure, winged but with his wings broken, who for this reason begins to fall into the abyss. One feature in the Christ figure that must be worked out with special artistic care is the manner in which he raises his left arm, for it is precisely this gesture that precipitates the breaking of the wings. It must not appear, however, as if the Christ Himself were breaking the wings of this being. Rather, the interaction of the two figures must be portrayed artistically to show how the Christ, by the very motion of raising his hand, is expressing his infinite compassion for this being. Yet this being cannot bear the energy flowing upward through arm and hand, an energy that is evidenced by indentations that the fingers of the extended hand seem to leave in the rock itself. When this being comes into proximity with the Christ being, he feels something that may be expressed in the words: I cannot bear the radiation of such purity upon me.

This feeling dominates so essentially as to break this upper beings wings and cause his imminent plunge into the abyss. To make this visible will be a particularly important artistic task and you will see how the meaning of this interaction could easily be misunderstood. Imagine, for example, an artistic portrayal of the Christ suggesting that merely by raising His hand He would radiate such power onto the being that his wings would be broken, forcing the plunge into the abyss. In that case it would be the Christ Himself who irradiated this being, as it were, with hatred, and thereby caused his descent. Such an impression must under no circumstances be conveyed. Rather, the being must be portrayed as having caused his own fall, for what is to be shown plunging downward, with broken wings, is Lucifer.

Now let us consider the other side of the group, toward the right of the Christ figure. There, the rock will have a ledge and, therefore, will be concave underneath. In this depression there will be another winged figure, who with his arm-like organs turns toward the ledge above. You have to visualize this as follows. To the right is the depression in the rock and in it stands this winged figure with wings entirely different from the figure on top of the rock. The wings of the figure on top of the rock resemble those of an eagle, whereas the figure in the depression has bat-like wings. This figure virtually buries himself in the cave, working in shackles, ever busy undermining the earthly realm.

The Christ figure in the middle has his right hand directed downward and the left one upward. Again, it will be an important artistic task not to show the Christ as wanting to shackle this figure; rather, he has infinite compassion for this being, which is Ahriman. Ahriman cannot bear this compassion and he writhes with pain from what the hand of the Christ exudes. This radiance from Christ's hand causes the golden veins down in the rock depression to wind around Ahriman's body like strong cords and shackle him. What is happening to Lucifer is his own doing; the same is true with Ahriman. This concept is going to take form as a sculpture that will be set up in a significant place in the new building. Above the sculptured group we will attempt to express the same motif through the medium of painting, but then the concept must be expressed differently. To summarize, the group of three figures: Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman will stand at the bottom as a sculpture, and above, the same motif will appear as a painting.

We are injecting this configuration of a relationship between Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman into our Dornach building because the science of the spirit reveals to us in a certain way that the next task regarding the comprehension of the Christ impulse will be to make man finally understand how the three forces of Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman are related in this world. To this day there has been much talk about Christianity and the Christ impulse, but man has not yet gained a clear understanding of what the Christ impulse has brought into the world as the result of the Mystery of Golgotha. Certainly, it is generally admitted that there is a Lucifer or an Ahriman, but in so doing, it is made to appear that from these two one must flee, as if one wished to say, “I want nothing to do with Lucifer and Ahriman!”—In yesterday's public lecture <¹ I described the way in which the divine-spiritual forces can be found. If these forces did not want to have anything to do with Lucifer and Ahriman, either, the world could not exist. One does not gain the proper relationship to Lucifer and Ahriman by saying, “Lucifer, I flee from you! Ahriman, I flee from you!” Rather, everything that man has to strive for as a result of the Christ impulse must be seen as similar to the equilibrious state of a pendulum. In the center, the pendulum is in perfect balance, but it must oscillate to one side or the other. The same applies to man's development here on earth. Man must oscillate to the one side according to the luciferic principle and to the other according to the principle of Ahriman, but he must maintain his equilibrium through the cultivation of Paul's declaration, “Not I, but Christ in me.”

To understand the Christ in His quintessential activity we must conceive of Him as a reality, as a working force. That is to say, we must realize that what wove itself into our evolution here on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha was present as a fact. It is not important how well or how inadequately this fact has been understood by mankind up to this time; what is important is that it has been present, influencing human development on earth. Much could be said to explain exactly what man has not understood about the Christ impulse up to this time; the science of the spirit will have to contribute its share to bring about a full comprehension of how the Christ impulse has come from spiritual heights and influenced man's development on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. In order to realize how the Christ has become a working force, let us visualize—as has been done elsewhere—two events in the annals of man's evolution that have influenced the development of the entire Western world.

You will remember an important event from history when Constantine, son of Constantius Chlorus, defeated Maxentius and thus introduced Christianity externally into the mainstream of Western civilization. Constantine had to fight that important battle against Maxentius so that he could establish Christianity in his western empire as the official religion. Had this battle not taken place as it did, the entire map of Europe would have been different. But this battle really was not decided by military skill, that is, not by the intellectual prowess available to people in those days, but by something entirely different. Maxentius consulted the so-called Sibylline Books, the prophetic oracles of Rome, which guided him into leading his army out of the assured safety of Rome's walls into the open field, in order to confront Constantine's army. Constantine, on the other hand, had a dream before the battle in which he was told, “If you approach Maxentius under the banner of the Mystery of Golgotha you will reach a great objective!” Indeed, Constantine carried the symbol of the Mystery of Golgotha—the cross—when he led his forces into battle, even though his army was three-fourths smaller than that of Maxentius. Enthused by the power emanating from the Mystery of Golgotha, Constantine won that historical battle resulting in the external introduction of Christianity to Europe. When we realize the extent to which people in those days understood the Christ impulse purely by intellectual means, it is not surprising to find that there ensued an endless theological quarrel. People argued whether or not Christ was consubstantial with the Lord in all eternity, and so on. Let us say this, that the degree of knowledge of the Christ impulse available to human beings in those days is not important, but rather the fact that the Christ impulse was present and that through his dream it guided Constantine to bring about what had to happen. What is important is the actuality of the Christ and His real and visibly active power. Only in the science of the spirit do we begin to understand what the Christ impulse is.

Another historical event was the struggle between France and England. It changed the map of Europe in such a way that we can say that if France had not been victorious over England, all conditions and relationships would have become different. But how did this victory happen? It happened because the Christ impulse has worked itself into the subconscious of the soul up to the present time, when it is increasingly becoming a conscious force. So we can see in the evolution of the Western spirit how the Christ impulse seeks out in the souls of men those conditions by which it can become effective in some individuals. Legends have preserved for us the manner in which the Christ impulse can assert itself within the Western spiritual tradition. In part, these legends refer generally to ancient pagan ages, but they take us back to those heathen times in which an understanding of Christianity was beginning to germinate.

If the soul does not consciously seek initiation as delineated in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, but becomes saturated with the Christ impulse as if by way of natural initiation, then the most favorable period for this process is from December 25 to January 6. We can understand this clearly by realizing that for occult knowledge it is evident that the earth is not only what geologists describe. Geologists conceive the earth's components as being similar to the skeleton of man. Yet the spiritual also belongs to our earth whose aura has been permeated by Christ. During the day's twenty-four hours, this earth sleeps and is awake just as we are. We must familiarize ourselves with the fact that the state of wakefulness on earth occurs during the winter, and the state of sleep during the summer. The earth spirit is most awake in these twelve or thirteen days from Christmas to the Epiphany. In ancient ages when, as you know from the various presentations in my lecture series, human beings elevated themselves to a sort of dreamlike clairvoyance to reach a spiritual understanding of the world, in those ages the most favorable time for this process was summer. Thus, it is quite natural that whoever wants to elevate himself to spiritual heights by means of a more dreamlike clairvoyance will have an easier time of it during the summer, when the earth is asleep. Therefore, St. John's midsummer-day was in ancient ages the most propitious time to raise the soul to the spiritual level. The old way of spiritual interaction with the earth has been replaced by a more conscious elevation that can best be reached during the earth's wakefulness.

For this reason, legends inform us that unusually endowed people, who are particularly suited by their karmas, pass into an extraordinary state of consciousness that resembles sleep, but only on the surface. its inner quality is such that it can be inspired by those forces that elevate human beings to the domain we call the spirit world. A beautiful Norwegian legend² tells us that Olaf &Åsteson, in church on Christmas Eve, falls into a sleeplike state and when he awakens on January 6 is able to relate the experiences he had in this condition. This Norwegian legend does in fact describe the experiences that one perceives first as the soul world—and then as something that feels like the spirit world, but with everything being expressed as images, as imaginative forms.

This time of year has been most favorable in those epochs when human beings were not as advanced as they are in our time. Now it is no longer possible for the Christ impulse to penetrate the souls of men in this way, as if by natural initiation. Nowadays man must make a conscious effort and climb to initiation in a way similar to that achieved through the instructions given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. We are living in an age when natural initiations are becoming increasingly rare and will eventually disappear. Yet one initiation that could still essentially be called a natural initiation took place when the Christ impulse worked itself into the soul of the simple country girl, The Maid of Orleans. It was she who caused the victory of the French over the English. Again, not the human mind nor the talents of military leaders were decisive factors in changing the map of Europe so magnificently, but rather the Christ impulse working itself into the subconscious of the Maid of Orleans and inspiring her to radiate its presence in all of history.

We would now have to examine whether something similar could have occurred in the Maid of Orleans by way of natural initiation and ask whether her soul was inspired in the nights from the 25th day of December to the 6th of January. From her biography it seems difficult to demonstrate that she was even once in a sleep-like state during the twelve or thirteen special days when the Christ impulse could have entered her soul, inspiring her to act as its human shell on the battle grounds of France. Yet, that is precisely what happened. There is a time when the karma of a particular individual can facilitate such a sleep-like state in a human being. During the last few days prior to a person's birth he lives in the mother's womb in a dreaming, sleep-like state. He has not yet perceived with his senses what is happening in the world outside. If by virtue of his karma a person were especially suited to receive the Christ impulse during these last few days in the womb, then these days could also be days of natural initiation. Strengthened by and saturated with the Christ impulse, such a person would have to be born on the sixth day of January. Joan of Arc was born on that day. It is her special mystery that she was born on the 6th day of January and had spent the time from Christmas to the day of Epiphany in a peculiar sleep-like state in the womb of her mother where she received her natural initiation. Now consider the profound connections beyond the external developments that we are accustomed to call history. As a rule, the external events that are reconstructed from historical documents are of the least significance. What is of decisive historical significance is the plain date in our calendar indicating that Joan of Arc was sent into this world on the 6th day of January. Thus, supernatural forces become active in the sentient world and we must read the occult signs that present this fact to us. They tell us that the Christ impulse had already streamed into the Maid of Orleans before her physical birth, as if by way of natural initiation.

I want to explain these facts in order to instill in your souls a feeling for the fact that the external preception must take into account unknown forces and connections beyond what we ordinarily call history. European history has been guided by the Christ impulse since the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas Asia retained a world view that is not vet fully sensitive to the Christ impulse. To be sure, Europeans have been led into considering the wisdom of India as something especially profound. Not only is it characteristic of Hindu thought, if not of all Asian religious perception, however, that its entire attention is directed to the time preceding the appearance of the Christ impulse, but also that the state of religious perception is preserved as it was in those days. If something remains behind in the evolutionary process it can be interpreted to have absorbed something luciferic, and for this reason Asian religious evolution is the carrier of a luciferic element. A glance at the religious development of Asia will inform us that it contains much of what mankind as a whole once possessed but was later forced to abandon. We must in part cleanse Western culture of the luciferic remnants and in part we must elevate them in such a way that the Christ impulse can enter.

Moving from Asia to the East of Europe, we notice how Russian orthodox Christianity has remained stationary at an earlier stage of Christian development, refusing to advance and thereby keeping something of the luciferic element. In short, we can detect a luciferic remnant in the East, which, I would say, a wise guiding force left behind for the evolution of mankind in general.

Looking to the West and especially to American culture, a different characteristic quality stands out. The characteristic feature of American culture is to explain everything from external appearance. This kind of perception can certainly lead to great and significant achievements, but still, externals are usually expected to provide answers to all questions. Suppose we in Europe, and especially in Central Europe, notice a person who earlier in his life did not yet have an opportunity to dedicate himself to Christ and to the spiritual cosmic forces. If some event in this person's life brought about his conversion, we want to know what had gone on in his soul. We are not interested in learning that there was a leap forward in his development because such a phenomenon could certainly be found everywhere. The most incorrect pronouncement made by the empirical sciences is that nature does not make any leaps.³ Yet there is a tremendous leap from a green plant leaf to the red petal of a flower, and there is another significant leap from petal to the calyx. This pronouncement is therefore patently false; the truth of all development rests precisely on the fact that leaps occur everywhere. Hence, when a person who for some time was leading an external existence is suddenly induced by something to turn to spiritual things, we are not interested in the fact that it happened. What does interest us is the inner force and power that can bring about such a conversion. We will want to look into the soul of such a person and ascertain what has caused such a reversal. The inner workings of the soul will interest us.

How would the American proceed? He would do something quite peculiar. In America, conversions of this sort have been observed frequently. Well, the American would ask the people who have experienced conversions to write letters. He would then gather all these letters into a bundle and say, “I have received these letters from some two hundred people. Fourteen percent of all these souls experienced a conversion out of sudden fear of death or hell: five percent claimed altruistic motives; seventeen percent because they aspired to ethical ideals; fifteen percent had experienced pangs of conscience; ten percent acted in obedience to what they were taught; thirteen percent because they saw that others were converted and imitated them; nineteen percent because they were forced by a good whipping at the appropriate age, and so on.” In this fashion the most extreme souls are isolated, sorted and tallied and the result is claimed to be founded on “scientific data.” The findings are then compiled in books that are sent out and billed as “soul science.” For these people all other evidence is unsound, or as they claim, rests on subjective notions. There you have an example of the externalization of the innermost phenomena, and so it goes with many, many things in America. At a time that cries out for special spiritual deepening, the most external brand of spiritism is rampant in America! Everything there has to be tangible.

That is a materialistic interpretation of spiritual life. We could mention many other instances from which it would be possible to see how the culture of the West is seized by the ahrimanic principle, and what principle causes the pendulum to swing to the other side. In the East we are confronted by the luciferic and in the West by the ahrimanic principle. In Central Europe we have been assigned the immensely important task of finding the equilibrium between East and West. Therefore, the plastic group in our building in Dornach must represent what we consider the most significant spiritual task of our age, that is, finding the equilibrant relationship between Lucifer and Ahriman. Only then will it be recognized how the Christ impulse was meant to influence evolution on earth, when the Christ is not simply brought to preeminence, but is known in the proper way as exemplary force in balance with Lucifer and Ahriman.

The following may illustrate that no clear understanding has yet been reached concerning the relationship of man and of Christ to Lucifer and Ahriman. In a period, even the greatest phenomena are not always free from a one-sided attitude that may characterize the age. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of Michelangelo's magnificent painting The Last Judgment, which can be found in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Christ is portrayed in triumph, directing the good people to the one side and the wicked to the other. Let us look at this Christ figure. It does not possess the features we would like to emphasize in the Christ of our building in Dornach. Even though Lucifer towers above, it must be shown that the Christ raises His hand in compassion. Lucifer is not supposed to be toppled by the power of Christ, but plunges down by his own power because he is unable to bear the radiance of the Christ nearby, and the Christ looks up and raises his brow toward Lucifer. Similarly, Ahriman is not conquered by any hatred from Christ, but because he feels he cannot stand the forces emanating from Him. The Christ, however, towers in the middle as the One who is carrying the Parcival principle into the new age and who, not through His power but through His very being, induces others to overcome themselves, rather than being overcome by Him. In Michelangelo's painting, we see a Christ who uses His very power to send some to heaven and others to hell. In future, such an image will no longer be seen as the genuine Christ, but rather as a Christ having luciferic qualities. Of course, this observation does not detract from the greatness of the painting, in fact, we acknowledge it. We simply must admit, however, that Michelangelo was not yet capable of painting the genuine Christ because the development of the world had not yet advanced to such a point when this could be done. There has to be a clear understanding that we cannot turn our attention just to the Christ, but must set our sight on the threefold configuration: Christ, Lucifer, Ahriman. I can only hint at this, but spiritual science will eventually bring to light the full content of the mystery, Christ in relation to Lucifer and Ahriman.

Now consider the following. Looking eastward we can make out luciferic forces even in the eastern regions nearest to us, while in the West we see ahrimanic forces. As a matter of fact, in spiritual scientific consideration we must adopt a mode of perception by which neither objects nor nations, nor the spirit of nations, are observed with sympathy or antipathy, but rather in accordance with their characteristics. What is called the national mentality of a person steeped in the heritage of his people depends to a large degree on the activity of the physical body and the ether body. From the time of our falling asleep to the moment of our awakening we live with our spiritual-intellectual being as astral body and ego, and during this period we also live outside our habitual national identity. Only during the time from our awakening to the time when we fall asleep do we partake in our nationality, because then we are immersed in our physical body. For this reason man overcomes his sense of national identity little by little during his stay in kamaloka. There he strives toward a union with humanity as a whole in order to live most of the time between death and rebirth in the sphere of humanity as such. Among the characteristics discarded in kamaloka is one that specializes us as members of a nationality.

In this connection the various nationalities differ considerably from one another. Let us, for instance, compare a Frenchman with a Russian. It is a Frenchman's particular trait that he is especially persistent in holding onto, and dwelling in, what the collective soul of his people carries into his physical body and ether body during his life between birth and death. This can be seen in his definitive idea—not as an individual but as a Frenchman—of what it is to be French. Above all, he stresses the importance of being French and what that means to him. But this notion held by Frenchmen or by anyone else from a Romance culture about their nationality affects the ether body by clearly imprinting the idea of nationality on it. A few days after the Frenchman has passed through the gate of death he loses his ether body; it is then a closed entity that has a prolonged existence in the etheric world. The ether body is unable to dissolve for a long time because it is impregnated with, and held together by, the Frenchman's idea of nationality. Thus, if we look to the West we see the field of death filled with firmly defined ether bodies.

Now, if we take a closer look to the East, at Russian man, we recognize his peculiar trait; his soul, upon passing through the gate of death, carries an ether body that dissolves in a relatively short period of time. That is the difference between the West and the East. When the ether bodies of Western Europeans are separated after death, they tend to maintain a certain rigidity. What the Frenchman calls “Gloire” is impregnated in his ether body as a national Gloire. He is condemned for a long time after his death to turn his spiritual sight onto this ether body, and to look at himself (The Russian, however, looks little at himself after his death.) Through all this, Western European man is exposed to the ahrimanic influence because his ether body has been infected by materialistic thinking.

The speedy separation and the diffusion of the ether body is accompanied by a feeling of sensual pleasure, which is also present as a most peculiar ingredient of national sentiment. How is this expressed in the East (Central Europeans do not understand this just as they do not empathize with the East.) Consider Dostoevsky and even Tolstoy or those leading writers who are constantly speaking of “Russian man”; their jargon is an expression of an undefined sensual pleasure surging from their national sentiment. Even in Solowjow's philosophy, we find a vague and stifling quality that the Central European man cannot reconcile with the clarity and purity he seeks. This search for clarity and purity is related to what is active in Europe as spiritual power.

In Central Europe there exists another condition, an intermediate state and something I can now dwell on in greater detail than was possible in yesterday's lecture. I mentioned that something exists in Central Europe that could be called the inner disposition toward striving. As a Central European, Goethe could have written his Faust no differently in the eighteen-forties: he was always striving! This striving is innermost nature. It was in Central Europe where the mystics made their appearance—those mystics who were not satisfied with the mere knowledge of the divine-spiritual principle but wanted to experience it in their own souls. To experience the Christ event internally was their very endeavor. Now take Solowjow who proceeds above all from a historical premise that the Christ died for mankind. That is correct, but Solowjow is a soul who, similar to a cloud, perceives spiritual life as something outside himself. Somehow he thinks that everything is viewed as a completed event, while Central European man demands that everyone experience the Christ event again in himself. Solowjow stresses time and again that Christ has to die so that man can be human. Meister Eckhart, in contrast, would have responded like this: “You are seeing Christ in the same way in which one looks at something external.” The point is that we should not look only at historical events, but that we should experience the Christ within ourselves. We must discover something within ourselves that passes through stages similar to those experienced by Christ, at least spiritually, so that we can rediscover the Christ event within ourselves.

Now it will certainly seem strange and fantastic when mankind nowadays is told that in Central Europe the close association of the “I” with the Christ principle had put a stamp on the entire development of the area, to the effect that even the linguistic spirit of a people took up this association and equated “I” (Ich) and “CH” (Christ): I-CH conjoined became “Ich.” In pronouncing “Ich” in Central Europe one utters the name of Jesus Christ. That is how close the “I” wants to be to the Christ, longing for the most intimate closeness with Him. This living together, as one, with the spiritual world, which we in Central Europe must strive to attain in all intellectual fields, is not known in the West or in the East. Therefore, something in the twentieth century is necessary so that the Christ principle can gradually spread over the entire European continent. I have frequently emphasized in several lecture series⁴ that in November 1879 the spiritual being we call the Archangel Michael had reached a special stage of development. Michael had become, so to speak, the leading spirit who is now preparing the event that has to take place in the twentieth century. This is alluded to in my first mystery play⁵ as the appearance of the etheric Christ on earth. It will come to pass that at first a few, and gradually more and more souls will know that the Christ is really here, is again on this earth, but as an ether body and not as a physical body.

Certain preparations are necessary. When some souls in the course of the twentieth century become clairvoyant to life in the etheric world—and that will happen—they would be disturbed by those ether bodies that are residual from Western Europe. The spiritual eye would perceive them first of all and would have a distorted vision of the Christ figure. For this reason Michael has to fight a battle in Europe. He has to contribute something to the diffusion of these rigid ether bodies from Western Europe. To accomplish this task, he must take the ether bodies from the East, which strive for diffusion, and join with them in a struggle against the West. The result of this is that since 1879 a violent struggle has been in preparation between Russian and Western European ether bodies and is now raging in the entire astral world. This furious battle between Russia and France is indeed going on in the astral world and is led by Michael; it corresponds to the war that is now being waged in Europe. We are often shaken by the knowledge that the events in the physical world take place as exact opposites to those occurring in the spiritual world, and that is precisely what is happening in this case. The alliance between France and Russia⁶ can be blamed on the seductive powers of Ahriman or, if you will, on the ahrimanic element, the twenty billion francs that France gave to Russia. This alliance is the physical expression of a struggle raging between French and Russian souls, a struggle that has an impact on Central Europe as it strives in its innermost soul for an encounter with the Christ. It is the karma of Europe that we in Central Europe must experience in an especially tragic way what the West and East must settle between themselves. The only possible interpretation of the external struggle between German and French elements is that the German element lies in the middle and serves as an anvil for both East and West. Germany, which is hammered by both sides in the conflict, is in reality the subject of their own controversy. That is the spiritual truth and quite different from what is happening in the physical world. Consider how different the spiritual truth is from what is happening in the physical world! This must strike contemporary man as grotesque, but it nevertheless is the truth, which must have a shocking effect on us.

There is yet another extraordinarily important matter worth mentioning. Surely history seems to be contradicted when we see that England, even though she has in the past always been allied with Turkey against Russia, now has to fight with Russia against Turkey. We can understand this contradiction only through occult observation. On the physical plane England and Russia are allies in the fight against the Turkish element, yet occult vision, perceiving this struggle from below through the physical plane and then onto the astral plane, sees that in the North it is Russia and in the Southeast it is Turkey that appear to be allied with England. This is due to the fact that the alliance between England and Russia is only of significance on the physical plane, but has no corresponding value in the spiritual world since it rests entirely on material interests. From below one sees that England and Russia are allied in the North only on the physical plane. In the Southeast, looking through the physical plane, one perceives on the astral plane a spiritual alliance between the English and the Turks while they are both fighting the Russians. Thus, on the physical plane, England is an ally to Russia and on the astral plane Russia is attacked by England. This is how we must see the events as they unfold in external reality inasmuch as they reveal themselves as external history. What is behind this history is something entirely different.

There will be a time when people will speak about the present events differently than they are doing now. You will have to admit, the entire war literature contains something rather unpleasant. True, some valid statements are made, but there are also many disagreeable ones. Above all, there is one thing that is disagreeable. There is much talk about how it is still too early to discuss the question of who has caused the war and so on. People delude themselves about the facts when they say that at a later date the documents in our archives will surely bring to light who is to blame for the war! In reference to the external events, however, the matter can be resolved fairly easily, provided one judges dispassionately. Chamberlain, in his War Essays⁷ is correct (even though he is in error about the details) when he says that it is possible to know the key issues of this war. All that is without a doubt accurate, but it leaves the proper question unasked. For example, there is but one question that can be answered unequivocally, if only it is properly posed, and this question is: Who could have prevented the war?—The constantly recurring question: Who is to blame for this war? and many other questions just are not appropriate. Who could have prevented the war? The answer to this question can be no other than that the Russian government could have prevented the war! Only in this fashion will it be possible to find the appropriate definition for the impulses that are at work in each situation. Of course, war had been desired by the East for decades, but had it not been for a certain relationship between England, Russia and France, it could not have broken out. Therefore, one might ascribe the greater blame to England. Yet all these conjectures do not take into consideration the underlying causes that made this World War a necessity. It is naive to believe that war could have been avoided. People these days talk as if it did not have to come about when it was, of course, destined by the European karma.

I wanted to allude to some of this by sketching the spiritual differences between East and West. It is not important that we look for external causes. All we have to know is that this war was a historic necessity. When that is understood the individual causes do not matter.

What is important is the proper attitude toward the various effects, for one effect can impress our souls in an especially significant way. It is remarkable and a characteristic phenomenon that a war like this one produces many unexpended ether bodies. Since this is the biggest war in man's conscious history, this phenomenon is present to a corresponding large degree. Ether bodies are produced that are not worn out. You see, the ether body that man carries with him can support him for a long period of time, until he reaches seventy, eighty or ninety years of age. But in a war human beings are sacrificed in the prime of their lives. You know that man, when he passes through the gate of death loses his ether body after a short period of time. A person dying in a war, however, loses his ether body when normally it could have supported his physical body for a long time, in many cases for decades. Those ether bodies entering the etheric world prematurely are preserved with all their powers. Consider now the countless number of unexpended ether bodies of those going through the gate of death at an early age. There is something distinctive about these ether bodies. I would like to illustrate this fact with an example that concerns our Movement, and after that I wish to explain how the ether bodies of the young soldiers who have gone through the gate of death will emerge in the etheric world in the near future.

This fall we witnessed in Dornach the death of little seven-year-old Theodor Faiss; his family belonged to the Anthroposophical Society and was employed not far from our building project. The father used to live in Stuttgart before moving to Dornach. He worked as a gardener in the vicinity of the building and lived there with his family. He himself had been drafted soon after the beginning of the war and at the time of the event I would like to relate, he was staying in a military hospital. Little seven-year-old Theodor was really a sunny child—a wonderful, lovely boy. Now, one day the following happened. We just had a lecture that I delivered in Dornach about the work that goes on in the building. After the lecture someone appeared and reported that little Theodor's mother had not seen him since late in the afternoon. It was ten o'clock at night and we could not help thinking that a terrible accident had happened. This afternoon a horse-driven furniture van had been in the vicinity of the so-called canteen; it was seen on a narrow street where it was forced to turn. To my knowledge, no van as huge had reached that spot in decades. Little Theodor had been in the canteen before the van had turned. He had been delayed there, otherwise he would have gone home earlier with the food that he had fetched from the canteen for supper. It so happened that he covered the short distance to his home in such a way that he reached the very spot where at that moment the van turned over and fell on him. Nobody had noticed the accident, not even the coachman because he was tending to his horses when the van turned over and did not know that the child was buried under it. When we were informed that the child was missing we tried to heave the vehicle up again. Friends fetched tools and alerted Swiss soldiers to help us with the task. Naturally the child had been dead since five-thirty in the afternoon. The van had crushed him immediately and he had died of suffocation.

This case can be used as an example of what I have often tried to explain by means of a comparison: causes are mistaken for effects, and vice versa. I have frequently used the following example. A person falls into the river and people hurry to the spot where it happened. When they find a rock, they conjecture that the victim had stumbled over it and this caused him to fall into the river and drown. Thus, they are sure that the man had died because he fell into the river. If one were to conduct an autopsy, however, it might turn out that he had suffered a heart attack and as a result, was already dead when he fell into the water, but he fell into the water because he had died. You will frequently encounter a similar confusion of cause and effect when life situations are assessed, and even more frequently in the general sciences.

The situation with little Theodor was that his karma had expired, so that it is actually possible to say, “He himself ordered the van to the place of the accident.” I have told you this externally tragic case in detail because we are here concerned with a child's ether body, which could have supported his life for decades. This ether body has passed into the spiritual world with all of its unexpended powers, but where is it? What is it doing? Since that day, anyone attuned to occult perception who is working artistically on the building in Dornach or is there simply to pursue his thoughts will know that the entire ether body of the child, with all its powers, is enlarged in the aura of the Dornach building. We must distinguish that the individuality is elsewhere; it goes its own way, but the ether body was separated after a few days and is now present in the building. I will never hesitate to assert that the powers needed for intuition are those of this ether body that was sacrificed for the building. The relationships behind ordinary life are often quite different from what we are able to suspect. This ether body has become one of the protective forces of the building. Something tremendously stupendous lies in such a relationship.

Now let us consider the vast amount of power that ascends to the spiritual world from the unexpended ether bodies of these who are now walling through the gate of death as a result of military events.

The way in which events are connected is different from what people can imagine; the karma in the world takes its course in a different way. It is the task of spiritual science to replace fantastic notions with spiritually true ideas. For example, we can hardly imagine something more fantastic and untrue, from a spiritual perspective, than what has taken place in the last few decades. Let us ask what has been accomplished by the (Hague) Peace Conference⁸ which aimed at replacing war with law, or international law, as it was called. Since the Peace Conferences were held, wars have never been more terrible. During the last few decades this Peace Movement counted among its special patrons the very monarch who has waged the bloodiest and most cruel wars ever known in history. The launching of the Peace Conferences by the Russian Czar must therefore be considered the biggest farce in world history; it is also the most abominable. This must be labeled a luciferic seduction of the East; the details can be easily traced. No matter how one may view the situation, the human soul is shocked by the fact that in the beginning, when the war impulses made their way into Central Europe, the people there made few comments about the situation, even in places where they gathered for the purpose of discussion, such as the German Parliament in Berlin. Little was said, but the events spoke for themselves. In contrast, there was much talk in the East and West. The most shocking impressions come from the debates among various political parties in the St. Petersburg Duma. Representatives of these parties uttered, with great fervor, endless variations of absolutely meaningless phrases. It was terrifying to see the luciferic seduction at work. The fires raging in this war, however, are intended to warn and admonish the human race to be on guard.

From what is now happening, a few souls must come to a realization that we cannot go on like this; human evolution must take up the spiritual! Materialism is confronting its karma in this, the most terrible of all wars. In a certain sense, this war is the karma of materialism. The more this fact is realized by human beings, the more they will abandon their arguments about who is to blame for the war, and then they will have to realize that this war has been sent into world history to admonish man to turn to a spiritual perception of human life in its entirety.

Not only does materialism cause human souls to embrace materialism, it also perverts man's logic and dulls his feelings. We in Central Europe are still lacking a full understanding of what I have stated before. We in Central Europe must be most intimately engaged in the continued development of the Christ impulse. To do this we must, among other things, try to understand the minds that have already sown the seeds. Just one example. Goethe wrote a theory of color, which physicists regard as something—well—something that deserves no more than an indulgent smile, as if they wanted to say, “What did the poet know about colors? He was nothing but a dilettante.” Since the 1880's I have tried to gain acceptance for Goethe's theory of color in spite of the findings of modern physics.⁹ Why does nobody understand that? The answer is that Central Europe has been imbued with the materialistic principle that has come to us from the British folk soul. Newton, whom Goethe had to oppose, has been victorious over everything emanating from Goethe's spirit. Goethe also established a theory of evolution that demonstrates how human beings, simply by grasping spiritual laws, can progress from the state of greatest imperfection to one of greatest perfection. People found this too difficult to understand. When Darwin published his theory of evolution in a more comprehensible fashion, it was readily accepted. Darwin, a materialistic thinker who was inspired by the British folk soul has conquered Goethe, a man whose perceptions resulted from a most intimate dialogue with the German folk soul.

Ernst Haeckel's experiences were tragic. During his entire life he nourished himself intellectually by leaning on the ideas of Huxley and Darwin; his materialism is basically an English product¹⁰ Yet when the war broke out, Haeckel was enraged about what emerged from the British Isles. He was one of the first to return British medals, diplomas and honors; instead, he should have returned his brand of Darwinism and physics, which is tinged with English thought. This is what we have to realize if we are to understand how Central Europe can strive for an intimate harmony with the laws of the world.

The greatest damage is done when what is poured into a child's soul induces the child to develop merely materialistically later in life. This trend has been on the increase for several centuries. Ahriman has even inspired one of the great British writers to compose a work that is calculated to impress the child's soul materialistically. The intent is hardly noticeable because ordinarily, one does not see all this as preparatory to a materialistic orientation. The work I am talking about is Robinson Crusoe. The description of Robinson is so shrewd that once the mind has accepted the ideas in the Robinson tale, it cannot avoid thinking materialistically thereafter. Mankind has not yet recovered from the ill effects perpetrated by the inventors of Robinson tales; they existed before and exist now. Much more could be said. These statements are not made to say something derogatory about the people of the West who have to be what they are. Rather, I wish to point out how the people in Central Europe must discover the connections to great values that are just now germinating but will grow to determine future developments. In this regard, the significance of Austria is especially noteworthy. During the past few decades several men there aspired to profound accomplishments, for example, Hamerling¹¹ in the area of literature, Carneri¹² who set out to deepen Darwinism, by extending it to the moral realm, as well as Bruckner¹³ and other artists from a variety of disciplines. What matters here is the concern of a people for these things.

Now let us consider the unexpended ether bodies that are still in existence. They were cast off by human beings who had learned, through a great event, how to sacrifice themselves for their people's spiritual commonalty, a commonalty no longer present for them, at least on the surface. If a spiritual scientist today asserts that there is a collective soul of people and that it exists as archangel and so forth, he will be ridiculed. What is called a people's collective soul by the materialists is nothing but the abstract sum of attributes that the people of a nation possess. The materialist considers the people as nothing but the sum of human beings who co-exist in the same geographic area and share a sense of commonalty with each other. We, on the other hand, speak of a people's spiritual commonalty in such a way that we know that the spirit of a people is present as a real being of the rank of an archangel. Even though somebody who sacrifices his life for his people is not fully conscious of the real spirit of his people, he nevertheless confirms by the manner in which he goes through death that he believes in a continuity of life alter this death. He believes that there is more to a people's spiritual commonalty than meets the eye, that is, it is related to, and co-exists with, the super-sensible world. All those going through death confirm in a more or less conscious way that there is a super-sensible world, and that realization is imprinted on their ether bodies. In a future time of peace, the unexpended ether bodies will be among people living on earth and will continually send the following sounds into the music of the spheres: there is more in the world than what mere physical eyes can perceive! This spiritual truth will ring forth as part of the music of the spheres through ether bodies that the dead have left behind. These are aside from what they are taking along as their individuality, which they retain during their lives between death and rebirth. We must listen to what lives and echoes from these ether bodies, because they were discarded by people who went through death and in so doing, affirmed the truth of the spiritual world. Mankind's greatest sin will be to ignore what the dead call out to us when their ether bodies speak. One's glance at the spiritual world will be infinitely enriched if one considers that those who have lost loved ones—fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters—may tell themselves that those who were sacrificed continue to live for humanity, as a reminder of what is yet to come!

If one were to rely only on what is taking place in the physical world, there would be little hope for the successful continuation of the spiritual movement through which a spiritual scientific world view is to be cultivated. Recently, a good and faithful colleague aged thirty or so died. My words to this soul that had gone through the gate of death requested that it should continue to work in our spiritual scientific field as faithfully and as courageously as it had done here on earth, utilizing all of its acquired knowledge. This colleague had worked diligently with us here on the physical plane; my message to him for his life between death and rebirth was that he should continue to work with us after death as he had done in life, for we are counting on these so-called dead as we are counting on the living. Our spiritual-scientific world view must be alive to such a degree that the gap between the so-called dead and the living can be overcome: we must feel the dead among us as if they were alive. We want not only theory, but life. Thus we wish to point out that when there is peace, there will be a living tie between those on earth and those who have gone through the gate of death. Man will be able to learn, and must learn, from the dead how they contribute to the great spiritual progress that must take hold on earth.

Sometimes life offers us an opportunity to see how human logic alone does not suffice. I would like to mention an example—not for personal reasons but because I want to characterize the way our Movement is viewed by the public. A few years ago an article was printed in a respected South German journal¹⁴ by a famous contemporary philosopher about our spiritual science. This treatment of spiritual science was intended to impress the public purely because the essay was authored by a famous philosopher. The editor took great pride in the fact that he was able to present an article about spiritual science by such a famous man. Of course, everything was skewed and the facts about spiritual science were distorted. But what did it take for the editor to realize that the account about spiritual science that he had sponsored in his monthly journal was distorted? The war broke out and the author of the article sent several letters to the editor. These letters contained some of the most disgusting remarks about Central European culture that one could imagine. The professor had railed and sneered at it. The editor then printed these letters in his journal as examples of the stupidity of this kind of thinking, commenting that anyone who writes this way belongs in an insane asylum. We are confronted by a curious fact. A good editor needed such an experience in order to see that the author, whose article on spiritual science had severely damaged the public image of the Movement, belonged in an insane asylum. If the man belongs in an insane asylum now, however, then the same was true before, when he wrote the article on spiritual science!

So it goes in the world! To be a judge of what is going on, man must garner other supports than those ordinarily available to him. The spiritual scientist who can clearly demonstrate that truth finds its own way, is on firm ground. Spiritual science, however, must be active in the evolution of mankind so that what is necessary, happens. Early in history Emperor Constantine had to accomplish his mission so that the Christ impulse could bear on the subconscious from the spiritual world. Later, the Christ impulse became active in the Maid of Orleans; what had to happen did indeed take place. Today, the Christ impulse must continue to bear on man, but more on his consciousness. In the future, there must be souls who will know that up there in the spiritual world there are those who sacrificed themselves as individuals and who admonish us to emulate their own belief in the active force of the spiritual, which they attained in death. The forces in the unexpended ether bodies beckon to the future, as well: to understand their message is to admit it into one's soul. Below, however, there must be souls who will perceive this truth and prepare for it through the proper and active understanding of our spiritual science. Our spiritual science must cultivate souls on this earth who will be capable of sensing what the ether bodies of the dead up there will say to us in the future. These souls will know that in the beyond there are forces to admonish human beings who had to be left on earth. When spirit-conscious souls down here harken to the hidden sounds of the spiritual world, then all bloodshed, all sacrifices and all suffering, past and future, will bear fruit. I do hope that quite a few souls come together through spiritual science and perceive the voices from the spiritual world that are resounding especially because of this war. Summarizing the final words of today's reflection, I wish to say a few words to you that are merely an expression of my feeling for what I want to instill in your souls.

From the warrior's valor,
From the blood of battles,
From the pain of the bereaved.
From a people's sacrifice
Will the spirit fruit arise—
Will the souls embrace the spirit
Consciously, with inner eyes.

With such feelings in our hearts we forever want to imbue ourselves with the meaning of the rose cross so that we can perceive it in the proper way as the motto for our doing, weaving and feeling. Not the black cross alone. He who tears the roses from the black cross and has nothing left but the black cross, would fall into the clutches of Ahriman. The black cross in itself represents life when it strives to embrace inanimate matter. Also, if one were to separate the cross from the roses, keeping only the latter, one would nor find the proper thing. For the roses, separate from the cross, tend to elevate us to a life of selfish striving toward the spiritual, but not to a life in which we reveal the spirit in a material world. Not the cross alone, not the roses alone, but the roses on the cross, the cross carrying the roses: That is our proper symbol.

• 1 . “Die übersinnliche Erkenntnis und ihre stärkende Seelenkraft in unserer schicksalstragenden Zeit” (“Supersensible Perception and Its Strengthening Soul-force in Our Time of Destiny”). Corresponding remarks can be found in the Berlin lectures of April 16 and 23, 1915, published as: “Aus schicksalstragenden Zeit”, (“From a Time of Destiny”) Bibl.-No. 64 in the Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works [of Rudolf Steiner]), Dornach, 1959.
• 2 . “Welten-Neujahr. Das Traumlied von Olaf &Åsteson” (“Cosmic New Year. The Legend of Olaf &Åsteson's Dream”), Hanover lecture of January 1, 1912. Published as a separate edition in Dornach, 1958; Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No 158.
• 3 . In this form the pronouncement was first made by Karl von Linné in his Philosophia Botanica, Stockholm, 1751, no. 77.
• 4 . Cf. especially “Die spirituellen Hintergründe der äusseren Welt—Der Sturz der Geister der Finsternis” (“The Spiritual Background of the External World—The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness”), 14 lectures, Dornach, September 29 to October 28, 1917. Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No. 177, Dornach, 1965.
• 5 . “Die Pforte der Einweihung” (“The Portal of Initiation”), first scene. Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No 14, Dornach, 1962.
• 6 . The alliance was negotiated in 1897 by President Faure of France and Czar Nicolas II of Russia.
• 7 . Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Neue Kriegsaufsatze (New War Essays), Munich, 1915, p.36.
• 8 . “The reference is to the Hague Peace Conference of 1899 and 1907, which were both initiated by Czar Nicholas II.
• 9 . Rudolf Steiner was asked in 1882 to edit Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's Deutsche National-Literatur. Volume I was published in 1883; it contained writings on the formation and transformation of organisms. Rudolf Steiner's introductions and critical commentaries to the four volumes were published as a special edition, entitled: Rudolf Steiner, , Dornach, 1926. A German edition was published in Freiburg, 1949. Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Bibl.-No. 1. Cf. the correspondence between Karl Julius Schröer, Joseph Kürschner and Rudolf Steiner in Blätter für Anthroposophie,. 13 Jg. No. 2, February 1961.
• 10. Ernst Haeckel: “I have always readily acknowledged the magnificent contributions of the small insular British empire to the enrichment of human civilization. These were possible because of its advantageous insular position and its geographic alliances. In addition I worked on Darwinism for the past fifty years and had many personal dealings with Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, John Murray and many other famous natural scientists in England and Scotland; these were pleasant and fruitful personal relationships.” Haeckel, Ewigkeit. Weltkriegsgedanken über Leben und Tod, Religion und Entwicklungslehre (Eternity, World War Reflections on Life and Death, Religion, and the Theory of Evolution), Berlin, 1915, p.65 and 114.
• 11. Robert Hamerling, 1830-1889. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur 1886-1902 (Collected Essays on Literature, 1886-1902), Bibl.No. 20, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1957; Mein Lebensgang (The Course of My Life), Bibl.-No. 28, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1962; “Robert Hamerling, ein Dichter und ein Denker und ein Mensch” (“Robert Hamerling, the Poet, the Thinker and the Man”), Dornach, 1939.
• 12. Bartholomäus Ritter von Carneri, 1821-1909. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, “Carneri, der Ethiker des Darwinismus” in Methodische Grundlagen der Anthroposophie 1884-1901 (“Carneri, the Moral Philosopher of Darwinism” in Methodological Foundations of Anthroposophy, 1884-1901), Bibl.-No. 30, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1961: also “Vom Menschenrätsel” (“On the Riddle of Man”) and Mein Lebensgang (The Course of My Life).
• 13. Anton Bruckner, 1824-1896.
• 14. Wincenty Lutoslawski, “Rudolf Steiner's sogenannte ‘Geheimwissenschaft’” in Hochland, 8.Jg., 1.Heft Oktober 1910, S.45-58. (“Rudolf Steiner's so-called ‘Occult Science’” in Hochland, VIII, 1, October 1910, p.45-58). Professor Karl Muth, editor of the journal, writes an editorial comment in No. 7 of the same year, in which he describes Lutoslawski as an “author who is eminent as a man and as a thinker.” Later, in Krisgshefte der Suddeutschen Monatshefte, Munich, February 1915, p.623-631, Muth refers to his correspondence with Lutoslawski and writes, among other things: “in addition to making several small contributions to Hochland, Lutoslawski also published in this journal three lead articles which aroused considerable attention among the readers: one article on the theosophy of Rudolf Steiner, another one on exercises to strengthen the will, and the third one on his conversion to the Catholic faith. His published notes contain peculiar biographical clues ... Where in Germany—except in an inane asylum—would there be a human being like this lector of philosophy from the University Geneva—a man who seems to be completely disoriented as he confronts the magnitude of our contemporary world-historical situation with complete blindness and a paucity of ideas! The relief which his overwrought brain received through his epistolary outpouring did not satisfy him; he now insists that his latest letter should come to the attention of the public as well.”

Dr. Steiner: I would like to hear everything about the class schedule.

The new class schedule is described. All of the foreign language classes are in the morning. There were no changes in personnel. Once, a language class had to be moved from 12:00 until 1:00. An attempt was made to group the students. A few times Latin and Greek had to be put after eurythmy, but otherwise the language class immediately followed main lesson.

Dr. Steiner: You will have to do it that way if nothing else is possible.

A teacher: I would prefer having the 4a language class in the afternoon instead of from 12:00 until 1:00.

Dr. Steiner: Then we will do it in the afternoon.

A teacher: Is that true otherwise?

Dr. Steiner: When the respective teachers demand it. It is important that the teachers agree.

The religious instruction is described. Voice instruction is always in the morning. Eurythmy, mostly. All the handwork and shop classes are in the afternoon as well as gymnastics, but Wednesday afternoon had to be used also. If Wednesday afternoons are to be held free, then gymnastics and some of the shop classes would have to be in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against having some things at the end of the morning under certain circumstances. It is, of course, not good when the children move from the practical into the completely theoretical. We should try to keep a Wednesday free. Gymnastics should also not be done before the theoretical periods. It was badly scheduled on Wednesday only because the gymnastics teacher was excluded from the meeting.

A teacher: The parents have arranged a number of things under the assumption that Wednesday is free.

Dr. Steiner: Surely we can get the parents to choose another day. The teachers need to be able to come to the faculty meetings. That is important. The teachers could meet on Saturday. There is too much to do. Let us try to keep Wednesday afternoon. I think it is best if we do gymnastics in the afternoon.

A teacher: We carried out the division between the humanistic and business courses of study.

Dr. Steiner: Then this class schedule is possible, and we will see if it is satisfactory.

A teacher: I would like to teach foreign languages in my first-grade class.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, that is possible. That is how it should have been from the beginning.

The fourth-grade teacher would like a fourth period of foreign language.

Dr. Steiner: We carefully considered the number of hours, but we should allow you to decide. It needs to be something that is not required.

I think, if everyone is satisfied with it, we could actually begin with the class schedule. It would be nice if you could start on Thursday, December 7. Then, on Saturday, when I can look at things again, everything will be under way.

They present the individual class schedules.

Dr. Steiner: The first grade only has class once in the afternoon. 2a and 2b, as well. 3a is only on Monday afternoon. 3b, only Tuesday afternoon. The same is true of the 4a and 4b classes. 5a has class on three afternoons, two of which are the Catholic religion class. 5b also has handwork and eurythmy on two afternoons. 6a, three afternoon classes. That is not too much. For the time being, only the teachers are carrying too much.

Dr. Steiner goes through the list with the teachers, determines how many hours each teaches, and how many hours beyond a reasonable limit each is teaching. He assumes that each teacher should teach sixteen to seventeen hours per week. Thus, for example, N., who teaches twenty hours, is teaching three to four hours too many.

Dr. Steiner: Now we have determined that. In normal life, the teachers would demand extra pay for these hours. However, I think we should try to get an additional language teacher. I would also like an additional gymnastics teacher.

A teacher asks whether the provisional plan for decreasing the teaching load should be tried.

Dr. Steiner: Y. already has too many hours. We could do that only if we could find some trade. If, for example, you, Miss Z., would take over one of the religion classes, then Y. could trade. Make the change with whoever appears most burdened. Mrs. W. has the greatest tendency to give up time. We will wait until Tittmann comes to answer the question of V.

V. defends himself.

Dr. Steiner: There are also inner reasons. You should be happy we expect more of you. You are more robust. I think you are quite strong. You certainly must admit that you are more robust than Mrs. W. We will see that we get Tittmann here as soon as possible.

A teacher: The class teachers have asked if they could teach gymnastics to their own classes.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against that if it does not become a burden. I certainly see no reason why two classes cannot have gymnastics with their teachers in the same room. That would, in fact, be quite good, if it is possible, because we would then achieve a pedagogical goal. We need to remove nervousness from our teaching. If we cannot do that, it would be a sign of nervousness. Actually, we should see it as an ideal that we could teach mathematics in one corner, French in another, astronomy and eurythmy in the others, so that the children have to pay more attention to their own work.

A teacher: That is also relevant for eurythmy?

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy if you could do it, because it is pedagogically valuable. teachers would, of course, need to be able to get along with each other.

A teacher: The religion teachers would like to keep the room they have had for the Sunday services. It should be used only for that.

Dr. Steiner: I agree. What is important in these Sunday services is the attitude among those present. We can best achieve that by maintaining that arrangement.

A teacher: Should Miss R. and Mr. W. hold the services?

Dr. Steiner: They should both celebrate the sacraments. That is an obvious condition for the independent religious instruction. I would like to say something more. Experience has shown that the Independent Religious Instruction consists not only in what we teach during religion class, not only what we teach through feeling, but that a certain relationship needs to develop between the religion teacher and the student. You can develop that through the celebration of a sacrament. If someone else does the service, then, for the student who receives the sacrament from someone else, a large part of the intangibles necessary for teaching religion are missing between the students and the religion teacher. The reverse is also true. If someone gives the sacrament without teaching religion, that person falls into a difficult position that can hardly be justified. It is easier to justify teaching religion without leading a service than it is to justify leading a service without teaching religion. Through the service, we bring religious instruction out of empty theory. It is based upon a relationship between the religion teacher and the students. As I have said in connection with the sacrament, you should decide.

A teacher: I did not understand that.

Dr. Steiner: Now that we have completed things, in selecting a teacher for religion my first question is if he or she can lead the Sunday service. You might have the wrong impression. If the question is which one of you here do I think is appropriate, then I could reply, “Only those who I think are appropriate to give the service.” Many people could teach religion, but the giving of the sacraments can hardly be done by anyone other than the two whom I mentioned. You should not be angry that I am speaking quite straightforwardly in this connection, but each of you should know what I think of your capabilities, at least for now. That may change, though.

The children need to become mature enough. This nonsense with a special confirmation class needs to stop. They should attend the Youth Service when they have reached a certain level of maturity, but that maturity cannot be taught. They will simply reach it, and for that reason, we should not have any special confirmation class. Only the person giving religious instruction should hold the Youth Service.

A teacher asks about the decorations in the service room.

Dr. Steiner: I would like to think about that. I think it would be nice to have a harmonium. We want to be careful about how we develop the service. There is not much to say about the text except that the Gospels are still missing. There is still much we can do in connection with music and also paintings. In contrast, though, there is something else we need to consider, namely, the participation of the faculty.

There are two sides to the question. There is the very real question of whether things are moving too rapidly here. The services permeated by a religious renewal have the possibility of becoming something quite great. On the other hand, I hear in town among those who are working on this religious renewal that a religious community of a hundred members consists only of anthroposophists who are forming a sect. You see, there is a danger connected with all this. It is already present. I also hear that, “Those members who have not yet joined are being pressured.” The religious renewal was intended for those outside the Society. You need to be clear that such things have two sides, and that the primary thing is that our anthroposophical friends, both inside the school and outside, need to see that their mission is to straighten out people who are falling into an erroneous path. Those things connected with the most noble intent also have the greatest dangers. This is something that must be taken seriously. Before this religious renewal has withstood the test whether it is true and proper, we can certainly not say that we should respect someone who does not attend less than someone who does.

It would be best if we create a service for the children that has a great deal of warmth and heart, if we did everything possible to create an attitude that is serious without being oppressive, but on the other hand, to keep it as simple as possible.

A teacher: We have thought about some questions we would like to ask you. The question arose in connection with teaching foreign language about the musical/language and the sculptural/ painting streams. They were often mentioned in the course.

Dr. Steiner: There are also a number of references to that in that short cycle of four lectures on pedagogy that I gave in September of 1920.

You will forgive me if I mention that, but I believe it contains everything you need to come to more concrete actions.

Concerning teaching modern languages—if you use the same methods, the effects upon the child will compensate each other, since the child’s head dies through French to the same extent as the child’s metabolism is enlivened through English. The difficulty arises, and this is something that just occurred to me, when you remove English for some of the children. Socially, that is unnatural. It should not happen, but there is nothing more we can do. We cannot have both English and the ancient languages. But, particularly during the present stages of their development, these two languages compensate one another unbelievably well. Take, for example, Mr. B’s French class today. He developed something extremely important for the more quiet listeners. The French language is in a process of eliminating all the “S’s”. It would not be proper to say Aisne (An). You can hear the “s”. But, during the Battle of the Marne, it was referred to only as “An”. In English, many suffixes are moving toward removing an “s.” When you use the same methods, these are completely compensating, particularly during the ages of nine and ten. Otherwise, it is best to do as little French grammar as possible. In contrast, it is good you emphasize the grammatical aspect of English around the age of eleven or twelve. I will discuss that in more detail later, but for now I wanted only to make a preliminary mention of it in order to hear from you how things are going.

A question is asked about the stages of language teaching.

Dr. Steiner: There are stages. It would be interesting to look at this question in connection with other things. I intend to write an essay about Deinhardt’s book about the basic elements of aesthetic principles in instruction. Of course, these things are overemphasized by Deinhardt as well as Schiller, but it is easy to discuss them. It would be good to mention the publisher at the same time. Perhaps one of the faculty members could write a critique of the book in relation to Schiller. You are not familiar with the book? It is difficult to read. Steffen was asked to write an introduction to this book, but he found it terribly boring. That is only because of his long sentences. An Austrian can understand having such long sentences in a book. Sometimes you have to stand on your head in order to understand such sentences, but Steffen does not like that.

A teacher: We assumed such things would result in a textbook.

Dr. Steiner: That would be a good idea.

A teacher asks about how to ask questions using the Socratic method.

Dr. Steiner: There is something about that in my lecture cycles.

A teacher asks about having English as an elective in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: That would be possible.

A teacher asks a question about mathematics.

Dr. Steiner: I would be happy to explain that if you would try to use such things in a non-pedantic way. You should remember that such rules are always flexible, so they must never become pedantic. Particularly concerning spatial questions, it is always bad when things become too rigid.

Dr. Steiner: You need to understand the small bones within the ear, the hammer, stirrup, the oval window, the anvil, as small limbs, as arms or legs that touch the eardrum. A sense of touch enters the understanding of tone. The spiral, which is filled with liquid, is a metamorphosed intestine of the ear. A feeling for tone lives in it. What you carry within you as an understanding of language is active within the eustachian tubes that support the will to understand. Tone is primarily held in the three semicircular canals. They act as a memory for tone. Each sense is actually an entire human being.

I often say such things as a paradigm in order to animate people like Baumann and Schwebsch to get to work and write a book about all their experiences. They said such things this morning. You only need to be more specific and things will seem plausible to them. Dr. Steiner is asked to open the new school building after Christmas.

Dr. Steiner: That is difficult, since not all the classes will be moving in. Quite a number will remain in the temporary buildings, so if we make this a particular celebration, those children staying in the temporary buildings will feel they are not as good as those moving into the new building. We need to consider the effects of a special ceremony upon those children remaining in the temporary buildings. It would be a different question if we were to open a new hall, such as a gymnasium. However, if we were to do this, it would fill the whole building with an inner disturbance.

I want to characterize Leisegang as a philosopher, a caricature of a philosopher. He is just a windbag. What he is as a philosopher is complete nonsense. You can do this in a pedantic way: What are the characteristics of a philosopher? A philosopher needs a firm foundation under his feet, but all his assumptions are incorrect. You could actually prove that he, in fact, has no real foundation.

If you proceed that way in philosophy, that is what happens. I do not know of any profession where such a person would belong. He certainly could not make jokes in the newspaper because he doesn’t have enough of a sense of humor.

[ 1 ] In the spatial cosmos there stand in opposition to one another: World Expanse, and Earth-Centre. In the World-Expanse, strewn abroad as it were, are the Stars. From the Earth-Centre, forces radiate forth in all directions to the World-Expanse.

[ 2 ] As Man stands to-day in the world, in the present cosmic age, the Stars in their shining, and the Earth-forces in their working, can only appear to him collectively as the accomplished work of the divine spiritual beings, with whom his link is in the inner man.

[ 3 ] But there was once an age of cosmic history when this shining of the stars and these earth-forces were still a direct spiritual revelation of the divine spiritual beings actively at work within his own being.

[ 4 ] Then came another age. The Star-Heaven separated as a corporeal existence out of the divine spiritual tide of activity. There arose what may be called World-Spirit and World-Body. The World-Spirit is a multiplicity of divine Spirit-Beings. They send their influences, in the earlier age, from the places of the stars upon the earth within. What there rained down in light from the regions of the world-expanse, what radiated forth as forces from the earth-centre, was in actuality the Intelligence and the Will of those divine spirit-beings who were shaping Earth and Earth's Manhood.

[ 5 ] In the alter cosmic epoch—after the evolution of Saturn and Sun—this Intelligence and Will of the divine Spirit-Beings became ever more spiritually inward in its workings. What they had actively been present in, present with their very Being, became now the ‘World-Body,’ an harmonious ordering of the stars in cosmic space. Looking back upon these things in spirit, comprehending them in a spiritual world-conception, one may express it thus: Out of the original Spirit-Body of the world-creative Beings there arose World-Spirit and World-Body. The World-Body marks in stellar order the stellar movement the way in which the Gods were working, long long ago in their Intelligence and Will. For the present age of the Cosmos, what once lived in the stars as freely moving, freely shaping divine intelligence and will, is now set fast in them as fixed Law.

[ 6 ] What shines therefore from out of the star-worlds to-day, to Man upon earth within, is not the immediate expression of divine will and divine intelligence, but a sign, left stationary, to mark what this divine will and intelligence were long ago, even in the stars. In the marvelous star-configuration of the heavens, waking wonder in the human soul, we may behold therefore a past manifestation but not the present manifestation of the Gods.

[ 7] But what is thus ‘past’ in the glory of the shining of the stars, is ‘present’ in the world of the spirit. And Man lives with his own being in this ‘present’ world-spirit.

[ 8 ] In the evolving forms of the world, we must look back upon an ancient epoch of cosmic history, when world-spirit and world-body worked together as a unity. We must keep before our eyes the intermediate epoch, during which they develop as a duality. And we must think forward into the future—into the third epoch, when the world-spirit will once more absorb the world-body into its sphere of action.

[ 9 ] For the ancient epoch there could have been no ‘calculating’ the constellations and the courses of the stars, for they were an expression of the free intelligence and the free will of divine spiritual beings. In the future, there will again be no calculating them.

[ 10 ] ‘Calculation’ only has any meaning for the intermediate epoch of the Cosmos.

[ 11 ] This, which is true of the constellations and the courses of the stars, applies also to the action of the forces which radiate from the earth-centre into the world-expanse. What there spring forth ‘from the depths’ also becomes ‘calculable.’

[ 12 ] Everything tends from the earlier cosmic epoch towards the intermediate one, when the worlds of Time and space become ‘calculable,’ and when Divine Spirit, in its manifestations as Intelligence and will, must be sought ‘behind’ the ‘Calculable.’

[ 13 ] This intermediate epoch alone affords the conditions under which Mankind can progress from a dull, dim consciousness to a clear, free consciousness of Self—to free intelligence and free will of his own.

[ 14 ] There had to come the time when Copernicus and Kepler ‘calculated’ the world-body; for the cosmic forces that served to bring about this moment were necessary to that development of human Self-consciousness. The disposition for this Self-consciousness was laid in an older age; then came the time when it was advanced so far as to be able to calculate the distant world-expanses.

[ 15 ] ‘History’ begins to be played out upon earth. There would have been no History, had not the world-expanse with all its stars become set in ‘fixed’ constellations and orbits. In the ‘course of history’ upon earth, we have a reproduction—though a quite transformed one—of what, once on a time, was ‘heavenly history.’

[ 16 ] The peoples of olden time continued to carry this ‘heavenly history’ still in their consciousness, and turned their eyes rather upon this than upon ‘earthly history.’

[ 17 ] In Earthly History there lives the intelligence and will of Man, at first in connection with the cosmic, divine will and divine intelligence, and then independently.

[ 18 ] In Heavenly History there lived the intelligence and will of the divine spirit-beings connected with mankind.

[ 19 ] Looking back over the spiritual life of the various peoples one finds, in the far remote past, such a consciousness amongst men of their being together and willing together with the divine spirit-beings, that their own human history is still a heavenly history. In his narration of first ‘origins,’ man's tale is not of earthly proceedings but of cosmic. Indeed, even for his own times—the times in which he is presently concerned—that which goes on in his earthly surroundings seems to him so insignificant in comparison with what is going on in the Cosmos, that he disregards the former and only pays attention to the latter.

[ 20 ] There was an age when the consciousness of mankind beheld the Heaven's history in mighty impressions, in which the divine spirit-beings themselves stood before Man's soul. The divine Beings spoke, and Man heard their speech in dream-like Inspiration; they revealed their forms, and Man beheld them in dream-like Imagination.

[ 21 ] This Heavenly History, which for a long while filled men's souls, was followed by Mythical History, now for the most part regarded as old poetic fiction. This Mythical History links together heavenly doings and earthly doings. ‘Heroes’ for instance came upon the scene—super-human beings. These are beings who stand higher than men in their evolution. Men at a particular time, for instance, have only developed the different parts of Man's being as far as the Sentient Soul. The Hero however has already evolved what will one day take its place in Man as ‘Spirit-Self.’ The Hero cannot directly incarnate in a physical body under earthly conditions; but he can do so by going down into the physical body of a human being, and thus enabling himself to work as a man amongst men. In the ‘Initiates’ of earlier ages we have beings of this kind.

The actual fact, with regard to all these things which occurred in the course of the world, is not simply that mankind in the successive periods of history ‘pictured’ things in one way or another in their own minds. What actually took place between the more spiritual, ‘incalculable’ world and the corporeal ‘calculable’ one, itself underwent a change. Only this much may be said: long after the actual conditions had changed in the world, human consciousness, in one or another other of the peoples, still clung to a ‘view of the world’ which corresponded to a far earlier reality. At first it was so, that human consciousness—which does not keep pace with the progress of cosmic events—still really saw the things of old. Then came a time when spiritual sight grew dim, and the old things were only maintained by tradition. Thus in the Middle Ages people still traditionally ‘pictured in their minds’ an intervention of the heavenly in the earthly world, which was no longer seen, since the power of pictorial vision no longer existed.

[ 22 ] Moreover, the evolution of the various peoples in the earthly sphere is such that they retain one or other view of the world, with its corresponding picture, for varying lengths of time; so that there are living alongside one another, views of the world which by their essential character should be living after one another.

The different views of the world however, existing amongst the different peoples, did not proceed only from this, but also from the fact that these different peoples, according to their dispositions, saw different things. Thus the Egyptians saw that world in which there are beings who long ago stopped short on the road to human evolution and never became earth-men; and they saw Man, after his earth-life, in all that he had to do with beings of this kind. The Chaldean peoples saw rather, how spiritual beings—both good and evil—from beyond the earthly sphere entered into earth-life to influence its course.

[ 23 ] To the ancient Heavenly History, properly speaking, which extends over quite a long period of time, there then succeeds the Mythological History, which is shorter, but still long in comparison to the subsequent period of ‘history proper.’

[ 24 ] As I described, men in their consciousness leave go but reluctantly of the old views, in which gods and men are pictured as fellow-actors in a common field. Proper, earthly history had long been in existence—ever since the development of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul—whilst men were still ‘thinking’ in the sense of what had been in former times. Only with the first opening flower of the Spiritual Soul did men begin to turn their eyes upon ‘history’ in the proper sense.

[ 25 ] Now in the human spirit working in earthly history, loosed from its tie with the Divine Spirit, men have the possibility to realize within themselves free intelligence and free will.

[ 26 ] So the weaving of the world-process in which Man is interwoven moves on, between the altogether calculable and the workings of free intelligence and free will. Under the joint action of both, the world-process is manifested—in every variety of shade betwixt the two.

[ 27 ] In his life as he leads it between birth and death, Man has ready-laid for him in the Calculable, as a foundation, the bodily groundwork upon which to unfold the free Incalculable of his inner, spiritual soul-life. His life between death and new birth is passed in the Incalculable—yet in such a way that in his inner life of soul and spirit, the Calculable is revealed to him in thought. Thereby—out of this Calculable—he becomes the architect of his next earth-life.

[ 28 ] In ‘history,’ the Incalculable is played out on earth—an Incalculable with which however the Calculable is interwoven, if only in feeble measure.

[ 29 ] Against this order established between Calculable and Incalculable by the divine spiritual beings who have been associated with Man from the beginning of all things, against their harmonizing of the Cosmos through ‘Measure, Number and Weight,’ stands the opposition of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings. Lucifer can combine with his own form of being, as he has made it, nothing calculable. His ideal is the cosmic unconditioned action of intelligence and will.

[ 30 ] This Luciferic tendency is one fitly suited to the world's order in those fields where freedom should rightly rule events. And there Lucifer is justly the spiritual helper of Mankind in their evolution. Without his aid, freedom would never make its way into Man's spiritual and soul life, built as it is upon a calculable, bodily basis. But Lucifer would like to extend this tendency to the whole Cosmos. And here his activity becomes a war against that divine spiritual order to which Man originally belongs.

[ 31 ] Here Michael intervenes. With his own being he stands in the Incalculable; but he dresses the balance between the Incalculable, and that Calculable which he bears within him as a World-thought received from his Gods.

[ 32 ] The Ahrimanic Powers stand otherwise in the world. They are the complete opposite of the divine spirit-beings with whom Man is originally connected. These latter are at the present day purely spiritual beings, who bear within themselves perfectly free intelligence and perfectly free will, but who create, in this their free intelligence and will, a wise insight into the necessity of the Calculable and Unfree, as a World-Thought from whose sheltering lap Man may grow up into a free being. And with all the Calculable, with this World-Thought of the cosmos, they are united in Love. This Love streams from them throughout all the universe.

[ 33 ] In complete opposition to all this is the grasping greed of the Ahrimanic powers, in which lives cold Hate of everything expanding in freedom. Ahriman's aim and endeavour, in all that he pours forth into world-space, is to make a cosmic machine. His ideal is, ‘simply and solely,’ Measure, Number and Weight. He was called into the Cosmos prepared for the service of human evolution, because it was necessary that this, his special department—Measure, Number and Weight—should be developed.

[ 34 ] He who comprehends the world as everywhere Spirit-in-body, he alone really comprehends it. This must be carried down into the world of Nature with regard to the powers at work there, such as the Divine Spiritual Powers who work in Love, and the Ahrimanic Powers who work in hate. In the natural, universal warmth, as it sets in with the spring and tends on into summer, we must behold the natural love of the Divine Spirit-Beings. In the freezing blasts of winter we must recognize the workings of Ahriman.

[ 35 ] In the height of midsummer, Lucifer mingles his power with the Love, the Warmth of Nature. At Christmas-tide, the Divine Spirit-Beings with whom Man is from his origin united turn their power against the frozen Hate of Ahriman. And ever more and more towards the springtime, Natural Divine Love is mildly at work, mitigating Natural Ahrimanic Hate.

[ 36 ] The yearly sign of this Divine Love, new-manifested as it is year by year, is the time of Remembrance, when we recall how with the Christ the free element of God entered into the calculable element of Earth. Christ works in perfect freedom within the Calculable. In so doing, He renders harmless that which craves the Calculable only—Ahriman and his forces.

[ 37 ] The unique Event of Golgotha is the free, cosmic act of Love within Earth's history. It is to be comprehended too only by the Love that Man brings to its comprehension.

Leading Thoughts

[ 38 ] The cosmic process with which the evolution of mankind is interwoven, and which reflects itself in human consciousness as History (in the most comprehensive sense,) may be distinguished into: a lengthy period of Heavenly History; a shorter one of Mythological History; and the comparatively short Earthly History.

[ 39 ] This cosmic process, at the present time, falls apart into: the ‘not-to-be-calculated’ working of divine spirit-beings, who freely create in free Intelligence and Will, and the ‘calculable’ processes or the world-body.

[ 40 ] To the Calculable of the world-body are opposed the Luciferic Powers; to the creating in free intelligence and free will, the Ahrimanic Powers.

[ 41 ] The unique Event of Golgotha is a free cosmic act, which originates in World-Love and can only be comprehended by Man's Love.