The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We will continue our study of particular karmic questions in relation to human life. What does occult science have to say about the origin of conscience? At our present stage of evolution conscience appears as a kind of inner voice telling us what to do and what to leave undone. How did such an inner voice come into being?

It is interesting to inquire whether in the historical evolution of mankind there has always been something comparable to what we call conscience. We find that in the earliest times, language had no word for it. In Greek literature it appears quite late, and in the language of the earlier Greeks no word for it exists. The same thing is true of the early periods of other civilisations. We may conclude, then, that the idea of conscience, in a more or less conscious form, came only gradually to be recognised. Conscience has developed fairly late in human evolution, and we shall see presently what our ancestors possessed in place of it.

How, then, has conscience gradually developed? On one of his journeys Darwin²⁷ came across a cannibal and tried to convince him that it is not a good thing to eat another human being. The cannibal retorted that in order to decide whether eating a man is good or bad you must first eat one yourself. In other words, the cannibal had not reached the point of judging between good and bad in terms of moral ideas, but in accordance simply with the pleasure he experienced. He was in fact a survival from an earlier stage of civilisation which was at one time universal. But how does a man like this cannibal come to distinguish between good and bad? He went on eating his fellow-men until one day he was due to be eaten himself. At that moment he experienced the fact that it could really happen to him. He felt that there was something wrong about this, and the fruits of this experience remained with him in Kamaloka and Devachan. Into his next incarnation he brought a dim feeling that what he had been doing was not quite right. This feeling became more and more definite in the course of further incarnations; he also came to take heed of the feelings of others, and thus he gradually developed a certain restraint. After various further incarnations the feeling became still more definite and gradually the thought emerged: Here is something one should not do. Similarly, a savage at a primitive stage would eat everything indiscriminately, but when he got [a] stomach-ache he came to realise by degrees that there were some things he could eat and some he could not. This kind of experience became gradually more and more firmly rooted, and finally it developed into the voice of conscience.

Conscience is therefore the outcome of experiences spread over a number of incarnations. Fundamentally, all knowledge, from the highest to the lowest, is the outcome of what a man has experienced; it has come into being as a result of trial and error.

An interesting fact is relevant here. Only since Aristotle has there been a science of logic, of logical thought. From this we must conclude that accurate thinking too, was born at a certain time. This is indeed so: thinking itself had first to evolve, and logical thinking arose in the course of time from fundamental observation of how thinking can go wrong. Knowledge is something mankind has acquired through many incarnations. Only after long trial and error could a store of knowledge be built up. All this illustrates the importance of the law of karma; here we have another example of something which has developed out of experience into a permanent habit and inclination. A motive such as conscience binds itself to the etheric body, becoming in time a permanent characteristic of it because the astral body has been so often convinced that this or that would not do.

Another interesting karmic relationship is between an habitually selfish attitude and a loving sympathy with others. Some people are hardened egoists—not only in their acquisitiveness—and others are unselfish and sympathetic. Both attitudes depend on the etheric body and may even find expression in the physical body. People who in one life have been habitually selfish will age quickly in their next life; they seem to shrivel up. On the other hand, if in one life you have been ready to make sacrifices and have loved others, you will remain young and hale. In this way you can prepare even the physical body for the next life.

If you recall what I said yesterday, you will have in mind a question: How is it with the achievements of the physical body itself? Its deeds become its future destiny; but what is the effect of any illnesses it may have had in this life?

The answer to this question, however strange it may sound, is not mere theory or speculation, but is based on occult experience, and from it you can learn the mission of illness. Fabre d'Olivet,²⁸ who has investigated the origins of the Book of Genesis, once used a beautiful simile, comparing destiny with a natural process. The valuable pearl, he says, derives from an illness: it is a secretion of the oyster, so that in this case life has to fall sick in order to produce something precious. In the same way, physical illnesses in one life reappear in the next life as physical beauty. Either the physical body becomes more beautiful as a result of the illness it endured; or it may be that an illness a man has caught from infection in his environment is compensated by the beauty of his new environment. Beauty thus develops, karmically, out of pain, suffering, privation and illness. This may seem a startling connection, but it is a fact. Even the appreciation of beauty develops in this way: there can be no beauty in the world without pain and suffering and illness. The same general law holds for the history of man's evolution. You will see from this how wonderful karmic relationships really are, and how questions about evil, illness and pain cannot be answered without knowledge of the important inner relationships within the evolution of humanity.

The line of evolution goes back into ancient, very ancient times, when conditions on Earth, and the Earth itself, were quite different. There was a time when none of the higher animals existed; when there were no fishes, amphibians, birds or mammals, but only animals less developed than the fishes. Yet man, though in a quite different form, was already there. His physical body was still very imperfect; his spiritual body was more highly developed. He was still enclosed within a soft ethcric body, and his soul worked on his physical body from outside. Man still contained all other beings within himself. Later on he worked his way upwards and left behind the fish form which had been part of himself. These fish forms were huge, fantastic-looking creatures, unlike the fishes of today. Then again man evolved to a higher stage and cast out the birds from himself. Then the reptiles and amphibia made their way out of man—grotesque creatures such as the saurians and water-tortoises, which were really stragglers from an earlier group of beings, even further removed from man, whose evolution had lagged behind. Then man cast out the mammals from himself, and finally the apes; and then he himself continued to advance.

Man has therefore always been man and not an ape; he separated off the whole animal kingdom from himself so that he might become more truly human. It was as though you gradually strained all the dye-stuffs out of a coloured liquid and left only clear water behind. In older days there were natural philosophers, such as Paracelsus and Oken,²⁹ who put this very well. When a man looks at the animal world, they said, he should tell himself: “I carried all that within myself and cast it out from my own being.”

Thus man once had within himself a great deal that was later externalised. And today he still has within him something that later on will be outside—his karma, both the good and the evil. Just as he has separated the animals from himself, so will he thrust good and evil out into the world. The good will result in a race of men who are naturally good; the evil in a separate evil race. You will find this stated in the Apocalypse, but it must not be misunderstood. We must distinguish between the development of the soul and that of races. A soul may be incarnated in a race on the down grade, but if it does not itself commit evil, it need not incarnate a second time in such a race; it may incarnate in one that is ascending. There are quite enough souls streaming in from other directions to incarnate in these declining races.

But what is inward has to become outward, and man will rise still higher when his karma has worked itself out. With all this something of extraordinary interest is connected. Centuries ago, with the future development of humanity in view, secret Orders which set themselves the highest conceivable tasks were established. One such Order was the Manichean, of which ordinary scholarship gives a quite false picture. The Manicheans are supposed to have taught that a Good and an Evil are part of the natural order and have always been in conflict with one another, this having been determined for them by the Creation. Here there is a glimmer of the Order's real task, but distorted to the point of nonsense. The individual members of the Order were specially trained for their great work. The Order knew that some day there will be men in whose karma there is no longer any evil, but that there will also be a race evil by nature, among whom all kinds of evil will be developed to a higher degree than in the most savage animals, for they will practise evil consciously, exquisitely, with the aid of highly developed intellects. Even now the Manichean Order is training its members so that they may be able to transform evil in later generations.

The extreme difficulty of the task is that these evil races will not be like bad children in whom there is goodness which can be brought out by precept and example. The members of the Manichean Order are already learning how to transform quite radically those who by nature are wholly evil. And then the transformed evil will become a quite special good. The power to effect this change will bring about a condition of moral holiness on Earth. But this can be achieved only if the evil has first come into existence; then the power needed to overcome the evil will yield a power that can reach the heights of holiness. A field has to be treated with manure and the manure has to ferment in the soil; similarly, humanity needs the manure of evil in order to attain to the highest holiness. And herein lies the mission of evil. A man's muscles get strong by use; and equally, if good is to rise to the heights of holiness, it must first overcome the evil which opposes it. The task of evil is to promote the ascent of man. Things such as this give us a glimpse into the secret of life. Later on, when man has overcome evil, he can go on to redeem the creatures he has thrust down, and at whose cost he has ascended. That is the purpose of evolution.

The following point is rather more difficult. The shell of a snail or mussel is secreted out of the living substance of the animal. The shell which surrounds the snail was originally inside its body its house is in fact its body in a more solid form. Theosophy tells us that we are one with all that surrounds us: this means that man at one time contained everything within himself. The Earth's crust, in fact, had its origin in man, who in the far past crystallised it out from within himself. Just as the snail at one time had its house within itself, so man had all other beings and kingdoms, minerals, plants and animals, within himself, and can say to them all: The substances were within me; I have crystallised out their constituent parts. Thus when man looks at anything outside himself, it becomes intelligible for him to say: All that is myself.

Even more subtle is a further idea. Imagine that ancient condition of humanity when nothing had yet been separated off from man. Man was there, and he formed mental pictures but they were not objective—not, that is, caused by external objects making an impression on him—they were purely subjective. Everything had its origin in man. Our dreams are still a legacy from the time when man, as it were, spun the whole world out of himself. Then he was able to look on the world over against himself. We as human beings have made everything, and in the rest of creation we can see our own products, our own being which has taken solid form.

Kant³⁰ speaks of the thing-in-itself as something unknowable by man. But in fact there are no limits to knowledge, for man can find, in everything he sees around him, the traces of his own being, left behind.

All this has been said in order to show you that nothing can be truly understood if it is looked at from one side only. Everything which appears to us in one condition was quite different in earlier times; only by relating the present to the past can it be understood. Similarly, if you do not look beyond the physical world of the senses, you will never understand illness, or the mission of evil. In all such relationships there is a deep meaning. Evolution had to take its course in this way, through a process of splitting off, because man was to become an inward being; he had to put all this out of himself in order that he might be able to see his own self. So we can come to understand the mission of illness, of evil, and even of the external world. We are led to these great interconnections by studying the law of karma.

We will now deal with several particular questions about karma which are often asked. What is the karmic reason that causes many people to die young, even in childhood? From individual instances known to occult science we may come to the following conclusion. If we study a child who has died young, we may find that in his previous life he had good abilities and made good use of them. He was a thoroughly competent member of society, but he was rather shortsighted. Because with his weak eyes he could not see clearly, all his experiences acquired a particular colouring. He was wanting in a small matter which could have been better, and because of his weak eyes he always lagged behind. He could have achieved something quite remarkable if he had had good sight. He died, and after a short interval he was incarnated with healthy eyes, but he lived only a few weeks. By this means the members of his being learnt how to acquire good eyes, and he had gained a small portion of life as a corrective of what had been lacking in his previous life. The grief of his parents will, of course, be compensated for karmically, but in this instance they had to serve as instruments for putting the matter right.

What is the karmic explanation of children born dead? In such cases the astral body may well have already united itself with the physical body, and the two lower members may be properly constituted. But the astral body withdraws, and so the child is born dead. But why does the astral body withdraw? The explanation lies in the fact that certain members of man's higher nature are related to certain physical organs. For instance, no being can have an etheric body unless it possesses cells. A stone has no cells or vessels, and so it cannot have an etheric body. Equally, an astral body needs a nervous system: a plant has no nervous system and therefore cannot have an astral body. In fact, if a plant were to be permeated by an astral body it would no longer be a plant, but would have to be provided with cells if it were to be permeated by an etheric body.

Now if the Ego-body is gradually to find a place for itself, there must be warm blood in the physical body. (All red-blooded animals were separated off from man at the time when the Ego-condition was being prepared for man.) Hence it will be seen that the physical organs must be in proper condition if the higher bodies are to dwell within them. It is important to remember that the form of the physical body is moulded by purely physical inheritance. It may also happen that the way in which the various bodily fluids are combined is at fault, although parents are well-matched in soul and spirit. Then the incarnating entity comes to a physical body which cannot house the higher members of its being. Thus for example the physical and etheric bodies may be properly united; then the astral body ought to take possession of the physical body, but the organism at its disposal is not in a suitable condition, and so it has to withdraw. The physical body remains, and is then still-born. A still-birth may thus be the outcome of a faulty mixture, on the physical level, of the fluids of the body, and this, too, will have a karmic connection. The physical body can thrive only in so far as the higher principles can live within it.

How are karmic compensations accomplished? If someone has done something to another person, there will have to be a karmic adjustment between them, which means that the persons concerned must be born again as contemporaries. How does this happen? What are the forces that bring the two persons together?

The way it works out is as follows. A wrong has been done; the victim has suffered it; the person who did it passes into Kamaloka, but first he has to witness the occurrence in the retrospective tableau of his past life. The injury he has inflicted does not then cause him pain, but in Kamaloka, as he relives his life backwards, the event comes before him, and now he has to suffer the pain he caused. He has to feel it in and through the very self of his victim. This experience imprints itself like a seal on his astral body. He takes with him a portion of the pain, and a definite force remains in him as the outcome of what he has experienced in the other man's being. In this way any pain or pleasure he has to live through turns into a force, and he carries a great number of such forces with him into Devachan.

When he returns to a new incarnation, this is the force that draws together all the persons who have had experiences in common. During the Kamaloka period they lived within one another, and they incorporated these forces into themselves. Hence within one physical human being there may be three or even more “Kamaloka men”, in order that the situation involving them may be lived out.

An example known to occult science will make this clear. A man was condemned to death by five judges. What was really happening there? In a previous life the man had killed these other five men and karmic forces had brought all six together for a karmic adjustment. This does not produce a never-ending karmic chain; other relationships come in to change the further course of events.

Spiritual forces, you see, are thus secretly at work to bring about the complicated patterns of human living. Further important aspects of the subject will become clear during the next few days, when we go on to study the whole evolution of Earth and Man.

• 27. Charles Darwin, 1809–1882.
• 28. Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, 1768–1825, author of La Langue hebraique restituee, 1816.
• 29. Lorenz Oken, 1779–1851, natural scientist and philosopher.
• 30. Immanuel Kant, 1724–1804.

Christmas Lecture

Follow me for a few moments into the ancient Egyptian temples for a ceremony that was celebrated at midnight on the day that corresponds to our Christmas Day. On this day – or rather at midnight – one of the images that are only shown four times a year was unveiled in the temple and carried before a small crowd that had been prepared for this temple service. This image was locked in the innermost sanctuary of the temple throughout the year and was kept in strict secrecy. On this day, it was carried out by the oldest of the priests, and a ceremony was performed before him, which I will describe to you very briefly.

After the eldest of the priests had carried out the radiant image of Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, four priests in white robes approached the image. The first of the priestly sages spoke the following before the image: “Horus, you who are the sun in the spiritual realm and you who give us the light of your wisdom as the sun gives us the light of the world, lead us so that we may no longer be what we are today.” This temple priest had entered from the east. The second of the temple priests entered from the north and spoke roughly the following words: “Horus, you sun in the spiritual realm, you who are the giver of love, as the sun is the giver of the warming power that coaxes out the forces of plants and fruits throughout the year, lead us to a goal so that we may become what we are not yet today.” And the third of the temple priests came from the south and said: “Horus, thou sun in the spiritual realm, bestow thy power upon us, as the sun of the physical world bestows its power, by which it will part the darkest cloud and spread light everywhere.” After this third priest had spoken, a fourth stepped forward and said something like the following: “The three wisest of us have spoken. They are my brothers, but they are beyond the sphere in which I myself still am. I am the representative of you” - and he meant: the representative of the multitude. And he said: “I will lead your voice. I will speak for you who are still standing there as minors. I will tell my older brothers that they long for the great goal of the world, where human destiny and the eternal law of the world will be reconciled.” This should be understood in this hour by those who were sufficiently prepared for it, as once unchanging cosmic law and human destiny were one.

If we understand the ceremonies that took place on Christmas in Asia, India and even in China, then we understand what Christmas bells actually mean to us. A macrocosm has always been called the world and a microcosm the human being. This was meant to suggest that the human being contains within himself the forces that are present outside in the great. But not only the calculating mind has called the world a microcosm for man, but also the mind, which tells us that we must look up at the stars. Here a word of the philosopher Kant applies: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe...: the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”

How different macrocosm and microcosm are when we look at them from a different point of view. Especially when faced with the macrocosm with its immutable eternal laws, those who are the most knowledgeable are filled with the deepest admiration and reverence. There have been no knowledgeable people who have seen through the wisdom of the world and not at the same time stood in awe of the creative spirit of the world. And one of those people [in modern times] who for the first time had a confidential relationship with this immutable law, Kepler, spoke the words: Who could look into the wonderful structure of the whole world and not admire the Creator who implanted these laws of the world. - Those who know most admire the eternal laws of the starry sky.

It seems to be different when it comes to human destiny. Goethe says that he likes to take refuge from the changeability of man in the fixed rules of eternal nature, and the moral law [of Kant] with its categorical imperative seemed to him to be in error. We perceive the difference between the human heart and the world-spirit, the macrocosm, in yet another way. We perceive this difference when we consider the connection between human destiny and human character. Who would impose responsibility on a volcano? Probably no one. But we must indeed impose responsibility on the man who causes harm. Who would speak of justice and injustice in relation to nature? And how is it that the good suffer while the wicked prosper?

We see harmony within the macrocosm. What position do we have in relation to it? What is clearly and distinctly outlined in the ceremony I have described will be enacted in a few days in the festival that is so little understood today. The starry sky with its immutable laws was not always the cosmos that appears to us now. This cosmos emerged out of chaos. Out of the surging and swaying of forces, what we have today first developed. The Copernican-Keplerian laws, which make us marvel at the wisdom of the world spirit, have not always applied. Today it seems to be poured out, exalted above justice and injustice; we cannot ask about good and evil. But we can ask about good and evil in relation to the human being. Today we ask ourselves the deeper question: Why do we ask about good and evil, about justice and injustice in relation to the human being? Why can we not ask this question in relation to the macrocosm? In the beginning, when the world was still a surging sea, there was, in the midst of what the eyes see, the ears hear, the senses perceive, between what appears to us today in the laws of harmony, still a surging sea of surging feelings, of desires and passions out there in the universe. These world passions, which were in the midst of the laws and chaos, had to be overcome first. Today, anyone who tries to visualize this world of cosmic desires and passions from an ancient past can hardly perceive the body of passions. Shiny and transparent, bright as stars, barely perceptible with the seer's finest tools, it shines in every atom after chaos has been overcome.

What has brought the astral body of the cosmos to rest has not yet reached the same goal in man. In man, the astral body is still surging. What has already taken place in the cosmos over the course of millions of years, what has reached its goal, is still in the process of becoming in man. And if we follow man from return to return, from re-embodiment to re-embodiment, if we see him in his different bodies and then follow him in his astral bodies, then we see that from embodiment to embodiment the astral body becomes brighter and purer. In the beginning we see it permeated by dull passions. These remind us of the passions of that time when the world was still a chaos. But little by little that brightness and clarity developed, as it has now the astral body of the great universe.

Because the sages of ancient times knew about the connection between the development of the human being and the existence of the world, they called the world macrocosm and the human being microcosm. The human being must look at the goal that he can set for himself: to become like the macrocosm, to imbue himself with the same bliss and peace that flows through the cosmos as a universal law today. Just as we cannot ask whether the laws of the cosmos are just or unjust, so neither can man ask whether his destiny coincides with his law. Pure law is the law of the cosmos, and pure human law, pure human spirit, shall one day become man's destiny. This is the path of destiny that the human spirit undergoes in its various embodiments. We become ever more starry and ever more similar to the destiny of the cosmos.

Karma is a law by which we all suffer. What we have accomplished in one embodiment bears its fruits in later embodiments. What befalls us today we have caused in previous embodiments. But karma is a law that not only distributes guilt and atonement, disharmony and harmony in the right way, but is a law that leads us up to the highest summit of the human spirit. The great world book of karma will have found its balance on the left and on the right. We will have transformed everything we owe to life back into the bright glow of the astral body. Everything we have felt as deficiencies will be balanced out. Karma is burnt up. When the guilt points of our existence will no longer be there, when we ourselves go our way like the sun, which is not able to step even a little out of its orbit, then we will also follow the laws implanted in us like the sun in the starry sky. That is our way, that is our goal. That will one day be the harmony between the destiny of man and the laws of the world.

Not everyone's journey through life is the same. Just as in the natural world, the perfect exists alongside the imperfect, and the higher animal already exists alongside the worm, so too in the spiritual world, the imperfect human spirit exists alongside that which has already reached a higher level.

Those who honestly and sincerely believe in evolution must also have faith in spiritual science and its teachings of the first human beings. These are those who have already come further along the path that we all have to travel than we have today. Some have rushed ahead. They have overtaken us from the times of which history tells us; they have reached a higher stage of human development. Thus they have become leaders, guides of humanity. Just as the higher developed animal towers above the worm, so the Rishis, the masters, tower above humanity. They have achieved this in the earlier times because they have taken a different path of knowledge, a steeper, more dangerous path, which is associated with infinite danger. No one may enter it for its own sake. Whoever does so may stumble and fall into deep abysses, or lose his sense of existence for a time, or become a tormentor to people. In short, no one may seek out this path of faster knowledge out of selfishness. Only he who has taken this vow, who has sworn an oath that may never be broken, to powers of which the ordinary person has no inkling, only he who has taken this vow can enter upon the path to becoming a leader of humanity, a forerunner of humanity. Such leaders of men have never used their knowledge for themselves.

What is so highly esteemed in the West, the knowledge for the sake of knowing, is not what the adepts, the great masters of knowledge, strive for. They strive for knowledge in order to help humanity, to draw it up to where human destiny and world harmony are in harmony with each other. These human firstlings are those who live in our midst and have lived in all times, who have acquired an astral body cleansed of desires and passions. Buddha already had it, the starry astral body. When he once went out with his disciple Ananda, Buddha dissolved into a bright cloud, into a cloud of light, into radiant light. That was the astral body that had come to rest.

The corona of rays is nothing other than the symbol of the radiant astral body of the founder of Christianity. The Firstfruits of Men, as walking brothers of humanity, are an immediate reflection of the macrocosm. It should be shown that they have burnt their karma, that there is nothing more to be redeemed, that the eternal wisdom can no longer stray, that they guide humanity as surely as the sun follows its path across the vault of heaven and cannot stray from this path marked out in the firmament. This is the symbol for the firstfruits of mankind. It expresses that they cannot stray from the path that is laid out for people. As surely as the sun walks across the vault of heaven, they walk their path. And just as the sun sends its light and warmth over the earth, so they send the love of their hearts into the hearts of people, awakening love in the hearts of their fellow brothers. These firstfruits are strong in their powers to resist all temptations. You can show them, you can offer them all the riches of this world, they will not accept them, they only want to be one with the original spirit from which they came forth. These people want to be a macrocosm themselves in this life. That was their consciousness. This is also present in all religions. Those who know the sources of the religions are aware that in all these religions one looks up to the founders of the religions as one looks up to the stars of the macrocosm, as one looks up to the eternal cosmic law that rules the starry sky. These firstfathers of mankind were suns for the initiated and those who had progressed further.

If humanity was to be shown how karma works, then they were shown the image of the sun in the temple. This signifies to man his destiny, like the course of the sun in the course of the world. [A-mi-t'o] was the same for the Chinese when they worshipped the Buddha as the “son” among their heavenly gods. And it was the same for the Hindus when they showed Krishna resting in the arms of the Deva-Mother. Christmas permeates all religions. It is the festival that should make man aware that his destiny is once to be an image of the destiny of the macrocosm.

In Christianity, the spirit sun lives just as much as in the old religions. The life of Christ should also directly reflect the sun as it rushes across the firmament. His birth was therefore transferred to Christmas. Let us ask ourselves why. What happens to the sun at the time of the winter solstice, at the time of Christmas? The days become longer again after the shortest day has passed. The light struggles out of the darkness again. The sun, which has been in darkness for most of the day, is reborn, and as such a newly born sun it now sends its light. The birth of the light was celebrated at midnight because the light was born out of darkness. Thus, symbolically, the light of wisdom is to be born, which is represented by the firstlings of man. The sun appears again anew - she who moves across the firmament. With her birth, she is a symbol of the firstling of man who is born, who walks just as surely on his path as the universe carries harmony within itself.

In the beginning, there were various Christian sects, and they celebrated the Savior's feast at different times. In the early Christian times, there were 135 such days. It was only at the beginning of the 5th century that a uniform date was set, namely our present Christmas. It was deliberately set on this day in order to establish the same symbolism, which resounded throughout the ancient world, for this Christian festival as well. A church father himself, who had been canonized by the church, considered it justified and in the spirit of Christianity. He tells us that the Christians were right to celebrate the birth of Christ at a time when the Romans celebrated the birth of Mithras and the Greeks the birth of Dionysus. The same meaning should be attached to the festival as to the festivals of Mithras and Dionysus, because in them too the birth of the firstlings was celebrated. Thus, in the Christmas festival, Christianity has erected a symbol that is intended to remind people again and again that the karma must be burned so that harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm, which is not yet present today, will one day be present, so that man will one day also follow the immutable laws from which he must not stray.

Just as Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, the symbol of human existence and human destiny, was shown to the assembled crowd at midnight, and just as it was pointed out by the priests that he was the sun in the spiritual kingdom, that it is equal to the power of warmth and light of the sun, just as the three wise priests have joyfully bowed down, so the Christian legend also presents us with the three wise men bowing down before the Christ child. They follow the star, the light. There is a deep meaning in the visit of the three wise men from the Orient. They are the same three wise men who were active in the service of Horus and who now say: “A child has been born to us who will follow his path as unchangingly as the star that now guides us. The star is still far from us. But when this law will one day be our own, then we will be like the one who carries the unchanging law within himself. Just as the star is our ideal, so he who was born under it is our example. What the Egyptians celebrated became a world fact, a world event. Therefore, he who founded Christianity was allowed to call his disciples together for the Sermon on the Mount. It says: “He led them away from the people, up the mountain.” “Mountain” means the secret place where the inner circle were taught. The King James Version contains a tremendous error at this point: (“Blessed are they that are poor in spirit”). In truth it says: “Blessed are they that are beggars for spirit, for they find within themselves the Kingdoms of Heaven.” What did Jesus want to do for them? He wanted to make them blessed, the beggars for the spirit. Only those who were initiated into the temple mysteries had become partakers of wisdom. The founder of Christianity wanted to carry this wisdom out into the whole world; not only the rich in spirit were to receive the grace of wisdom – no, all those who stand outside and are also beggars for the spirit should find the Kingdoms of Heaven within themselves. In the past, people found this in the temple mysteries. They should not only find bliss within the temple precincts, but should also find the Kingdoms of Heaven within themselves, which were presented to them as the harmonious model of human destiny. They should ascend to the summit where a balance can be struck between the changeable, erring human heart and the unchanging law of the macrocosm. This is what the Christmas bells are meant to make people aware of, according to the original will of the initiates; they are a pointer to what shows us how karma leads to the goal, how the laws of the world and human destiny are connected.

And to hear this again is what theosophical deepening is meant to bring us. Many festivals that we celebrate today without thinking about it, without knowing their deeper meaning, have their origin in a deeper wisdom. Because the ancient man was connected to the macrocosmic world, the events of the festival were signs for him. The mystery of the heart and the immutable law resound to us from the sounds of Christmas bells. Theosophy will bring deeper wisdom and the core of religious beliefs into the most direct life; it will show the extent to which these truths are contained in them. And when we recognize this truth, then, in the highest sense, what is expressed in the beautiful word “peace be with all beings” will gradually come true in the harmony between the law of the universe and the destiny of man.

[ 1 ] I did not have the feeling that I was writing a “centennial book” to mark the beginning of the century when I set about to outline the World and Life Conceptions of the Nineteenth Century, which appeared in 1901. The invitation to present this book as a contribution to a collection of philosophical works only provided me with the challenge to sum up results of the philosophical developments since the age of Kant, at which I had arrived long ago, and which I had meant to publish. When a new edition of the book became necessary and when I reexamined its content, I became aware of the fact that only through a considerable enlargement of the account as it was originally given could I make completely clear what I had intended to show. I had at that time limited myself to the characterization of the last one hundred and thirty years of philosophical development. Such a limitation is justifiable because this period indeed constitutes a well-rounded totality that is closed in itself and could be portrayed as such even if one did not mean to write a “centennial book.” But the philosophical views of the last century lived within me in such a way that, in presenting its philosophical problems, I felt resounding as undertones in my soul the solutions that had been attempted since the beginning of the course of the history of philosophy. This sensation appeared with greater intensity as I took up the revision of the book for a new edition. This indicates the reason why the result was not so much a new edition but a new book.

To be sure, the content of the old book has essentially been preserved word for word, but it has been introduced by a short account of the philosophical development since the sixth century B.C. In the second volume the characterization of the successive philosophies will be continued to the present time. Moreover, the short remarks at the end of the second volume entitled, Outlook, have been extended into a detailed presentation of the philosophical possibilities of the present. Objections may be raised against the composition of the book because the parts of the earlier version have not been shortened, whereas the characterization of the philosophies from the sixth century B.C. to the nineteenth century A.D. has only been given in the shortest outline. But since my aim is to give not only a short outline of the history of philosophical problems but to discuss these problems and the attempt at their solution themselves through their historical treatment, I considered it correct to retain the more detailed account for the last period. The way of approach in which these questions were seen and presented by the philosophers of the nineteenth century is still close to the trends of thought and philosophical needs of our time. What precedes this period is of the same significance to modern soul life only insofar as it spreads light over the last time interval. The Outlook at the end of the second volume had its origin in the same intention, namely, that of developing through the account of the history of philosophy, philosophy itself.

[ 2 ] The reader will miss some things in this book that he might look for in a history of philosophy—the views of Hobbes and others, for instance. My aim, however, was not to enumerate all philosophical opinions, but to present the course of development of the philosophical problems. In such a presentation it is inappropriate to record a philosophical opinion of the past if its essential points have been characterized in another connection.

[ 3 ] Whoever wants to find also in this book a new proof that I have “changed” my views in the course of years will probably not even then be dissuaded from such an “opinion” if I point out to him that the presentation of the philosophical views that I gave in the World and Life Conceptions has, to be sure, been enlarged and supplemented, but that the content of the former book has been taken over into the new one in all essential points, literally unchanged. The slight changes that occur in a few passages seemed to be necessary to me, not because I felt the need after fifteen years of presenting some points differently, but because I found that a changed mode of expression was required by the more comprehensive connection in which here and there a thought appears in the new book, whereas in the old one such a connection was not given. There will, however, always be people who like to construe contradictions among the successive writings of a person, because they either cannot or else do not wish to consider the certainly admissible extension of such a person's thought development. The fact that in such an extension much is expressed differently in later years certainly cannot constitute a contradiction if one does not mean by consistency that the latter expression should be a mere copy of the earlier one, but is ready to observe a consistent development of a person. In order to avoid the verdict of “change of view” of critics who do not consider this fact, one would have to reiterate, when it is a question of thoughts, the same words over and over again.

Rudolf Steiner
April 1914

[ 1 ] At this point we must indicate a preconception, existing since Kant, which has already taken root so strongly in certain circles that it is considered axiomatic. If anyone were to question it, he would be described as a dilettante, as one who has not risen above the most elementary concepts of modern science. The preconception I mean is the view: It is already established from the very beginning that the whole world of perception, this endless manifoldness of colors and shapes, of sounds and warmth differentiations, etc., is nothing more than our subjective world of mental pictures (Vorstellungen), which exists only as long as we keep our senses open to what works in upon them from a world unknown to us. This view declares the entire world of phenomena to be a mental picture inside our individual consciousness, and on the foundation of this presupposition one then erects further assertions about the nature of our activity of knowing. Even Volkelt adhered to this view and founded upon it his epistemology, which is masterful with respect to its scientific execution. Even so, this preconception is not a fundamental truth and is in no way qualified to stand at the forefront of the science of knowledge.

[ 2 ] But do not misunderstand us. We do not wish to raise what would certainly be a vain protest against the physiological achievements of the present day. But what is entirely justified physiologically is still far from being qualified on that basis to be placed at the portals of epistemology. One may consider it to be an irrefutable physiological truth that only through the participation of our organism does the complex of sensations and perceptions arise that we have called experience. But the fact remains, nevertheless, that any such knowledge can only be the result of many considerations and investigations. This characterization—that our phenomenal world, in a physiological sense, is of a subjective nature—is already what thinking determines it to be, and has therefore absolutely nothing to do with the initial appearance of this world. This characterization already presupposes that thinking has been applied to experience. The examination of the relationship between these two factors of knowing activity must therefore precede this characterization.

[ 3 ] By this view, people believed themselves elevated above the pre-Kantian “naïveté” that regarded things in space and time as reality, just as the naive person with no scientific education still does today.

[ 4 ] Volkelt asserts “that all acts claiming to be an objective activity of knowing are inextricably bound to the knowing individual consciousness; that all such acts occur immediately and directly only within the consciousness of the individual; and that they are utterly incapable of reaching beyond the sphere of the individual person and of grasping or entering the sphere of reality lying outside it.”

[ 5 ] It is nevertheless still the case that an unprejudiced thinking could never discover what it is about the form of reality which approaches us directly (experience) that could in any way justify us in characterizing it as mere mental picture.

[ 6 ] This simple reflection—that the naive person notices absolutely nothing about things that could bring him to this view—shows us that in the objects themselves there lies no compelling reason for this assumption. What is there about a tree or a table itself that could lead me to regard it as a mere configuration of mental pictures? At the very least this cannot therefore be presented as an obvious truth.

[ 7 ] By presenting it as an obvious truth, Volkelt entangles himself in a contradiction with his own basic principles. In our view, he had to be untrue to the truth acknowledged by him—that experience contains nothing but an unconnected chaos of pictures without any conceptual characterization—in order to be able to assert the subjective nature of that same experience. Otherwise, he would have had to see that the subject of knowing activity, the contemplator, stands just as unrelated within the world of experience as any other object in it. But if one applies to the perceived world the predicate “subjective,” this is just as much a conceptual characterization as when one regards a falling stone as the cause of the depression in the ground. But Volkelt himself, after all, does not wish to acknowledge any connection whatsoever between the things of experience. There in lies the contradiction in his view; this is where he became untrue to the principle he stated with respect to pure experience. By doing this he encloses himself within his individuality and is no longer capable of emerging from it. Indeed, he admits this without reservation. Everything remains doubtful to him that lies beyond the disconnected pictures of our perceptions. In his view, our thinking does indeed struggle to draw inferences from this world of mental pictures about an objective reality; it is just that going beyond this world cannot lead to really sure truths. According to Volkelt all knowing that we attain through thinking is not protected from doubt. In terms of certainty it cannot compare at all with direct experience. Only direct experience can provide a knowing not to be doubted. But we have seen how defective this knowing is.

[ 8 ] But all this indeed stems only from the fact that Volkelt applies to sense-perceptible reality (experience) a characteristic that cannot pertain to it in any way, and then he builds up his further assumptions on this presupposition.

[ 9 ] We had to pay particular attention to Volkelt's book because it is the most significant contemporary achievement in this sphere, and also because it can be taken as the prototype for all the epistemological efforts which, in principle, stand in opposition to the direction we are presenting on the basis of the Goethean world view.

From the book by Croce, one can clearly see how the way of thinking in the present day still prevents even outstanding minds from gaining the right access to Goethe's work. Among the various obstacles that arise for such minds, the misunderstanding of Goethe's relationship to mathematics is one of the most effective. From this it can be seen that Goethe had no skill in the treatment of mathematical problems. He himself admitted his inability in this respect sufficiently strongly. In his scientific works, therefore, one never finds the problems worked out in those areas in which a mathematical treatment is required by the nature of the subject.

Now, in the period that followed Goethe, mathematical treatment was regarded as essential for those parts of knowledge of nature that are considered to be truly exact. It was under the same impression that Kant had been under when he expressed the view that there is only as much real science in any knowledge as mathematics is contained in it. For this way of thinking, the rejection of Goethe's scientific approach is sealed from the outset.

But when it comes to assessing Goethe's relationship to mathematics, something quite different comes into play.

The study of mathematics gives a person a special position in relation to the penetration of the cognitive tasks themselves. In mathematical thinking, one deals with something that arises within the human soul. One does not look outwards, as in sensory experience, but builds up the content of thought purely within. And by thinking one's way from one mathematical structure to another, one does not have to rely on the evidence of the senses or of external experimentation, but remains entirely within one's inner soul life; one is dealing with an inner, conceptual view. One lives in the realm of the freely creative spirit.

Novalis, who was equally at home in the field of mathematics as in that of the free creative poetic imagination, saw in the former a perfect imaginative creation.

In more recent times, however, this trait has been denied in mathematics. It has been thought that this field of knowledge also borrows its truths from sensory observation, like an external experimental science, and that this fact is merely beyond human attention. It was only believed that one formed the mathematical forms oneself because one did not become aware of the borrowing from external observation. But this view has arisen only out of prejudice, which refuses to admit any free activity of the human mind. We are willing to accept scientific certainty only where we can rely on the statements of sense observation. And so, because the certainty of its truths cannot be denied, mathematics is also said to be a sense science.

Because in mathematics we live in the realm of the free creative spirit, its essence can be most clearly seen in inner self-knowledge. If one turns one's attention away from the structures that one works out in mathematical activity and back to that activity itself, one becomes fully aware of what one is doing. Then one lives in a kind of free creative spirituality.

One must only then summon up the flexibility of soul to extend the same creative inner activity that one unfolds in mathematics to other areas of inner experience. In this flexibility of soul lies the power to ascend to imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge, of which this weekly journal has often spoken.

In mathematics, every step one takes is inwardly transparent. One does not turn to the outside with the soul in order to determine the being of the other through the being of the one. One does, however, remain in a realm that, although created inwardly, relates to the external world through its own nature. Mathematics originates in the soul, but relates only to the non-spiritual. When the freely creative activity of the spirit ascends to the types of knowledge mentioned, however, one comes to grasp the soul itself and the realm of the world in which the soul lives.

Goethe's spiritual nature was such that he felt no need to cultivate mathematics himself. But his way of knowing was of a completely mathematical nature. He took in what concerned external nature through pure, refined observation, but then transformed it in his inner experience so that it became one with his soul, as is the case with freely created mathematical forms. Thus his thinking about nature became, in the most beautiful sense, a mathematical one. As a thinker of nature, Goethe was a mathematical spirit without being a mathematician.

He was just as open about his lack of knowledge of mathematics as he was about the mathematical direction of his way of looking at things. You can read about this in the essays that conclude his works on natural science under the title “On Natural Science in General. In this work he also stated that in all knowledge one must proceed as if one owed an account of one's findings to the strictest mathematician.

Through this direction of his quest for knowledge, Goethe was particularly predisposed to introducing a true scientific method of research into those scientific fields that cannot be determined by measure, number and weight because they are not quantitative but qualitative in nature. The opposing view wants to limit itself to what can be measured, counted and weighed, and leaves the qualitative as scientifically unattainable. It denies Goethe scientific validity because it does not see how he extends the rigor of research, which it demands where actual mathematics is applicable, to fields of knowledge where this is no longer the case.

Only when Goethe's methods of thought can be truly understood in this direction will it be possible to gain an unbiased judgment of the relationship between his knowledge and art. Only then will it be possible to see what the further development of his way of thinking can bring, both for art and for science.

1.

[ 1 ] Friedrich Nietzsche characterizes himself as a lonely ponderer and friend of riddles, as a personality not made for the age in which he lived. The one who follows such paths as his, “meets no one; this is a part of going one's own way. No one approaches to help him; all that happens to him of danger, accidents, evil and bad weather, he must get along with alone,” he says in the preface of the second edition of his Morgenröte, Dawn. But it is stimulating to follow him into his loneliness. In the words in which he expressed his relationship to Schopenhauer, I would like to describe my relationship to Nietzsche: “I belong to those readers of Nietzsche who, after they have read the first page, know with certainty that they will read all pages, and listen to every word he has said. My confidence in him was there immediately ... I understood him as if he had written just for me, in order to express all that I would say intelligibly but immediately and foolishly.” One can speak thus and yet be far from acknowledging oneself as a “believer” in Nietzsche's world conception. But Nietzsche himself could not be further from wishing to have such “believers.” Did he not put into Zarathustra's mouth these words:

[ 2 ] “You say you believe in Zarathustra, but of what account is Zarathustra? You are my believer, but of what account are all believers?

[ 3 ] “You have not searched for yourselves as yet; there you found me. Thus do all believers, but, for that reason, there is so little in all believing. Now I advise you to forsake me and to find yourselves; and only when all of you have denied me will I return to you.”

[ 4 ] Nietzsche is no Messianic founder of a religion; therefore he can wish for friends who support his opinion, but he cannot wish for confessors to his teaching, who give up their own selves to find his.

[ 5 ] In Nietzsche's personality are found instincts which are contrary to the complete gamut of the ideas of his contemporaries. With instinctive aversion he rejects most of the important cultural ideas of those amid whom he developed himself and, indeed, not as one rejects an assertion in which one has discovered a logical contradiction, but rather as one turns away from a color which causes pain to the eye. The aversion starts from the immediate feeling to begin with, conscious thinking does not come into consideration at all. What other people feel when such thoughts as guilt, conscience, sin, life beyond, ideal happiness, fatherland, pass through their heads, works unpleasantly upon Nietzsche. The instinctive manner of rejection of these ideas also differentiates Nietzsche from the so-called “free thinkers” of the present. The latter know all the intellectual objections to “the old illusionary ideas,” but how rarely is one found who can say that his instincts no longer depend upon them! It is precisely the instincts which play bad tricks upon the free thinkers of the present time. The thinking takes on a character independent of the inherited ideas, but the instincts cannot adapt themselves to the changed character of the intellect. These “free thinkers” put just any belief of modern science in place of an old idea, but they speak about it in such a way that one realizes that the intellect goes another way from that of the instincts. The intellect searches in matter, in power, in the laws of nature, for the origin of phenomena; but the instincts misguide so that one has the same feeling toward this being that others have toward their personal God. Intellects of this type defend themselves against the accusation of the denial of God, but they do not do this because their world conception leads them to something which is in harmony with any form of God, but rather because from their forefathers they have inherited the tendency to feel an instinctive shudder at the expression, “the denial of God.” Great natural scientists emphasize that they do not wish to banish such ideas as God and immortality, but rather that they wish to transform them, in the sense of modern science. Their instincts simply have remained behind their intellect.

[ 6 ] A large number of these “free spirits” are of the opinion that the will of man is unfree. They say that under certain circumstances man must behave as his character and the conditions working upon him force him to act. But if we look at the opponents of the theory of “free will,” we shall find that the instincts of these “free spirits” turn away from a doer of an “evil” deed with exactly the same aversion as do the instincts of those who represent the opinion that according to its desires the “free will” could turn itself toward good or toward evil.

[ 7 ] The contradiction between intellect and instinct is the mark of our “modern spirits.” Within the most liberal thinkers of the present age the implanted instincts of Christian orthodoxy also still live. Exactly opposite instincts are active in Nietzsche's nature. He does not need first to reflect whether there are reasons against the acceptance of a personal world leader. His instinct is too proud to bow before such a one; for this reason he rejects such a representation. He says in his Zarathustra, “But that I may reveal to you my heart, to you, my friends: if there were Gods, how could I stand it not to be a God! Therefore, there are no Gods.” Nothing in his inner being compels him to accuse either himself or another as “guilty” of a committed action. To consider such a “guilty” action as unseemly, he needs no theory of “free” or “unfree” will.

[ 8 ] The patriotic feelings of his German compatriots are also repugnant to Nietzsche's instincts. He cannot make his feelings and his thinking dependent upon the circles of the people amid whom he was born and reared, nor upon the age in which he lives. “It is so small-townish,” he says in his Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, “to make oneself duty-bound to opinions which no longer bind one a few hundred miles away. Orient and Occident are strokes of chalk which someone draws before our eyes to make fools of our timidity. I will make the attempt to come to freedom, says the young soul to itself; and then should it be hindered because accidentally two nations hate and fight each other, or because an ocean lies between two parts of the earth, or because there a religion is taught which did not exist a few thousand years previously?” The soul experiences of the Germans during the War of 1870 found so little echo in his soul that “while the thunder of battle passed from Wörth over Europe,” he sat in a small corner of the Alps, “brooding and puzzled, consequently most grieved, and at the same time not grieved,” and wrote down his thoughts about the Greeks. And, a few weeks later, as he found himself “under the walls of Metz,” he still was not freed from the questions which he had concerning the life and art of the Greeks. (See Versuch einer Selbstkritik, Attempt at a Self-Critique, in the 2nd edition of his Geburt der Tragödie, Birth of Tragedy.) When the war came to an end, he entered so little enthusiasm of his German contemporaries over the decisive victory that in the year 1873 in his writing about David Strauss he spoke about “the bad and dangerous consequences” of the victorious struggle. He even represented it as insanity that German culture should have been victorious in this struggle, and he described this insanity as dangerous because if it should become dominant within the German nation, the danger would exist of transforming the victory into complete defeat; a defeat, yes, an extirpation of the German spirit in favor of “the German realm.” This was Nietzsche's attitude at a time when the whole of Europe was filled with national fanaticism. It is the thinking of a personality not in harmony with his time, of a fighter against his time. Much more could be added to what has been said to show that Nietzsche's life of feeling and reflection was completely different from that of his contemporaries.

2.

[ 9 ] Nietzsche is no “thinker” in the usual sense of the word. For the deeply penetrating and valid questions which he had to ask in regard to the world and life, mere thinking was not sufficient. For these questions, all the forces of human nature must be unchained; intellectual thinking alone is not sufficient for the task. Nietzsche has no confidence in merely intellectually conceived reasons for an opinion. “There is a mistrust in me for dialectic, even for proofs” he writes to Georg Brandes on the 2nd of December 1887 (see his Menschen und Werke, Men and Works, p. 212). For those who would ask the reasons for his opinions, he is ready with the answer of Zarathustra, “You ask why? I do not belong to those of whom one may ask their why.” For him, a criterion was not that an opinion could be proved logically, but rather if it acted upon all forces of the human personality in such a way that it had value for life. He grants validity to a thought only if he finds it will add to the development of life. To see man as healthy as possible, as powerful as possible, as creative as possible, is his desire. Truth, beauty, all ideals, have value and concern the human being only to the extent that they foster life.

[ 10 ] The question about the value of truth appears in several of Nietzsche's writings. In the most daring form it is asked in his Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil. “The will for truth which has misled us into so many hazards, that famous truthfulness, about which all philosophers have spoken with awe: what questions this will for truth has already put before us! What marvelous, difficult, worthy questions! This is already a long story, yet it seems that it has barely begun. Is it any wonder that we finally become mistrustful, lose patience, turn about impatiently? Is it any wonder that from the Sphinx we ourselves also learn to ask questions? Then who is it who asks questions here? What is it in us that really wants to penetrate ‘to truth?’ In fact, we had to stand for a long time before the question about the cause of will—until we finally remained completely still before a yet more fundamental question. We asked about the value of willing. That is, provided we want truth; why not rather untruth?”

[ 11 ] This is a thought of a boldness hardly to be surpassed. If one places beside it what another daring “ponderer and friend of riddles,” Johann Gottlieb Fichte, said about the striving after truth, then one realizes for the first time from what depths of human nature Nietzsche brings forth his ideas. “I am destined,” said Fichte, “to bear witness to truth; upon my life and my destiny, nothing depends; upon the effects of my life, infinitely much depends. I am a priest of truth; I am in its debt; for it I have bound myself to do all, to dare all, and to suffer all.” (Fichte, Über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, On the Task of the Scholar, Lecture 4). These words describe the relationship of the most noble spirits of the newer Western culture to truth. In the face of all of Nietzsche's cited expressions, they appear superficial. Against them one can ask, Is it not possible that untruth has more valuable effects upon life than truth? Is it impossible that truth harms life? Has Fichte himself posed these questions? Have others done it who have borne “witness to truth?”

[ 12 ] But Nietzsche poses these questions. And he believes that he can become clear only when he treats this striving after truth not merely as an intellectual matter, but seeks the instincts which bring forth this striving. For it could well have been that these instincts make use of truth only as a medium to accomplish something which stands higher than truth. Nietzsche thinks after he has “looked at the philosophers long enough between the lines and upon the fingers,” that “most thinking of philosophers is secretly led by their instincts, and forced along definite ways.” The philosophers consider that the final impulse to action is the striving after truth. They believe this because they are unable to look into the depths of human nature. In reality, this striving after truth is guided by the will to power. With the help of truth, this power and fullness of life should be increased for the personality. The conscious thinking of the philosopher is of the opinion that the recognition of truth is a final goal; the unconsicous instinct that motivates this thinking strives toward the fostering of life. From this instinct, “the falsity of a judgment is no real objection toward a judgment;” for him only the question comes into consideration, “to what extent is it life furthering, life supporting, species supporting, perhaps even species cultivating.” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 4.)

[ 13 ] Do you call will to truth, you wisest ones, that which impels you and makes you ardent?

[ 14 ] Will for the conceivableness of all being: thus do I name your will!

[ 15 ] All being would you first make conceivable, because you doubt with good reason whether it is already thinkable.

[ 16 ] But it shall yield to you and bend itself to you! So wills your will. Smooth shall it become, and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and reflection.

[ 17 ] That is your entire will, you wisest ones, a Will to Power. (Zarathustra, second part, The Self Surpassing).

[ 18 ] Truth is to make the world subservient to the spirit, and thereby serve life. Only as a life necessity has it value. But can one not go further and ask, what is this life worth in itself? Nietzsche considers such a question to be impossible. That everything alive wants to live as powerfully, as meaningfully as possible, he accepts as a fact about which he ponders no further. Life instincts ask no further about the value of life. They ask only what possibilities there are to increase the strength of its bearers. “Judgments, evaluations of life, either for or against, can never be true, in the final analysis; they have value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms, and in themselves such judgments are nonsense. One must absolutely stretch out one's fingers and try to comprehend the astonishing finesse in the fact that the value of life cannot be measured. It cannot be measured by a living person because he partakes of it; indeed, for him it is even an object of strife: therefore he is no judge; neither can it be appraised by a dead person, for another reason. For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life remains, so to speak, an accusation against him, a question concerning his wisdom and lack of wisdom.” (Götzendämmerung, Das Problem des Sokrates, The Twilight of Idols, The Problem of Socrates.) The question about the value of life exists only for a poorly educated, sick personality. A well-rounded personality lives without asking how much his life is worth.

[ 19 ] Because Nietzsche has the point of view described above, he places such little weight upon logical proofs for a judgment. It is of little account to him that a judgment lets itself be proved logically; he is interested in whether one can live well under its influence. Not alone the intellect, but the whole personality of the human being must be satisfied. The best thoughts are those which bring all forces of human nature into an activity adapted to the person.

[ 20 ] Only thoughts of this nature have interest for Nietzsche. He is not a philosophical brain, but a “gatherer of honey of the intellect” who searches for “honey baskets” of knowledge, and tries to bring home what benefits life.

3.

[ 21 ] In Nietzsche's personality, those instincts rule which make man a dominating, controlling being. Everything pleases him which manifests might; everything displeases him which discloses weakness. He feels happy only so long as he finds himself in conditions of life which heighten his power. He loves hindrances, obstacles against his activity, because he becomes aware of his own power by overcoming them. He looks for the most difficult paths which the human being can take. A fundamental trait of his character is expressed in the verse which he has written on the title page of the second edition of his Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Wisdom:

I live in my own house,
Have never copied anything from anyone,
And have ridiculed every master
Who has not ridiculed himself.

[ 22 ] Every kind of subordination to a strange power Nietzsche feels as weakness. And he thinks differently about that which is a “strange power” than many a one who considers himself to be “an independent, free spirit.” Nietzsche considers it a weakness when the human being; subordinates his thinking and his doing to so-called “eternal, brazen” laws of the intellect. Whatever the uniformly developed personality does, it does not allow it to be prescribed by a moral science, but only by the impulses of its own self. Man is already weak at the moment he searches for laws and rules according to which he shall think and act. Out of his own being the strong individual controls his way of thinking and doing.

[ 23 ] Nietzsche expresses this opinion in the crudest form in sentences, because of which narrow-minded people have characterized him as a downright dangerous spirit: “When the Christian Crusaders in the East came into collision with that invincible order of assassins, those orders of free thinking spirits, par excellence, whose lowest order lived in a state of discipline such as no order of monks ever attained, in some way or other they managed to get an inkling of that symbol and motto that was reserved for the highest grade alone, as their secret: ‘Nothing is true, everything is permissible!’ ... Truly, that was freedom of the spirit; thereby faith itself was giving notice to truth.” (Genealogie der Moral, Genealogy of Morals, 3rd Section, ¶ 24.) That these sentences are the expression of feelings of an aristocratic, of a master nature, which will not permit the individual to live freely according to his own laws, with no regard to the eternal truths and rules of morality, those people do not feel who by nature are adjusted to subordination. A personality such as Nietzsche cannot bear those tyrants who appear in the form of abstract moral commandments. I determine how I am to think, how I am to act, says such a nature.

[ 24 ] There are people who base their justification for calling themselves “free thinkers” upon the fact that in their thinking and acting they do not subject themselves to those laws which are derived from other human beings, but only to “the eternal laws of the intellect,” the “incontrovertible concepts of duty,” or “the Will of God.” Nietzsche does not regard such people as really strong personalities. For they do not think and act according to their own nature, but according to the commands of a higher authority. Whether the slave follows the arbitrariness of his master, the religious the revealed verities of a God, or the philosopher the demands of the intellect, this changes nothing of the fact that they are all obeyers. What does the commanding is of no importance; the deciding factor is that there is commanding, that the human being does not give his own direction for his acting, but thinks that there is a power which delineates this direction.

[ 25 ] The strong, truly free human being will not receive truth, he will create it; he will not let something “be permitted” him; he will not obey. “The real philosophers are commanders and law givers; they say, ‘Thus shall it be,’ they first decide the ‘why’ and ‘wherefore’ and thereby dispose of the preliminary labor of all philosophical workers, all conquerors of the past; they grasp at the future with creative hands and all that is and was becomes for them a means, a tool, a hammer. Their ‘knowing’ is creating, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is Will to Power. Are there such philosophers today? Were there once such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 211.)

4.

[ 26 ] Nietzsche sees a special indication of human weakness in every type of belief in a world beyond, in a world other than that in which man lives. According to him, one can do no greater harm to life than to order one's existence in this world according to another life in a world beyond. One cannot give oneself over to greater confusion than when one assumes the existence of beings behind the phenomena of this world, beings which are not approachable by human knowledge, and which are to be considered as the real basis, as the decisive factor in all existence. By such an assumption one ruins for oneself the joy in this world. One degrades it to illusion, to a mere reflection of the inaccessible. One interprets the world known to us, the world which for us is the only real one, as a futile dream, and attributes true reality to an imaginary, fictitious other world. One interprets the human senses as deceivers, who give us only illusory pictures instead of realities.

[ 27 ] Such a point of view cannot stem from weakness. For the strong person who is deeply rooted in reality, who has joy in life, will not let it enter his head to imagine another reality. He is occupied with this world and needs no other. But the suffering, the ill, those dissatisfied with this life, take refuge in the yonder. What this life has taken away from them, the world beyond is to offer them. The strong, healthy person who has well developed senses fitted to search for the causes of this world in this world itself, requires no causes or beings of the world beyond for the understanding of the appearances within which he lives. The weak person, who perceives reality with crippled eyes and ears, needs causes behind the appearances.

[ 28 ] Out of suffering and sick longing, the belief in the yonder world is born. Out of the inability to penetrate the real world all acceptances of “things in themselves” have originated.

[ 29 ] All who have reason to deny the real life say Yes to an imaginary one. Nietzsche wants to be an affirmer in face of reality. He will explore this world in all directions; he will penetrate into the depths of existence; of another life he wants to know nothing. Even suffering itself cannot provoke him to say No to life, for suffering also is a means to knowledge. “Like a traveler who plans to awaken at a certain hour, and then peacefully succumbs to sleep, we philosophers surrender ourselves to sickness, provided that we have become ill for a time in body and soul; we also close our eyes. And as the traveler knows that somewhere something does not sleep, that something counts the hours and will awaken him, so we also know that the decisive moment will find us awake—that then something will spring forth and catch the spirit in the act; I mean, in the weakness or the turning back or the surrendering or the hardening or the beclouding, as all the many sick conditions of the spirit are called, which in days of health had the pride of spirit against them. After such a self-questioning, self-examination, one learns to look with a finer eye at everything which had been philosophized about until now.” (Preface to the second edition of Fröhliche Wissenschalt, Joyful Wisdom.)

5.

[ 30 ] Nietzsche's friendly attitude toward life and reality shows itself also in his point of view in regard to men and their relationships with each other. In this field Nietzsche is a complete individualist. Each human being is for him a world in itself, a unicum. “This marvelously colorful manifoldness which is unified to a ‘oneness’ and faces us as a certain human being, no accident, however strange, could shake together in a like way a second time.” (Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, ¶ 1.) Very few human beings, however, are inclined to unfold their individualities, which exist but once. They are in terror of the loneliness into which they are forced because of this. It is more comfortable and less dangerous to live in the same way as one's fellow men; there one always finds company. The one who arranges his life in his own way is not understood by others, and finds no companions. Loneliness has a special attraction for Nietzsche. He loves to search for secrets within his own self. He flees from the community of human beings. For the most part, his ways of thought are attempts to search for treasures which lie deeply hidden within his personality. The light which others offer him, he despises; the air one breathes where the “community of human beings,” the “average man” lives, he will not breathe. Instinctively he strives toward his “citadel and privacy” where he is free from the crowds, from the many, from the majority. (Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 26). In his Fröliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Wisdom, he complains that it is difficult for him to “digest” his fellow men; and in Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 282, he discloses that at the least he carried away dangerous intestinal disturbances when he sat down at the table where the diet of “ordinary human beings” was served. Human beings must not come too close to Nietzsche if he is to stand them.

6.

[ 31 ] Nietzsche grants validity to a thought, a judgment, in the form to which the free-reigning life instincts give their assent. Attitudes which are decided by life he does not allow to be removed by logical doubt. For this reason his thinking has a firm, free swing. It is not confused by reflections as to whether an assumption is also true “objectively,” whether it does not go beyond the boundaries, of the possibilities of human knowledge, etc. When Nietzsche has recognized the value of a judgment for life, he no longer asks for a further “objective” meaning and validity. And he does not worry about the limits of knowledge. It is his opinion that a healthy thinking creates what it is able to create, and does not torment itself with the useless question, what can I not do?

[ 32 ] The one who wishes to determine the value of a judgment by the degree to which it furthers life, can, of course, only do this on the basis of his own personal life impulses and instincts. He can never wish to say more than, Insofar as my own life instincts are concerned, I consider this particular judgment to be valuable. And Nietzsche never wishes to say anything else when he expresses a point of view. It is just this relationship of his to his thought world which works so beneficially upon the reader who is orientated toward freedom. It gives Nietzsche's writings a character of unselfish, modest dignity. In comparison, how repellent and immodest it sounds when other thinkers believe their person to be the organ by which eternal, irrefutable verities are made known to the world. One can find sentences in Nietzsche's works which express his strong ego-consciousness, for example, “I have given to mankind the deepest book which it possesses, my Zarathustra; soon I shall give it the most independent.” (Götzendämmerung, Twilight of Idols, ¶ 51.) But what do these words indicate? I have dared to write a book whose content is drawn from lower depths of a personality than is usual in similar books, and I shall offer a book which is more independent of every strange judgment than other philosophical writings, for I shall speak about the most important things only in the way they relate to my personal instincts. That is dignified modesty. It would of course go against the taste of those whose lying humility says, I am nothing, my work is everything; I bring nothing of my personal feelings into my books, but I express only what the pure intellect allows me to express. Such people want to deny their person in order to assert that their expressions are those of a higher spirit. Nietzsche considers his thoughts to be the results of his own person and nothing more.

7.

[ 33 ] The specialist philosophers may smile about Nietzsche, or give us their impressions about the “dangers” of his “world conception” as best they can. Of course, many of these spirits, who are nothing but animated textbooks of logic, are not able to praise Nietzsche's creations, which spring from the most mighty, most immediate life impulses.

[ 34 ] In any case, with his bold thought Nietzsche leaps and hits upon deeper secrets of human nature than many a logical thinker with his cautious creeping. Of what use is all logic if it catches only worthless content in its net of concepts? When valuable thoughts are communicated to us, we rejoice in them alone, even if they are not tied together with logical threads. The salvation of life does not depend upon logic alone, but also upon the production of thoughts. At present our specialized philosophy is sufficiently unproductive, and it could very well use the stimulation of the thoughts of a courageous, bold writer like Nietzsche. The power of development of their specialized philosophy is paralyzed through the influence which the thinking of Kant has made upon them. Through this influence it has lost all originality, all courage. From the academic philosophy of his time Kant has taken over the concept of truth which originates from “pure reason,” He has tried to show that through such truth we cannot learn to know things which lie beyond our experience of “things in themselves.” During the last century, infinite, immeasurable cleverness was expended to penetrate into these thoughts of Kant's from all directions, The results of this sharp thinking are unfortunately rather meager and trivial, Should one translate the banalities of many a current philosophical book from academic formulae into healthy speech, such content would compare rather poorly with many a short aphorism of Nietzsche's, In view of present-day philosophy, the latter could speak the proud sentence with a certain justice, “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in one book—what every other person does not say in one book ...”

8.

[ 35 ] As Nietzsche does not want to express anything but the results of his personal instincts and impulses, so to him strange points of view are nothing more than symptoms from which he draws conclusions about the ruling instincts of individual human beings or whole peoples, races, and so on. He does not occupy himself with discussions or arguments over strange opinions. But he looks for the instincts which are expressed in these opinions. He tries to discover the character of the personalities or people from their attitudes. Whether an attitude indicates the dominance of instincts for health, courage, dignity, joy, and life, or whether it originates from unhealthy, slavish, tired instincts, inimical to life, all this interests him. Truths in themselves are indifferent to him; he concerns himself with the way people develop their truths according to their instincts, and how they further their life goals through them. He looks for the natural causes of human attitudes.

[ 36 ] Nietzsche's striving, of course, is not according to the tendencies of those idealists who attribute an independent value to truth, who want to give it “a purer, higher origin” than that of the instincts. He explains human views as the result of natural forces, just as the natural scientist explains the structure of the eye from the cooperation of natural causes. He recognizes an explanation of the spiritual development of mankind out of special moral purposes, or ideals out of a moral world order, as little as the natural scientist of today recognizes the explanation that nature has built the eye in a certain way for the reason that nature had the intention to create an organ of seeing for the organism. In every ideal Nietzsche sees only the expression of an instinct which looks toward satisfaction in a definite form, just as the modern natural scientist sees in the intentional arrangement of an organ, the result of organic formative laws. If at present there still exist natural scientists and philosophers who reject all purposeful creating in nature, but, who stop short before moral idealism, and see in history the realization of a divine will, an ideal order of things, this belief is an incompleteness of the instinct. Such people lack the necessary perspective for the judging of spiritual happenings, while they have it for the observation of natural happenings. When a human being thinks he is striving toward an ideal which does not derive from reality, he thinks this only because he does not recognize the instinct from which this ideal stems.

[ 37 ] Nietzsche is an anti-idealist in that sense in which the modern natural scientist opposes the assumption of purposes which nature is to materialize. He speaks just as little about moral purposes as the natural scientist speaks about natural purposes. Nietzsche does not consider it wiser to say, Man should materialize a moral ideal, than to explain that the bull has horns so that he may gore with them. He considers the one as well as the other expression to be a product of a world explanation which speaks about “divine providence,” “wise omnipotence,” instead of natural causes.

[ 38 ] This world clarification is a check to all sound thinking; it produces a fictitious fog of ideals which prevents that natural power of seeing, orientated to the observation of reality, that ability to fathom world events; finally, it completely dulls all sense for reality.

9.

[ 39 ] When Nietzsche engages in a spiritual battle he doesn't wish to contradict foreign opinions as such, but he does so because these opinions point to instincts harmful and contrary to nature, against which he wishes to fight. In this regard his intention is similar to that of someone who attacks a harmful natural phenomenon or destroys a dangerous creature. He does not count on the “convincing” power of truth, but on the fact that he will conquer his opponent because the latter has unsound, harmful instincts, while he himself has sound, life-furthering instincts. He looks for no further justification for such a battle when his instinct considers his opponent to be harmful. He does not believe that he has to fight as the representative of an idea, but he fights because his instincts compel him to do so. Of course, it is the same with any spiritual battle, but ordinarily the fighters are as little aware of the real motivations as are the philosophers of their “Will to Power,” or the followers of a moral world order of the natural causes of their moral ideals. They believe that only opinions fight opinions, and they disguise their true motives by cloaks of concepts. They also do not mention the instincts of the opponents which are unsympathetic to them; indeed, perhaps these do not enter their consciousness at all. In short, these forces which are really hostile toward each other do not come out into the open at all. Nietzsche mentions unreservedly those instincts of his opponents which are disagreeable to him, and he also mentions the instincts with which he opposes them. One who wishes to call this cynicism may well do so. But he must be certain not to overlook the fact that never in all human activity has there existed anything other than such cynicism, and that all idealistic, illusory webs are spun by this cynicism.

American readers have known the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche in English for somewhat less than fifty years. The first translations of Nietzsche's works began appearing in this country shortly after the turn of the century. Since then, almost without interruption American publishers' lists have included collections of his writings, selections from his letters, extracts from his journals, commentaries on his works, and, above all, numerous descriptions of his tragic life story; and American interest in Nietzsche continues today.

In view of this it seems particularly fitting that the present book, with its profound insight into Nietzsche's creative activity, brilliant analysis of his character, and clear evaluation of his significance should be published for the first time in English translation as the second volume of the Centennial Edition of the Major Writings of Rudolf Steiner.

In Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, Rudolf Steiner presents an unforgettable portrait of the man whose writings continue to exercise an important influence in shaping the world in which we live today, and which our children will inherit tomorrow.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in the little village of Röcken near Leipzig on October 15, 1844. As he wrote later, “I was born on the battlefield of Lützen, and the first name I heard was that of Gustavus Adolphus.” The Protestant element was in his very blood, for Lutheran clergymen were among his forebearers on both his paternal and maternal sides, while his father was the pastor of Röcken. A tradition that his ancestors were Polish noblemen of the Niëzky family was recorded by Nietzsche himself, as was the statement that his grandmother belonged to the Goethe-Schiller circle of Weimar.

The parsonage life during Nietzsche's early childhood was typical of most of the country clergy-houses of the time. The atmosphere was that of “plain living and high thinking,” and the family combined honor and piety with a social life of happiness and cheer, in which a love of music, books and friendships played a role. When the boy was nearly five, in the summer of 1849, Pastor Nietzsche sustained a severe fall, in consequence of which he died. The widow took her children to Naumberg some months later, and they made their home with the paternal grandparents.

At first Friedrich was enrolled in the municipal school in Naumberg, but shortly afterward he was transferred to a private school in the same town. In October 1858, in response to the offer of a scholarship, the boy was enrolled in the Landes-Schule at Pforta. This famous institution had been founded as a Cistercian Abbey in the middle of the twelfth century; at the time of the Reformation it became a secular school. Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel and Ranke are among the names of those who studied there. In the nineteenth century the Landes-Schule at Pforta was frequently referred to as “the German Eton” because of its excellence in classical studies and as a preparatory school.

Friedrich Nietzsche found a second home in the Landes-Schule; he thoroughly enjoyed his studies—languages, literature and history in particular. In the summer of 1860 he conceived the idea of organizing a literary-artistic club among the students, and this met with a ready response from his schoolmates. Soon the Germania Club, as it came to be called, was organized, and Nietzsche contributed a number of essays on literary and historical themes to the club paper. Many happy hours were spent with his friends at the Germania Club in active discussions about Greek and Latin classics, the works of current German and English authors, and similar subjects. Nietzsche's favorite writers at this time included Emerson, Shakespeare, Tacitus, Aristophanes, Plato and Aeschylus. About Tristram Shandy he wrote his sister Elizabeth, “I read it over and over again.”

While Friedrich Nietzsche was a student at the Landes-Schule, Rudolf Steiner was born on February 27, 1861 in the little town of Kraljevec on the frontier between Hungary and Croatia. His father was a station master in the service of the South Austrian Railway, and the boy's earliest recollections were connected with the activities of the railroad. From his second through his eighth year his impressions were those of the quiet country village of Pottsach, situated in a beautiful green valley at the foot of the magnificent Styrian Alps. The infrequent arrival and departure of the train, the daily activities of the village people, the services at the little church, the colorful peasants and foresters, the life at the local mill, and always and ever the mysterious wonder and beauty of the surrounding nature: all this was a part of the child's world. He attended school in the village for a time; afterward his father undertook to teach him the rudiments of elementary education.

But side by side with this world, the child knew another world, a spiritual world, which was just as real and tangible to him as were the forests, fields and mountains surrounding him. This spiritual world was filled with objects and beings, just as the world about him contained stones and plants and animals and people. Even before he was eight, the child could distinguish between these two worlds, and the one was as clear and immediate to him as the other.

Many children have experiences similar to this of Rudolf Steiner. However, generally speaking, with the passing of the years of childhood, these experiences also vanish little by little, until in the retrospect of later years they seem like “the gentle fabric of a dream.” But in the instance of Rudolf Steiner, the reality and immediacy of the spiritual world did not fade away; it broadened and deepened into a clear, conscious perception of beings and events of that world.

In the wondering eyes of this quiet boy there were many questions. He knew, however, that these were questions he could ask of no one around him. More than this, he could speak with no one about the “other” world which was as close and as real to him as were the houses and fields of Pottsach. So he remained silent, and the questions remained alive within him. And, although he shared the daily activities of the children around him, and entered fully into the life of his family, he was unhappy. More than this, he was lonely ...

In September 1864, Nietzsche left the Landes-Schule with excellent marks, particularly in languages and literature. He entered the University of Bonn a short time later, enrolled as a student of theology and philology. However, he had not been long in the university when his friendship with his professor of philology, Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschel, caused him to drop his theological studies in favor of philology. This action caused great grief to his mother and the other members of his family, who had looked to him to continue the clerical tradition of his father.

A year after he had entered the University of Bonn, Nietzsche withdrew in order to accompany Ritschel, who had been transferred to the faculty of the University of Leipzig. Here he continued his philological studies, and here also two very important events of his life took place. He met Richard Wagner in the home of Professor Brockhaus at Leipzig for the first time; his other meeting happened in a somewhat unusual way.

One day while he was browsing in Rohm's second-hand bookstore in Leipzig, “as if by accident” Nietzsche picked up a copy of Schopenhauer's Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Idea. Without stopping to so much as open the book, he paid for it, and rushed to his lodgings. There he threw himself down on his bed and began to read avidly. As he relates in his journal, “I don't know what daemon told me to take the book home with me. ... From every line I read I heard a cry of renunciation, denial, resignation. In the book I saw a mirror of the world; life and my own soul were reflected with dreadful faithfulness. The dull, disinterested eye of art looked at me. I saw illness and healing, banishment and restoration, hell and heaven.”

Thus, at the age of twenty-one, his reading of Schopenhauer's book—the first part of which had been sold as waste paper shortly after publication because there was no sale for it—changed Nietzsche's outlook upon life. In Shopenhauer he felt he had found his teacher in the fullest, most ideal sense.

After a brief interval spent in military service, during which he sustained a serious chest injury as the result of a fall from a horse, Nietzsche returned to Leipzig to continue his studies in the autumn of 1868. Meanwhile, a series of articles he had contributed to the periodical, the Rheinisches Museum, had been read by the authorities of the University of Basel, where a position as professor of classical philology was vacant. A letter was addressed to Ritschel, asking details about Nietzsche, and indicating that the chair at the university might be offered to the young student. Ritschel's reply was unequivocal: “Nietzsche is a genius, and can do whatever he puts his mind to.”

This sweeping endorsement must have impressed the authorities at Basel, for they appointed Nietzsche to the post, despite the fact that he had not yet obtained his doctor's degree. One member of the board, however, was slightly dubious of the appointment, for he said, “If the candidate proposed is actually such a genius, perhaps we had better not appoint him, for he would be certain to remain only a short while at such a little university as ours!”

When word of the appointment reached Leipzig, the authorities of the university at once conferred a doctorate upon Nietzsche, without requiring him to undergo further examination. Accordingly, on May 28, 1869, Nietzsche delivered his Inaugural Address at the University of Basel on Homer and Classical Philology. He remained in the position for the next ten years, his final retirement being due solely to reasons of health. The foreboding of the official who felt he might “remain only a short while” proved to be ill-founded.

His residence at Basel gave Nietzsche opportunity to follow up his friendship with Richard and Cosima Wagner, and he was often a guest at their Triebschen estate on the Lake of Lucerne, under the shadow of Mount Pilatus. At the same time, he made friends with Jacob Burckhardt, “the hermit-like, secluded thinker,” as Nietzsche described him. Burckhardt had recently completed his well-known Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, History of the Renaissance in Italy, 1867, and was famous as the author of a series of critical historical writings on Italian painting, sculpture, and architecture. In addition he occupied the chair of professor of history at the University of Basel.

1869 was a year of importance in the life of Rudolf Steiner, now a boy of eight years. Surrounded by the beauties and wonders of nature, puzzling over the intricacies of such mechanical contrivances as the telegraph equipment in the railway station and the machinery in the local mill, the boy's questions moved to a still broader plane. How could he reconcile his direct experience of the spiritual world with the world of sense which surrounded him? Was there a connection between the two? How could one find a bridge between the experiences of the outer and the inner?

The answer came in a most unexpected way.

Among the books of his school teacher in the little Hungarian village of Neudörfl where he now lived with his family, the boy found a textbook on geometry. This volume opened a new world for Rudolf Steiner. In the study of geometry he found answers to his questions. Perhaps even more important, he says, “I learned to know happiness for the first time.” His satisfaction was complete, for he had discovered that “one can live within the mind in the shaping of forms perceived only within oneself.” He had found that an inner joy came to him as he learned through his study of geometry to “lay hold upon something in the spirit alone ... ”

In the vicinity of his home in Neudörfl was a monastery of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. As the boy often met the silent monks on his walks, they aroused solemn feelings in him and he very much wished that they would speak with him. But they never did.

In October 1870, Rudolf Steiner, now eleven, entered the Realschule at Wiener-Neustadt in Austria, traveling backward and forward daily from his home in Neudörfl, which was over the border in Hungary. Along with his intimate contacts with nature which were still an important part of his daily life, the boy now began to find interest in such scientific matters as space and time, attraction and repulsion, atoms and their relation to natural phenomena, and many other subjects. With intense interest his mind turned to science and mathematics, and his teachers in the Realschule were of great help to him in these studies.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 found Nietzsche active as an ambulance attendant in the medical corps, because his health would not permit him to take part in more active combat. However, even these duties proved too much for his strength, and he contracted diphtheria as a result. He returned to his work at the University of Basel, and in 1872, when he was twenty-eight, Nietzsche published his first major work, the result of his friendship with Wagner and Burkhardt, and the feelings they had evoked in him. This was his Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. The aesthetic passages attracted musicians to the book, but Nietzsche's colleagues in the philological field greeted it with a bitter attack which was led by Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. The result was that despite efforts on the part of Ritschel and Burckhardt to defend him, Nietzsche had no pupils at all in his philology classes in the winter term of 1872–3.

The aftermath of the German victory in the War of 1870 was the eruption of a nationalistic spirit which had been gathering since the previous successes of 1864 and 1866. Nietzsche felt that this was the time to issue a fiery call to the intellectuals of Germany to abandon what he considered a highly dangerous and unworthy chauvinistic spirit, and to return to their work in the service of true German culture. Richard Wagner joined him in this effort to arouse the German youth to a recognition of the responsibilities their victorious destiny had placed upon them.

Nietzsche devoted parts of his lectures in the university to this subject, and finally, in 1873 he issued the first of a series of pamphlets under the general title, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, Thoughts Out of Season, which he called David Strauss, dealing with the Philistinism of the period. The second, which was published in the following year, was Von Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, The Use and Abuse of History in Life, a sharp attack on the exaggerations of the current “popular historians” of Germany. The third pamphlet was titled, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, and appeared in the same year as the second. The last in the series was Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, and was published in 1876 when Nietzsche was thirty-two years of age.

Late in August, the first complete performance of Richard Wagner's opera cycle, Der Ring des Niebelungen took place in the newly constructed Bayreuth Festival Theatre under the direction of Hans Richter. People flocked to Bayreuth from many countries to attend this cultural event of the first magnitude. Among the spectators was Friedrich Nietzsche who, however, did not share the general enthusiasm for what he saw depicted on the stage.

The well-known French author and critic, Edouard Schuré was also present at the Bayreuth Festival and wrote an account of his meeting with Nietzsche, including a keen appraisal of the latter's character. Schuré's article appeared some years later in the Paris Revue des Deux Mondes (1895):

“I met Nietzsche in 1876 when the Ring of the Niebelungs had its premiere in Bayreuth. As I spoke with him I was impressed by the high caliber of his mind and by his strange countenance. His forehead was large, his short hair combed well back, and his prominent cheekbones were those of a Slav. His thick mustache and courageous bearing gave him the look of a cavalry officer, at first glance. However, this was tempered by a certain mixture of arrogance and nervousness difficult to describe.

“The music of his voice and the slowness of his speech expressed his artistic feelings. His circumspect, thoughtful bearing pointed to the philosopher in him. But nothing could have been more misleading than the seeming tranquility of his expression. The fixed gaze revealed the unhappy task of the thinker; his look combined sharp perception with fanaticism. This double quality made his eye appear uneasy, particularly since it always seemed to be fastened upon a single point. When he spoke for any period of time his face took on the appearance of poetic gentleness, but it was not long before it resumed its antagonistic character.

“When we left (the theatre) together, he spoke no word of censure or disapproval; his face expressed only the sorrowful resignation of a defeated man. ...”

The year ended badly for Nietzsche. As the months progressed, his health began to fail steadily, and toward the end of the year his symptoms of eye disease were augmented by those of a still graver sort. He withdrew from his university teaching, and was given sick leave.

He passed the winter in Sorrento in company with his friends, Baroness Meysenberg and Dr. Paul Rée, with whom he was to travel considerably in the next years. Despite his illness, he somehow found strength to begin another of his important writings, which would occupy him periodically over the next four years. This was his Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Human, All Too Human.

The three years that followed were a time of increasing illness and loneliness. Finally, Nietzsche resigned his position at the University of Basel in 1879 and was given a retirement pension on which he lived for the rest of his life.

The physical and mental suffering he experienced in the year 1879 alone, is described by him: “I have had two hundred days of anguish in this year. ... My pulse is as slow as that of Napoleon I. ...”

The years between 1873 and 1879 were most important in the development of Rudolf Steiner. He then passed his twelfth through eighteenth years. As Nietzsche had discovered Schopenhauer's book in Leipzig, Steiner now saw Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Critique of Pure Reason, in a bookstore window, and eventually came into possession of the volume. From the eager study of this book, to which he devoted every spare moment he could find, often reading single pages “more than twenty times in succession,” he hoped to find that which would enable him to understand his own thinking. Yet what he read in Kant was sharply opposed to his own inner conclusion, which he was to describe with the words, “Thinking can be developed to a faculty which really grasps the objects and events of the world.”

In this period Steiner deepened his knowledge of mathematics and German literature, in addition to the prescribed courses of study in the Realschule. From his fifteenth year onward he spent considerable time tutoring other pupils, thus inaugurating an educational activity that was to accompany him through the coming years. He found that a knowledge of practical psychology was indispensable for this task, and from his experience as a tutor he learned many valuable things about the problems involved in the training of the human mind.

Early in the summer of 1879 Steiner completed his studies at the Realschule, and was entered as a student at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna for the term to begin in the fall. He spent the summer entirely in the study of philosophy, working his way with utmost care and diligence through the writings of Kant and the principal works of Fichte. He was enrolled for the study of mathematics, natural history, and chemistry.

The years from 1879 to 1889 are generally regarded as Nietzsche's time of mature productivity. When one takes into account the suffering he experienced, the restless traveling, his constant loneliness, one is astonished at the amount of creative work he was able to produce during this period. In Italy, the French Riviera, the Swiss Engadine, the urge to write drove him relentlessly.

In July 1881, his Morgenröte, Dawn, was published. Although it received a cold reception, it is of importance, for it marks a turning point in Nietzesche's creative development. His previous writings had been largely negative and critical in tone. This book marks the appearance of a positive, constructive tendency, which increased in the works which followed.

Although his letters and journals give the impression that the autumn of this year was one of the happiest times of his life, he described the winter as a time “of unbelievable suffering.”

The next summer while Nietzsche was at Tautenberg in Thuringia, Dr. Rée and Baroness Meysenberg introduced him to Miss Andreas Salomé. Out of this and subsequent meetings with Nietzsche, Miss Andreas Salomé later wrote what has been described as “the most unreliable book about Nietzsche which has ever appeared in print.”

In July the first performances of Richard Wagner's music drama, Parsifal, were given at Bayreuth under the composer's direction. Nietzsche chose this occasion to send Wagner a presentation copy of his Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Human, All Too Human. Curiously enough, at exactly the same time, Wagner sent Nietzsche an inscribed copy of his Parsifal. The two packages crossed in the mail. No word of acknowledgment from either recipient was ever forthcoming; the break between Nietzsche and Wagner was complete, although the public was not to become aware of it until six more years had passed. In the meanwhile, Wagner had died suddenly in Venice early in 1883.

The high point in Nietzsche's creative life came in May 1883 with the birth of his Also Sprach Zarathustra, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the work which he and many others considered to be his masterpiece. The first part in twenty-three chapters took just ten days to write, as did each of the other parts with the exception of the fourth and last which was completed in 1885. In a letter he said of the writing of his Zarathustra, “All of it was conceived in the course of rapid walks ... absolute certainty, as though each sentence were shouted at one. While writing this book, the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power ...”

In addition to his studies at the Technische Hochschule, Rudolf Steiner attended lectures at the University of Vienna. He particularly appreciated the courses given by the celebrated Karl Julius Schröer on German literature, especially on Schiller and Goethe. As a result, Steiner read Goethe's Faust for the first time at the age of nineteen. Later, he enjoyed a personal friendship with Schröer, under whose guidance he came to a deep awareness of the importance of Goethe's contribution to natural science as well as to literature.

Out of his interest in philosophical studies, Steiner attended lectures by the philosophers Robert Zimmerman and Franz Brentano. He studied writings by Ernst Haeckel on morphology, and by Friedrich Theodor Vischer on aesthetics. The writings of Eduard von Hartmann, “the philosopher of the unconscious,” interested him deeply, and the day was to come when he would meet this man face to face in Berlin; eventually Steiner would dedicate his book, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Truth and Science, to him “in warm admiration.”

Among the lectures in his scientific courses, those of Edmund Reitlinger on the mechanical theory of heat and on the history of physics made a deep impression on Rudolf Steiner.

At this time Steiner was engaged as tutor in a family where there were four boys, the youngest of whom was a retarded child. The three older boys were no particular problem for him, and their studies went forward without difficulty under his direction. However, the retarded child was a great challenge. That Steiner met this challenge is clear from the fact that in two years the child was able to complete his work in the elementary school and enter the Gymnasium. Eventually he entered the School of Medicine and finally graduated as a physician. The experience with this child was reflected in methods for the treatment and care of retarded children which Rudolf Steiner gave some forty years later, thus laying the foundation for a system of Curative Education which is successfully practiced in both Europe and America today.

In 1884 Professor Schröer recommended Steiner to the position of editor and commentator on Goethe's natural scientific writings which the publisher, Joseph Kürschner, wished to include in his series of volumes on German literature. In recalling the nature of this task years later, Steiner wrote, “I saw in Goethe a personality who, because of the particular spiritual relation in which he placed man in regard to the world, could also fit the science of nature into the entire realm of human creative activity in the right manner ... To me, Goethe was the founder of a science of organics ... applicable to what is alive.”

From this time onward, Steiner was occupied with Goethe's investigations in such areas of natural science as metamorphosis, the archetypal plant, the world of animals and minerals, and so on. And out of this study in the light of Goethe's investigations and comments, Steiner came to recognize that if one wishes to understand Goethe as a natural scientist this can be done only on the basis of learning how one must perceive in order to enter into the phenomena of life.

Finally he realized that no theory of knowledge then extant explained Goethe's particular form of knowledge. Therefore, as a part of his preparatory work before setting about to edit and write commentry on Goethe's natural scientific writings for Kürschner, Steiner drafted a short study of Goethe's theory of knowledge. This was completed in 1886, when Steiner was twenty-five, and is clear proof of his comprehensive grasp of Goethe's way of thinking. The book is titled, >Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, Theory of Knowledge in Goethe's Conception of the World, and is one of the most basic of Rudolf Steiner's major writings.

In 1886 Nietzsche, now in his forty-second year, wrote his Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, a large part of which was composed during his residence in Italy. This was his first attempt to deal with the subject of the origin of morals. The reaction to the book was generally unfavorable, although Jacob Burckhardt in Basel and Hyppolyte Taine in Paris wrote appreciatively of it.

On July 8th Nietzsche wrote his sister, “My health is actually quite normal, but my soul is very sensitive and is filled with longing for good friends of my own kind. Get me a small circle of men who will listen to me and understand me, and I shall be cured. ...” No words could better express the poignancy of the pathetic struggle for health and the longing for human beings who “understand.”

In 1887 came his Zur Genealogie der Moral, The Genealogy of Morals, a further development of the subject which had occupied his mind for some time.

Finally, in 1888 came the publicizing of his break with Richard Wagner upon the appearance of Neitzsche's book, Der Fall Wagner, The Case of Wagner. The volume produced a sensation. It was the first of Nietzsche's works to be reviewed by the public press, and for the first time Nietzsche attracted widespread attention as an author.

Not long before this, Nietzsche had written, “I am the author of fifteen books, and never yet have I seen an honest German review of any of them.” Even though this may have been the case, nevertheless Nietzsche had had devoted and entirely capable readers during all his productive years. Among these were Jacob Burckhardt, the Swiss historian, and Hyppolite Taine, the French critic, as we have seen, and also August Strindberg, the Swedish dramatist, and Georg Brandes, the Danish literary historian. It was Brandes who wrote his famous essay about Nietzsche in 1888, thus making his name known in leading intellectual circles throughout Europe. Nietzsche's books began to sell widely. Fame had come at last. ...

But Nietzsche was fast wearing out; day by day he was fighting against fearful odds. In a pitiful letter to Brandes late in the year, he said, “I have resigned my professorship at the University; I am three parts blind. ...”

Somehow he managed to complete his Götzendämmerung, Twilight of Idols, before the year came to a close.

With the dawn of New Year's Day, 1889, the battle Nietzsche had waged so long was nearly over. For four days he struggled against the gathering shadows, but finally the light of his consciousness flickered out.

On the fourth of January Nietzsche wrote his last letter in pencil on a scrap of paper torn from a child's notebook. It was addressed to Georg Brandes from Turin: “To the friend Georg: When once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me; the difficulty now is to get rid of me.” The letter was signed, “The Crucified One.”

Nietzsche was forty-five years of age; the long night of spiritual darkness began. ...

While at work on Goethe's natural scientific writings, Steiner was active in the literary and artistic circles of Vienna in the last two years of the eighties. He had many friends among writers, poets, musicians, architects, journalists, scientists and the clergy. Before the Goethe Society of Vienna in 1888 he gave a lecture which reflected his keen interest in the question of artistic beauty. This lecture was subsequently published under the title, Goethe als Vater einer neuen Ästhetik, Goethe as Father of a New Aesthetics.

This year was marked by Steiner's first journey into Germany. This was in response to a letter from the administration of the Goethe-Schiller Archives at Weimar inviting him to act as a collaborator on the famous Weimar Edition of Goethe's works then in preparation under commission from the Archduchess Sophie of Saxony. Steiner was well received at Weimar, and from there went to Berlin where he made the acquaintance of Eduard von Hartmann, as we have already seen.

The reading of Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, in 1889 was Steiner's first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings. He said, “I was fascinated ... yet repelled at the same time. I found it difficult to discover a right attitude toward Nietzsche. I loved his style, I loved his daring, but I did not love the way he spoke of most significant matters without entering into them in ... full consciousness. But then I saw that he said many things to which I was very closely related by my own spiritual experience. I felt myself near to his struggle. To me Nietzsche seemed to be one of the most tragic figures of the time.”

“I felt that Nietzsche photographed the world from the point to which a deeply significant personality was forced if he had to subsist on the spiritual substance of that time alone, that is, if the vision of the spiritual world did not penetrate into his consciousness ...

“This was the picture of Nietzsche that appeared in my thought. It revealed to me the personality who did not see the spirit, but in whom unconsciously the spirit fought against the unspiritual views of the age ...”

Steiner's move from Vienna to Weimar was the beginning of a new phase of his life. As a free collaborator in the Goethe-Schiller Archives he could observe events from the vantage point of one of the centers of the cultural life of his time. He came to know many of the leading personalities of the day. He had conversation with men like Hermann Grimm, the art historian and Goethe scholar, Ernst Haeckel, the scientist and German interpreter of Darwin, Ludwig Laistner, author and literary advisor to the internationally-known Cotta publishing firm, and many others. Laistner invited Steiner to edit editions of Schopenhauer and Jean Paul Richter, which were published by Cotta in their Library of World Literature. Steiner fulfilled this task, including writing introductions to the writings of both authors.

In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. His thesis dealt with the scientific teaching of Fichte. In somewhat enlarged form this thesis appeared under the title, Wahrheit und Wissenchaft, Truth and Science, as the preface to Steiner's chief philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom, 1894.

And now events occurred which finally brought Rudolf Steiner into the company of those around Nietzsche, who was being cared for at the home of his mother in Naumberg.

In his autobiography Steiner describes a significant meeting: “One day Nietzsche's sister, Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, visited the Goethe-Schiller Archives. She was about to take the first step toward forming the Nietzsche Archives, and wanted to know how the Goethe-Schiller Archives were managed. A short time afterward the publisher of Nietzsche's works, Fritz Koegel, also appeared in Weimar, and I came to know him. ...

“I am thankful to Frau Foerster-Nietzsche that during the first of my many visits (to Nietzsche's home), she led me into the room of Friedrich Nietzsche. There on a couch he lay in spirit-night, with his marvelously beautiful brow, that of artist and thinker in one. It was early in the afternoon. Those eyes, which even in thir dimness gave the effect of soul penetration, still took in a picture of the surrounding, but this had no entrance into the soul. One stood there and Nietzsche was unaware of it. And yet one could have believed that this spiritually illuminated countenance expressed a soul which had formed thoughts within itself all morning, and now wished to rest for a while. A deep inner shudder which siezed my soul ... transformed itself into an understanding for the genius whose look was directed toward me, but which did not meet mine ...

“And before my soul stood the soul of Nietzsche, as if floating above his head, already boundless in its spirit light, freely surrendered to the spirit world, for which it had longed before this darkened condition, but did not find. ...

“Previously I had read the Nietzsche who had written; now I saw the Nietzsche who, from far distant spirit fields carried within his body ideas which still shimmered in beauty, despite the fact that on the way they had lost their original power of light. I saw a soul which had brought rich gold of enlightenment from earlier earth lives, but which it could not bring to full radiance in this life. I had admired what Nietzsche had written, but now behind my admiration I glimpsed a radiant picture.

“In my thoughts I could only stammer about what I had seen, and that stammering is the content of my book. ... It was the picture of Nietzsche which had inspired it.

“Frau Foerster-Nietzsche had asked that I arrange the Nietzsche library. Thus I was permitted to spend several weeks in the Nietzsche Archives in Naumberg. It was a beautiful task that brought before me books that Nietzsche had read. His spirit lived in the impressions these volumes made. ... A book by Emerson, covered with marginal notes, bore traces of the most devoted, intense study. ...

“My relationship with the Nietzsche Archives was a very stimulating episode in my life in Weimar. ...”

In 1897 Nietzsche's mother died, and his sister took him into her home, where he passed his last years. In this same year Rudolf Steiner wrote his Goethes Weltanschauung, Goethe's Conception of the World, a rich harvest from his work in Vienna and Weimar in close study of Goethe's contribution to the knowledge of man and nature. This book marked the end of Steiner's residence in Weimar, for he now moved to Berlin to assume the editorship of Das Magazin für Litteratur, a well-known literary periodical which had been founded by Joseph Lehmann in 1832.

On the twenty-fifth of August, 1900, Friedrich Nietzsche died. He was buried in the graveyard at Röcken near the church where his father had preached, and the parsonage where he had been born fifty-six years before.

In Berlin, two weeks after Friedrich Nietzsche's death, Rudolf Steiner gave a Memorial Address in his honor, the text of which is included in the present volume.

In his Fors Clavigera, John Ruskin wrote, “Youth is properly a forming time—that in which a man makes himself, or is made, what he is to be. Then comes the time of labor, when, having become the best he can be, he does the best he can do. Then the time of death, which, in happy lives, is very short; but always a time. The ceasing to breathe is only the end of death.”

For the Fighter for Freedom, the end of death had come at last.

PAUL MARSHALL ALLEN

Englewood, New Jersey
February, 1960

One of the outstanding figures in world history is Julian the Apostate (a successor of Constantine) who fell by the hand of an assassin in the campaign against the Persians in the year A.D. 363 (note 1). Julian occupies a special place in the history of the West. His life and career show how the course of world history is determined by the clash of contending forces. I pointed out in my previous lecture that in Constantine we have a personality who had to abandon the former coercive measures practised by the majority of the earlier emperors when they sought initiation into the Mysteries. To compensate for this he therefore did everything in his power to advance the cause of exoteric Christianity in the Empire.

Now from earliest childhood Julian was held in low esteem by the Imperial family and their adherents. In the age with which we are dealing it was the custom to anticipate the future of an individual such as Julian by resorting to prenatal prophecies. The Imperial family had been obliged to conclude from the predictions of the Sibylline oracles that Julian would actively oppose the policy pursued by the Emperor Constantine. From the first, therefore, they tried to prevent Julian from being raised to the purple. It was decided that he should be murdered while still a child and preparations were made to have him butchered along with his brother. There was a strange aura attaching to Julian which inspired terror in those around him and countless stories relating to his personality testify to the fact that there was something uncanny about him. On one occasion during his campaign in Gaul a somnambulist cried out as the army passed by: “There is the man who will restore the old Gods and their images.”

The appearance of Julian at this moment in history must be seen as something predestined, something deeply significant. As often happens in such cases his life was spared lest his murder should bring greater disaster in its train. People persuaded themselves that whatever steps he might take against the policies of Constantine could be quickly nullified. And precautionary measures were taken to neutralize the dangerous tendencies of Julian's make-up and his leanings towards Paganism. In the first place it was decided to give him a sound Christian education which accorded with the ideas of Constantine. It was wasted effort and met with no response. Anything which had survived from the ancient Hellenic traditions fascinated him. Where powerful forces are at work in such a personality they ultimately prevail. And so, because his mentors sought to protect him from dangerous associations he was driven into the arms of Hellenic tutors and was introduced to Hellenic culture and civilization. When he grew older Julian learned how the neo-Platonic philosophers were imbued with the spirit of Hellenism and in consequence he was finally initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis. Thus at a time when the Roman Emperors had already dispensed with the principle of initiation, an initiate in the person of Julian once again sat on the throne of the Caesars.

Everything that Julian undertook must be judged in the light of his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries (and history has been at great pains to misrepresent his actions in every possible way). In order to form a true estimate of such a personality as Julian we must give due weight to the effects of this initiation. What spiritual benefit had Julian derived from his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries? Through direct spiritual perception he learned the secrets of cosmic and world evolution, the spiritual origin of the world and how spiritual forces operate in the planetary and solar systems. He learned to understand certain things which were quite incomprehensible to his contemporaries (with the exception of a few Greek initiates), namely, the relation of solar influences and the Being of the Sun to the old Hermes-Logos. He understood the meaning of the Pythagorean maxim: “Thou shalt not speak against the Sun!” This does not refer, of course, to the physical sun but to the Spirit which is concealed behind the Sun. He knew that the ancient sacred traditions ascribed the origin of the world to the spiritual Being of the Sun and above all that man must recover his relation to the spiritual Sun if he is to penetrate to the source of his existence.

Julian therefore was aware of the ancient Sun-Mystery. He realized that the physical sun is but the external form of a spiritual Sun which can be awakened in the soul of man through initiation, and when awakened can reveal to him the intimate connection between the universe and the historical life of man on Earth. It was clear to Julian that the world can never be ordered on a basis of rationalism, that only those who are able to be in touch with the Sun Logos are in any way fitted to have a voice in the ordering of the world. He had to recognize that the movements of the celestial bodies and the great historical movements of mankind are governed by a common law.

Even a Church Father such as St. Chrysostom was aware of the existence of an ancient Sun-Mystery, since he went so far as to declare that men are so dazzled by the physical sun that they cannot penetrate to the spiritual Sun. The soul of St. Chrysostom was still illumined by a ray of wisdom from olden times, but in those around him hardly a trace of it remained. It is clear that scarcely a vestige of understanding remained for that method of awakening the soul to the secrets of the universe which had been communicated through the ancient Mysteries and which were certainly communicated to Julian who was one of the last to be instructed in that method. He was therefore surrounded entirely by adherents of Constantine, by those who echoed the thoughts of Constantine. It is true that in the West, up to the end of the ninth century we find outstanding personalities even amongst the Popes, who were still inspired by the ancient Mystery wisdom; but the real opposition came from Rome which set out to nullify the efforts of these individuals and to pursue in its place a definite policy of its own towards the traditions of the ancient Mysteries. I shall say a few words about this later. In effect, Julian only came in contact with a very exoteric form of Christianity.

Through complicated psychological processes which are difficult to describe in detail he lighted upon the idea of utilizing the last surviving remnants of initiation in order to ensure continuity in evolution. In reality he was not an opponent of Christianity; he simply favoured the continuity of Hellenism. He was more interested in promoting Hellenism than in opposing Christianity. With passionate enthusiasm he strove to arrest the decline of Hellenism and to transmit its traditions to posterity. He was opposed to any sudden break in continuity, any radical change. As an initiate of Eleusis he knew that the policies he proposed to embark upon could not be realized unless one was in close touch with the spiritual forces operating in the sensible world, and that if we seek to introduce new impulses into world evolution by appealing to physical and psychic forces alone, then we are “speaking against the Sun” in the Pythagorean sense. Julian had no such intention; indeed his purpose was quite the reverse. In effect he accepted one of the greatest challenges that it is possible to imagine.

Now we must not forget that in Rome at that time and throughout the whole of Southern Europe there was active opposition to this challenge. Remember that up to the time of Constantine, in large sections of the population the last remnants of ancient cults had been preserved. Today the question of miracles is a real thorn in the side of Biblical exegesis, because people refuse to read the Gospels from the standpoint of the age to which they, the Gospels, belong. The question of miracles raised no problems for the contemporaries of the Evangelists, for they were aware of the existence of rites and ceremonies from which men derived spiritual forces which they were able to control.

Whilst, on the one hand, Christianity was introduced as a political measure which culminated in Constantine's edict of toleration, so attempts were made on the other hand, to suppress the ancient pagan rites. Endless laws were promulgated by Rome which forbade the celebration of rites which derived their power from the spiritual world. These laws, it is true, declared that the old superstitions must cease, that no one may practise ritual magic in order to injure others and no one may communicate with the dead, and so on, but these were only pretexts. The real purpose of these laws was to eradicate root and branch any traces of pagan cults which had survived from ancient times. Wherever possible, history has endeavoured to hush up or to conceal the real facts of the situation. But our earliest historical records were the work of priests and monks in the monasteries (a fact which modern science, which claims to be “objective and to accept nothing on authority”, studiously ignores). The avowed object of the monasteries (i.e. priests and monks) was to suppress all knowledge of the true character of antiquity and to prevent the essential teachings of the pagan Mysteries from being transmitted to posterity.

And so Julian saw the vanishing world of antiquity in a totally different light from the forerunners of Constantine. Through his initiation he knew that the human soul was related to the spiritual world. He could only hope to succeed in the task he had undertaken—to use the forces of the old principle of initiation in order to further the continuity of human evolution—by resisting the current attitude to man's evolution. Because of his initiation Julian was in reality a man with a profound and sincere love of truth, a sense for truth that was totally foreign to Constantine. Indeed Julian's profound respect for truth has not its like in the history of the West. With his deep instinct for truth that had been fortified by his initiation he turned his attention to teachings of the universities and schools of his day. He found that the Christian dogma had been introduced into the schools in the form that had existed since the time of Constantine. Armed with this dogma the teachers gave their personal interpretations of the Hellenistic writers whose works were centred round the figures of Zeus, Apollo, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Hermes-Mercury and so on. And Julian said to himself: “These teachers are the most outrageous sophists. How can they presume to expound ancient writings whose authors were convinced that the old gods were still living forces in the world? On what grounds do these teachers presume to interpret these writings when, by the very nature of their dogmas, they must deny the existence of these gods?” Julian's instinct for truth was outraged. He therefore forbade those who, by virtue of their Christian dogma were unable to believe in the old gods, to expound the ancient writings in the schools. If today we had the same honesty of purpose as Julian you can well imagine how much would be excluded from the curricula of our schools!

Julian wished to meet the challenge of the current trends which none the less were a necessity from another point of view. In the first place he had to come to terms with the Gospels, which had arisen in a totally different way from the knowledge imparted to him in the Eleusinian Mysteries. He could not reconcile himself to the way in which the Gospels had arisen. He said to himself: If that which is manifested in the Christ is a genuine inspiration that stems from the Mysteries then it must be possible to find it in the Mysteries, for it must have been incorporated in the Mystery-teachings. He wanted to ascertain if it were possible to continue the ancient Mystery-teachings. In the first place he was only familiar with the Christianity of his time in its exoteric aspect. He decided to make an experiment—not the kind of experiment that relies purely on human expedients (that would have seemed childish to him)—but to undertake an experiment that had a spiritual significance. He reasoned as follows: It has been prophesied that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed, not a single stone would remain standing. This has indeed come to pass. But if this prophecy could be discredited, if its fulfilment could be prevented then the mission of Christianity could not be accomplished. At the cost of great capital outlay Julian decided therefore to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. A large number of workmen was assembled to begin the reconstruction. Now the whole affair must be regarded from a spiritual standpoint; it was not men alone, but gods, whom Julian set out to challenge. And it is an undoubted fact that can be demonstrated historically—in so far as historical facts can be demonstrated, even externally, although internal evidence leaves no doubt of their truth—that each of the workmen engaged on the work of reconstruction had a vision; he saw tongues of flame licking over the place where he was working and was obliged to withdraw. The undertaking was abandoned; but we recognize the high purpose that inspired Julian to undertake this venture.

Julian's experiment miscarried. After he had failed to discredit the prophecy of the destruction of the temple, he decided to approach the problem from another angle. His new plan was no less boldly conceived. The time had not yet come when the evolution of Europe had been influenced by that spiritual current which owed its origin to the fact that one of the greatest Church Fathers, Augustine (note 2), could not rise to a certain idea because at that time he lacked the necessary spiritual development. You know perhaps from your study of history—and I have referred to this on frequent occasions when discussing the Faust legend—that Augustine had originally been a Manichaean. Manichaeism originated in Persia and claimed to understand Christ Jesus better than Rome and Constantinople. This doctrine (unfortunately it is not yet permissible today to unveil the ultimate secrets of this doctrine, even in our present circle) filtered through into Europe in later times in various guises and still survived, though in a corrupt form, in its ramifications in the sixteenth century when the Faust legend was first recorded. By a happy intuition the revival of the Faust legend by Goethe preserved something of the spirit of Manichaeism. Julian thought on the grand scale; his thought embraced all mankind. In the presence of a man such as Julian we realize only too clearly how limited are the thoughts of ordinary mortals. The doctrine of the “Son of Man” will of necessity assume different forms according to our capacity to form conceptions of the real nature of man himself. Our conceptions of the “Son of Man” must therefore depend upon our conceptions of man; the one involves the other. In this respect men differ widely. At the present time people have only the most superficial understanding of such matters.

In Sanscrit the word for man is Manushya. This word expresses the basic feeling which a large number of people associate with the idea of humanity. When we use this vocable to describe man we are referring to the spiritual aspect of man, we are appraising man primarily as a spiritual being. If we wish to express the idea that man is spirit and his physical aspect is only the manifestation of spirit, then we use the word “Manushya”.

From our earlier discussions you know that we can study man from another angle. We can consider him mainly from his psychic aspect. We shall then give more attention to man as soul than to man as spirit; his physical aspect and everything that is related to his external aspect will be of secondary importance. We shall then be able to characterize man from the information derived from his inner life which is reflected in the eye or in the fact that he holds his head erect. If you look into the derivation of the Greek word anthropos you will find that it gives a rough indication of this aspect. Those who characterize man with the word Manushya or some similar vocable see him primarily as spirit, as that which descends from the spiritual world. Those who characterize man with a word resembling the Greek word anthropos (and this applies especially to the Greeks themselves) are expressing his soul nature.

Now there is a third possibility; we can concentrate on the external, the corporeal or somatic aspect, which is the product of physical inheritance. We shall then characterize man with the word homo that signifies (approximately) the procreator or the procreated.

Here are three conceptions of man. Julian who was aware of this trichotomy felt the need to look for a spiritual interpretation of the “Son of Man”. The thought occurred to him: “I have already been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Perhaps it is possible to have myself initiated into the Persian Mysteries and into the Mysteries which are in accordance with the doctrine of the Manichaeans. By this means perhaps I may be able to achieve my aim—the continuity of the pagan Mysteries.” This was a momentous thought. Just as Alexander's campaign had deeper motives than the mere conquest of Asia, so Julian's expedition had other motives than the conquest of Persia. He wished to find out whether he could further his objective with the help of the Persian Mysteries.

In order to understand the problem that faced Julian we must ask: What was it that Augustine could not understand in Manichaeism? I have already said that the time had not yet come to reveal the ultimate secrets of Manichaeism but it is possible to give a few indications. In his youth, Augustine was deeply attached to these teachings and they made a profound impression on him. He later exchanged the teachings of Manichaeism for Roman Catholicism. What did he not understand in Manichaeism? Why did he reject it, what was beyond his comprehension in Manichaeism?

The Manichaeans did not cultivate abstract ideas which divorced the world of thought from the world of reality. The Manichaeans and the initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries were alike incapable of abstract thinking. In earlier lectures I attempted to show the difference between logical concepts and concepts in conformity with reality. The basic principle of Manichaeism was to cultivate only those ideas which are consistent with reality. Not that unreal ideas do not play a part in life; unfortunately they play a large part in life, especially at the present day, and the part they play is disastrous. And so, amongst other things, it was consistent with Manichaeism to form representations that were not purely abstract, but which were sufficiently powerful to intervene in the external world and to play an active part in that world. The conception of Christ Jesus that was commonly held by people at that time would have been quite impossible for the Manichaeans. And what was this conception? They had a somewhat nebulous idea of the Christ who had incarnated in Jesus through whom a change had been brought about in Earth evolution. Ideas about Christ have become incredibly vague, especially in the nineteenth century.

If we are really honest and sincere we cannot say that the notions afforded by Christian dogma about Christ and His mission will take us very far. If Christian ideas are not powerful enough to envisage an Earth which is not the graveyard of humanity, but the seed-bed of a transformed humanity, if we cannot envisage Earth evolution differently from the natural scientists of today who predict that life on the Earth will one day become extinct, then all our conceptions of Christ are vain. For even if we believe that Christ has brought new life to the Earth, it is difficult for us to imagine that matter can be so spiritualized that we can envisage it as capable of being transmuted from its present earthly condition to its future condition. We have need of far more powerful ideas in order to be able to conceive of the Earth's metamorphosis to the Jupiter condition.

I said recently in a public lecture that natural science thinks—or rather calculates—that if the forces of nature as they exist today were to persist for millions of years, then a condition would arise according to Dewar (I mentioned in Lecture Three his lecture before the Royal Institute) when, if the walls of a room were painted with albumen, it would be possible to read the newspaper in its phosphorescent light. And I spoke of the scientist who declared that in the distant future milk would be solid and emit a blue light and so on. These ideas are the inevitable consequence of nebulous thinking that is unable to come to terms with reality. Such calculations are equivalent to deducing from the modifications in the human stomach over a period of four or five years what its condition would be after two hundred and fifty years. I am able to arrive at this conclusion by extending my calculations over a large number of years. The scientist calculates what will be the condition of the Earth a million years hence; on the same principle I can calculate the condition of the human stomach after two hundred and fifty years—only by that time the man will be dead! Just as the geologists calculate the condition of the Earth millions of years ago, so too on the same principle one could calculate, by showing the modifications in a child's stomach over a period of a week or a fortnight, the condition of the same stomach two hundred and fifty years ago—but of course the child would not have been alive at that time. Concepts cannot provide a total picture of reality. Scientific concepts are valid for the period of time between 6000–7000 B.C. and A.D. 6000–7000, but not beyond that time.

We must think of the evolution of man in terms of a totally different time scale. And the Christ Being must occupy a central place in this future evolution. I said therefore on a previous occasion that we must distinguish between what the Middle Ages called “mystical marriage” and what Christian Rosenkreutz called “chymical marriage”. Mystical marriage is simply an inner experience. As many theosophists used to say (and perhaps still say): if one looks within, if one withdraws into oneself one becomes united with the divine Being! This was depicted in such roseate hues that, after an hour's lecture, the members emerged with the firm conviction that if they took firm control of their inner life, if they practised self-discipline, they would experience the first intimations of the divine within. The chymical marriage of Christian Rosenkreutz imagines forces to be active in man which embrace the whole man, which so transform his being that when he is purified from the dross of the physical body he is translated to the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan conditions.

The aim of Manichaeism was the conquest of evil and of matter by thought. Julian was brought face to face with the deeper implications of the problem of evil and the relation of Christ Jesus to this problem. He hoped to find an answer through initiation into the Persian Mysteries and to return to Europe with the solution. But unfortunately he fell by an assassin's hand during the Persian campaign. It can be proved historically that this was the work of an adherent of Constantine. Thus we see that in the course of history the attempt to establish the “principle of continuity” was fraught with tragedy and that in the case of Julian it led into a blind alley.

In the following years the Augustinian principle triumphed—ideas that in any way echoed Manichaeism were forbidden, i.e. the inclusion of material ideas in spiritual thinking. The West therefore was driven to an abstract mode of thinking and in the course of time this mode of thinking permeated the whole of Western Europe. Only a few of the foremost minds rebelled against this tendency and one of the most celebrated of these was Goethe. His whole cast of mind was opposed to abstract theorizing. And one of those who succumbed to it most was Kant. Take, for example, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason—I know that what I am about to say is heretical—and let us look at the main propositions. If you reverse each of these propositions you will arrive at the truth. And the same applies particularly to his theory of space and time. You can equally well reverse every proposition and you will then arrive at conclusions that are valid for the spiritual world. You can gather from this why some people have a professional interest in misrepresenting Goethe (the great opponent of Kant) as I showed in the case of Haller, who wrote: “no created spirit can penetrate into the inner recesses of nature”—a complete distortion of Goethe's conception of nature.

If we bear this point of view in mind, we can appreciate at its true worth Julian's essay which was directed against Pauline Christianity (note 2). It is a remarkable document, not so much for its contents, but for its similarity to certain writings of the nineteenth century. This may seem paradoxical, but the facts are as follows: Julian's polemic against Christianity musters every kind of argument against Christianity, against the historical Jesus and certain Christian dogmas, with passionate sincerity. And when we compare these arguments with the objections raised by the liberal theology of the nineteenth century (note 3) and the later theology of the adherents of Drews against the historicity of Christ, when we consider the whole field of literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which reveals most careful, painstaking and thorough philological investigation, there are endless repetitions, so that one has to consult whole libraries—we find that we can piece together certain guiding principles. The leading critics began to undertake a comparative study of the Gospels and found many discrepancies in the texts. But all these critical methods were already anticipated by Julian. The nineteenth-century criticism offered nothing new that was not already known to Julian. Julian spoke out of a natural creative gift whilst the nineteenth-century criticism displayed enormous industry, great erudition and downright theological sophistry.

Julian therefore was engaged in a titanic struggle. He finally attempted, by reviving Manichaeism, to bring about continuity in the evolution of the pagan Mysteries. Bear in mind how the most enlightened minds such as Goethe felt an instinctive urge to recapture the spirit of ancient Greece! Imagine what would have happened if Julian's policy had been crowned with success! That he was doomed to fail was a necessity of the time. And we shall not understand the reason for his failure if we belittle his great achievements, if we fail to see him as a titanic figure, fighting for a realistic understanding of the relations between man and the universe. And it is of paramount importance today to recall these great moments in the historical evolution of the West. For we are living in an age from which we shall not emerge with a healthy outlook unless we make a fresh assessment of the aims of Julian the Apostate. It was not possible in his time—herein lies his great tragedy—to reconcile the old principle of initiation with the real essence of Christianity. Today this has become possible and we must not fail to translate the possibility into reality if the world and mankind are not to suffer evolutionary decline. People must realize the need for regeneration in all spheres of life and above all the crying need to restore communication with the spiritual world.

First of all we must understand the factors that militate against this necessary regeneration. Today we are afraid of definite, clear-cut ideas which could lead to such an understanding. There is no lack of physical courage today—but we are certainly lacking in intellectual courage! Mankind today is unwilling to face realities and this is the greatest need of our time. For if our age is not to end in futility it must learn to understand the principle of the creative spirit and what it means when it is said that the spirit, when creative, is as powerful a force as the instincts, save that our instincts work in the dark, whilst the creative spirit works in the light of the Sun, i.e. the spiritual Sun. This is what our age must learn to understand. And especially in our own time many forces are still arrayed against any understanding of the creative spirit and are actively engaged in suppressing that knowledge.

Cato's policy was to establish a highly centralized political system. In order to achieve this he felt it was necessary to exile the adherents of Hellenistic philosophy. “They only prate”, he said, “and that has a disturbing effect upon the decrees of the authorities.” And the celebrated Florentine Machiavelli was also of this opinion and gave high praise to Cato because he proposed to banish those who used the weapon of spiritual knowledge in order to raise objections to State decrees. Machiavelli fully appreciated the fact that in the Roman Empire any interference with the structure of the social order was on certain occasions punishable by death. Intercourse with the spiritual world was anathema especially to the Roman Empire and the successor States in Europe. Every effort was therefore made to ensure that the greatest uncertainty should prevail in these matters and they were hushed up as much as possible. If a conception of the Mystery of Golgotha that is both radical and uncompromising gains a firm foothold in the world, then we shall have to modify considerably our mental attitude. This is not to our liking, but it will have to come. And a way must be found to arrive at a real understanding of the nature of Christ. In our next lecture I propose to discuss how we can directly experience the being and nature of Christ today.

We shall see this whole question in wider perspective through a study of two contrasting figures—Constantine who inaugurated the exoteric side of Western culture and Julian the Apostate who, when the times were out of joint (for him), attempted to take up the struggle against the exoteric side of Western evolution. It is a curious phenomenon that if anyone with a slight knowledge—I do not mean of occult facts, but with a real knowledge of those occult facts that can still be found in ancient writings—makes a study of Christian dogma, if, for example, we inquire into the origin of the Mass, or if ritual and dogma are studied in the light of this occult knowledge derived from ancient writings, we discover the most extraordinary things. What lies behind these dogmas and cult acts? Not I alone, but countless authors who have studied these questions from this standpoint have come to the conclusion that in ritual and dogma a large residuum of paganism has been preserved or has survived, so that an attempt was made for example by the French writer Drach (note 4), who was an authority on Hebraism, to demonstrate that the dogma and ritual of the Catholic Church were simply a revival of paganism. And others attempted to show that certain people were at pains to conceal from the faithful the fact that the dogmas and ritual of the Church were imbued with paganism.

Now it would have been a strange phenomenon if paganism in particular had survived quite unconsciously. In that event, we might ask, in what way would the survival of paganism have contributed to the survival of the Roman Empire? And what would have been the position of Julian the Apostate? If many recent writers are right in saying that the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, for example, is in essence a pagan sacrifice and that Julian had been at great pains to preserve and perpetuate the ancient pagan rites, then to some extent Julian has achieved his aim after all. A study of these two contrasting figures, Constantine and Julian, raises countless problems of the highest importance, “thorny” problems as Nietzsche calls them, problems which are fraught with fateful consequences for us today and which without question will become the central problems of our time.

I propose to return to these problems in my next lecture.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Julian had received a strict Christian education; during his internment in Cappadocia he began to doubt the validity of Christianity and when sent to Athens in 354, the intellectual centre of Greece, he secretly abandoned Christian beliefs. His treatise “Against the Galileans” (referred to here) summarizes his polemical arguments against Christianity. Briefly they are as follows: Knowledge of God is natural to man and does not come by teaching. The story of Eden in the Old Testament is a fable and the account of Creation is inferior to that of Plato. The idea of a jealous God and a chosen people is unacceptable. The Mosaic law is barbarous; the Decalogue common to all nations. No man is better for reading the Jewish scriptures. The New Testament is full of inconsistencies. Matthew and Luke disagree on the genealogy of Jesus. Peter and Paul were hypocrites. Matt. IV, 5, is illogical and in Luke XXII, 42-47, since the disciples were asleep, who could have told him the story of the angel? The Christians were fanatics and cheerfully massacred heretics. By contrast the Greeks were mild and forbearing, they were superior in wisdom and intelligence. Christianity has achieved little or nothing in the fields of science, astronomy, arithmetic and music. The achievements of Plato, Socrates, Aristides, Thales, Lycurgus, Agesilaus and Archedemus, the Sibyls, the Delphic Oracle and the pagan Mysteries surpassed anything that Christianity had to offer.

The formal refutation of Julian's treatise was “Pro Christiana Religione” composed between A.D. 429 and 441 by Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria.

Note 2. Manichaeism and Augustine. Augustine (A.D. 345–410), an African by birth, was a Manichaean for ten years. He became dissatisfied with Manichaeism and when Faustus, a leader of the sect, failed to resolve his doubts he abandoned Manichaean teachings. (See Confessions, Books IV and V.) Augustine repaired to Rome where he was converted by St. Ambrose in A.D. 386. His chief works were directed against the Manichaeans, e.g. Books against the Manichaeans and On the Utility of Believing. The Scriptures were a means to faith and hope and the Canon was the testimony of Christianity in the Church. His dictum, “Better a man's body be destroyed than his soul” leads to the Inquisition. When Christianity became the State religion he distinguished between “Civitas Dei”, which was perfect and in which all men were equal in the sight of God, and “Civitas terrena”, which of necessity was imperfect. It was the devil's domain where sinful men had to submit to the authorities. Augustine was the founder of Western monasticism and monastic spirituality and exercised considerable influence on Pascal, Fenelon and Port Royal. On Manichaeism in general, see F. C. Burkitt, Religion of the Manichees 1925) and H. C. Puesch, Le Manicheisme, son fondateur, sa doctrine (1949).

Note 3. Liberal theology. The chief representatives of Liberal Protestant theology in the nineteenth century were Bauer, founder of the Tübingen school of New Testament research, and Ritschl (1822–89) who rejected metaphysics and mysticism and developed an objective and scientific method of research. The great exponent of the Ritschl school was A. von Harnack (1851–1930) whose History of Dogma and What is Christianity? are regarded as monuments of liberal historiography. Harnack eschewed metaphysical speculation, perfected the scientific-historical method and emphasized the need for source study and the faithful representation of facts. “The Gospel about Jesus does not belong to the Gospel preached by Jesus”, said Harnack. Radical historical research led to Bultmann's “demythologization”, the attempt to liberate the Church's teaching from the mythological language in which it is expressed. Myths, he said, need reinterpretation in terms of modern consciousness. The other burning question of the nineteenth century was: is the Gospel true and how can we know that it is true? Drews, Jensen and Kalthoff in Germany, J. M. Robertson, W. B. Smith and T. A. Jackson in England claimed that the Christ figure was a copy of the cult-god of pagan beliefs under another name.

Note 4. Drach (1791–1865) studied at various Talmudic Schools and was converted to Christianity, 1823. He went to Rome and was appointed librarian of propaganda.

The study of Spiritual Science should always go hand in hand with practical experience of how the mind works. It is impossible to get entirely clear about many things that we discussed in the last lecture unless one tries to get a kind of living grasp of what thinking involves in terms of actualities. For why is it that among the very persons whose profession it is to think about such questions, confusion reigns, for example, as to the relation between the general concept of the “triangle-in-general” and specific concepts of individual triangles? How is it that people puzzle for centuries over questions such as that of the hundred possible and the hundred real thalers cited by Kant? Why is it that people fail to pursue the very simple reflections that are necessary to see that there cannot really be any such thing as a “pragmatic” account of history, according to which the course of events always follows directly from preceding events? Why do people not reflect in such a way that they would be repelled by this impossible mode of regarding the history of man, so widely current nowadays? What is the cause of all these things?

The reason is that far too little trouble is taken over learning to handle with precision the activities of thinking, even by people whose business this should be. Nowadays everyone wants to feel that he has a perfect claim to say: “Think? Well, one can obviously do that.” So they begin to think. Thus we have various conceptions of the world; there have been many philosophers—a great many. We find that one philosopher is after this and another is after that, and that many fairly clever people have drawn attention to many things. If someone comes upon contradictions in these findings, he does not ponder over them, but he is quite pleased with himself, fancying that now he can “think” indeed. He can think again what those other fellows have thought out, and feels quite sure that he will find the right answer himself. For no one nowadays must make any concession to authority! That would deny the dignity of human nature! Everyone must think for himself. That is the prevailing notion in the realm of thought.

I do not know if people have reflected that this is not their attitude in other realms of life. No one feels committed to belief in authority or to a craving for authority when he has his coat made at the tailor's or his shoes at the shoemaker's. He does not say: “It would be beneath the dignity of man to let one's things be made by persons who are known to be thoroughly acquainted with their business.” He may perhaps even allow that it is necessary to learn these skills. But in practical life, with regard to thinking, it is not agreed that one must get one's conceptions of the world from quarters where thinking and much else has been learnt. Only rarely would this be conceded to-day.

This is one tendency that dominates our life in the widest circles, and is the immediate reason why human thinking is not a very widespread product nowadays. I believe this can be quite easily grasped. For let us suppose that one day everybody were to say: “What!—learn to make boots? For a long time that has been unworthy of man; we can all make boots.” I don't know if only good boots would come from it. At all events, with regard to the coining of correct thoughts in their conception of the world, it is from this sort of reasoning that men mostly take their start at the present day. This is what gives its deeper meaning to my remark of yesterday—that although thought is something a man is completely within, so that he can contemplate it in its inner being, actual thinking is not as common as one might suppose. Besides this, there is to-day a quite special pretension which could gradually go so far as to throw a veil over all clear thinking. We must pay attention to this also; at least we must glance at it.

Let us suppose the following. There was once in Görlitz a shoemaker named Jacob Boehme. He had learnt his craft well—how soles are cut, how the shoe is formed over the last, and how the nails are driven into the soles and leather. He knew all this down to the ground. Now supposing that this shoemaker, by name Jacob Boehme, had gone around and said: “I will now see how the world is constructed. I will suppose that there is a great last at the foundation of the world. Over this last the world-leather was once stretched; then the world-nails were added, and by means of them the world-sole was fastened to the world-upper. Then boot-blacking was brought into play, and the whole world-shoe was polished. In this way I can quite clearly explain to myself how in the morning it is bright, for then the shoe-polish of the world is shining, but in the evening it is soiled with all sorts of things; it shines no longer. Hence I imagine that every night someone has the duty of repolishing the world-boot. And thus arises the difference between day and night.” Let us suppose that Jacob Boehme had said this.

Yes, you laugh, for of course Jacob Boehme did not say this; but still he made good shoes for the people of Görlitz, and for that he employed his knowledge of shoe-making. But he also developed his grand thoughts, through which he wanted to build up a conception of the world; and for that he resorted to something else. He said to himself: My shoe-making is not enough for that; I dare not apply to the structure of the world the thoughts I put into making shoes. And in due course he arrived at his sublime thoughts about the world. Thus there was no such Jacob Boehme as the hypothetical figure I first sketched, but there was another one who knew how to set about things. But the hypothetical “Jacob Boehmes”, like the one you laughed over—they exist everywhere to-day.

For example, we find among them physicists and chemists who have learnt the laws governing the combination and separation of substances; there are zoologists who have learnt how one examines and describes animals; there are doctors who have learnt how to treat the physical human body, and what they themselves call the soul. What do they all do? They say: When a person wants to work out for himself a conception of the world, then he takes the laws that are learnt in chemistry, in physics, or in physiology—no others are admissible—and out of these he builds a conception of the world for himself. These people proceed exactly as the hypothetical shoemaker would have done if he had constructed the world-boot, only they do not notice that their world-conceptions come into existence by the very same method that produced the hypothetical world-boot. It does certainly seem rather grotesque if one imagines that the difference between day and night comes about through the soiling of shoe-leather and the repolishing of it in the night. But in terms of true logic it is in principle just the same if an attempt is made to build a world out of the laws of chemistry, physics, biology and physiology. Exactly the same principle! It is an immense presumption on the part of the physicist, the chemist, the physiologist, or the biologist, who do not wish to be anything else than physicist, chemist, physiologist, biologist, and yet want to have an opinion about the whole world. The point is that one should go to the root of things and not shirk the task of illuminating anything that is not so clear by tracing it back to its true place in the scheme of things. If you look at all this with method and logic, you will not need to be astonished that so many present-day conceptions of the world yield nothing but the “world-boot”. And this is something that can point us to the study of Spiritual Science and to the pursuit of practical trains of thought; something that can urge us to examine the question of how we must think in order to see where shortcomings exist in the world.

There is something else I should like to mention in order to show where lies the root of countless misunderstandings with regard to the ideas people have about the world. When one concerns oneself with world-conceptions, does one not have over and over again the experience that someone thinks this and someone else that; one man upholds a certain view with many good reasons (one can find good reasons for everything), while another has equally good reasons for his view; the first man contradicts his opponent with just as good reasons as those with which the opponent contradicts him. Sects arise in the world not, in the first place, because one person or another is convinced about the right path by what is taught here or there. Only look at the paths which the disciples of great men have had to follow in order to come to this or that great man, and then you will see that herein lies something important for us with regard to karma. But if we examine the outlooks that exist in the world to-day, we must say that whether someone is a follower of Bergson, or of Haeckel, or of this or that (karma, as I have already said, does not recognise the current world-conception) depends on other things than on deep conviction. There is contention on all sides!

Yesterday I said that once there were Nominalists, persons who maintained that general concepts had no reality, but were merely names. These Nominalists had opponents who were called Realists (the word had a different meaning then). The Realists maintained that general concepts are not mere words, but refer to quite definite realities. In the Middle Ages the question of Realism versus Nominalism was always a burning one, especially for theology, a sphere of thought with which present-day thinkers trouble themselves very little. For in the time when the question of Nominalism versus Realism arose (from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries) there was something that belonged to the most important confessions of faith, the question about the three “Divine Persons”—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—who form One Divine Being, but are still Three real Persons. The Nominalists maintained that these three Divine Persons existed only individually, the “Father” for Himself, the “Son” for Himself, and the “Holy Ghost” for Himself; and if one spoke of a “Collective God” Who comprised these Three, that was only a name for the Three. Thus Nominalism did away with the unity of the Trinity. In opposition to the Realists, the Nominalists not only explained away the unity, but even regarded it as heretical to declare, as the Realists did, that the Three Persons formed not merely an imaginary unity, but an actual one.

Thus Nominalism and Realism were opposites. And anyone who goes deeply into the literature of Realism and Nominalism during these centuries gets a deep insight into what human acumen can produce. For the most ingenious grounds were brought forward for Nominalism, just as much as for Realism. In those days it was more difficult to be reckoned as a thinker because there was no printing press, and it was not an easy thing to take part in such controversies as that between Nominalism and Realism. Anyone who ventured into this field had to be better prepared, according to the ideas of those times, than is required of people who engage in controversies nowadays. An immense amount of penetration was necessary in order to plead the cause of Realism, and it was equally so with Nominalism. How does this come about? It is grievous that things are so, and if one reflects more deeply on it, one is led to say: What use is it that you are so clever? You can be clever and plead the cause of Nominalism, and you can be just as clever and contradict Nominalism. One can get quite confused about the whole question of intelligence! It is distressing even to listen to what such characterisations are supposed to mean.

Now, as a contrast to what we have been saying, we will bring forward something that is perhaps not nearly so discerning as much that has been advanced with regard to Nominalism or to Realism, but it has perhaps one merit—it goes straight to the point and indicates the direction in which one needs to think.

Let us imagine the way in which one forms general concepts; the way in which one synthesizes a mass of details. We can do this in two ways: first as a man does in the course of his life through the world. He sees numerous examples of a certain kind of animal: they are silky or woolly, are of various colours, have whiskers, at certain times they go through movements that recall human “washing”, they eat mice, etc. One can call such creatures “cats”. Then one has formed a general concept. All these creatures have something to do with what we call “cats”. But now let us suppose that someone has had a long life, in the course of which he has encountered many cat-owners, men and women, and he has noticed that a great many of these people call their pets “Pussy”. Hence he classes all these creatures under the name of “Pussy”. Hence we now have the general concept “Cats” and the general concept “Pussy”, and a large number of individual creatures belonging in both cases to the general concept. And yet no one will maintain that the general concept “Pussy” has the same significance as the general concept “Cats”. Here the real difference comes out. In forming the general concept “Pussy” which is only a summary of names that must rank as individual names, we have taken the line, and rightly so, of Nominalism; and in forming the general concept “Cats” we have taken the line of Realism, and rightly so. In one case Nominalism is correct; in the other. Realism. Both are right. One must only apply these methods within their proper limits. And when both are right, it is not surprising that good reasons for both can be adduced. In taking the name “Pussy”, I have employed a somewhat grotesque example. But I can show you a much more significant example and I will do so at once.

Within the scope of our objective experience there is a whole realm where Nominalism—the idea that the collective term is only a name—is fully justified. We have “one”, “two”, “three”, “four”, “five”, and so on, but it is impossible to find in the expression “number” anything that has a real existence. “Number” has no existence. “One”, “two”, “three”, “five”, “six”,—they exist. But what I said in the last lecture, that in order to find the general concept one must let that which corresponds to it pass over into movement—this cannot be done with the concept “Number”. One “one” does not pass over into “two”. It must always be taken as “one”. Not even in thought can we pass over into two, or from two into three. Only the individual numbers exist, not “number” in general. As applied to the nature of numbers, Nominalism is entirely correct; but when we come to the single animal in relation to its genus, Realism is entirely correct. For it is impossible for a deer to exist, and another deer, and yet another, without there being the genus “deer”. The figure “two” can exist for itself, “one”, “seven”, etc., can exist for themselves. But in so far as anything real appears in number, the number is a quality, and the concept “number” has no specific existence. External things are related to general concepts in two different ways: Nominalism is appropriate in one case, and Realism in the other.

On these lines, if we simply give our thoughts the right direction, we begin to understand why there are so many disputes about conceptions of the world. People generally are not inclined, when they have grasped one standpoint, to grasp another as well. When in some realm of thought somebody has got hold of the idea “general concepts have no existence”, he proceeds to extend to it the whole make-up of the world. This sentence, “general concepts have no existence” is not false, for when applied to the particular realm which the person in question has considered, it is correct. It is only the universalising of it that is wrong. Thus it is essential, if one wants to form a correct idea of what thinking is, to understand clearly that the truth of a thought in the realm to which it belongs is no evidence for its general validity. Someone can offer me a perfectly correct proof of this or that and yet it will not hold good in a sphere to which it does not belong. Anyone, therefore, who intends to occupy himself seriously with the paths that lead to a conception of the world must recognise that the first essential is to avoid one-sidedness. That is what I specially want to bring out to-day. Now let us take a general look at some matters which will be explained in detail later on.

There are people so constituted that it is not possible for them to find the way to the Sprit, and to give them any proof of the Spirit will always be hard. They stick to something they know about, in accordance with their nature. Let us say they stick at something that makes the crudest kind of impression on them—Materialism. We need not regard as foolish the arguments they advance as a defence or proof of Materialism, for an immense amount of ingenious writing has been devoted to the subject, and it holds good in the first place for material life, for the material world and its laws.

Again, there are people who, owing to a certain inwardness, are naturally predisposed to see in all that is material only the revelation of the spiritual. Naturally, they know as well as the materialists do that, externally, the material world exists; but matter, they say, is only the revelation, the manifestation, of the underlying spiritual. Such persons may take no particular interest in the material world and its laws. As all their ideas of the spiritual come to them through their own inner activity, they may go through the world with the consciousness that the true, the lofty, in which one ought to interest oneself—all genuine reality—is found only in the Spirit; that matter is only illusion, only external phantasmagoria. This would be an extreme standpoint, but it can occur, and can lead to a complete denial of material life. We should have to say of such persons that they certainly do recognize what is most real, the Spirit, but they are one-sided; they deny the significance of the material world and its laws. Much acute thinking can be enlisted in support of the conception of the universe held by these persons. Let us call their conception of the universe: Spiritism. Can we say that the Spiritists are right? As regards the Spirit, their contentions could bring to light some exceptionally correct ideas, but concerning matter and its laws they might reveal very little of any significance. Can one say the Materialists are correct in what they maintain? Yes, concerning matter and its laws they may be able to discover some exceptionally useful and valuable facts; but in speaking of the Spirit they may utter nothing but foolishness. Hence we must say that both parties are correct in their respective spheres.

There can also be persons who say: “Yes, but as to whether in truth the world contains only matter, or only spirit, I have no special knowledge; the powers of human cognition cannot cope with that. One thing is clear—there is a world spread out around us. Whether it is based upon what chemists and physicists, if they are materialists, call atoms, I know not. But I recognize the external world; that is something I see and can think about. I have no particular reason for supposing that it is or is not spiritual at root. I restrict myself to what I see around me.” From the explanations already given we can call such Realists, and their concept of the universe: Realism. Just as one can enlist endless ingenuity on behalf of Materialism or of Spiritism, and just as one can be clever about Spiritism and yet say the most foolish things on material matters, and vice versa, so one can advance the most ingenious reasons for Realism, which differs from both Spiritism and Materialism in the way I have just described.

Again, there may be other persons who speak as follows. Around us are matter and the world of material phenomena. But this world of material phenomena is in itself devoid of meaning. It has no real meaning unless there is within it a progressive tendency; unless from this external world something can emerge towards which the human soul can direct itself, independently of the world. According to this outlook, there must be a realm of ideas and ideals within the world-process. Such people are not Realists, although they pay external life its due; their view is that life has meaning only if ideas work through it and give it purpose. It was under the influence of such a mood as this that Fichte once said: Our world is the sensualised material of our duty.² The adherents of such a world-outlook as this, which takes everything as a vehicle for the ideas that permeate the world-process, may be called Idealists and their outlook: Idealism. Beautiful and grand and glorious things have been brought forward on behalf of this Idealism. And in this realm that I have just described—where the point is to show that the world would be purposeless and meaningless if ideas were only human inventions and were not rooted in the world-process—in this realm Idealism is fully justified. But by means of it one cannot, for example, explain external reality. Hence one can distinguish this Idealism from other world-outlooks:

We now have side by side four justifiable world-outlooks, each with significance for its particular domain. Between Materialism and Idealism there is a certain transition. The crudest kind of materialism—one can observe it specially well in our day, although it is already on the wane—will consist in this, that people carry to an extreme the saying of Kant—Kant did not do this himself!—that in the individual sciences there is only so much real science as there is mathematics. This means that from being a materialist one can become a ready-reckoner of the universe, taking nothing as valid except a world composed of material atoms. They collide and gyrate, and then one calculates how they inter-gyrate. By this means one obtains very fine results, which show that this way of looking at things is fully justified. Thus you can get the vibration-rates for blue, red, etc.; you take the whole world as a kind of mechanical apparatus, and can reckon it up accurately. But one can become rather confused in this field. One can say to oneself: “Yes, but however complicated the machine may be, one can never get out of it anything like the perception of blue, red, etc. Thus if the brain is only a complicated machine, it can never give rise to what we know as soul-experiences.” But then one can say, as du Bois-Reymond once said: If we want to explain the world in strictly mathematical terms, we shall not be able to explain the simplest perception, but if we go outside a mathematical explanation, we shall be unscientific. The most uncompromising materialist would say, “No, I do not even calculate, for that would presuppose a superstition—it would imply that I assume that things are ordered by measure and number.” And anyone who raises himself above this crude materialism will become a mathematical thinker, and will recognize as valid only whatever can be treated mathematically. From this results a conception of the universe that really admits nothing beyond mathematical formulae. This may be called Mathematism.

Someone, however, might think this over, and after becoming a Mathematist he might say to himself: “It cannot be a superstition that the colour blue has so and so many vibrations. The world is ordered mathematically. If mathematical ideas are found to be real in the world, why should not other ideas have equal reality?” Such a person accepts this—that ideas are active in the world. But he grants validity only to those ideas that he discovers outside himself—not to any ideas that he might grasp from his inner self by some sort of intuition or inspiration, but only to those he reads from external things that are real to the senses. Such a person becomes a Rationalist, and his outlook on the world is that of Rationalism. If, in addition to the ideas that are found in this way, someone grants validity also to those gained from the moral and the intellectual realms, then he is already an Idealist. Thus a path leads from crude Materialism, by way of Mathematism and Rationalism, to Idealism.

But now Idealism can be enhanced. In our age there are some men who are trying to do this. They find ideas at work in the world, and this implies that there must also be in the world some sort of beings in whom the ideas can live. Ideas cannot live just as they are in any external object, nor can they hang as it were in the air. In the nineteenth century the belief existed that ideas rule history. But this was a confusion, for ideas as such have no power to work. Hence one cannot speak of ideas in history. Anyone who understands that ideas, if they are there are all, are bound up with some being capable of having ideas, will no longer be a mere Idealist; he will move on to the supposition that ideas are connected with beings. He becomes a Psychist and his world-outlook is that Psychism. The Psychist, who in his turn can uphold his outlook with an immense amount of ingenuity, reaches it only through a kind of one-sidedness, of which he can eventually become aware.

Here I must add that there are adherents of all the world-outlooks above the horizontal stroke; for the most part they are stubborn folk who, owing to some fundamental element in themselves, take this or that world-outlook and abide by it, going no further. All the beliefs listed below the line have adherents who are more easily accessible to the knowledge that individual world-outlooks each have one special standpoint only, and they more easily reach the point where they pass from one world-outlook to another.

When someone is a Psychist, and able as a thinking person to contemplate the world clearly, then he comes to the point of saying to himself that he must presuppose something actively psychic in the outside world. But directly he not only thinks, but feels sympathy for what is active and willing in man, then he says to himself: “It is not enough that there are beings who have ideas; these beings must also be active, they must be able also to do things.” But this is inconceivable unless these beings are individual beings. That is, a person of this type rises from accepting the ensoulment of the world to accepting the Spirit or the Spirits of the world. He is not yet clear whether he should accept one or a number of Spirits, but he advances from Psychism to Pneumatism to a doctrine of the Spirit.

If he has become in truth a Pneumatist, then he may well grasp what I have said in this lecture about number—that with regard to figures it is somewhat doubtful to speak of a “unity”. Then he comes to the point of saying to himself: It must therefore be a confusion to talk of one undivided Spirit, of one undivided Pneuma. And he gradually becomes able to form for himself an idea of the Spirits of the different Hierarchies. Then he becomes in the true sense a Spiritist, so that on this side there is a direct transition from Pneumatism to Spiritism.

These world-outlooks are all justified in their own field. For there are fields where Psychism acts illuminatingly, and others where Pneumatism does the same. Certainly, anyone who wishes to deliberate about an explanation of the universe as thoroughly as we have tried to do must come to Spiritism, to the acceptance of the Spirits of the Hierarchies. For to stop short at Pneumatism would in this case mean the following. If we are Spiritists, then it may happen that people will say to us: “Why so many spirits? Why bring numbers into it? Let there be One Undivided Spirit!” Anyone who goes more deeply into the matter knows that this objection is like saying: “You tell me there are two hundred midges over there. I don't see two hundred; I see only a single swarm.” Exactly so would an adherent of Pneumatism stand with regard to a Spiritist. The Spiritist sees the universe filled with the Spirits of the Hierarchies; the Pneumatist sees only the one “swarm”—only the Universal Spirit. But that comes from an inexact view.

Now there is still another possibility: someone may not take the path we have tried to follow to the activities of the spiritual Hierarchies, but may still come to an acceptance of certain spiritual beings. The celebrated German philosopher, Leibnitz, was a man of this kind. Leibnitz had got beyond the prejudice that anything merely material can exist in the world. He found the actual, he sought the actual. (I have treated this more precisely in my book, Riddles of Philosophy.) His view was that a being—as, for example, the human soul—can build up existence in itself. But he formed no further ideas on the subject. He only said to himself that there is such a being that can build up existence in itself, and force concepts outwards from within itself. For Leibnitz, this being is a “Monad”. And he said to himself: “There must be many Monads, and Monads of the most varied capabilities. If I had here a bell, there would be many monads in it—as in a swarm of midges—but they would be monads that had never come even so far as to have sleep-consciousness, monads that are almost unconscious, but which nevertheless develop the dimmest of concepts within themselves. There are monads that dream; there are monads that develop waking ideas within themselves; in short, there are monads of the most varied grades.”

A person with this outlook does not come so far as to picture to himself the individual spiritual beings in concrete terms, as the Spiritist does, but he reflects in the world upon the spiritual element in the world, allowing it to remain indefinite. He calls it “Monad”—that is, he conceives of it only as though one were to say: “Yes, there is spirit in the world and there are spirits, but I describe them only by saying, ‘They are entities having varying powers of perception.’ I pick out from them an abstract characteristic. So I form for myself this one-sided world-outlook, on behalf of which as much as can be said has been said by the highly intelligent Leibnitz. In this way I develop Monadism.” Monadism is an abstract Spiritism.

But there can be persons who do not rise to the level of the Monads; they cannot concede that existence is made up of beings with the most varied conceptual powers, but at the same time they are not content to allow reality only to external phenomena; they hold that “forces” are dominant everywhere. If, for example, a stone falls to the ground, they say, “That is gravitation!” When a magnet attracts bits of iron, they say: “That is magnetic force!” They are not content with saying simply, “There is the magnet,” but they say, “The magnet presupposes that supersensibly, invisibly, a magnetic force is present, extending in all directions.” A world-outlook of this kind—which looks everywhere for forces behind phenomena—can be called Dynamism.

Then one may say: “No, to believe in ‘forces’ is superstition”—an example of this is Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Language, where you find a detailed argument to this effect. It amounts to taking your stand on the reality of the things around us. Thus by the path of Spiritism we come through Monadism and Dynamism to Realism again.

But now one can do something else still. One can say: “Certainly I believe in the world that is spread out around me, but I do not maintain any right to claim that this world is the real one. I can say of it only that it ‘appears’ to me. I have no right to say more about it.” There you have again a difference. One can say of the world that is spread out around us. “This is the real world,” but one can also say, “I am clear that there is a world which appears to me; I cannot speak of anything more. I am not saying that this world of colours and sounds, which arises only because certain processes in my eyes present themselves to me as colours, while processes in my ears present themselves to me as sounds—I am not saying that this world is the true world. It is a world of phenomena.” This is the outlook called Phenomenalism.

We can go further, and can say: “The world of phenomena we certainly have around us, but all that we believe we have in these phenomena is what we have ourselves added to them, what we have thought into them. Our own sense-impressions are all we can rightly accept. Anyone who says this—mark it well!—is not an adherent of Phenomenalism. He peels off from the phenomena everything which he thinks comes only from the understanding and the reason, and he allows validity only to sense-impressions, regarding them as some kind of message from reality.” This outlook may be called Sensationalism.

A critic of this outlook can then say: “You may reflect as much as you like on what the senses tell us and bring forward ever so ingenious reasons for your view—and ingenious reasons can be given—I take my stand on the point that nothing real exists except that which manifests itself through sense-impressions; this I accept as something material.”

This is rather like an atomist saying: “I hold that only atoms exist, and that however small they are, they have the attributes which we recognize in the physical world”—anyone who says this is a materialist. Thus, by another path, we arrive back at Materialism.

All these conceptions of the world that I have described and written down for you really exist, and they can be maintained. And it is possible to bring forward the most ingenious reasons for each of them; it is possible to adopt any one of them and with ingenious reasons to refute the others. In between these conceptions of the world one can think out yet others, but they differ only in degree from the leading types I have described, and can be traced back to them. If one wishes to learn about the web and woof of the world, then one must know that the way to it is through these twelve points of entry. There is not merely one conception of the world that can be defended, or justified, but there are twelve. And one must admit that just as many good reasons can be adduced for each and all of them as for any particular one. The world cannot be rightly considered from the one-sided standpoint of one single conception, one single mode of thought; the world discloses itself only to someone who knows that one must look at it from all sides. Just as the sun—if we go by the Copernican conception of the universe—passes through the signs of the Zodiac in order to illuminate the earth from twelve different points, so we must not adopt one standpoint, the standpoint of Idealism, or Sensationalism, or Phenomenalism, or any other conception of the world with a name of this kind; we must be in a position to go all round the world and accustom ourselves to the twelve different standpoints from which it can be contemplated. In terms of thought, all twelve standpoints are fully justifiable. For a thinker who can penetrate into the nature of thought, there is not one single conception of the world, but twelve that can be equally justified—so far justified as to permit of equally good reasons being thought out for each of them. There are twelve such justified conceptions of the world.

Tomorrow we will start from the points of view we have gained in this way, so that from the consideration of man in terms of thought we may rise to a consideration of the cosmic.

• 2. “Unsere Welt ist das versinnlichte Material unserer Pflicht.” The rendering given is that of Professor Robert Adamson, in the series of Blackwood's Philosophical Classics for English readers. Alternative words for versinnlichte might be “sense-perceptible” or “tangible”. The quotation is from Fichte's work, Über den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung (1798).

In material science it is customary—with the exception of a few circles who in modern times have come to a different explanation—to represent our present solar system as having developed out of a kind of nebula which embraced a space as far as the orbit of Neptune, that is, as far as the orbit of the outermost planet of our solar system. And then, it is supposed, through a condensing process, our sun and the planets moving round it gradually formed. As we have said, there are now a few exponents -who have a somewhat different view; but they too do not bring forward anything essential for us who take a spiritual view. So our sun and the planets circling round it are supposed to have formed themselves into globes. In connection with this a neat little comparison has always been made use of in the schools, and it is still employed to-day, to show by ocular demonstration how a whole planetary system can originate through rotation. Some oily liquid is taken, which, when placed in water takes a globular form. Then a small disc is cut and inserted through the equatorial line of this oily ball so that it is divided into two halves. This is then rotated by means of a pin stuck through the centre of the disc, and one sees at first one drop separate itself and circle as a separate body round the large globe, then a second and a third drop, and finally a large drop remains in the centre around which many smaller ones revolve. “A planetary system in miniature!” says the experimenter. Then he says: Why should not our solar system originate from that primeval nebula in this way, if we can now imitate it in this miniature solar system? Usually this comparison seems to be extremely illuminating and people now understand how once upon a time Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury separated from that primeval nebula. But the whole affair, not only the comparison but the whole idea, proceeds from the emptiness of all present-day thinking, for the persons in question, otherwise quite learned men, who put for-ward this illustration in such an illuminating manner, forget only one thing, namely, that they themselves are present and turn the pin. Now self forgetfulness is very good in certain realms of life, but in this case, if the experimenter is forgotten, the most important thing is forgotten, for without him the drop of oil would never rotate at all. The learned person who believes in such a superstition—this superstition is called the Kant-Laplace system—should at least be logical in his thinking, he should at least presume that some sort of being must have sat on a gigantic stool in space at that time and set a gigantic axis in motion. But human thought has gradually become so accustomed to consider only the material, that the contradiction in such a comparison is no longer noticed. As a matter of fact, there is a certain truth in this so-called Kant-Laplace system, although the truth is different from the materialistic explanation of the matter. There is a certain truth in it because to spiritual vision everything contained in our present solar system actually appears as having proceeded from such a primeval nebula; only to him who can really investigate historically it is clear that the good in the Kant-Laplace hypothesis comes from occult traditions. This was forgotten when the word “occultism” became something of which one was afraid, as children are of the chimney-sweep. That which really took place did not happen without the influence of spiritual beings and powers. Matter can do nothing unless spiritual beings are behind it.

It would take us too far to-day if, linking on to what was said yesterday, we were to explain the whole of our solar system. Leaving the planets such as Jupiter, Saturn, etc., out of our present study, let us only keep in mind what is of special importance to human life and human evolution.

At one time there was, in fact, such a nebula; and in this all the parts of our solar system were as if dissolved. But, bound up with this nebula, so that they belonged to it, were all the beings mentioned in the course of our observations yesterday. For example, all the beings who passed through the human stage in the twenty-four Rounds were connected with this cosmic nebula. Other beings too were bound up with it. They all dwelt in this nebula which, if not thought of in connection with these beings, is a fantastic abstraction. In the way the materialistic chemist imagines this nebula, it is impossible; it exists only in thought, there is no reality. In reality, the nebula only exists because it is inhabited by a number of spiritual beings. For when this nebula again became visible, there were connected with it all the beings who once inhabited ancient Saturn, who then passed through the various stages of evolution through Sun and Moon right on up to Earth, when after a long intermediate pause the Earth-nebula arose, so to speak. The other beings also with whom we became acquainted on the Sun, were connected with this nebula. It is the whole choir of these beings, who filled the nebula, who produced the movements. For it is beings who create their field of work.

For example, there were beings who needed a dwelling place quite different from that of man if they were to undergo the evolution suited to them. The men who lived upon the ancient Moon as the ancestors of the present men had only physical body, etheric and astral bodies. With these three members of their being they came out of the so-called pralaya again like a plant from the seed. Thus when the entire system began it was unsuitable for the beings who had brought with them the germs for the present man. Had the speed of development been maintained which our solar system had at the beginning when it came forth from the cosmic twilight, man would have been unable to find the path of his evolution. It would have been as if you were now to be born and then in a very short time become old. If the speed of evolution natal to the Sun had been maintained, man would have grown old quickly; he would be unable to take the slow course through the decades which he now actually does; after a short time he would have white hair, he would be old almost before he was a child.

But this was not to be. There were beings who needed a quicker tempo. These only went through a part of evolution with man, then they took out the heavenly body which now stands as the sun in the heavens and made it their dwelling place. They drew out the substance of the sun together with their own being. For the sun which sends its light to us to-day is inhabited by spiritual beings, just as our earth is. With every sunbeam descending to the earth come the actions of those spiritual beings who in the course of the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon had progressed so far that they were able to participate in the rapid development taking place on the present sun. High, exalted beings were connected with this sun existence at the beginning of our earth development. These separated from the earth; and that which then remained you must imagine as if you had mixed together the present moon and earth in a great cauldron, and this mingled earth and moon circled round the sun for a time.

Thus before we reached the point described yesterday as human incarnation, we have first to recognize the separation of the sun from the earth, that is, the present earth plus the present moon. Upon the sun remained the beings who are the spiritual directors of earthly events. When they came over from the ancient Moon there were seven such beings; in Genesis they are called Elohim, Spirits of Light. For a time they went through their evolution together with the earth, then they drew forth the sun so that they could now work upon the earth from the sun. These Elohim, these Spirits of Light, were seven in number. Six of them united their existence with the actual cosmic sun, and one, known in the Old Testament as Jehovah, separated from them and remained at first united with the earth. He guided and directed the earthly evolution from within, while the others worked upon it from without. That was the position for a time. But after what was pointed out yesterday concerning the ancient Moon, you will understand that with the withdrawal of the sun was connected a condensation of all that emerged as earth plus moon. There came a period in the earth's evolution when not only the substance, but all beings, underwent a coarsening. For example, the beings who later became man, who at that time were very soft and delicate, underwent a coarsening through taking on horrible instincts. A coarsening of all life took place.

Evolution could not remain thus if man were to arise. A coarsening would have taken place, everything would have become more and more dense and the human beings would have stiffened into mummies, they would have become mummified. And there would very soon have been a planet upon which some-thing not exactly beautiful, but human-like mummies, statues would have collected. The earth would have become mummified. A different event had to take place. Through the government of Jehovah, as cosmic spirit, that which you now see as the moon as the burnt-out moon-dross in the heavens, was separated from the whole mass of earth plus moon. Not only were the grossest substances separated but also the grossest beings. Hence only through the withdrawal of the sun it was brought about that man did not proceed too quickly in his evolution, and through the withdrawal of the moon it was brought about that he did not develop towards a condition of drying up, densification, or mummification.

Thus the earth was separated from the whole mass, and now the course of human evolution was guided on the earth under the influence of these two heavenly bodies—that is, of course, of their beings, the six sun Spirits and the moon Spirit, who had separated himself for the salvation of man. And it was so guided that on the whole these two forces were balanced. Through the exit of both the sun-forces and the moon-forces, exactly the right tempo for human development was attained.

Now in order to understand this more clearly, imagine a man as if influenced only by the sun. You know that man goes through his evolution upon the earth in many, many incarnations. Man began with his first incarnation, then took on a new body over and over again, until he goes through his last incarnation. He passes through a series of incarnations, as a result of which he develops slowly and rises from one incarnation to the next. Men trod the surface of our earth as true spiritual infants. Since the separation of sun and moon from our earth they have risen to the present stage. All these souls will return in different bodies up to the end of the earth's evolution. Now if man were influenced by the sun alone he would have to pass through in a single incarnation all that he now goes through in so many. The right tempo comes into the many incarnations through the balancing of the forces between the sun and moon from without.

Modern man was gradually shaped during the period which followed the withdrawal of sun and moon; the first germs of the present-day man were then created. That was at a time when man moved upon this earth in quite a different way from that in which he moves now. You must not imagine that when the moon had just gone forth man moved upon this earth in a fleshly form as he does now. There appear again all the forms which had previously been there, as a repetition; and when the earth was liberated from the sun and moon it looked approximately like the old Moon, even softer. And if a being with eyes organized like those of the present day had looked at the earth he would not yet have been able to see man. On the other hand, certain other beings were there who were not sufficiently mature to await a later time. These had to take bodily form while the stage of evolution was still incomplete; so that some time after the moon's departure from the earth certain forms of the lower animals could already be seen physically condensed. Man had not yet descended, nor yet the higher mammals. Man was still a spirit being. He floated as a spirit round the earth and took into himself the finest substances from the environment of the earth. Then gradually he densified so far that he could descend to where the earth had already become solid and islands had formed.

Thus we see that the first human beings appeared comparatively late in the earth's evolution and at that time they had a very different constitution from the present human being. I cannot describe to you the forms of those men which first crystallized, so to speak, out of the spirit. Although you have already heard much that is difficult to believe, you would be greatly shocked if I were to describe to you the grotesque forms of the bodies in which your souls were then incarnated. You would not be able to bear such a description. However, at a later date, when these things which are only now beginning to come to the consciousness of man through Anthroposophy, when they more and more penetrate men's consciousness, this will have to be made known, and it will have a tremendous result, it will be extremely important to the whole life of man. For only when man learns how his body has developed, how the organs he now possesses have gradually developed out of entirely different forms, will he feel that remarkable relationship existing between the organs in the human body which to-day are apparently far apart. He will then see the correspondence between certain organs, for example, between the appendix and the windpipe, which in their earlier form grew together in those remarkably formed beings. All that to-day is man is the previous form unrolled as it were, the previous form unfolded in the most varied ways. Organs which to-day are separated formerly grew together. They have, however, kept their relationship, and very frequently this relationship is manifested in illnesses. It is seen that when a certain organ is diseased another one is of necessity involved. Hence those who really study medicine will have to make many discoveries, of which the present medical age, which is only a collection of notes, does not dream; then only will physicians really learn something about the true nature of man. All this is merely to point out how entirely different was man's earlier form.

The solid parts have only been built into this human form gradually. There were originally no bones in the human body, even when it had already descended. The bones were developed from soft cartilaginous structures which traversed the human body like cords. These in their turn originated from quite soft substances, and these soft substances from fluid substances, these from airy, the airy from etheric and the etheric from astral which had densified from spiritual substantiality. If you trace it back you will find that everything material has originated from the spiritual. Everything is in archetype in the spiritual world. It was only the Atlantean epoch that the bones, formerly merely indicated, actually developed in man.

We must now more closely examine Lemurian humanity in order the better to understand the writer of the Apocalypse. I need only indicate that following the first period, when the moon had separated from the earth and man descended, he was of a very different nature as regards his will power from what he became later. At that time the will of man worked magically—by his will he could work upon the growth of flowers. When he exerted his will he could make a flower shoot up quickly, a capacity which can only be acquired to-day by an abnormal process of development. Hence at that time the natural surroundings depended upon how the will of man was constituted. If it was good it worked soothingly upon the billowing waters, upon the storm and upon the fiery structures which were then all around, for the earth was to a great extent of a volcanic nature. Man worked soothingly upon all this through a good will and destructively through all evil will. Whole islands could be destroyed by evil will. Thus the human will was in complete correspondence with its environment. The tracts of land upon which man then lived were destroyed essentially by the evil will of man, and only a small part of mankind was saved (we have here to distinguish between race-development and soul-development) who lived on into the epoch which we may describe in so far as words can express clairvoyant perception.

After this catastrophe by fire we come to the Atlantean epoch when the human race developed essentially on a continent which now forms the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, between the present Europe and America. At that time man lived under very different physical conditions. At the beginning of the Atlantean epoch he was a structure which perceived in quite a different way from the present man; we have already indicated this in the first lecture and again later; to-day we shall again point out this different kind of vision of the man of that epoch. He still had a kind of spiritual vision, because the construction of his body was different from what it is now. The etheric body was not yet so firmly bound up with the physical body. The etheric body of the head extended far beyond the physical body. Only towards the last third of the Atlantean epoch did the projecting etheric body draw in and take the form of the present physical human head. Since the form of the ancient Atlantean was so very different from that of present man and his members so differently joined together, his whole life of consciousness, his whole soul life was also different. And here—if we wish to understand the Apocalyptist—we must touch upon a very important, but a very mysterious, chapter.

If you were to enter this ancient Atlantis, you would find that it was surrounded not by such pure air as the present earth but by air saturated with volumes of mist, with water. This air became clearer and more transparent the further Atlantis developed, but the mists were densest where the more advanced Atlantean civilization referred to developed. The thickest mists were there, and from these developed the foundations of the later civilizations. Atlantis was covered far and wide by those mists. A division of rain and sunshine such as we have to-day did not then exist. Hence in ancient Atlantis that which you know as the rainbow could not appear. You might search the whole of Atlantis and you would not find it. Only when the condensation of the water led to flooding, when the great flood spread itself over the earth, could the rainbow originate physically. And this is a point where from Spiritual Science you will gain the greatest respect for the religious records. For when you are told that after the flood, Noah, the representative of those who then saved the human race, sees the rainbow first appear, this is really an historical event. After the flood humanity saw the first rainbow; previously it was not physically possible. Here you will see how profound, how literally true the religious records are. To-day many are distressed when one says that the religious records are literally true. Many quote a saying which is true; it is quoted, however, by lazy people, not as a true statement but from indolence. It is the saying: “The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” From this they deduce the right to take no notice at all of what stands in the records, to have no longer the will to recognize what is actually there, for it is the “dead letter” they say. And so they like to let their spirit shine and concoct all sorts of fantasies. These persons may indeed be very clever in their explanations, but that is not the point; the point is that we ought really to see in the records what is contained in them. “The letter killeth but the spirit giveth life” has the same significance in mystical language as the saying of Goethe, “He who has not this, this dying and becoming, is but a sad guest upon the dark earth.” This saying does not mean: “If you wish to lead some one to a higher knowledge you must slay him,” but it means that just through the culture of the physical world man must uplift himself to spirituality. So also the letter is the body of the spirit, and we must first have and understand it, then we may say that we can find the spirit in it. The letter, the understood letter, must then die so that the spirit may be resurrected from it. This saying is not an injunction to fancy anything you please about what is contained in the religious records. When we recognize the true significance of this rainbow as we have represented it, something like deep respect for the religious records invades our soul, and we get an idea of how, through the deepening of the understanding by the teachings of Anthroposophy, man first attains to true and real feelings and advances to a true understanding of the religious records by an act of will.

We will now look back into ancient Atlantis. We have already said that man then lived in a different state of consciousness and that his memory was different from what it is now; but the difference is much more considerable. If we go far back not merely into the later period of Atlantis but to the beginning, we then find the human consciousness very different from that which we possess to-day.

Let us once more consider the present consciousness. During the day a person uses his senses. At night he goes to sleep. On the bed lie the physical body and the etheric body; the astral body and the “I” withdraw. The sphere of consciousness darkens. The man of to-day sees nothing and hears nothing. Then again in the morning when the astral body and the “I” re-enter the physical body and etheric body, physical objects again confront him. How was it in the early Atlantean epoch? Let us take the moment when in the morning man plunged into the physical body and etheric body; at that time he did not have a physical world around him such as we have to-day. All the present objects which are now seen with clear outlines were then seen as if surrounded with an aura, with coloured edges, quite indistinct. In ancient Atlantis the appearance was somewhat similar to what is now seen when in the evening there is a dense fog and you cannot see the street lamps clearly, but surrounded by coloured edges. Thus it was in early Atlantis. All objects were seen indistinctly, not with clear outlines and surfaces as to-day, everything was as if enveloped in coloured mist. Only gradually have clear outlines developed. Had we looked at a rose in the first portion of Atlantis it was as if a cloudy structure arose and in the middle something red. Only gradually did the external colour appear to be laid on the surface; only later did objects obtain sharp outlines.

Hence you see that the physical world surrounding man was quite different in ancient Atlantis. It was also different when at night he rose out of his physical body when—shall we say—he went to sleep. Really it was not sleep in the present sense. However, the entire world of the misty physical formations remained below, and a spiritual world arose. Possessing no sharp outlines man lived within a spiritual world. Spiritual beings were his companions. In the first portion of the Atlantean epoch day and night alternated in such a way that when man plunged into his physical body he had only hazy, indistinct pictures of the physical world; but when at night he left the physical body he was able to live spiritually, although somewhat indistinctly, among spirits; he moved among spirits. And above all, man's entire life of feeling was also different in the Atlantean epoch. At that time when he went out of his physical body and etheric body, he did not feel fatigue and the need for rest. Neither did he find rest. He had to enter into the spiritual world; that was then his sphere of activity. On the other hand, when the morning came, he felt the need for rest and sought out his resting-place, which was his own body. There he lay peacefully. He crept into his own body and rested during the day.

Thus in the first period of Atlantis it was entirely different from what it is now. During the Atlantean epoch, man gradually passed from the very opposite conditions into those of the later period. This came about more and more as the etheric body was driven into the physical body. This occurred during the last third of the Atlantean epoch. Before this event man felt himself as a waking being above in the spiritual world; but as yet he did not say to himself “I,” he did not possess self-consciousness. When he withdrew from the physical body and etheric body in order to go into the brilliance of the night, he felt himself to be a member of the spirituality which was above, he felt himself safely hidden, so to speak, in his group-soul. It always became bright around him during the night; but he felt himself dependent. Just as our finger belongs to our “I,” so man felt that he belonged to the group-souls which are seen spiritually as the four heads of the Lion, Eagle, Bull and Man, described in the Apocalypse of John. Man felt himself transposed into one such group-soul. And only when, snail-like, he was in his bodily shell did he feel that he possessed something of his own. For the circumstance that man became an independent being resulted from his being able to envelop himself in his body. He had, however, to pay for this confinement in his body by the gradual obscuration of the spiritual world, until it completely withdrew. In its place the world which he saw below when he was in the physical body became brighter and clearer. In this way it gradually dawned upon him that he was an “I,” that he had self-consciousness within him. He learned to say “I” to himself.

If we wish to characterize what took place at that time we must imagine man creeping out of his “snail-shell,” as it were, into the spiritual world. There he is among spiritually divine beings. There resounds to him from without the name of what he is. One group heard the word which in the original language was the word for that group; another group heard a different word. Man could not name himself from within; his name sounded into him from without. When he thus crept out of the “snail-shell” of his body he knew what he was, because this knowledge was poured into his soul. Now when in his body he learned to perceive the physical environment, he learned to feel himself as “I,” he learned to feel within himself the divine power which previously was poured into him, he learned to feel God within him. The God nearest to him, who pointed to his “I,” he called Jehovah. This God was the “I”-leader, and man felt the power of this God arising within his “I.”

External events were connected with this. When the first Atlantean thus descended into his physical body and looked out into space, he did not see an actual rainbow; in the place where the sun later emerged, he saw something like a circle formed of colour; the sun did not yet penetrate in power, but acted through the mist; though hindered and held back by the fog, its forces influenced the earth. It appeared very gradually. All that we have described as the awakening of external consciousness was connected with the emergence of the sun from the mist. That which was up above where the other six spirits had their abode, who together with Jehovah had to guide the earth evolution, gradually emerged and shone down upon the earth in deeds.

What had taken place in man? When previously he rose out of his body, when it was night, so to speak, his soul and spirit entered into the inner astral brilliance to which the external sun is not necessary. This brilliance surrounded him. It was the same light which later shone down physically from the sun, from mighty spiritual beings. As he gradually enclosed himself in his physical consciousness, the door of inner vision was closed. Darkness surrounded him when at night he left his physical and etheric bodies and entered the spiritual world. To the extent to which he confined himself, to the same extent arose the external light which represents the deeds of the spiritual beings of the sun; the light of the spiritual beings shone externally upon the earth. Man prepared himself to look upon the external light as something material. The light shone in his then darkened inner being, but the light was not then comprehended by his darkness. This is a world-historical event. Man bought his self-consciousness at that time through spiritual darkening. In this way man grew out of the brilliance connected with the group-souls. But it was only the very first dawning of the individuality. It was a long, long time before he really grew possessed of it. The last portion of the Atlantean epoch passed away and the flood came.

The post-Atlantean epoch began. The ancient Indian civilization passed away. True self-consciousness had not yet developed. Then came the Persian and Babylonian-Egyptian ages. Man gradually matured so as to develop self-consciousness within him. At length came the fourth age. At this stage something of tremendous importance took place for which all that had gone before was the preparation. Imagine yourself now uplifted from the earth to a distant star and gifted with spiritual vision, looking down to the earth from that distant star. You would then see that this earth as physical body is not only physical body, but that an etheric body and an astral body belong to it, just as with man. The earth has all this too. You would see the earth surrounded by its aura and from that star you would be able to follow the development of the earth's aura for thousands of years. You would see this earth surrounded by all sorts of colours; in the centre the physical kernel and around it the aura floating in various forms and colours; and in this spiritual atmosphere of the earth you would see the most varied structures. You would see these colours and forms change in various ways in the course of thousands of years; but there would come a moment, a moment of great importance, when the whole aura assumes a different form and colour. Seen from outside the earth then appears in a new light; and this takes place extremely quickly, so that one has to say: From this moment a fundamental trans-formation of the earth has taken place; its aura has changed completely. When is this? It is the moment when upon Golgotha the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer. This moment is an extremely important one, the most important moment in the whole of the earth's evolution! The moment when the blood flows from the wounds of the Redeemer is the same as that in which the aura of the earth shapes itself anew. An entirely new power enters in, the power which gives the most important impulse to the earth's evolution, for which all that we have considered up to now was only the preparation.

To the chemist the blood of Golgotha is the same as any other blood; but in reality it is quite different. It signifies that the substance of the blood flows down to the earth, and that the spirit corresponding to it fills the aura of the earth with new impulses and new forces which have significance for the future evolution of humanity. From there the forces which change the earth stream forth, from there they stream through man. Only a small part of what flowed in at that moment has been realized up to now. Ever more and more man will learn to understand what the earth has become through that moment of Golgotha, and what man can develop towards in that consciousness which he has gained since Atlantis. What, then, has man gained since Atlantis? Two things: the “I”-consciousness and the faculty of sight in the external world. That which previously was open to him, the spiritual world, has been closed. Truly these earlier men saw what the later myths relate—Woden, Mercury, Jupiter, Zeus. They saw all these beings at night; they were then among them. This door to the spiritual beings has closed. In its place man gained the world now surrounding him. The spirits have withdrawn from him; all that he was able to see at that time has disappeared. Formerly he saw the Divine when he slipped out of the snail-shell of his physical body. He had now to see the Divine within the body if it were to appear before him. This means nothing else than that we must receive the Divine in bodily visible shape because human consciousness has become adapted to physical vision, and for this reason the Divine Itself had to assume bodily physical form. Therefore the Divine appeared once on the earth in a fleshly body. It had to appear in this form because man had advanced to this stage of perception it had to be presented in this way to his perception so that he could understand it. And all the appearances which had previously taken place at other stages of evolution had to be united in that greatest event in the earth's history, which will throw light on the whole future and which we shall now unveil from the Apocalypse; in that event which physically looks as if drops of blood stream down to the earth, but spiritually as if something rises up which changes the aura of the earth. The force which then flowed in will work together with the earth throughout the whole future. The earth-soul, the spirit of the whole earth, was then inoculated with something new. The Christ principle united with the earth at that time and the earth has become the body of this Christ principle. So that the statement is literally true, “He who eats my bread treads me underfoot.” When man eats the bread of the earth he eats the body of the earth and this is the body of the earth-spirit which, as the Christ-Spirit, since the event on Golgotha, is united with the earth. And man walks upon the earth-body, he treads this body underfoot. All can be understood literally if only we are able first of all to comprehend the text in the right way.

To such a man as the writer of John's Gospel, all that he knew, all that he could grasp with spiritual vision, was a summons to understand the greatest event in the earth's evolution. Of all that he was able to stream through spiritual vision he said, “I must use it in order to understand Christ and His work.” It was the intention of the writer of the Apocalypse to use all his occult knowledge in order to explain the Event of Golgotha. Whatever he could learn from occult science was regarded by him as a road to wisdom, helping him to understand this event which he has placed before us in such a wonderful way, and regarding which we shall see what it signified for him.