The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In spiritual science we consider all matter or substance to be a manifestation of the spiritual. But the essential question is always how a particular material phenomenon manifests the spiritual. The generalization that all matter is a manifestation of the spiritual really says nothing at all; at most it is an easy philosophy for lazy people. All those who seriously strive for knowledge have to study how the world's specific material phenomena manifest the spiritual.

There is a very ancient, yet ever new, saying to the effect that the human being is a microcosm. Human beings in the physical world are, in the first place, material phenomena. If we seriously believe that the human being is a microcosm, that our physical being contains the secrets of the whole cosmos, then we will think it worthwhile to examine how our physical being reveals the spiritual. If you study the physical aspect of the human being and think about it and you'll have to think if you strive for knowledge—you will see there are two totally different kinds of substance in our physical being. It only takes ordinary thinking and observation to see that there are two fundamentally different kinds of substance in us: the blood substance, or blood material, and the nerve substance.

Of course, you may say that at first glance there are all sorts of other substances too, muscle tissue, bone matter, and so on. But all these substances are actually built up from blood, as you will see when you study them more closely. Thus, their existence does not contradict that we have primarily two substances in us, blood substance, or blood material, and nerve substance.

One of the differences between these two substances can easily be observed; you need only consider that everything connected with the blood is involved from the inside, so to speak, in our metabolic processes. Though generated as a result of external influences, our blood is produced within us, and it in turn generates what is necessary for physical existence.

On the other hand, the most important nerves show themselves to be continuations of our sense organs. For instance, in the eyes you find the optic nerve continuing behind the eye and merging with the nerve substance of the brain. Similarly, all nerves are really continuations of our sense organs. The processes taking place in them are more or less the result of outside influences, of everything working upon us from the outside. We can say that just as magnets have two poles and just as we have positive and negative electricity, so the blood and the nerve substances are the two poles of our physical being. And these two kinds of substance are inwardly very different from each other.

If we perform an autopsy on a human being according to the methods and teachings of modern anatomy and physiology, we can put everything originating directly out of the blood next to everything built up from the outside, namely the nerve substance. Then the substances would appear to be the same. In fact, they are fundamentally different. The great and significant difference between them becomes clear if we trace the gradual development of life. We could quote a great deal from the most modern anatomy and physiology to provide further proof of this difference; however, we will not go into that right now but look at the question from the point of view of spiritual science instead.

Our blood has entered our organism as a result of processes belonging specifically to the earth. Blood is essentially of an earthly nature. You know that the development of the human being had been prepared long before the earth existed during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of evolution.¹ What was prepared there did not yet have any blood. Human blood, as it flows through our veins today, was added during our earth evolution. In contrast to that, the structure and development of the nervous system contains what had long ago been prepared in the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of evolution through processes that preceded our earth organization.

If you investigate both the blood substance and the nerve substance in the light of spiritual science, you will readily see the tremendous difference between the two. Our nerve substance is not of the earth, but the blood substance is of the earth. Nerve substance originated in processes that took place before the formation of the earth. Our blood substance, and everything that streams and flows in it, has its origin completely in earthly processes. Our nerve substance is absolutely extraterrestrial, so to speak, and woven into us as something cosmic; it is related to the cosmos.

Our nerve substance has been transferred into the earthly realm; it exists here on the earth where we live as physical beings. Thus, we all bear something of extraterrestrial origin in us that has been transplanted onto the earth. This is a very important fact, for the nerve substance, as it rests in us, is actually dead. You need only open any current anatomy or physiology textbook to see that in terms of substance, nerve substance is the most durable in our body. It is the one most resistant to change and, like the blood substance, least subject to direct, mechanical interference from the outside. Our nerve substance is affected by influences of our sense perceptions, but it cannot be influenced directly and mechanically because it was originally a living substance and is now dead because we as earth beings carry it in us. We might say if it were not paradoxical—though it is true in a spiritual sense regardless of any paradox—that if we could take our nerve substance and raise it to a sphere beyond the influence of earth forces, it would become a marvelous, living, vibrant being.

This nerve substance is, so to speak, designed for life in the heavens, in the extraterrestrial realm, but because it is in our organism and has thus entered the earthly sphere, it dies. This is very strange, isn't it? We have this nerve substance in us that is alive in the realm of the cosmos but dead in the realm of the earth. If we were to take some of this nerve substance up beyond the reach of earthly influences, we would have a wonderful, living, luminous substance. Of course, as soon as we returned it to our earthly sphere, it would revert again to the still, lifeless condition in which it now rests within us. Our nerve substance, then, is alive in the cosmos and dead on earth.

In fact, as far as its material composition is concerned, the nerve substance we have in us is an extraterrestrial element. All this can be very clearly expressed in a symbol. As you remember, I once lectured here on anthroposophy in a more specific sense and listed the human senses. Usually people distinguish only five senses, but we counted twelve then. Human beings have twelve senses if everything that can really be called a sense is taken into account. Ultimately, our senses are nothing but points of departure from which our nerves extend into us.

So, we really have twelve senses. And from these twelve senses nerves extend into us like little trees. This is because the nervous system that belongs to our outer senses is the expression of the passage of the sun through the twelve constellations of the zodiac, which is symbolized in the relation of our entire nervous system to each of the twelve senses. This shows that we carry in us, in the spatial relationship of our total nervous system to the twelve senses, what really exists out there in the cosmos in the sun's passage through the constellations of the zodiac.

When you look at that part of our nervous system located deeper inside us in the spinal cord, you will find the nerve fibers extending through the ring-like vertebrae of the spine. These rings in fact correspond to the months, to the orbit of the moon around the earth. Thus, the passage of each nerve fiber through the opening of the vertebrae in the spine corresponds to each day of the month—another cosmic relationship! The orbit of the moon around the earth is really symbolized in the relationship of our inner nerves to the spinal cord. Our nerve substance is entirely built up out of the heavens, out of the cosmos. We can understand this marvelous organization of the nerve substance within us only when we see in its tree-like arrangement an image of the whole starry firmament. And the forces that flow outside from star to star and express themselves in the movements of the heavenly bodies, those same forces actually flow in our nervous system, which is, however, dead in us. This connection between the organization of the cosmos and the structure of our nervous system, like many other things, reveals that the whole universe is manifest in us. Insofar as our nervous system is built for the heavens, it is alive in the heavens, in the cosmos, but it is dead in us because it has entered the earthly sphere.

Our blood substance is quite different because it belongs entirely to the earth. Due to the inner composition of the blood, the processes taking place in it would really have to be completely earthly processes. The peculiar thing about them, however, is that they are not living processes. As you know, the mineral realm, the lifeless kingdom, developed during evolution on the earth. And the nature of our blood corresponds fully to this lifeless kingdom. Although our blood lives as long as it is in us, it is not destined for life by its inner, earthly nature. Strangely enough, our blood is alive only because it is connected to the cosmic element in us. Our nervous system is actually destined for life in the cosmos beyond the earth but is dead inside us; our blood, on the other hand, is meant to be dead in us and receives its life from outside. In a sense, the nervous system yields its life to the blood. Thus, the nervous system is dead while the blood is alive, comparatively speaking. Our blood is by its very nature dead on earth and has only a borrowed life, a cosmic life forced upon it. Life itself is not at all of our earth. That is why the nervous system must take death upon itself in order to become earthly, and why the blood has to become living to enable us as beings of earthly substance to turn to the world beyond the earth.

This is the point where all we have learned through spiritual science takes on a deeply serious character. For we have to realize that the nerve substance we have in us is by its very nature destined for life, and yet it is dead. Why is that? It is dead because it has been transplanted onto the earth. Death—as you can read in the cycle of lectures I gave in Munich—is actually the kingdom of Ahriman.² Thus, be cause our nervous system lost its life in its descent into the earthly sphere, we carry an ahrimanic element in us. And because our blood is alive—though by its very nature destined for death, that is, for mere chemical and physical processes—we have a luciferic element in us. Ahriman can exist in us because our nervous system is dead, and because our blood is alive, Lucifer can live in us. Now you can see the significant differences between these two substances; they are polar opposites, just as the North Pole is to the South Pole.

Let us now consider the realm beyond the earth, not condensing spiritual science into an abstract theory but keeping it alive so it can speak to our feelings. We look out into the universe and realize that out there is the spirit that could live in our nervous system if the latter had not descended to the earth. We can sense the spirit out there, filling the universe, the spirit belonging to our nervous system. When we then turn our thoughts to our blood, we understand that by its very nature it is actually destined only for physical and chemical processes, only for the assimilation of oxygen as it is described by anatomy and physiology. However, because it lives in us, it participates in the life of the cosmos. It has, however, a primarily luciferic life.

And now think deeply and with great sensitivity of a recurrent common theme of our talks and remember all we have said about the descent of Christ from the cosmos into our earthly sphere. Then we can link what we remember with the thoughts we have just discussed. We ourselves originated in this universe, in the cosmos. Long ago, in the Lemurian epoch, or in the course of earthly evolution in general, we descended and have connected our evolution with the earth. But by entrusting the development of our nervous system to the earth, we have consigned it to death and left its life behind in the cosmos. That life we left behind later followed us and descended in the Christ Being. In other words, the life of our nerves, which we have not been able to bear in us ever since the beginning of our earthly existence, followed us later in the Christ Being. And what did that life have to lay hold of in earthly existence?

It had to lay hold of the blood! That is why we talk so much about the mystery of blood.

Our nervous system lost its cosmic life and our blood received a cosmic life, that is, life became death and death became life. They live separately in us. Yet, a new connection between them was achieved when the life of our nervous system, which had been left behind, descended to us from the cosmos, became human and entered the blood, which in turn united itself with the earth, as I have explained before.³ And now we as human beings can reconcile the contrast between blood system and nervous system through our participation in the Christ Mystery.

The polarity we carry in us manifests in various ways. For instance, there is the material science of the outer world. It has found its culmination, its goal, in present-day natural science, which sees the world as built up out of atoms. These atoms, however, are pure fantasy; they are simply not to be found out there. Why then do we talk about atoms? Because we have in us our nervous system built up out of little globules, and we project this structure on the world outside. The world of atoms out there is nothing but a projection of our nervous system! We project ourselves into the world and thus think of it as consisting of atoms, and of our nervous system as composed of many individual ganglion-globules. Science will always tend to atomism for it originates in nerve substance. By contrast, mysticism, religion, and so forth come from the blood and do not look for atoms but always for unity. These two opposites are in conflict with each other in the world. We do not understand their conflict unless we know it is really the struggle in us between nerve substance and blood substance. There would be no conflict between science and religion if there were none in us between nerve and blood substance.

Reconciliation is found if we unite ourselves in the right way with the Christ Being that pulsates through the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. Every feeling and experience we can have in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha contributes to this reconciliation. We have not yet advanced much in bringing about this reconciliation, but we must continue to strive for it. Even in our circles we see very often that the contrast I described manifests in one way or another. There are many among us who listen to the teachings of anthroposophy and accept them as they would accept conventional science. As a result, many people see no difference between anthroposophy and ordinary science. But we understand anthroposophy rightly only when we grasp it not just with the head, but allow every one of its utterances to kindle our enthusiasm and to live in us so that it finds its way from the nerve system to the blood system. Only when we take warmly to the truths contained in anthroposophy do we really understand it. As long as we approach it abstractly and study it as we study the multiplication tables, an arithmetic book, instruction manuals, or a cookbook, we do not understand it at all! We cannot understand anthroposophy if we study it in the same way as chemistry or botany. Only when it generates warmth in us, replenishes us with its own vibrant life, do we begin to really understand it.

Christ said: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” And He is with us not as one who is dead, but as a living Being among us, revealing Himself continuously. And only people so shortsighted as to fear these revelations can want us to stay with what has always held good in the past. Those who are not cowards know Christ is always revealing Himself; therefore, we may accept what He has revealed in the form of anthroposophy as a true Christ-revelation. Members have often asked me how they can establish a relationship with Christ. This is a naive question; for everything we strive for, every line we read of our anthroposophical science, is an entering into a relationship with Christ. In a certain sense, we really do nothing else. And those who seek an additional, special way of entering into a relationship with Christ are only naively expressing that they would prefer to avoid the more troublesome way of reading and studying.

My talk began like a conventional scientific talk, maybe one about anatomy or physiology, by looking at the substances in the human being, but now we find the transition to the loftiest knowledge we can have on earth: to Christology. You cannot find this transition in any other science. Spiritual science shows you that our nerve substance lost something in becoming earthly substance. But where is what our nerve substance lost? When Jesus of Nazareth was thirty years old, Christ entered his body and went through the Mystery of Golgotha. Try to warm yourselves through and through with this thought. What is lacking in our nervous system because we are living on earth, what has been replaced with an ahrimanic element, is what we find in the Mystery of Golgotha.

It is our task as human beings to take this Mystery into our blood to fill the luciferic element there with Christ, to kindle our enthusiasm so that it can live in us. Our abstract thinking is connected to the nerve substance, while our feelings, our heart and soul, enthusiasm, or mood, are connected to the blood. The relationship between nerve substance and blood substance in our organism is the same as that in our soul between abstract, cold thinking and the enthusiasm we can feel when things do not remain merely cold thoughts for us, but warm us through the spirit. This warming through the spirit does not come naturally; we have to train ourselves to attain it.

Now you can see in spiritual and physiological terms as it were, what the Mystery of Golgotha accomplished. What we had left behind in the cosmos followed us. It can now once again permeate our soul, because it did not permeate our body at the beginning of our earth existence, or we would have become automatons of the spirit. As it was, we went through a period of evolution on the earth before we were to be ensouled by what did not permeate our body right from the very beginning. This great and wonderful connection reveals the activity of the spiritual in matter.

We are not speaking here of the general, vague spiritual element woolly-headed pantheists speak of so glibly, but of the specific and definite spirit we see undergoing the Mystery of Golgotha. That is what I meant when I said that the general truism that all matter is a manifestation of the spiritual really does not say very much. We know something only when we know in detail how a specific, physical being manifests the spiritual. The findings of conventional science are an abundance of facts and material just waiting to be permeated with spiritual understanding. Spiritual understanding can penetrate them so deeply that even the most material science of all can be connected with Christology.

In our age people have difficulties finding the path connecting the nerve system with the blood system. And that is why I have shown you in several lectures how far our age is from such a spiritual understanding of the world. Last time I mentioned Hermann Bahr as an example of a man who had always been striving for the spiritual but was not able to make even the most elementary approach to the spiritual until he was already over fifty years old. I also told you that grotesque phenomena virtually dominate our cultural life, as in the case of the professor of philosophy in Czernowitz whose pronouncement I read to you.

Lest we forget his pronouncement, let me read it again: “We have no more philosophy than animals, and only our frantic attempts to attain a philosophy and the final resignation to our ignorance distinguish us from the animals.” This is the quintessence of his philosophy—well, one cannot really call it philosophy; after all, according to this professor of philosophy, human beings have no more philosophy than the animals! What it amounts to is that we have reached the point where duly appointed professors of philosophy have set themselves the task of representing philosophy as ridiculous nonsense. In this case, we can see clearly how far this fellow goes. Most other philosophers do the same, only not as openly. And this truth applies not only to philosophers ut also to other people who understand their task in life a out as much as this philosopher does his philosophy. Therefore, they ruin every task they are appointed to fulfill as much as this philosopher ruins philosophy. However, with most of them this is not so noticeable except when they rub our noses in it as cynically as Richard Wahle does, this philosopher appointed as professor of philosophy for the destruction of philosophy.

Clearly, it is necessary—to be convinced of this necessity you need only remember my lecture a few weeks ago—to connect our striving with the era in European spiritual life when people tried to approach the spirit, although not yet with the methods of modern spiritual science. For this reason, I have given the lectures of the past winters in these difficult times and have now collected them in a book entitled Vom Menschenrätsel The Riddle of Man”), which will be published shortly.⁴ This book summarizes the thinking, reflections, and contemplations of several great minds of the nineteenth century, who were striving for knowledge of the spirit though not yet with the methods of modern spiritual science. I tried to show how these great minds reached out toward the spirit even though they could not yet get there. Time will tell whether this collection of the lectures of the past winters will prove too difficult for people, even though it was written as simply as possible, and whether they will, after all, be content with merely buying it. But the important thing is to read it! Time will tell whether this book, which was written only to serve the times, will have any effect, whether it will enter into people's souls. It is a book everyone can use to prove to those outside our movement that spiritual science represents a demand of the best minds of our recent past. It did not develop arbitrarily, but is truly what the best minds have called for.

Thus, I would like to suggest that you read some of the great, spiritual works our great writers created in the nineteenth century; they are magnificent and important works. However, such good intentions often turn out strangely. As I indicated elsewhere and therefore did not repeat in this book, among the greatest of these works are the philosophical writings of Schiller, for instance, his Letters the Aesthetic Education of Man.⁵ Indeed, those who have read these letters with deep sympathy have done a great deal for the life of their soul. Several people have made efforts to draw the public's attention to the philosophical writings of Schiller. One of them was Heinrich Deinhardt from Vienna.⁶ In the 1860s, he wrote a splendid, extraordinarily profound little book on Schiller's world view. I don't think you can still get it in bookstores, except possibly an old, used copy in a second-hand store. It is out of print and was probably remaindered a long time ago, for nobody read what Deinhardt had to say about Schiller even though his book is one of the best things written about Schiller. Deinhardt was a teacher in Vienna whom the world has forgotten. He once had the misfortune to break his leg. Although his broken leg was set carefully, he could not get well again because he was undernourished. This man wrote one of the best books on Schiller, doubtlessly better than all the nonsense written since then, and yet he had to starve. That's the way of the world.

With my book I tried to show the relevance of great minds such as Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Troxler, Planck, Preuss, Immanuel Hermann Fichte and a few others for our age.⁷ Their works provide a completely different kind of nourishment for the soul than the writings people so often turn to in their sincere but misguided quest for the spirit. With an aching heart I have seen again and again sincerely seeking people reach for this or that book in order to find nourishment for their soul and to find a way into the spiritual world. If they had only turned to works such as Schelling's Klara or Bruno, they would have received infinite nourishment for their soul. Granted, it would have required some effort, but that would have been good for them. A certain naive searching of souls has become more and more lively and urgent in recent times. Yet, most people only reach for the soul-gunk produced by Ralph Waldo Trine or for the stuff you get when you lace some formulation or other of Buddhism, Brahminism, or something like that with a sticky sauce.⁸ One can have the strangest experiences with such things. For example, I used to know a very dear man—he died recently here in Berlin—who was very enthusiastic about my writings interpreting Goethe when I first published them. Then as he grew older, he began translating a number of such soul-gunk writings, not Ralph Waldo Trine but others, from American English into German—his earlier enthusiasm evidently having been only a flash in the pan. For a long time there, people here in Europe thought they needed American-English nourishment for their souls.

Let us get a sense for what needs to be done to nourish people's souls. In the book I mentioned and also in the booklet Mission of Spiritual Science, which has just been published, I tried to show what can be given even to those who are not members of our circle.⁹ We can certainly hand this booklet to people who are not part of our circle. Then time will tell whether there is any understanding for the task devolving on anyone who has some idea of how necessary it is that spiritual truths stream into our present age.

I can assure you I have not merely made this or that disparaging statement in what I have said to you during these difficult times, but I have substantiated everything with details and verified it. I have not merely said philosophers are only homunculi but have quoted a particularly characteristic statement and a number of other things to give you an idea of how matters really stand and to show you that in this first third of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch everything tends to develop into homunculism, into spiritual emptiness.

People will have to penetrate more and more deeply into the difference between a merely logically correct concept and one that is true to reality. A logically correct concept is not necessarily true to reality. In my new book I have tried to elaborate what it means to think true to reality. So much that is deplorable in our cultural life comes from the belief that anything thought out logically is also necessarily true to reality. However, thinking that is true to reality is very different from merely logical and correct thinking.

For example, when you see a tree trunk lying on the ground, you see an external reality. But if you think about this tree trunk, you will find it is not a reality at all because it cannot exist as such. It necessarily has to contain the shoots that develop into branches, leaves, and blossoms. Thus, it is really a lie, this tree trunk, a “true unreality,” because what it appears to be cannot exist in the nature of things. Only if you are aware that you think of something unreal when you think about a tree trunk, then your thinking is true to reality.

Thus, you see most modern sciences consist of thoughts about unrealities. Geology thinks of the earth as consisting purely of minerals. But there is no such purely mineral earth, just as the tree trunk as such does not exist. For the mineral kingdom of the earth already contains in itself plants, animals, and human beings, and only when we think of these latter kingdoms as connected with the mineral are we thinking about a reality. Geology, then, is a completely unreal science.

The outstanding feature of my new book is that I have tried to elaborate the concept of reality. Another important feature is my attempt to give at least a preliminary sketch of the imaginative thinking we will all have to develop. You will also find all kinds of comparisons and analogies in this book because I did not work with abstract, logically developed concepts. Instead, I said, for example, thinking in terms of the atomistic world view means insisting what the natural sciences think is real. It means believing when we paint a portrait, the subject of the painting can then walk around. In my book I have worked with images like this. It remains to be seen whether this unique style will be appreciated. It is the beginning of a special mode of presentation not readily found elsewhere these days.

We have to realize, however, how far people are from unbiased acceptance of these things. These days people have an incredible faith in authority. They do not look at what stands behind the authorities, but measure authority by title, rank, and official position. However, what matters is what stands behind an authority. I would like to give you a nice example to show the extent to which homunculism and thinking in mere appearances have already advanced. A man told this story as an interesting example of what homunculism in our time considers great and important—he told it with the best of intentions for he is opposed to homunculism though he is not sure what to replace it with.

There are many today who worship technology as their god, and I gave you examples of this a few weeks ago. To show the extent of this adoration of technology let me quote the following monstrosity. This is an outrageous utterance of a serious man of mature years, a doctor and a family man. He is said to be not especially outstanding or profound in any way, that is, he is considered to meet all requirements for pronouncing judgments held to be good common sense. Before the war, when the newspaper world was thoroughly amazed by the daring flight of the French aviator Pegoud, this man—a doctor and family man and in no way outstanding—this man judged the cultural value of the airplane in the style of the period, saying with great seriousness and pathos, “A screw of Pegoud's flying machine is more important than all the philosophy of Kant and Schiller, than all philosophy of all times, if you like.”¹⁰ Now, don't think this is a very unusual and rare statement. It is the sort of attitude prevailing with many people today, and it is growing stronger and stronger.

It is now more than twenty years ago, that a lady invited me to speak in her salon on Goethe after I had just given a series of public lectures. I did so, and from her circle of friends she was able to bring together quite a large audience. So I spoke to them about Goethe's Faust and some of his other plays.¹¹ The ladies took it quite well, but most of the men said that Faust was not a drama but science. What they meant was that in a theater one ought to see Blumenthal and not Goethe's Faust.¹² It is indeed true that people now are moving in a direction culminating in judgments such as the one I just read to you.

You see, today things happen quickly. Not long ago someone published the memoirs of a well-known natural scientist who died recently—at least it was something like memoirs, not really an autobiography but a book written down later by somebody else. Strictly speaking, one cannot call this memoirs. It is indeed interesting to contemplate one of the opinions expressed by this world-famous man; I don't even want to tell you his name, you would be surprised how famous he is. Indeed, he was one of the most renowned people of his day, famous and an expert in his profession, and we certainly don't want to deny his greatness. One of the things he said was, “Philosophy does not concern me at all. It is all the same to me whether the sun moves around the earth or the earth around the sun. I would only be interested in this if I were studying astronomy.”¹³ This man has given the world a new medical preparation; his name is on everyone's lips; yet he has never gone outside his very narrow circle and serenely admits being not particularly interested whether the earth moves around the sun or the sun around the earth. He would concern himself with that only if he were an astronomer!

I don't want to denounce or criticize anyone; this man has doubtlessly earned his fame in his own field. He liked to have his wife play the piano for him in the evening; yet he considered music merely a means to improve his concentration and was not really listening to it at all. So she played the piano for him, but he understood nothing of it and merely enjoyed his enhanced concentration. Only on Saturdays he did not want any music because then he was waiting for something still more important to him. He was fervently expecting the arrival of a detective novel, a blood-curdling detective story in a lurid cover. He used to read such novels with special pleasure and preferred them to piano music. He loved these detective novels, the kind of trashy literature peddled on the backstairs!

Now, as I said, I am not telling you this to denounce anyone but simply to show what our times are like. We must remember that these are the authorities behind laboratory tables, behind dissecting tables. This is the spirit permeating what can indeed be very useful in the outer world and what will inevitably lead our whole culture step by step into technologization, that is, into homunculism. We must realize this danger, and, based on this insight, we have to find ways to allow the spirit to approach people. What I said here this winter was not said out of a subjective bias in favor of spiritual science, but out of insight into its inevitable significance for the present age. I believe it will be good if you will take into your souls what has been said.

We can probably meet again for another talk next Tuesday because it will surely take still another week before my book is finished.

• 1. These names do not refer to present-day planets but to ancient evolutionary stages and are therefore capitalized.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, Secrets of the Threshold, (Hudson, NY: Anthro- posophic Press, 1987).
• 3. Rudolf Steiner, The Gospel of St. Luke, 3rd ed, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1988).
• 4. Rudolf Steiner, Vom Menschenrätsel (“The Riddle of Man”), vol. 20 in the Collected Works, (Domach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1984).
• 5. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, 1759–1805, German poet, playwright, and critic. Wrote Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795).
• 6. Heinrich Deinhardt, often mentioned by Steiner. No biographical information available. His Beiträge zur Würdigung Schillers (“Contributions to the Appreciation of Schiller”) were reissued in 1922 in Stuttgart.
• 7. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German philosopher.
  
  Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, 1775–1854, German philosopher. Leading figure of German idealism. Clashed with Fichte and later also with Hegel. Wrote on Transcendental Idealism.
  
  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770–1831, German philosopher. Last of the great German Idealist system-building philosophers. Created monistic system reconciling opposites by means of dialectic process. Viewed history as similar process, dialectic of thesis an its implied antithesis leading to synthesis. Exerted influence on Existentialists, Positivists, and Marx.
  
  Immanuel Hermann von Fichte, 1796–1879, son of Johann Got- t ie . Philosopher, exponent of an ethical or speculative theism.
• 8. Ralph Waldo Trine, American spiritualistic writer.
• 9. Rudolf Steiner, Die Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaft und deren Bau in Dornach (“The Mission of Spiritual Science and its Building in Dornach”), Berlin, 1916.
• 10. Adolphe Pegoud, 1889–1915, French aviator. Known for acrobatic ying feats; credited with first “looping the loop” in an aircraft. Killed in aerial combat.
• 11. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, German poet and playwright. Faust (1808–32), a drama in verse, is his masterpiece.
• 12. Oskar Blumenthal, 1852–1917, German playwright and critic.
• 13. It was not possible to ascertain the identity of the person Steiner refers to here.

Today, we want to talk about some peculiarities of the occult development of the human being, in order to then prepare for something else. We are allowed to speak of this occult development because, basically, engaging with spiritual science is the beginning of a real occult development. Even if most people do not recognize the fact that simply occupying oneself with spiritual science is really the first step towards occult development, it is nevertheless the case. And it has been emphasized time and again, and must always be emphasized, that spiritual science is not meant to merely convey knowledge to us, a theoretical knowledge, but that spiritual science is meant to give us something that transforms our whole being, that makes something different out of our whole being than the external culture of the present can do.

Now we will gain an insight into the difficulty that spiritual science has in impressing itself not only on our memory but also on our whole cultural life of the present, if we familiarize ourselves with the peculiarities of spiritual scientific research, with the way in which the results of spiritual scientific research relate to us humans. They relate to us differently than other knowledge that we acquire in life. We acquire knowledge through our experiences, through our experiences; because even if we acquire scientific knowledge, it is either through direct or indirect experience. Wherever we acquire knowledge, we acquire it first through experience and then we store it in our memory, in our recollection. We keep these results of life.

We have often made it clear what it means, in more intimate terms, to store something in our memory, especially in recent times we have talked a little more about what memory is. In any case, for life, memory is an extraordinarily important thing. Just think: if we did not have memory, if we could not remember what we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday, a year ago or ten years ago, how very different our lives would have to be. It is inconceivable to us that the ordinary life of the soul, taking place on the physical plane, could take place without memory.

But compare the power that enables you to retain experiences of the physical plane in your memory with the much lesser power that enables you to retain dream experiences in your memory. Consider how much more easily you forget a dream than experiences in the physical world. One may initially ask the question: Why do we forget dream experiences more easily than experiences of the physical world? Well, the answer to this question will also give us an important point of view for higher knowledge.

How are dream experiences acquired? They are acquired by not being completely inside the physical body. When we are completely inside the physical body, we do not dream. Then we experience through the senses on the physical plane and through the mind bound to the senses. When we dream, we must at least be partially outside the physical body. What does the physical body do when it works through the power of memory? Yes, as difficult as it is for a person to think at first, it is nevertheless true: every time a person has an experience and stores this experience in their memory through a thought, an imprint, a kind of cliché of the experience, is formed in our etheric body. But – and I have already discussed this – it is not the case that this imprint would photographically depict the experience. Just as the letter of a writing has nothing to do with the sound, what exists in our body as an imprint has just as little to do with the experience itself. The imprint is only a sign. And this sign is strangely similar to the human form itself. And if you take the upper parts of the human form, the head and at most a little of the upper body and the hands, you have what can be observed in the etheric body every time a person forms a memory of an experience.

So, we can say: I experience something; the experience remains with me, whether it be a small or a great experience, as a memory. An impression is formed, something like this (see drawing). Something like this arises in your etheric body every time a memory is formed, and if it were to be extinguished, you would no longer be able to remember the experience.

Think of how many things you remember in life! You have just as many thousands and thousands of such ethereal images of people within you. Your etheric body, and also your physical body, allow so many different images to be there. If two were the same, you would not be able to distinguish the experiences. If you observe a person occultly, you will find thousands and thousands of such images of people within him. But they do not only arise in the etheric body; a fine impression of each such human image also arises in the physical body, and these impressions also all remain, insofar as the person has memories. So thousands upon thousands of such homunculi are present in a person.

Let us say you are listening to today's lecture. Just by listening to this lecture, hundreds and hundreds of such homunculi are forming in your soul. These also make impressions in your physical body when you remember them later, and these impressions also remain.

But what about dreams? Yes, you see, in a dream the homunculus is formed in the etheric body, but

but it does not leave an impression on the physical body. It leaves a weak impression, or sometimes no impression at all. Then the person is well aware that he has dreamt, but he cannot remember what he dreamt. Dreams leave a weak impression, much weaker than any experience on the physical plane. This is why it is so difficult to retain a memory of them.

The strength of the memory therefore depends entirely on how strong the impression is that the homunculus of the etheric body makes on the physical body. However, what the spiritual researcher finds, what he experiences in the spiritual world, is initially such that it cannot make any impression on the physical body at all. For if an experience can make an impression on the physical body, then it is no longer a purely spiritual experience; then it has already been acquired with regard to the physical body. This must be the peculiar thing about the spiritual experience, that at first nothing at all happens in the physical body, while the spiritual is being experienced.

What follows from this? It follows that the spiritual researcher has to understand that there is no memory for the results of spiritual research. The experiences of the spiritual researcher cannot be memorized. They pass away the very moment they arise.

This is the difficulty of knowing anything of the spiritual world while living in the physical world and wanting to live only through the physical body. Since man has a poor memory even for dreams, which still have a loose connection with the physical body, it shows how understandable it must be that man has no memory for what he really experiences occultly.

There are now people who begin to apply to themselves the rules of my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds,” the rules that are called the rules of occult development. They may apply them for a very long time; but then, after years, they come and say, “I have practiced over and over again, I have done all kinds of exercises; I see nothing, I hear nothing of the spiritual world. My sense for the spiritual world does not want to open up. Perhaps what these people say is completely wrong; it can be completely wrong. The people in question may have long since found entry into the spiritual world and may have perceptions in the spiritual world. But these perceptions disappear the moment they are made, because these perceptions cannot be incorporated into the physical memory. The fact that one can know something from one's spiritual experiences depends on something quite different from memory. And I would now like to make clear to you what it depends on.

Imagine that you make a toy for a child. The child can enjoy this toy. You can make it today and the child can enjoy it. You take the toy and put it in the cupboard. Tomorrow you give it to the child again, and the day after tomorrow, and so on. And the child can always enjoy the toy that you made today.

But something else can also happen. Let us assume that you are not interesting the child by making a toy, but that you are putting something together for him out of random things. Or you might even just make something up for him by imitating gestures or something similar. Let us assume that you attract the child's attention by imitating something with your hands or fingers in a very specific way, by pre-evolving something, for example. You cannot put this in the cupboard, take it out again tomorrow and the day after and give it to the child again and again like a toy. What is to make such an impression on the child must be done afresh each time. You can make a doll and keep it; the child can have it again and again. But if you use something you have done yourself, through gestures or the like, to attract the child's attention, you must do it freshly each time.

This is something that can explain to us the difference between what we acquire on the physical plane and what can become memory, and what we experience on the spiritual plane and what cannot immediately become memory. When we have experiences on the physical plane, something like a homunculus forms in our etheric body and an imprint of it is imprinted in the physical body. It remains, like a doll with a child. You can store it and find it in yourself again and again. This then points to the experience of the past. The experience you have in the spiritual world passes. But you had to do something to bring it about. You had to use the rules that you apply to the soul in the sense of “How to Know Higher Worlds” to put the soul in such a state that the occult experience could occur. You can evoke this state in yourself again and again, so that you can have the experience again and again, but you cannot store it like a memory image. For the physical plane, experiences become memories by preserving after-images, by being remembered. The re-occurrence, the re-memory - if we now use the word “memory” in a figurative sense - of occult experiences can only occur if we create the same conditions through which we experienced the event for the first time.

Let us be clear about one thing: we really have to be infinitely more active and engaged with experiences in the spiritual world than with experiences in the physical world. In contrast to experiences in the physical world, something really forms in us that, I would say, gradually acquires the greatest density. Something internally diverse and manifold is this in us. These many people that you have inside you go through life with you and are something complete. This makes life in the physical world easier for you, because you are spared the work that you have to do over and over again in the occult experiences in the spiritual world if you want to have the experience again. You can only remember the conditions under which you brought about the experience, so never the occult experience itself, but only the way in which it was brought about. And you have to bring about these conditions again to have the occult experience again.

If we – and I say this not comparatively but in the real sense – if we go down a path and there is a church or a house at the end of that path and we go back, we can carry the memory of this image of the church or the house with us on the whole way back. This is because the experience of the church or the house is an experience on the physical plane. If a spirit had stood there instead, and the spirit would only manifest itself at this place, then it would be necessary each time to go to the same place again to see this spirit. One must bring about the same conditions, for one can only remember by which route, through which conditions, one arrived at this experience.

That is the strange thing about these things, that a good memory is of no immediate use for retaining occult experiences, but that on the contrary, something that supports us in ordinary life in consciously developing a good memory can be a hindrance to us in the occult. Certain people are born with a good memory right from the start. Now they live and have a good memory. Others have a less good memory. This is based on very specific karmic conditions: A good memory is something that comes into the world from a previous incarnation in such a way that the soul's penetration of the whole body is as late as possible, and that certain parts of the physical body remain untouched by the soul for as long as possible. In this case it is possible that, without our doing anything, these impressions, these homunculi, which I have described, are formed.

But when someone enters life through physical birth and their personality is so inwardly disposed for their individual physical experience that the impressions take complete possession of their physical body as quickly as possible, then they will not be able to develop a particularly good memory because they fill their memory with themselves; and then it is too hard for so many impressions of such homunculi to enter it. Therefore, we will preferably find a good memory in those people who, I might say, have an otherwise vague egoistic interest in the experiences of the physical plane.

On the other hand, memory can also be developed to a certain extent. But it can only be developed by stimulating attention and interest. Interest, attention and memory belong together. If you try to take a very intense interest in some experiences, in some area of life, to be very much involved with it with your whole self, your memory, your recollection of these experiences will also become better and better. So if someone wants to develop their memory for something, the best way to do it is to sharpen their interest in the subject as much as possible. There is nothing we remember for which we do not create an intense interest. Thus, attention and interest are something that can help us to improve a poor memory in the physical world.

For the right approach to occult experiences, so that these experiences do not constantly flash past us like dreams and we are unaware of them, loving attention and loving interest for the spiritual in general is of the utmost importance. Without this spiritual interest, without this loving attention, we cannot have spiritual experiences again and again that we have had once. It is quite possible to have an occult experience. It flits by. Only through this will one be able to create not memories, but the conditions under which one can have the experience again and again, and again and again, by intensifying one's interest in the events in the spiritual world.

That is why it is so important that we do not just acquire as much knowledge as possible about the spiritual world by way of memory; that is actually the least important thing. The more important thing is that we never pursue these matters of the spiritual world without love, never without the most intense interest. If we absorb knowledge from spiritual science indifferently, perhaps just so that we can boast about it or for some other reason, as we so often absorb other knowledge of the world, then it has no significance. What is important is the degree of love, of sympathy for the spiritual world that we acquire. That is the important thing, that is the meaningful thing. And that is why we try to present the events of the spiritual world from so many points of view, again and again from different points of view; because this way we are more and more encouraged to actively approach the knowledge of the spiritual world, and not to come to the desire to understand this knowledge of the spiritual world in the same way as the knowledge of physical things. That is actually the most fatal thing for the real occultist: when the longing arises in a person to gain spiritual knowledge, but when one desires to gain this knowledge in a different way than physical knowledge.

People would prefer to have books about the spiritual world, just as they have books about the physical world; they would like to acquire knowledge about the spiritual world in the same way that they acquire knowledge about the physical world. But it is not at all possible to acquire knowledge of the spiritual world in this way; instead, books that deal with the spiritual world must stimulate our inner activity each time anew, setting our inner powers in motion. Therefore, it is not the same as when we acquire knowledge about the physical world, where we have to repeat it over and over again in order not to forget, when we acquire knowledge about the spiritual world. When we read a cycle again and again or a spiritual science book, then that is actually not a repetition, but an immersing ourselves in the activity through which we arrive at the knowledge. And that is the most important thing, that is the essential thing. You see, if someone were asked to pray when they went to church, you would look at them rather strangely if they said: I don't need to pray today; when I was seven years, three months and two days old, I read the prayer once. I will always remember that I have prayed it; I do not need to pray it again, because I know that I have prayed it; I will just remember it now. You would look at this person strangely, you would make it clear to him that it is not important to remember the prayer once it has been said, but to keep bringing it up because it is alive in every renewal. This is precisely how we should understand our experience in occult science. We should not say, as we do about ordinary science: Yes, we have absorbed it, we remember it - but we want to get used to delving into the subject again and again, to going through the activity again and again. But people of the modern age do not like this at all. Rather, people of modern times love to stop at what they have once attained. Isn't it true that one feels most happy when one has acquired some knowledge and then carries this knowledge in one's inner “backpack,” as it were, through life, and when one needs it, takes it out and remembers it again. This is something that modern humanity is increasingly in danger of falling into. But in modern times, I would say, there is an immediate need to transform this sitting on the acquired content so that human work, human striving, corresponds to the

Only he earns freedom and life who
must conquer them daily.

This beautiful saying from Faust.

And it is truly the case that nothing more than the Faust attitude, which we have often considered here, awakens and stirs in the human soul that which gradually leads to the occult, to the occult attitude.

Goethe wrote the first great monologue of Faust in the 1770s, in keeping with his mood at the time. Today it has become trivial for many, but it is something that, when viewed in its originality, weighs on the soul with all the tragedy of life:

I have now, alas! studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and, unfortunately! theology,
with great zeal.
There I stand, poor fool that I am!
And I am as wise as before.

Goethe wrote this himself, from his own nature, from the depths of his soul, as a young man in the 1770s. Then came the time when a high point of human philosophical development was experienced in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. But this high point of philosophical development was connected with legal development. Hegel wrote a natural law, Fichte wrote a natural law; Schelling published a medical journal. Something mighty and great has passed through the human soul, leading to Goethe's saying:

Have now, alas! Philosophy,
Jurisprudence and medicine,
And unfortunately! also theology,
studied thoroughly, with ardent endeavor.

But do you think that if Goethe had lived in 1840 and had begun his “Faust” only in 1840 instead of in 1772, do you think that because great and mighty things have been achieved in the cultural development of humanity, and that he had really searched in a truly philosophical way for what goes on in the human soul, do you think he would have said: “Now, thank God, I have found the answer!” studied philosophy, law and medicine and, of course, theology with Fichte, Schelling and Hegel: “There I stand now, I clever, wise man, and am no longer as foolish as before, but have become quite wise, as wise as one can only be”? Do you think that Goethe would have said that? Suppose it took much longer for the Earth's culture to develop, would this opening monologue of “Faust” have been written exactly the same way in 1840 as it was in 1772, exactly the same way? All these things are part of the real understanding of “Faust.” This great, gigantic idea cannot be understood if you do not grasp it in its details. And if Faust were to be started today, it would have to begin with the same words.

And once countless facts from the humanities have been brought to light, the following sentiment will no longer be shared: “Thank God I have studied philosophy, law and medicine, and thank God theology too, and of course theosophy as well, and am as wise as can be.” That would never be the true Faust mood! Only the one to whom the following applies would have the true Faust mood: “Only he earns freedom, like life, who must conquer it daily.” This is the mood that underlies “Faust” and at the same time shows us where the impulses lie that lead from the old, frozen culture to the new culture of humanity. Man must never cease to acquire something new and different, and I have also advocated this within the spiritual scientific movement to which we belong. It was truly terrible when one repeatedly heard in the old society: Yes, we need schemas, and when I presented this or that, then there should be schemas and tables hanging on the walls so that one has something to remember by. And people were dissatisfied when one came and basically reversed what was once there, what was established; since it always has to be acquired anew. Because it is this never-resting, never-ceasing striving forward that matters.

It can be said directly: By having driven out of itself a Faust, the newer culture has really built the bridge from the merely external materialistic culture to the new spiritual culture that must come over humanity.

But much, very much, in relation to the right view of life is connected with all this, with these peculiarities of the new knowledge, which must indeed be drawn from occultism, and which therefore makes demands on the active impulses of men. Thus it is connected with the principle of taking everything as it is finished, as it is complete, when people strive to preserve that which cannot be preserved. For example, something that I have really tried to explain for decades now, I can say, cannot be preserved; something that is called human freedom.

Freedom as an external institution, as an external condition in the human organization on earth, is something impossible, something unthinkable. Preserved in this way, as it was once conceived for a particular point in time, freedom would be a terrible fetter for man at the next point in time. Freedom is something that must constantly be unleashed as it arises, and man can only acquire freedom in each moment by developing within himself a sense of relating to the whole spiritual world. You can read about this in my book 'The Philosophy of Freedom'. There you will find that the whole mood is expressed there. There you can see that freedom is truly a key to that which leads into the spiritual world.

But it is obvious that freedom can only be understood by people who gradually develop the will to study spiritual science. Freedom cannot be understood by other people, because other people will always confuse certain peculiarities of external institutions with freedom, whereas freedom can only ever exist in the state that a person can acquire at any given moment.

We impair our freedom, namely, already through one thing by which we usually do not believe our freedom to be impaired: we impair our freedom already through our memory. For suppose, for a moment, that you have acquired certain sympathies and antipathies through the experiences you have undergone since your birth; then your freedom is already impaired by what has remained of these sympathies and antipathies. These acquired sympathies and antipathies, everything that is stored in the memory, impairs your freedom. And all knowledge that humanity strives for and that is then executed in order to become memory, that also distances us more and more from a real concept of freedom. On the other hand, with every acquisition of occult knowledge, one is brought closer to the true concept of freedom, genuine freedom.

But this whole thing is connected to something else: consider that with everything that takes root as memory, we are actually planting a homunculus within us. And everything that takes shape in us as a homunculus is really the case that by setting our inner life in motion, we do not get any further with our activity than this homunculus, than these impressions. We cannot get beyond them. If we could break through what has accumulated as memory, if we could really bring out of ourselves everything we have experienced since the time of our childhood, up to the time we can remember back to, we would break through something like a skin of life. But behind this skin of life is the spiritual world. There it is, right behind it! And by beginning to build up a picture of his own life from earliest childhood, by retaining from all his experiences that which makes up the content of his memory, he weaves a veil throughout his life, and this veil covers the spiritual world.

We could not stand in the physical world if we did not spin this web, for we are, insofar as we remember, this web itself.

But we arise as human beings in the physical world only by forming ourselves out of the veil, which we at the same time hold up before the spiritual world. It is really as if someone, well, I would like to say, wants to look at a stage and says: I want to look in there now. But he does it by hanging a curtain in front of it. In doing so, he covers up bit by bit what is behind it. That is what man does in life. The memories man stores up are a curtain that is hung over spiritual reality, woven before the spiritual world. This is a contradiction that we face in life, but it must not be blamed or criticized because it is the condition for our being in the physical life. It can only be characterized, but not blamed. If we did not spiritually weave the curtain before us, we would not be there in the physical world. And that is precisely what matters: that we know such a thing, that we do not mistake ourselves for a reality when we are only a curtain.

We immediately penetrate all deception by considering ourselves a curtain and not a reality, in the moments when we say to ourselves: You are actually only what stands before the true world, and your own form, what you yourself are, stands behind the form that you yourself weave throughout life. - When you keep this fact in mind, you stand in truth. Then you do not consider yourself to be reality, but only a curtain. But people are afraid of considering themselves a mere curtain. They want to consider themselves a reality in what they are. But that is why they cannot come to any clarity about the most important things in life.

All people thirst for preservation after death, for immortality, they all thirst to know something about the fact that they still exist after death. But they secretly think: if everything that is in me, that I have on the physical plane, perishes, what will then still be there? That this must go away after death, that the curtain not only tears, but must be dissolved, so that the human being can emerge: this is self-evident for the one who ascends in spiritual knowledge.

Thus we must accept such things, as they have been touched upon today, in such a way that we really say more and more to ourselves: For spiritual science, different human attitudes must be inwardly adopted than those in the culture up to now. There must arise a much greater striving for constant activity among people, for activity, for being there. The idea that one has grasped something and can retain it and carry it through life must disappear. If that disappears, all the other things that stand in the way of clear perception will disappear as well. I have often pointed out how people, even in science, have the most confused ideas about what is true. For example, you will often read in physiological works today that people sleep because they experience this or that in their waking state and become tired from it. Sleep would therefore be a result of fatigue. I have pointed out that the reindeer, which does not need to work very hard, should not have any need for sleep either. But if you listen to the reindeer, you will learn that if you do nothing at all, you feel most tired and you fall asleep without having done the slightest thing. From this you can see that fatigue has nothing to do with sleep, and sleep has nothing to do with fatigue, any more than day has to do with night.

At most, minds like Hume or Kant will have difficulties because they confuse what follows from each other. No one will consider the day as the cause of the night and the night as the cause of the day. Day and night arise one after the other. Day arises from the sun rising above the horizon, and night from the sun going below the horizon. The sun's standing above the horizon is the cause of day, and the sun's going below the horizon is the cause of night. Just as night is not the cause of day, or day the cause of night, so it is not essentially true that waking is the cause of sleeping or sleeping the cause of waking. Rather, it is rhythmic states that alternate, just as the positions of the sun above and below the horizon alternate, and these have nothing to do with a cause-and-effect relationship.

But just as it is true that the sun, when it goes below the horizon, causes twilight, and when it goes further down, causes darkness, so the truth is not that because we feel tired, we also want to sleep, but we feel tired because we want to sleep. We must have a desire for sleep, then we feel tired.

This seems to contradict everything that is thought today, but it is true, just as true as that day is not the cause of night and night is not the cause of day. So tiredness is not the cause of sleep. But just as night occurs when the sun goes down, so tiredness occurs because one wants to sleep. Here, cause and effect are completely confused and mixed up.

Today I want to draw attention to something else. There is an enormous difference between the relationship between day and night, the relationship between the sun and the earth, and the relationship between sleeping and waking in humans: you cannot imagine that the same thing can happen to the sun as can happen to humans. I mean, a person has a good meal and sleeps at the wrong time, or sleeps at the wrong time for some other reason. The sun does not do that. Because, think about what it would be like if the sun suddenly decided not to rise above the horizon at a certain time and everything that makes day into night happened all at once. You cannot possibly imagine that a constellation will arise in the universe that is analogous to man sleeping when he wants, arbitrarily arranging his waking and sleeping times. How far removed the sun is from that! It is impossible for the sun to overdo itself and stop shining in the middle of the day, so that night falls. As far as it is from anyone falling asleep during the day – it is easy, it just needs to be a little hot and one thinks that one has to sleep with the heat – so far away from freedom are natural necessity and natural law, so far away from the spirit is nature. But so far is the understanding that humanity has today, that the present time has, from the understanding that it will have to acquire through spiritual science.

We must always bear in mind that it is not only a serious but also a great task to find our way into the aspirations that spiritual science wants to bring to human culture. And there are many things that have not yet been overcome that will have to be overcome if spiritual science and its results are to be incorporated into the spiritual development of humanity.

Today, I would like to draw attention to two things – we will see more tomorrow – that must be acquired by anyone who wants to enter the field of spiritual science and make it fruitful for the spiritual life of the future: the first is a certain shyness, a certain reverence for the truth. One need only open one's eyes to see that, especially today, everything that happens in the world seems to be a revolt against this awe, against reverence for the truth. Those who have reverence for the truth will wait a long time before making an assertion about something or passing judgment on it. Today there is a tendency to do the opposite, to feel as little respect as possible for the truth, but rather to shape the truth to suit one's own convenience, to suit one's own feelings and perceptions. The ability to wait until the truth reveals itself as the chaste divinity of the human soul is a feeling that can be said to It is truly necessary for today's humanity to acquire it. But external culture resists this acquisition; it is a culture in which it is important to fabricate messages and to communicate all facts as quickly as possible, as today's journalism does. The opposite mood is present to that which our spiritual science must produce in us. The way in which the world is presented today through the press and the media is the opposite of what must be striven for by spiritual science, by those who mean well by humanity. This must be admitted by those who want to belong to the spiritual science movement. The first is reverence for the truth.

The second is reverence for knowledge. It must weigh heavily on the soul of those who recognize the impulses of the times and strive to introduce new impulses into the development of humanity that people do not take reverence for knowledge seriously enough. It is sad that people everywhere show that they do not have reverence for knowledge.

Particularly in our time, in view of the terrible events of the present, we do indeed see that people - most of all those who write and have it printed, but unfortunately the others do it too - judge as if the world were really created, say, in June or July 1914.

Strangely enough, when the events of the present are being discussed, one repeatedly hears the beginning of the story “In 1914” being repeated, and there the events are jumbled up and mixed up, and people believe that something can come of it. Nothing can come of it. One cannot understand why things are as they are in the present if one does not have the reverence for knowledge that leads to the times of the distant past and sees that the events of the present are the consequences of these distant pasts and are deeply connected with them.

The heart bleeds for those who are serious about the development of humanity when they see how thoughtlessly people judge the way cause and being are connected here or there. And these judgments are made by people whose judgments show that they basically do not know what is important.

Now one could object: You cannot demand that everyone should be able to judge. - Yes, certainly not. But what one can demand is reverence for knowledge, an awareness that one must first know something before judging.

This is something one would like to wish for people above all today: that they should not judge before knowing. It is one of the most terrible evils of the present day that people judge without knowing. It is what makes the products of contemporary culture so terrible, because you can see everywhere that they breathe exactly the opposite of what reverence for real knowledge is, what reverence for truth is.

Reverence for truth, reverence for knowledge, that is what we should acquire. I say: reverence for knowledge. I do not, of course, say reverence for scientific authority – so as not to distort things – but reverence for knowledge, especially for one's own knowledge. You have to acquire that first; then you can also have reverence for your own knowledge. As long as you do not possess it, you cannot, of course, have reverence for what does not exist. Then you also lack the necessary reverence in life.

But above all, it is important that we penetrate into our souls, that we experience new feelings and emotions, and that we do not try to make progress in the same way, now on the paths, on the paths of spiritual science, as has been attempted in material culture. Our serious task here must be to acquire the ability to distinguish.

Dear attendees! For many years now, I have had the honor of giving a lecture here almost every winter, as in various cities in Germany, on topics in the field that I dare to call spiritual science. In our fateful time, however, it will be appropriate to turn our attention to the events of which we are all participants and witnesses during this time. This seems all the more appropriate to me, esteemed attendees, as it is my conviction, flowing not from a dark feeling but from spiritual science itself, that precisely what spiritual scientific world knowledge is, is intimately connected with what the German people and the German soul have produced as the world picture of German idealism, which revealed itself most impressively and powerfully out of this German soul at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century, but which has continued to work and has worked into our days.

In the true sense of being a study of spiritual life, spiritual science wants to be a continuation of what the natural scientific world view has achieved for the outer world of the senses. But to mature the spirit for such an understanding of the spiritual foundations of the world, this world view of German Idealism seems to me – as I said, I say this from the knowledge of the spirit itself – but this world view of German Idealism seems to me to be the actual root and the actual source. Therefore, allow me this evening to present a kind of reflection on this world view of German idealism and its influence on the present, its effect on the whole of time formation and on the world-historical development of humanity.

Of course, this world view of German idealism is born, entirely born, as we shall see, out of the essence of German nationality, and in this respect one could deny it a certain comprehensive validity according to the saying often heard today: All knowledge, all science must actually assume an international character and becomes untrue to itself if it proves to be in any way shaded by the aspect of one nation.

As plausible as it may seem at first, I would like to say, as self-evident as such an assertion appears, one must still say that from a deeper world view point of view it is misleading. It seems self-evident because it is, I would say, the most extraordinary thing that can be said about science and penetration into world knowledge. When we speak of the internationality of knowledge and insight, we are actually saying no more than that the sun or the moon are the common thought of all people. That is what they are; but the way in which what people have to say about the sun and the moon speaks from the souls, from the hearts of people, this way, it is different according to the talents, according to the spiritual directions and dispositions of the different peoples. The most diverse talents are involved in order to make this knowledge fruitful for human spiritual culture in one direction or another. That is precisely what is at stake: the extent to which what can be known can penetrate into all human spiritual development in a healthy way. But in this the talents, the soul directions of the different peoples have their very distinct specificity. Otherwise, how could it be otherwise meaningful to understand that one of the most German minds, Goethe, when he had begun his journey through the world, in order to see not only what was offered to him in the contemplation of art, but also what nature could offer him. How else could it have been possible for him to write to his German friends from Italy: “After all the natural phenomena and facts I have seen in public, I would now most like to take a trip to India - so said Goethe - not to discover it, but to see what I have discovered in my own way.

The way in which we view what is given to everyone is what matters when we consider the actual impulses and driving forces for the progress of humanity as a whole.

Now it is precisely possible for spiritual science to look at the souls of nations in a truly cognitive way. To do so, however, one must start from a spiritual-scientific insight that - like so many insights today - may be regarded by some as paradoxical, perhaps even fantastic. But what I will say next about the souls of different peoples from a spiritual-scientific point of view is something that may still seem fantastic and paradoxical to the present day, but which human knowledge wants to incorporate, just as certain physical and certain scientific knowledge has incorporated.

If we consider the soul today in the light of current psychology, we see everything that swirls and lives in the soul in terms of impulses of will, feelings, perceptions, thoughts and ideas as a unity. Of course it is; but that does not lead to any real knowledge. Nor does one come to a real understanding of the soul itself, as one might come to a real understanding of light if one did not perceive its interaction with material existence, with material things that confront it, in such a way that one would believe that one would emerge from the light the different shades of colors: the reddish-yellow nuance on one side, the green nuance in the middle, the bluish-violet nuance on the other side - just as the physicist, in his interaction with material existence, must observe these color shades, structured from this one light , and how he cannot come to an understanding of the deeds of light, as Goethe says, in any other way, one cannot come to an understanding of what the human soul actually is if one does not, I would say, also divide it into three shades of its being. And so we call the first shade of the soul being - corresponding, as it were, to the red-yellow shades of light in the rainbow - [...] then the human sentient soul. The human sentient soul contains everything that often wells up unconsciously and subconsciously from the dark depths of the soul. Everything that lives in a person without them immediately having an intellectual grasp of it – their passions, their desires and so on, as well as what gives people this or that temperament – all this wells up in the sentient soul. But in this sentient soul is contained at the same time, in a certain way, if also, one might say, in a natural way, that which can be called the eternal powers of the human soul, which pass through births and deaths and can reappear in repeated earthly lives.

Let us distinguish – as it were, as a parallel phenomenon for the greenish shading of the light – let us distinguish the so-called intellectual or emotional soul. This is the part of the soul through which man acquires an overview, a rationally considered overview, a level-headed overview of that which would otherwise live indeterminately and unconsciously in his soul as affects, as inner tremors.

And as the third shade of life - corresponding to the color blue-violet in the light - we speak of the consciousness soul. It is that through which the human being is most connected, from his soul existence, with the surrounding physical world in which he finds himself; it is that which contains within itself the most temporal, the most transient, power of human being; it is also that through which the human being appears individually as a personality, through which he puts the world to use, through which he puts that which he deliberately lets flow out of the subconscious soul life into practical life.

And just as the one light, the one sunlight, lives in the different colors of the rainbow, so the one I, the one, self-aware being of man, lives in the totality of the shades of the soul. And just as the light appears as the unity of that red and green and blue, as the unity of everything, so the self appears, so the personality, the individuality of man, the actual I appears.

I cannot say more today in the way of an introduction to this scientifically well-founded fact, law of the soul, because it seems appropriate to me to apply this law of the soul to the different national souls, insofar as they are spread over European intellectual life.

We have to say that [...] what can be called the soul of a nation is just as much a reality for spiritual science, something alive in itself, not just an abstract concept that summarizes the characteristics of a nation, but something alive in itself. You will also find the necessary references for this in our spiritual science literature, especially in my Theosophy.

And here we must say that the individual nations differ so much that in one nation more of the shades of the sentient soul comes to the fore, in another nation more of a different shade of soul life. In this way the European peoples are structured according to their folk souls – not the individual people, but to the extent that these individual people belong to the folk soul – they bring to manifestation that which lives as the shade of the rainbow in the individual folk souls.

In this context, the approach that I would like to say is justified by spiritual science shows us that when we look to the south, to the Italian people – to some extent this also applies to the Spanish people – when we look to the Italian people, we see that the folk soul of the Italian people is expressed through the shades of the and everything that can be observed in the various expressions of this Italian national soul, in its good and bad aspects, is connected with the fact that the Italian national soul is dominated by the shades of the sentient soul, that everything springs from the sentient soul.

Today, we only want to emphasize the best qualities of the Italian people that come from their emotional soul; but it will be seen that the Italian people, insofar as they appear as a national soul – not as individual human beings, as I said – must have a certain one-sidedness because their expressions and revelations come from the emotional soul. Yes, if we take the greatest – I will refrain from the development of art, the actual visual arts, but they could very easily prove exactly what I have to say – if we take the greatest – Dante, Giordano Bruno – we learn, precisely when we immerse ourselves in them, that what they have achieved in a gloriously designed world view is created entirely from the sentient soul. One only has to read Giordano's work to see how he has become a great inspirer. When one delves into what he has brought, it is like an expression of feeling for the world view that man can create out of the abundance of the world's phenomena. Feeling lives in this one of the greatest [spirits of] Italians, in Giordano Bruno. I would just like to hint at this.

It is particularly important to look at the French national soul from the point of view that has been gained. This French national soul shows itself to the spiritual-scientific gaze in such a way that it actually sets the tone for the chiseling of the intellectual soul. Everything in the French spirit that appears great but also one-sided stems from the fact that the intellectual soul finds particular expression there. And today we shall mention only that which has influenced the development of an actual world view. The greatest Frenchman in this field, under whose influence French world-view life still stands today, was born at the end of the sixteenth century and lived into the seventeenth century, namely Descartes or Cartesius; but it is precisely in this Descartes or Cart esius, the man of world-view who emerged at the dawn of the newer development of world-view — one can see how in him in particular everything lives that can lead from the intellect to a world-picture. His saying, “I think, therefore I am,” has become famous. Thinking, that is, that which lives in the soul of the intellect, is now based on the being of the soul itself.

The human mind still has the peculiarity of building the world as if it were externally mechanical. It is indeed the peculiarity of the mind that it is unable to penetrate the inner vitality of the world, that it shrinks back, as it were, from the inner vitality, and that it wants to construct everything. But this is particularly evident in Descartes, in Cartesius. And now we will draw attention to one particular way in which this world view of Descartes came about: I would say that it is the one-sided expression of intellectual life. Descartes looks at the world; and after he has given himself over to doubting everything (and this doubt is also, in turn, an expression of the intellectual way of looking at the world), he comes to saying to himself how he can form a world picture that has sensuality. Indeed, this world view becomes such that everything mechanical only wants to be included in it. The world appears as a great mechanism. And it is characteristic of this – I would say genuinely French – world view that Descartes explicitly states: we can only perceive soul in ourselves, as humans. Animals are moving machines. Descartes denies that animals, or indeed all of nature except for human beings, have souls. Animals are automatons.

Thus, for Descartes, the whole of nature except for human beings is like a complicated machine, and animals are within this complicated machine. Indeed, it is precisely the rational mind that recoils from the living. And this intellectualism, it remained in its one-sidedness, and in the end it led to the fact that precisely from France and right up to our times the impetus has been given to establish the actual materialism of the world view, of mechanism, one might say, the world view,

Dear attendees, one could very easily reproach the one who describes the relationships of the folk souls in this way today: Yes, you are describing the feelings of the present time, because the war has brought about a situation in which what we ourselves regard as our world view, as the source of our national identity, is being vilified and even defamed from all sides in Europe. And so we are now trying – I would say – in this time to either justify or avenge ourselves.

Now, esteemed attendees, there are listeners here who know that what I am saying about the different national souls in these difficult times of European events is something I have said again and again for many years, long before this war, and not only to Germans but also to members of other European nations. I consider this to be a firm result of spiritual scientific knowledge about European conditions.

The mechanistic nature of this worldview has been so ingrained in French culture to this day that it has allowed what was French, materialistic or mechanistic world view to emerge. And today we may recall how Goethe, even as a young man, confronted the French mechanistic worldview from his German consciousness, which seeks to take account of the living soul and the vitality of the worldview. He said: They bring us this mechanical play, a mechanism only, a worldview as if the whole world were just a game, a real automaton! Yes, if only what one sees in the world of phenomena could at least be explained to one! These are moving atoms! But then, when he has explained how the atoms collide, he withdraws and leaves the whole world unexplained.

This is what repels Goethe, even as a young man, about the one-sidedness that arises from a purely intellectual development of a world view. And basically, to this day, we can see how this mechanistic world view affects what we seek in a worldview, a folk worldview. For only a few individuals have tried to work their way out of it, for example, the famous philosopher Bergson, I don't know whether one can still mention him today, after the beginning of the war, after the mood of the French, or whether the word Bergson is now taboo as his name in France, I don't know. It is precisely Bergson who, since the war broke out, one might say, has continually presented his French to his French in the most savage manner against the German essence, namely against the German world view, and has managed to that it is precisely the Germans – who were great in a certain way, especially during the period of German idealism – but who have now fallen so low in the present day, [the Germans] have become a nation that only trains itself mechanically and in a machine-like way. The Germans have become a nation that itself represents only a kind of machine!

Bergson probably thought – Bergson, who formed this view of the German people because the Germans opposed the French with cannons and rifles – he probably formed this view because he believed that the Germans will oppose the products of what he calls the “greatness, the great age” of the Germans to the French cannons and French rifles by reciting Novalis and Schiller and Goethe, because that is all they would rely on, right!

Well, this Bergson, he has in a sense worked his way out. But I showed in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” - which was not written during the outbreak of the war, but appeared at the very beginning of the war and was finished long before - that those of Bergson's thoughts that are reasonably plausible could be found long before that in much more intense and much more thorough form in the minds of German thinkers! But quite apart from that, Bergson always wants to be seen as the one who brought the French a world view that went far beyond the mechanistic and materialistic view of things.

Now, this world view, how did Bergson himself present it to the Germans in his lectures, to these Germans who are said to have come down so much since the time of their greatness? It is just a shame that it has been possible to prove, especially in recent times, that Bergson copied entire pages – not just repeating, but copying – from the German philosopher Schelling, the German philosopher Schopenhauer, and so on, and so on!

What the Frenchman is able to counter as a higher world view to the German, whom he defames, esteemed attendees, is something he himself has copied! It is necessary to bear these things in mind more often in the present if one wants to have an understanding of the mutual relationship between the European peoples and what is now being said about this relationship by the opponents of this German essence.

And, dearest attendees, when we turn our eye to the British national soul, we find that this British national soul bears the very shade of the consciousness soul. And in every detail of this British national soul, one can see how it expresses this consciousness soul, how the British, the Englishman in particular, has the intention of putting what wells up from his inner being into the service of practical life alone.

This is what English culture has in itself, without taking into account the development of the whole world view. Starting with Milton and Bacon, it can be seen everywhere that a world view was actually sought that was to be placed only at the service of the actually immediately tangible life. But I will refrain from that now, I will only point out that in the very last period, this English national character, insofar as it really arose from the British national character, has led to a very peculiar direction: truth, that is what a person who has a sense of truth regards as something that is intimately and genuinely connected to the soul as a reality. Ladies and gentlemen: The English – and in this case in harmony with the Americans – have developed a world view that they call pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? Well, this pragmatism, dear attendees, is characterized above all by the fact that it treats the truth, the concept, the idea of truth itself, in a highly peculiar way. Truth as something that connects the soul with reality, with spiritual reality, is something that this pragmatism, this primeval English product, does not recognize at all. Man perceives truth as an idea, as an idea - in the sense of pragmatism - purely for the purpose of dealing with the external world of the senses, with external tangible reality, in order to intervene in it. In the sense of this pragmatism, truth is a concept that proves useful for practical life. One could say that truth is a tool for usefulness in the very outermost sense, including scientific truth, when understood in this way. Truth has no independent significance, but only serves as a tool for finding one's way in the outer life – that is what this pragmatism has brought forth.

Do we not see this consciousness soul, which places everything that the human being produces in a spiritual way only at the service of the external life? Do we not see it at work in all the details - most honored attendees - that are found in the three peoples mentioned, that order and inner understanding will come into the matter when they are considered in terms of the guidelines that can only be briefly sketched here, but which can be fully substantiated from the insights of spiritual science?

And if we now turn our gaze to the center of Europe, let us turn our gaze to German spiritual life, insofar as it is rooted in its national character. Let us turn our gaze to that spiritual striving within the German people that is to lead to a world view, to such a world view that at least corresponds to the German being, the German national character, then we find confirmed in the most comprehensive way that spiritual science also shows in other respects that this German soul is shaded in such a way that it appears like light in three different color shades: in reddish-yellow, in greenish, and in bluish-violet. That the German soul is such that the I, the self-awareness, works through the three different soul nuances, the unity of the soul-living, working through all three soul nuances, this turns out to be the essence of the German national spirit, the German national soul, in a truly lively, penetrating observation.

And this can be said in a completely objective sense; it does not require any kind of one-sided nationalistic view, as we see it emerging from the Italian, French, and British national souls.

The German is in a position to be able to truly rely on what an insight into his nature, striven for in the soul, gives him, and [he is in a position] to understand his nature from this insight.

And if one wants historical proof that this I, this self, the whole living personality in German national character is really effective through the three soul nuances, then one can present precisely the three great world-view men who, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, so clearly emerged within German intellectual life and sought to reveal German national character at the highest spiritual level. Kant, who tried to educate himself from philosophy, was indeed ahead of them; but we do not want to look at him, although he provided the foundation for the others, so to speak.

But before our soul we want to place one of the most German men, one of those men who knew - even when they strove with their thoughts to the highest, to a world view - that they can only gain this world view in the right sense, in the living sense, within the German essence if this world view is the result of a conversation with the German national spirit itself. And so Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, knew that in the world view he created, German essence was most wonderfully revealed. How does he appear to us when we first consider his personality only in terms of appearance?

Allow me, esteemed attendees, to mention just a few essential traits of his life, so that we can see how this whole man, Fichte, attempts to obtain, from the unity of human life, from the self itself, that which illuminates the world in its deepest life and can bring it to knowledge for man.

The young Fichte, how does he appear to us? Two traits, wonderfully real in this sensitive beauty, we can hardly find them in any other mind: the six-year-old son of a simple, rural man is first of all a decent student; and because he is such a good student, he is given the book “Gehörnte Siegfried” by his father as a Christmas reward - he can already read. It soon becomes apparent that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is becoming somewhat inattentive in his studies; he is reproached for this. We see him one day standing by the stream that flows past his parents' house, throwing into it the “Gehörnte Siegfried”, which has become so dear to him, on which he has pinned his entire soul. And when his father comes along, the father realizes the reason for the boy's strange behavior: he could not tolerate, in the face of the iron concept of duty that was already living in him at the root of his soul, that what was dear to him as a human being, as a personality, should remain with him if he could violate his duty over it. Thus, even the boy Fichte, the six-year-old boy, feels trapped in a world that is, I would say, completely permeated by forces of duty.

Later, when Johann Gottlieb Fichte was nine years old, the village where his parents lived was visited by the estate neighbor. He actually wanted to hear the sermon on Sunday; but he came too late. What happened? Because the pastor had already delivered the sermon, they showed him the young boy, the nine-year-old boy in the blue farmer's coat, who at first behaved awkwardly, but then, when he saw what they wanted from him, came to life and now the whole sermon, which he had listened to as a nine-year-old boy, had listened to as a nine-year-old boy, and he now recites it word for word to the neighbor of the estate, so that everything he said comes from his soul – he had connected with the innermost view of his soul with what he had just heard, and so he could let it flow out again from the innermost. Thus he lived a spiritual life in the immediacy of his own being. Thus he was prepared to find in Fichte the world picture of German idealism, which was able to flow to him, I might say, admittedly from a certain one-sided point of view, but still from a genuinely German one.

Fichte's fundamental awareness of the fact that what lives in the human being, what is inside this I, how it contains the source forces of the world itself – that which pervades and permeates the world in a divine-spiritual way – how this can be found if only man plunges completely into the depths of his inner being, this is evident in all of Fichte's work. He was appointed to the professorship in Jena relatively early, which at that time was the center of German intellectual life. But the way in which Fichte as a teacher affected his listeners is really quite different from what one - I would say usually dreams of.

People who heard Fichte characterize him in the following way: When Fichte spoke, it was like rolling thunder that discharged in sparks of lightning; and when he spoke, he wanted to educate not only good, but great individuals. And one of those who had listened to some of those standing nearby said: What Fichte said revealed that he had not practical, but bold images, energetic images, that his imagination was not graceful in the proper sense but forceful and powerful, and that he speaks in the realm of thought, in the realm of ideas, not like one who merely makes grand words, but like one who is able to rule in this invisible, in this supersensible world.

When Fichte spoke to his listeners, he did not merely seek to communicate to them the content of what he had to say to them. He never spoke the same thing twice about a subject; he never spoke in such a way – I would say that he had only a certain content in his soul that he wanted to convey to his listeners, but rather he had in his own inner being an overall feeling of what he wanted to say, an overall feeling, and above all he sought to establish an inner bond between himself and each individual listener. He wanted that which lived in his soul to become active, not just as a word, but as a force in each individual listener, [but] that it resound in each individual listener himself. He wanted to pour a living fluid over his entire audience. He wanted the listeners, when they had heard his phrases, to leave with a different inner life than when they came. He wanted to awaken something in them. But that is how he worked, vividly, seizing the self.

And so Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, was able to completely negate, I would say, that which emerged from Descartes' rational world view. Striving to be in one's own self and to strive for the divine in the self, by starting from thinking, and because one thinks, one shows – Fichte could not approve of that either – so the self would have been something dead. For him, the ego was something that could never become dead, for the reason that it constantly creates itself. It cannot cease to be - because it constantly creates itself. That is to say: He saw the essence of the ego - Fichte - in the will. And by the fact that the ego wills itself, it places itself into the world through its own power.

But this also had to result in a world view for Fichte that saw in the will that pervades the world as the actual active force in the world. And the wonderful thing about Fichte is that he says: This external sense world, as it presents itself to us, is not the true, real one. Why is it there? It is there so that man can appear within this sensory world as a sensual being; so that in this human being the will that permeates the world and expresses itself as the divine duty that permeates the world, so that this will forms a material, in order to fulfill the duty, in order to fulfill the moral. Thus, for Fichte, the whole world is permeated by moral substance, by moral reality. For him, the whole world is a spiritual whole of duty, and that which exists as an individual is so that duty, so that the will, so that the divine that is alive in the will can live out itself.

Fichte calls the external sensual world matter, the sensualized material of duty. If one tries to hold together Fichte's placing in a divine-moral world order with the mechanistic materialism that emerged from a unified rational world view, as with Descartes —- Cartesius —, one tries to recognize how this Johann Gottlieb Fichte lived - I would like to say - a certain inner connection of the soul with what, as the divine, flows through and permeates the world, how he then tried to see this connection in the individual national spirits. But Fichte could only ascribe to the German national spirit the ability of a national spirit to grasp this living connection with the universal spirit in the ego. And so Fichte became quite aware that the German national spirit, in connection with the development of humanity, would be called upon to bring living knowledge in place of mechanistic, dead knowledge.

But what is true is that the “Addresses to the German Nation” are pulsating with an ethos, a world-historical sense of duty. Fichte delivered these magnificent addresses in Berlin, in the midst of the enemies who had invaded Berlin at that time, and during his Address to the German Nation, where he sought to show how the German national spirit is called upon to grasp, out of the living self, the connection of the human being with the spirit of the world, when he delivered these speeches, which can still have a wonderfully inspiring effect on the German mind today, the marching French regiments drummed outside. He could have been captured by the enemy at any moment. But he also stood firm as the German man, aware that he had to express the world-historical mission of the German national spirit.

One need not, honored attendees, take a one-sided view today that one should accept the philosophy, the worldview, of such a mind in terms of its content as dogma. Today we can go beyond that. We do not have to profess everything that Fichte said here or there, or what the others said, which we will discuss later; we can turn our attention to the way these people strive and how, in this striving, they show – which Fichte was also fully aware of – that they wanted to draw from the depths of the German national spirit.

Thus, we see Johann Gottlieb Fichte as one of those who, out of German Idealism, sought a world view. We want to look at this striving in him, and also in the others, not at what they said. One need not be a follower of anyone whom one finds to be a great and admirable personality, but one can continue to be inspired by the individual striving, even in those areas where one believes that one cannot go with him in terms of the content of a teaching. But it is not the doctrine that matters, it is the personality that matters, which, as it stands, can serve to characterize the German people themselves, because it must lie in the essence of the German people if, as I would say, with Fichte, such a thing can arise from this German essence with such awareness as Fichte brought forth from this German essence.

Then we see Fichte's succession from another, from Schelling. Schelling is also such a personality. I am convinced, dear attendees, that precisely these three figures, whom I am speaking of here, will be called upon again when the time, which is certainly a time of great hopes and activity that we are living through, but which is also a difficult time of trial, when this time will bear fruit.

We see Fichte's successor in Schelling. In him, too, we have a personality who wants to create a world picture directly from the depths of the ego, because he is clear that the divine-spiritual is at work in what man experiences in his innermost being, and that this divine-spiritual floods through all nature and all being and can be grasped in its activity in the world. If only man is able to experience his ego strongly enough within himself.

If for Fichte the divine essence is something that permeates the world – I would like to say – like a great weaving and working morality, then for Schelling the divine essence is first of all the great artist who, out of the artistic weaving of his own being, first confronts nature in order to see his own truth, his own being and working in the mirror of nature. For Schelling, God's work of art is nature. No natural science that is to be abstractly intellectual - a natural science that works in such a way that with every idea that is brought forth about nature, the human soul feels at the same time related to nature. But Schelling feels this nature in such a way that he says: Now man has emerged, now other animated beings have emerged in nature. But all of nature had preceded this, as it were, as the unconscious and subconscious, which had to be present beforehand like a skeleton. The whole spiritualized world view is nature; as the past and at the same time as the solid ground for the present; as the past in terms of material on which the spirit can stand, having prepared its existence in the existence of nature. And so, for Schelling, nature and spirit grow together, but they grow together in such a way that what lives out of Schelling as a world view of German idealism is again connected to the entire personality, not just one-sidedly with the sentient soul, one-sidedly with the consciousness soul, one-sidedly with the mind soul, but out of the fullness of the soul's being. One would like to say: This whole Schelling was there.

Those who knew him personally described how, even in old age, he spoke with his eyes sparkling, as if he wanted to pour out to his listeners through the shining gaze of his eyes what lived in his inner being as a spiritualized, ensouled nature, whereby he always felt that the soul of man was interwoven with all of nature. Schelling felt that this world view, which I would describe as having been woven out of the German mind, out of the soul of the emotions – as was the case with Fichte, out of the soul of the will – carried him to ever greater heights, to the point where he could ultimately be understood only to a limited extent. God as the artist, nature as a wonderful work of art, knowledge of nature through the senses, which Schelling believed was so interwoven with the human ego that he was carried away to say: To recognize nature is to create nature.

Of course, these spirits were one-sided; but they were as one-sided as all human beings are one-sided, who have the faults of their virtues, not the faults of their small characteristics. - To recognize nature is to create nature! He felt that whatever lives as a force in nature can be grasped by the soul if that soul only grasps itself in its own ego, that nature can be recreated.

And the third one is the much-maligned Hegel, who is, however, revered by some in the present day. If Fichte tried to revive in the will that can permeate everything, in the ego, if Schelling tried to create an idealistic world view in the world mind that comes to life in the ego and spiritualizes and ensouls everything, then Hegel tries to create a world view out of pure concepts, out of the idea. And with Hegel in particular it is obvious that he wanted to grasp a world picture in concepts, in ideas, to compare this Hegelian world picture with the mechanistic, with the intellectual one of Cartesius, of Descartes: there everything is intellectual! But what did Hegel want? Hegel did not want the concept, the idea, in such a way that his world picture was only an instrument, as it were, to recognize an external reality. Hegel wanted to have this world in such a way that the human soul, for its part, experiences the concepts themselves, that it lives with its I into the icy regions, but thereby also forms the experience of the pure concept. For Hegel had the inner experience - one may call it the inner experience - that when man grasps the ideas of the world in their purity, that he may then partake with the innermost part of his I-being in what, as divine thought itself, underlying all of the world, participating in the thought-work of the Godhead, because a thought in the soul is, so to speak, only an ideational representation of that which, as a divine thought, permeates the world - that is what Hegel wanted.

This world view is also one-sided, because it reduces the divine spiritual beings that underlie the world to mere logic, because the whole world is reduced to a mere skeleton of its reality. But it is significant that for once — I would like to say — there appeared a stage in the development of the German being, this inwardly living feeling and interweaving of a thought that permeates the world: I want to unite myself with the thought that is active in the world, and I am convinced that in so doing I have not only something in my soul that outwardly reflects the world, but that when thoughts flow through my soul, it is divine activity itself that allows its thoughts to appear in my soul — those thoughts according to which minerals, plants, animals and human beings are created. Outside, God creates the form and the facts according to the ideas; then, having stripped them of the material, he lets these ideas flow through the human soul, and man participates by surrendering to this flow in a mysticism that is not vague, not an emotional mysticism, but an idea-mysticism, crystal clear: Man participates in the efficacy of divine thoughts in the world!

Yes, esteemed attendees, with these three figures – who, much more than one might think, also in the period when they were rarely mentioned, in the second half of the nineteenth century and up to the present day, live on in the German essence – in these three figures, the world view of German idealism presents itself to us, that German idealism that was called upon – and we can see this directly and objectively in these minds, the spirits of this German idealism, - was called upon - I would say cognitively, I emphasize explicitly, not religiously, but cognitively - although the cognitive is a support of the religious, the religious emerges from another part - to conjure up the second great tidal wave in terms of a human world view from the depths of human existence.

Let us look across to Asia. Asia, especially India, still retains, I would say, an ancient world view in which the human being has also tried to come to that from the depths of his being, which as divine-spiritual flows through, works through and lives through the world. But how does the Asian and the descendant of this ancient Asian, the present-day Indian, attempt to make the divine-spiritual activity and flow in the world present in their own soul being? By attenuating and paralyzing the soul and paralyzing the I. The I must be extinguished so that the human being can give themselves over to the general flow of Brahman. This is the ancient striving for a world picture, I would say, the primeval striving for a world picture. Characteristic of this is that the ego is tuned down, paralyzed to the point of extinction, so that what the human being experiences in his ego does not stand in the way when he wants to revive in his soul that which flows through the world in a divine-spiritual way, giving it soul. To extinguish himself so that the Divine may work in him, that is the ideal of this Pan-Asiatic world picture.

This world picture was no longer possible when the greatest event in the world development of humanity had taken place. This world picture was no longer possible when the Christ Impulse had entered into humanity. From the religious side, humanity was given a deepening, of such magnitude that the Asian religion may never again emerge in its strength, for it could never again be adequate to this event, in which the Christ Impulse lives as the highest event. It was the destiny of the German national spirit to have created an understanding of earthly existence that is adequate to the Christ Impulse.

And these three spirits are like the three symptoms in which the striving for such a world view is expressed. As I said, how does one not seek such a world view by extinguishing the self! We have seen how these three spirits in particular – Fichte, Schelling and Hegel – want to fully live out the I, how they place it at the center of the three soul shades, not by extinguishing the I, but precisely by fully experiencing it, by elevating the I; how the divine-spiritual flows into this I, that is what was incumbent on the German national spirit. And it could do so because it was able to let the I shine through the three soul nuances, just as the unified light shines through the three rainbow nuances.

To place oneself in the more recent development of the world as those who now place everything that is recognized of the existence of nature and soul in the service of such an idealistic world view, that was the duty of the greatest German thinkers, who knew themselves to be one with what the truly German national spirit wants in the further development of humanity.

It seems appropriate to me to point this out to you today, esteemed attendees. What will become of the great external events will be decided by weapons and other circumstances. But it seems appropriate to me, especially in the present, to delve into the nature of the German national spirit itself, which is now being reviled and slandered from all sides, and which, precisely because it must work in the manner indicated, is so little understood by those who, out of their hatred, today all around us, not only misunderstand the German world view, but also want to misunderstand it. But they cannot understand it because they work in a one-sided way, in the one-sidedness of their particular shade of soul; whereas the German must work out of his nature, out of his whole being, towards a wholeness.

A kind of reverent mood is poured out over what the German spirit is meant to achieve in the world. This German national soul is particularly predisposed to acquiring knowledge through nature and the soul, and then enriching this knowledge in the soul so that this knowledge is like the soul's approach to the divine being.

If we do not see this – and I would like to read these words to you literally – if we do not see this beautifully when we look at those who always wanted to visualize from the depths of the German being, that which is the German folk spirit? Do we not see this striving - to know what the German can know, how to make it accessible to the divine-spiritual, to develop a devout mood in science as well? How beautiful and wonderful it is, for example, when a German — and that is precisely why he may perhaps be mentioned today — who appears in Austria as one of the greatest German-Austrians, delves into the German essence, even if he has not perhaps arrived at the concepts that have been developed today and presented to us, so as to feel the full expression of what has been developed in ideas today here: I am referring to Robert Hamerling, Austria's greatest German poet of modern times, who spoke the beautiful words, feeling like a German in Austria, spoke the beautiful words: Austria is my fatherland; but I feel it: Germany is my motherland - thus expressing the unity that has been so firmly forged today through Germany and Austria, through Central Europe. All these peculiarities of the German national soul, which I have been trying to develop today from the idealistic world view of the Germans - at the time when they believed they could turn back the tide, when the Germans came over from Asia, bringing with them the urge to grasp the Allgeist, which they would later express in their art, in their education, in their philosophy, in all their being and working in the world, by elevating the ego, not by dampening the ego. And there, as in a beautiful poet's dream in his “Germanenzug”, Robert Hamerling remembers - the old ancestors of the Germans are still sitting over there in Asia, while these old ancestors of the Germans are moving into Europe, into the West , Robert Hamerling describes beautifully how these Teutons are camped on the border of Asia and Europe, how the sun goes down - he beautifully describes the moon that rises, the whole landscape -, how the Teutons are camped. Only one is awake: the blond Teut, the youth. But in front of Teut, the future destinies of the Germans are written in the stars in wonderful signs. And the genius of the Germans, the spirit of the German people, speaks to the blond Teut, to the leader of the Germanic peoples to the German West. And Hamerling says beautifully:

"To whom does the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so tender, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the sounds of the strings
His innermost self? Who draws the senses so magnificently
Into the blue of heaven, granite hieroglyphics
of the soul's upsurge from the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
of the searching thought to the stars
so boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Who is led so high, so deep by his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps the near and the far so faithfully?
Where are all the zones of earth and heaven
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?

Not from such a self-exalting consciousness, not from national immodesty, as we often find among our opponents today, but from a devout consideration of the nature of the German, of the spiritual nature that has prevailed throughout world history.

The poet speaks of duty, the Austrian poet, in complete harmony with those who have created a German world view, an imaginative world view of the Germans, out of the German world view.

That is why it is so profoundly true what the “Philosophus teutonicus” Jakob Böhme said about all research and reflection on that world view that has a right to exist, which, fundamentally, for the German national character - so Jakob Böhme believes - the search for knowledge, for science, must be a path to God, even if it does not encroach on religion. Jakob Böhme expresses this, thereby characterizing the guiding principle for the world view of German idealism, beautifully from the depths of the German mind. Jakob Böhme says:

“When you see the depths”

he means the depths of heaven

"When you look at the depths of heaven

This is the union of the most beautiful sense of the German national character with the highest striving for knowledge of that which, in a divine and spiritual sense, permeates, interweaves and suffuses the world. Thus, in order to elevate his ego, the German seeks to penetrate into the innermost nature of things, and this is indeed something that can be understood only to a limited extent.

One can see how little it can be understood! There is one of those who, shortly before the beginning of this war, used to move around in Germany as foreign spirits, talking about all kinds of friendships with the German essence, about all kinds of understanding that they claim to have acquired for the German essence: that is Emile Boutroux. Shortly before the war, he even lectured at German universities about how one should revere the depths of the German spirit. And now the true Frenchman [Boutroux] is telling his fellow Frenchmen – he wants to be funny, of course, the good [Boutroux] wants to be funny – he is telling them what a difference there is between the French, the English and the Germans; what we - though for the French, certainly in a joking way - have sought today from the depths of the German character, yes, Boutroux talked about that in a similar way to his French not too long ago. He said: Yes, when the French want to recognize a lion or a hyena – you don't get the news exactly, but that's roughly how he spoke – and in any case, what I am saying is essentially not inaccurate – when the French describe a lion or a hyena, they go to the menagerie and observe the lion or the hyena; when the English want to recognize a lion or a hyena, they travel around the world and observe the life of the lion or the hyena. But when the Germans want to recognize a lion or a hyena, they neither go to a menagerie nor travel around the world, but retreat to their study and design the image of the lion and the hyena from within, without looking at the outside!

It is certainly a witty saying, and we are accustomed to the French speaking wittily from their intellectual culture; it is just a shame that this joke is by Heinrich Heine, repeated by Boutroux, because it comes from Heine; and the Frenchman, who we are accustomed to making good jokes, made a German joke in this case, to make a witty comment about the English and the French! This is another illustration of how the opponents of Germanness try to ascribe to themselves something higher than what a German can live with!

However, this same man recently told his Parisians what a barbaric people the Germans actually are; one can already deduce this from the word. For example, he said: the Germans have no word for generosity; therefore they don't even have this quality, they lack it, only the French have it. On the other hand, the Germans have a word that the French don't have: that is the word 'Schadenfreude'; so only the Germans have the quality of Schadenfreude. The French don't have this ignoble quality. And similar things more are what indicates the spirit from which one today vilifies and degrades the German essence.

But one has not always looked at this German essence in this way! And it would be particularly interesting to see which minds have tried to find their way into this German essence, as one can also see from this just how little account is taken of the actual meaning of this German essence, this spirit. Take, for example, the writer of “The Life of Jesus” — Ernest Renan — he wrote in a corresponding way even during the Franco-Prussian War about German essence to David Friedrich Strauß, who wrote about German essence. Strangely, the Frenchman, Ernest Renan, wrote; he says that at a certain age he realized what this German essence actually means. And he makes an interesting comparison. He says that after he had absorbed the French character in his education, he approached the German character through Goethe and Herder, and it was as if he encountered realities instead of mere concepts, whereas before he had only seen a lot of faded paper flowers. And then he compares the height of German intellectual life, which has been revealed to him in this way, by saying that everything he got to know outside of this German essence seems to him, well, like elementary mathematics to differential and potential mathematics. We shall see in a moment how such a mind itself utilizes, in terms of feeling, what has come to it through contact with the German essence.

But first, let us see a little more of how this Central European, German essence is viewed in the East, in that East from which the European West, that is to say our West, is currently suffering so much for what is, after all, its sphere of influence, its work for freedom and democracy today, this European West. If we have to consider the Russian national soul, we have to say: in Russia's national soul, the direct driving force of the I, everything still lives as something external. The Russian receives his religion as a foreign one, the Greek-Christian religion, which he does not have within him in the form of rebirth, as the German has experienced it from his innermost being, but which he accepts as something like a cloud that hovers over him, that he has from outside. While the Italian works from the sentient soul, the Frenchman from the intellectual and mind soul, the Englishman, the Briton from the consciousness soul, the German from the actual self, the person who truly belongs to the Russian national soul, works from the subconscious of the ego, which still has the ego that the ego has not yet absorbed into itself, which the ego still wants to see in a mystical darkness. This Russian soul, this eastern Russian soul, works like the national soul that has not yet fully come to consciousness.

And this is why this still immature national soul has not only so misunderstood the German national soul, but also all the national souls of Western Europe, especially in the course of the nineteenth century and up to our own times, so infinitely misunderstood them.

People have not even noticed what the relationship is, let us say, between the nature of the German spirit and the Russian spirit. In selfless German modesty, one has naturally included the great Russians – Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. They are not to be disparaged here; they can be fully recognized; but one must become aware of the gulf that exists between the Russian and the German essence, and which, especially in the Russian essence, has come to such an immature outbreak and revelation in our own time.

In the course of the nineteenth century, we encounter the best Russian minds, which - I would like to say - philosophically and artistically express, as in a world view, what, in political terms, the “Testament of Peter the Great” – whether it is forged or not, that is not the point now – which, in political terms, aims to achieve the complete annihilation and replacement of Western and Central Europe, as it exists today, with Eastern Europe! [The “Testament of Peter the Great” is the only thing that should be considered sustainable.] But everything, I would like to say, even Russian literary-philosophical and artistic thought, is in the service of this “Testament of Peter the Great”. And this is what we encounter again and again in all of nineteenth-century Russian intellectual life.

Then we encounter the best minds in Russia, who turn their gaze to what minds like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel have achieved. I would say that Herzen is able to observe this in a single such spirit. He seeks to delve into what Western culture has brought forth; he finds that it has all grown old, has become decrepit, that it must all disappear, that it is all superficial, because he cannot comprehend how this world view of German Idealism is inwardly lived and interwoven; and so it becomes worthless to him. In his book From the Other Bank, Herzen expresses how all these ideals that have sprung up in Western Europe must be destroyed and how something else must take their place.

One of Herzen's opponents, also a Russian, wrote to Herzen: So you want to destroy everything that has emerged in Western Europe: Greater, more significant – as a Russian wrote to Herzen, one of his Russian opponents, to appeal to his conscience – Greater than all the ideals of Central Europe, is the Russian sheepskin coat to you? – the friend wrote to Herzen!

What does he mean by the “Russian sheep's clothing”? Well, Herzen said it: In what this European culture, this European spiritual life has brought forth, there cannot be anything redemptive, anything salvific for humanity; but that which is salvific for humanity is the Russian peasant; that is, the one who, in all his originality, contains within him that which must flood the whole of Western and Central Europe. And this appears to be so deeply ingrained in Russian souls, especially in the most Russian of Russians, for example in Dostoyevsky, the great artist – whom we want to acknowledge in terms of his skill – that it is increasingly apparent in his work, when we take a closer look at it, that he regards German culture in particular as decrepit and obsolete, and that he already sees Russia as destined to be the redeemer. Basically, the delusional rage that is now to be poured out over Europe is nothing more than the brutal expression of this tendency, which has even found expression in great Russian writers; however, care has been taken to ensure that the good Germans do not become too aware of this, which, I might say, has always lived and breathed between the lines of Russian intellectual life! And so it comes about that - and those who know me better know how much I appreciate Tolstoy - but what is in Tolstoy, especially in such older works as “Anna Karenina” and so on, that shows how he - Tolstoy - always aimed to depict the German character in such a way that it appears decrepit and inferior.

Why have the Germans paid so little attention to such things? Why are they now surprised at the fact that hatred is being heaped on them from all sides? Well, you only have to take the fact that, for example, the older translations of Tolstoy, namely those works by translators that people still read, up to the last translation in the middle of the nineteenth century by [Raphael Löwenfeld], which people no longer read, these translations all either left out the passages in question entirely or translated them differently, so that no one actually knows the real Tolstoy!

It will be necessary, dear honored attendees, to go a little deeper into the nuances that live in the expressions of souls, so that the German knows how to fulfill his mission in the world. And so it came about that even insightful Russian minds, such as the great philosopher Soloviev, rebelled against this generally Russian view, against the view of those who, according to a Russian world view, had grown old and died, and that Russianism should overthrow this European essence.

If I emphasize individual personalities, it is because I want to cite facts and show by individual characteristics how many there are.

There is, for example, one Danilewski, who attempts to address the question in broad terms, entirely in the spirit of the Russian essence I have just hinted at, how Russia must expand, how Europe's west and center are ripe to because the European West and the Center have fulfilled their task; and Danilewski once asks the question in a book that is so completely formed from the Russian point of view: Why does Europe not love us, why does Europe fear us? Now he seeks to answer this question from his own point of view, and Danilevsky writes for his Russians something like this: Europe does not love us because Europe instinctively senses that we are the ones who are actually the only ones still entitled to exist, and who are to replace what lives in the rest of Europe. But Soloviev takes up this question, and Soloviev is one of those who has drawn from this life himself. And the great philosopher Solowjow, who, unbiased by his own Russian nature, takes up this question: Why does Germany not love us? He does not answer this question in the way Danilewski and the spirits of the most diverse kinds of Russians speak, that Europe feared Russia, but Solowjow answers Danilewski's question: Why does Europe not love us? Why does Europe fear us?” and Danilevsky's answer to this: ‘Because Europe instinctively senses that the Russians are the only ones who are still entitled to exist and should replace what is still alive in the rest of Europe,’ Solowjow replies to these words of Danilevsky:

“And yet both the content of his book and his later admissions, as well as those of his like-minded friend”

referring to a certain Strachow

“point to a different answer: Europe looks at us with apprehension and fear”

Solovyov wrote his reply, and it is certainly necessary for anyone who wants to get to know the conditions in the Russian east to listen to these Russians. Solovyov himself says:

"Europe regards us with apprehension and mistrust because dark and obscure elemental forces live in the Russian people, because its spiritual and cultural forces are poor and inadequate, but because its demands are clearly and sharply defined. The calls for what the Russian people want as a nation resound powerfully out to Europe: that it wants to destroy Turkey and Austria, conquer Germany, and seize Constantinople and, if possible, India.

And when we are asked how we intend to replace what we have destroyed and failed to accomplish, how we plan to rejuvenate the world intellectually and culturally, we either have to remain silent or spout meaningless phrases. And if Danilevsky's bitter confession is true, that Russia is beginning to fall ill, then instead of dealing with the question “Why doesn't Europe love us,” we would have to deal with another, more important question that is closer to us: “Why and how did we become ill?” Physically, Russia is still quite strong, as it showed in the last Russian war; so our suffering is a moral one. We are burdened, according to the words of an old writer, by the sins hidden in the national character and not conscious to us - and so it is necessary above all to bring these into the light of clear consciousness. As long as we are spiritually bound and paralyzed, all our elementary instincts must only harm us. The essential, indeed the only essential question of true patriotism is not the question of power and vocation, but of the sins of Russia."

Thus the Russian Solowjow, from a spiritual insight into the Russian character, thus the great philosopher Solowjow about Russia itself. And it is interesting to see this in conclusion: how have others perceived this relationship between Russia and the West, even the further West – with whom they are now in league or who is in league with them, one does not quite know how to say – how have others perceived this relationship with their further West? Oh, there are also interesting facts here! For example, a book by the Russian writer Yushakov was published in 1885. In 1885, he wrote a book in which he speaks quite differently from how he was later spoken of regarding the views that he attributes to his Russian people. It is interesting to take a look at Yushakov's ideas.

This man looks across to Asia and says: Yes, over there in Asia, we have peoples who have brought a very old culture from ancient times into more recent times. These peoples, how they have been mistreated by the Europeans. Russia must look across to Asia, and must bring redemption to this sacred, venerable, but by the Europeans mistreated Asian culture, this spiritual culture of Asia. Nice words Jushakow speaks. He says that Russia alone is capable – because it cannot yet grasp the human interior in such a way that it has been made sick and aged by the ego as in the European West – Russia alone can feel related to this Asia, which is now lying prostrate, groaning under the rape of Europe. And an old myth brings Yushakov back to mind when he says: Over there in Asia, Iranian, Turanian peoples are fighting. He himself also includes the Indians, the Persians, and so on, among the Iranian peoples. And then Yushakov says: These have found a wonderful, ancient myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman for their destiny. But we always see Ahriman and Ormuzd at work over there in Asia forever. And there, in his book, Yushakov says – in 1885 – and he points this out in his memoirs, that the Iranians worshiped the good Ormuzd over there in Asia; the good Ormuzd gave the Iranians all the fruits and crops that the earth can produce; they took them for themselves. Then they joined forces with Ahriman. These Europeans have worked like Ahriman, like the evil Ahriman himself. But Russia, by working across into Asia, will liberate people from the evil Ahriman. What the Asians have received under the blessing of the good Ormuzd, the selfish Europeans have appropriated for themselves. Russia will cross over to Asia and help by founding an alliance, yes – Yushakov says it, I have to repeat it to you – an alliance that will be formed with the greatest ideals in the world, as the most spiritual alliance in the world – Yushakov says it all, I am only repeating it. It will be formed by Russian peasants and Cossacks, who will rush over to Asia, which is groaning under European rule, and will carry over what Russia will be able to bring. Then the peasantry and Cossacks will advance into Asia, and Russia will redeem Asia from Ahriman. 1885, think Sic, written by Jushakow. It is interesting to hear some of what Jushakow said at the time in the book, which is called: “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. It says that the comrades of Ahriman, the evil god – from whom Russia must liberate Asia and bring order and harmony – are primarily the English.

The English – says Yushakov – have behaved in this Asia as if they believed that the Asian peoples existed only to clothe themselves in English fabrics, to fight each other with English weapons, to work with English tools, to eat from English vessels and to play with English baubles. And then he says:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, but her very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting the rich peninsula.”

And so he continues, Yushakov:

“I do not wish anything similar for my homeland – I can only be pleased that it is sufficiently far removed from this state, which is as brilliant as it is sad.”

Apparently because these Russians were so keen to distance themselves from this Englishness, so that they could free Asia from this hideous England, they soon allied themselves with this England, not to free Asia, but to destroy Europe.

One must also look at world development from this intellectual perspective in the nineteenth century, and in this way delve into what actually constitutes the German character and how it stands now, this German character, which has to defend itself in a way against the ring that has been formed around it, yes, in a way that can be simply hinted at when numbers are spoken.

These people – who want to keep Germany and Austria locked up in a big fortress today – are taking a stand for freedom, for the rights of small nations, and for all sorts of things they believe in. You only have to look at the numbers: 777 million people in the so-called Entente around the Central European powers, against 150 million; 777 million are “fighting” - let's put that in quotation marks - “fighting” against 150 million, and fighting in such a way that to this day still want to strike at the very essence of their actual bravery, they also want to strike at the German spirit, which they believe they understand so well, that 777 million people are turning against 150 million, joining forces to starve them out, to defeat them with starvation, the better part of bravery.

Actually, they had no need to be envious of what the Central Europeans were taking away from them; for the Entente Powers possess 68 million square kilometers of the earth, compared to 6 million square kilometers of the Central European Powers. One need only let these numbers speak. These numbers speak to this day, and will also speak in world history, ladies and gentlemen, that after all, within these 150 million present-day Central Europeans and on these 6 million square kilometers of Central European soil, those people live who have the world-historical, spiritual mission that we were allowed to speak of, and which they ascribe to themselves not ascribe it to themselves out of national chauvinism, but out of their spiritual gifts, out of the spirit of their Germanness, to which they have not devoted themselves through their egoism, but to which they have to approach if they want to offer the best of their being on the altar of this their national spirit. And those who feel this German essence in Central Europe feel a close bond with it, especially the best in Austria and Germany – and I am allowed to speak about this since I have spent thirty years of my life in Austria:

Precisely the best Austrians, those who have grown up with Central European culture, like the excellent philosopher Carneri, know how to experience and fathom the relationship between their own people and the German national spirit and German essence not out of national chauvinism but out of a sure knowledge of the essence of their own people.

For example, Carneri, the most important Austrian philosopher, says of the English: “Carneri, a wonderful man who, out of the deepest suffering, has founded a spiritual world view that is so completely in line with our time, a conceptual world view from German-Austria. Carneri talks about how the English have really focused their attention on external practical culture and he says: It has become so practical, this culture, that the English had to learn from the Germans the fact that the great playwright and poet Shakespeare lived among them. For it is true that it is only through the Germans delving into Shakespeare that Shakespeare has been recognized at all. And if one day someone has to write the story of Shakespeare's greatness, it will not be an English chapter in intellectual history that they have to write, but a German one.

All this characterizes the nature of the German world view, which creates out of all intellectual inner life, in contrast to everything around it. And so we may well believe that this is what the German must strive for above all else: spiritual science, knowledge of the spirit, just as there is knowledge of nature. Knowledge of the spirit, which must be based above all on the sources, on the roots that lie in the world view of German idealism. This is, as I said, not a conviction born out of blind national sentiment, but a conviction born out of knowledge. It is that which humanity is to scientifically fathom in the future about the spirit, that this must grow out of German national culture – and above all out of the ideal world view of German national culture – as it has been attempted to describe today.

And how little understanding there is among other nations today – let me say this in conclusion – this war can show the German so clearly how little understanding there is on the part of other nations towards the world view of German idealism and the German spirit, and how he must first ensure and strive to ensure that what he is called upon to create out of the depths of the German being can become part of the world development of humanity. The French, how did they look at this world view of German idealism? Or the Russians, for example, how did they look at this world view that the Germans have formed, this world view? The Russians look at it as if it only existed to be destroyed by them, as something decrepit and worn out. While we must see roots and leaves in it, from which the blossoms and fruits must first ripen in the future! We want to commit ourselves to this view! But the Russians need a new delusion; because the ego does not yet live in their soul, they must dream of a new delusion. They need a new delusion.

What do the French need? What do the French need today if they want to characterize their relationship to the German essence? Well, perhaps one could refer to one of their youngest poets to avoid doing them an injustice. What do the French want? They have been so accustomed to their nature being everywhere in Europe, just as the Germans were accustomed to their nature living in the Germans themselves, just as the Germans were accustomed to the way they felt the power, the driving force of what, for example, also lived in this world view of German idealism, up to Lessing, until they had to free themselves, the Germans, [so] these French were so accustomed that their nature lived everywhere in Europe. And after that, they believed that nothing could actually be done without what they did and what they produced intellectually, that everything had to come from them, that they had to be the cause of everything. In a very interesting and witty poem, Rostand, one of their own poets, recently illustrated how the French – that is, his own – national character can be compared to the cock crowing in the morning; and when the cock crows, the sun rises. And because the sun rises when the cock crows, the Frenchman believes that with his crowing he makes the sun rise. So he says to himself: If I don't crow, the sun can't rise!

This is said by the French poet Rostand himself as a characteristic of the French nature. The Frenchman thinks: If he doesn't crow, nothing at all can happen in the world. And that is why it is so incredible that he no longer occupies the position he once did; for it is actually the case that the German character, as expressed by Ranke, for example, is to be defended against the delusion of the crowing of the French national spirit, as early as 1870, when the Germans had to face the French: “We are still fighting against Louis XV!”

The French need a new delusion. The Russians need a new mission. The English – well, one really doesn't want to do them an injustice. What should one say so as not to do them an injustice? They declaim to the world: for the sake of the violation of Belgium's neutrality, for the sake of justice and democracy, we must undertake this war to the point of destroying the German essence; for these Germans are disgraceful people. They preach the principle of might over right. It is likely that one only forgets, as a result of a particularly refined education, that the English minister who decreed this – only recently – that the phrase “might over right” comes from the English philosopher, English utilitarian philosopher Thomas Hobbes. But: “might over right” – and England has adhered to this phrase for centuries. [gap in the transcript] as a professor in England himself, where he said: freedom and democracy, that is something that cannot be united, which should be advocated after the last English history, but that Great Britain's expansion [gap in the transcript], he says, is also a truth, also a practical truth, as the English world view must strive for. Yes, what can you say? “Might is right” – since Thomas Hobbes this principle has been winding its way through English history, concealing the real reasons why England tramples underfoot the entire mission of the German people. Yes, one would not want to do such things an injustice, but one must say: the English need a new lie to drown out that which cannot be compensated for.

The Russians need a new delusion; the French need a new conceit; the English need a new lie. The Italians – yes, a very outstanding man told me even before the Italian war broke out: “Italy needs this war!” There are people, of course, who are not so naive as to have believed that Italy could not join the Entente in this war. Italy needs this war; we must have this war; the Italians have become lethargic, sluggish and lazy; they are actually on the road to the abyss - said this important political figure at the time - and need to have something that will shake them up again, that will awaken them to life, otherwise they will become completely rotten and sluggish! What do these Italians need? These Italians needed a new sensation in order to have something at the same time – just as the French needed imagination, the English needed a new lie, the Russians needed a new delusion, a new mission, so the Italians needed a new saint, something very special! – They truly have a saint, namely, holy egoism – sacro egoismo – which is preached everywhere and on whose altar people are sacrificed. And the apostle of modern Italian nationalism, the hierophant, is Gabriele d'Annunzio! Perhaps history will one day rank him among the buffoons of the mind – that can be said without any national chauvinism. But he will nevertheless stand without dignity as the one who also made sacrifices to this new egoism, the sacro egoismo, which Italy represents and to which they have dedicated themselves, this new saint!

When we see all this going on around us, we can truly say that, without the Germans needing to become as nationally egotistical as those who want to surround, encircle and contain them, we can truly say that, from the inner fertility and knowledge of the greatness of the German essence, to which we humbly bow, we cannot, in arrogance, say that we experience in the German essence: It is the germs, it is the roots, it is the leaves – and the blossoms and the fruits must develop from them. And we can look to the future with confidence and hope!

And finally, I would like to say that – as if in a unified thinking – those who understood the German essence in Central Europe always felt it. One of my teachers in Austria once spoke a beautiful word. I may perhaps read it to you at the end, a little poem. It is called “Austria and Germany”. Today, when Austria and Germany are welded together, I may perhaps read it, this little poem:

"Let Russia and England wisely deliberate,
Perhaps not even find it unwelcome
If we get into a little bit of a fight here,
If they take away our good right!

You, German brothers, will not - advise here,
The enemy's attack will only unite us
And all ambition will fade among us
Before: being one people in word and deed.

And if one among us has failed,
If discord has reigned in a German heart,
There is only one thing that now inspires us:
What we have in common, in joy and in sorrow!
So may we also have in common:
A German war, if not a German peace!

Thus spoke the German of Austria in 1859. Those who feel that they are part of the German national spirit, who recognize it without national chauvinism, are so united in their awareness that loyalty springs from the soul to this German essence. Then this Karl Julius Schröer, who has remained so unknown, but who felt German essence in Austria quite extraordinarily, then he said:

A spirit arises, a giant to behold
[Who does not yet long gather all his strength
The German spirit rises up, aflame with courage
Wherever you look in all German regions.
He has been called a master in many a field,
In art and knowledge, in the building system,
he is first to be seen
then he will be truly recognized by the world.

To see him as a whole, this also includes the symptom that so clearly shows how the immortal martial forces come from the German essence. Likewise, the idealistic world view of the German stems from the primal power of the German essence, which has borne its roots and its leaves, and - looking towards it - we may have faith in the future: it must struggle through to its blossoms and fruits in the future, undisturbed by the hatred of the opposition.

This awareness wells up in us as 150 million people facing 777 million, as standing on 6 million square kilometers against 68 million square kilometers; this wells up in us from the spiritual, from the soul, from the heart of the German spiritual being!

So let us speak out of the knowledge itself and out of the most justified feeling: Yes, by being aware of our essence, we may believe, we may hope that the blossoms and fruits to the roots and leaves of the German being will unfold in the future.

Therefore, we can confidently live into the future of this German national spirit, also from the depths of the German endeavor.

And so may it be, because it must be so!

Ladies and Gentlemen,¹

A few weeks ago, in my lecture on Soul Health and Spiritual Investigation,² I put before you some of the answers that have been given to the question, "Why do people misunderstand Spiritual Investigation?" To-day, I should like to examine other points of view, which will give a more general answer to the question under discussion. There can, of course, be no question of my examining individual attacks which may have been made from one quarter or another on what we call Spiritual Investigation. Such a procedure would be quite out of key with the tone that you, ladies and gentlemen, have learnt to expect from these lectures. If, on occasions,³ frustrated ambition or some such motive has caused opposition to be raised in those very circles which formerly reckoned themselves perfectly good followers of Spiritual Research, this only serves to show how unimportant are these attacks in comparison to the great tasks which Spiritual Investigation has to fulfil. It will, therefore, be necessary to deal with individual points only occasionally, and on external grounds. That, moreover, is not my aim. My aim is this. To show how contemporary education and all that the mind may have assimilated of the habits of thought, the philosophic feeling, and the intellectual systems that characterise our present times—how all this may make it hard for the modern mind to bring the right spirit to the understanding of Spiritual Investigation. What, then, I wish to explain fundamentally are not the illegitimate attacks that have been made on Spiritual Investigation, but those that are, up to a point—one had almost said completely—legitimate; at any rate understandable to the modern Soul.

For Spiritual Science has to deal not only with the attacks that are made upon other spiritual tendencies of our time; it has, in the special sense mentioned just now, every intellectual movement of the time against it. If the mechanistic, materialistic—or to use the more scholarly expression now in vogue—the monistic view of the universe is put forward, it will be found to have opponents who base themselves upon a certain spiritual idealism. The reasons which such spiritually-minded idealists adduce in defence of their views against materialism are, as a rule, extremely weighty and important. They are objections which can in every respect be shared by the Spiritual Investigator, reasons which he can grasp and understand in the same way as anyone who merely takes his stand upon a certain spiritual idealism. But the Spiritual Investigation speaks of the spiritual world, not merely as do, for example, idealists of the stamp of Ulrici, Wirth, Immanuel Hermann Fichte,⁴ though the last, as we saw yesterday,⁵ went more deeply into things than the others. The Spiritual Investigator does not merely speak in abstract concepts which point to a spiritual world beyond the world of the senses. On the contrary, he cannot leave this spiritual world undefined, cannot grasp it in mere concepts; he must go on to a real description of it. He is not content, as are the idealists, to accept a purely intellectual indication of a spiritual world, which, though it must exist, still remains unknown. No—the spiritual world which he has to show forth must be concrete and manifested in various individual types of being which have, not a physical, but a purely spiritual existence. In a word, he has to speak of a spiritual world which shall be as varied and as full of meaning as the physical, far fuller indeed, if it were but truly described. If, then, the Spiritual Investigator speaks of the spiritual world, not as of something which exists in general and can be proved intellectually, but quite definitely as of something to be believed in, as of something which can be perceived as the world of sense is perceived, he will find among his opponents not only the materialists, but also those who speak of the spiritual world only in abstract concepts from the standpoint of a certain spiritual and intellectual idealism. Finally, he will have as opponents those who believe that religious feeling of any kind will be threatened by Spiritual Investigation, that religion—their religion—will be endangered by the existence of a science of the spiritual world. And one could name many other movements which the Spiritual Investigator would find working against him—all fundamentally in the same way as has been described, and to-day more powerfully than ever. Weighty objections, objections which from a certain point of view and to a certain extent are justified. It is of these, therefore, that I wish to speak.

And again and again it is the scientific view of the world which presents, especially in our day, the most considerable opposition to the aspiration of Spiritual Science, the view, namely, which seeks to erect a picture in the world on the foundations of those recent advances in science which may rightly be regarded as the greatest triumph of humanity. And again and again we must repeat that it is no easy task to realise that the true Spiritual Investigator does not really dispute anything in the world picture that can be legitimately deduced from the data of modern science, that on the contrary he does in the fullest sense of the word take his stand upon the ground of modern science, in so far as the latter supplies an adequate foundation for a cosmic or world-conception. Let us examine this recent scientific tendency from a particular contemporary point of view. For we can but pick out individual points of view for examination. Here, then, we stand before those men who quite legitimately raise difficulties against Spiritual Science by saying, "Does not modern science show us through the wonderful structure of the human nervous system and the human brain how dependent is that which man experiences mentally upon this structure and upon the action of this nervous system? "And one might easily expect the Spiritual Investigator to deny what the ordinary scientist is bound to maintain from his point of view. But this is just where so much mischief is done by the dilettante Spiritual Investigator, and by those who want to be Spiritual Investigators without being worthy to lay claim to so much as the name of dilettante. For ever and again true Spiritual Science is confused with charlatanism and dilettantism. It is no easy task to believe that just on this very subject of the meaning of the physical structure of the brain and nervous system, the Spiritual Investigator actually stands more firmly on scientific ground than the scientist himself.

Let us take an example. I purposely choose one that is not very recent, although with the rapid advance of modern science things alter very quickly and the older discoveries are easily superseded by new ones. I purposely did not choose a very recent example, though it would have been easy enough to do so. I have selected the famous brain specialist and psychiatrist, Meynert,⁶ because I wish to take as my starting-point what, as a result of his researches on the brain, he had to say about the relation between the brain and the life of the soul. Meynert had a profound knowledge of the brain and of the nervous system, both in their normal and in their pathological conditions. His writings, which towards the end of the nineteenth century, were standard works on the subject, will inspire anyone who reads them with the feeling that it is supremely important to consider not only the pronouncements of purely positive research on the question under discussion, but also those of a man of this quality. The following point, however, must be borne in mind. When people who, for one reason or another, have lightly taken upon themselves a would-be Spiritual Scientific attitude, people who have never looked through a microscope or a telescope, ignoramuses who have never done anything that could give them the remotest conception of—say—the wonderful structure of the human brain—when such people talk about the baseness of materialism, then it is easy enough to understand that the conscientious thoroughness which informs the methods of modern scientific research should prevent its votaries from accepting the objections that have been put to them by those who parade as the champions of Spiritual Science.

But when a man like Meynert, however, embarks upon the study of the brain, the first thing he finds is that the brain in its outer frame is a complicated agglomeration of cells (according to him about a milliard in number),⁷ which combine among themselves in the most intricate ways, which multiply and are distributed to the most various parts of the body, into the organs of sense where they become the nerves of the special senses, into the organs of movement, etc., etc. And to a scientist like Meynert it is revealed how connecting fibres lead from one set of nervous paths to another and he is thus led to the view that the brain takes in that which man experiences as the world of presentations, that which is broken up and bound together again in concepts and images when the external world impinges upon his senses. The brain takes all this in, works upon and transforms it, and according to the nature of the transformation, produces what we call the phenomena of the soul.

Yes, say the philosophers, but these phenomena, these visions of the soul, these mental processes are something quite different from the movements of the brain, different from anything that goes on inside the brain. The answer to them is this. That the brain should produce what we call mental processes is for a scientist like Meynert no more wonderful than that, say, a watch should, in accordance with the nature of its internal mechanism, produce signs which tell us the time of day; no more wonderful than that a magnet should, in virtue of its purely physical properties, attract a body outside itself, should, as it were, work with invisible threads. The magnetic field reveals itself as active around the physical object. Why should not the life of the soul be something produced similarly, but in an infinitely more complicated manner, by the brain? The view, in short, is one that cannot be easily dismissed, nor can its claims be rejected without very careful examination. You may laugh at the idea that the brain should, by the mere unrolling of its processes, bring into being some highly complex psychic life. Yet there are plenty of examples in nature of processes where we would not at first glance be disposed to speak of the presence of soul life. Not by taking our stand upon preconceived opinions, but by realising how justified are many of the difficulties which many people feel to be standing in the path of Spiritual Investigation—thus, and thus alone, can we bring order and harmony into the bewildered conceptions of the world.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing to disprove the possibility of that which in the ordinary sense of the word we call soul life having been produced by a purely mechanical process, in so far as it takes place in the brain and in the nervous system. The brain and the nervous system may be ordered in so complicated a manner that through the unrolling of their processes, the life of the soul can arise in man. No one, therefore, will reject the materialistic picture of the world given by Natural Science on the ground of considerations such as these, which merely rest upon the observations of nature. Indeed, Spiritual Science is hard put to it to-day to oppose Natural Science, just because the latter has been brought to such a pitch of perfection, and has achieved so legitimate an ideal in its own sphere. For the Spiritual Investigator must be able and willing to recognise to the full where the other side is in the right. That is why, once again, we can never hope to build up a spiritual view of the world by merely stressing those things which run counter to the claims of external observation, even when the latter extends to the sphere of our own human lives. If we want to reach the life of the soul, then we must experience it in ourselves, and our soul life must not flow from outer events. Then we shall not say that the brain cannot produce the processes of the soul, but we must experience these psychic processes ourselves.

Now there is one sphere in which everyone has experience of his own soul, independently of brain processes, and that is the sphere of ethics, the sphere of the moral life. It is at once obvious that what shines before a man as a moral impulse cannot occur as the result of the unrolling of any mere brain processes. It must be clearly understood that I am speaking of the moral impulse in so far as the will and the feelings enter into it, in so far as the experience is really ethical. Thus, in the sphere where the soul becomes immediately aware of itself, everyone can assert that the soul has a life of its own, independently of the body and of anything corporeal. But not everyone is able to add to this inner realisation and growth in the moral life the idea that Goethe added to it in the essay which I mentioned yesterday⁸ on "Anschauende Urteilskraft," and in many other passages. Not everyone can say, like Goethe, from the depth of his own experience: If even in the world of sense man can rise to impulses which act independently of the corporeal, why should not this soul of his be able, in relation to other spiritual activities, to embark boldly upon the "adventure of reason."⁹ (This was the name given by Kant to anything that went beyond the moral standpoint.) This is where Goethe speaks in opposition to Kant. And it means that we must rise, not only to a spiritual soul life which springs, as do the moral impulses, from the depth of the soul, so that it cannot be ascribed to the life of the brain—no, we must also have other spiritual experiences, which will go to show that the soul perceives spiritually with spiritual organs just as we perceive physically with physical organs. But for this to happen there must be added to the ordinary everyday life, which we go through passively, a life of inner activity and doing. And this it is which escapes so many people to-day, who have become accustomed to the idea that if anything is true, then it must be dictated to them from some quarter or another. For men would rather take their stand upon any external manifestation than upon the firm ground of inner experience. What is experienced within the soul strikes them as something arbitrary, something unsure. Truth, so it seems to them, should be firmly rooted in external reality, in something to whose existence we have not ourselves contributed.

Now this way of thinking is easy enough, at any rate in the sphere of scientific research. To add all manner of fantastic material to the testimony of the outer senses and to what experiment and method can make of this testimony, is to burden Natural Science unnecessarily. But we shall see in a moment that the same does not hold of Spiritual Investigation. And even if we admit that the standpoint of Natural Science is justified, we can see how it loses in strength for lack of the habit of inner energising, how enfeebled it shows itself when that activity is demanded of it which is simply indispensable for anyone wishing to make the smallest progress in Spiritual Science. In order to make progress in spiritual knowledge it is not necessary to go in for all sorts of hazy activities, nor to train oneself so as to have what are usually called clairvoyant experiences by means of hallucination, visions, etc. This comes neither at the beginning nor, as I pointed out in the lecture on Soul Health and Spiritual Science,¹⁰ does it come at the end of our quest. What is needful, however, in order to reach a deeper understanding of Spiritual Research (mind, I do not say in order to become a legitimate follower of its teaching), what is needful for a legitimate understanding is hard thinking. And hard thinking has suffered considerably from the fact that people have grown accustomed to do no more than observe how phenomena occur as to their form. They place implicit faith in the pronouncements of nature, whether in the outer world of sense, in external observation, or in experiment. They take their stand upon what the experiment says. They do not venture—and they are right so far as this particular field is concerned—they do not venture to establish as a comprehensive general law anything that has not been dictated from outside. But this attitude hinders the inner activity of the soul. Man gets into the way of being passive, of trusting only what is shown to him from outside. And his soul completely loses the faculty for seeking truth by an inner energising, an inner activity. Now, in approaching Spiritual Science, it is above all necessary that one's thinking should be thorough, so thorough that nothing will escape it, and that certain lightly-veiled objections which could be raised should spring up in one's mind. It is necessary, too, that one should anticipate such objections and face up to them oneself, so as to reach a higher standpoint from which, on looking back on these former objections, one shall find the truth. And at this point I would like to direct your attention to an example—one of many hundreds and thousands which could be found in Meynert. I do this, ladies and gentlemen, because I regard Meynert as a first-class scientist. When it comes to refuting criticisms I do not choose protagonists I despise, but critics for whom I have the highest regard.

Thus one of the points of interest in Meynert is his account of how the conceptions of time and space arise in man. His view is as follows. Let us suppose (the example is particularly apposite at the moment) that I am listening to a public speaker. I shall get the impression that his words are spoken one after the other, i.e., that they are spoken in Time. And, Meynert asks, how do we get this impression that the words are spoken successively in Time? (Thus, ladies and gentlemen, you can all imagine that Meynert is speaking of you as you are taking in my words in such a way that they appear to you one after the other in Time.) And he answers: Time comes into being through the conception of the brain; it is as the brain receives it that one word can be thought of as coming after another. The words come to us through the sense organs and from these sense organs a further process sends them on to the brain. The brain has certain inner organs with which it works upon the sense impressions, and thus the conception of Time arises within through the activity of certain organs. And it is in this way that all conceptions are created out of the brain. That Meynert does not mean a subordinate activity by this can be seen from a certain remark which he makes in his lecture on the "Mechanics of the Brain Structure,"¹¹ in which he gives his opinion of how the external world is related to man. The ordinary man in the street, says Meynert, assumes that the external world is there exactly as he creates it in his brain. The hypothesis, he continues, which Realism dares to make is that the world which appears to the brain is there before and after any brains existed. But the world as constructed in this way by a brain capable of consciousness gives the lie to the realistic hypothesis. That is to say, the brain builds up the world as man pictures it, as it is presented to him by his senses, as he has created it outwards from within through the processes of his brain. And in this way man creates, not only images, but also Time, Space, and Infinity. Certain mechanisms exist in the brain, says Meynert, which enable him to do this. Unfortunately in lectures of this sort, which must of necessity be short, one cannot enter into every detail of these ideas, which may, therefore, in many respects seem obscure. But we shall see in a moment that it is possible, nevertheless, to pick out the main line of thought in this matter. What seems clear is that as soon as one has taken a step along the path which leads to the view that the brain is the creator of the life of the Soul as it occurs in man, then what Meynert says will seem completely justifiable. It is what that path leads to; we are bound to end there. And the only way of avoiding such a conclusion is to have thought things out so thoroughly that the very simple objections to this view will immediately occur to one. For imagine what would be the consequences if Meynert's exposition were correct. You are all sitting there. You are listening to what I say. Through the structure of your brains what I am saying becomes ordered in Time. It is not merely that your auditory nerve transforms it into an auditory image, but it arranges for you in Time the words that I am speaking. Thus you all have, as it were, a dream picture of what is being said and also, naturally, of him who is standing before you. Behind this dream picture, says Meynert, Naive Realism assumes that there is a human being like yourselves, who is saying all this. But this is not necessarily so, for you have produced this man and his words in your brain, and there may be something quite different behind him. And yet I, too, am ordering my images in Time, so that Time is present not only in you but also in the fact that I am placing one word after another. Now this perfectly simple idea will not occur to anyone who digs himself into a certain line of thought. And yet it is easy to see in the case I have just described that Time has an objective existence, that it lives outside ourselves. But the man who has embarked upon a certain definite line of thought will see neither to right nor to left of him, but will go on and on in this same direction and reach the most extraordinarily subtle and highly remarkable results. But this is not the point. All the most subtle results which this line of thought will yield admit of vigorous proof. Each proof is linked to the other. You will never detect an error if you follow the stream of Meynert's thought. The point, however, is this, that you must have thought things out sufficiently to hit upon the instances that will not fit; the thinking finds out of itself that which will force the stream out of its bed. And it is just this act of making thought mobile and active which, among those in the other camp, interferes with that perfectly legitimate concentration upon the external world which is demanded of them by Natural Science. Thus the problem of Time gives rise here not to a subjective, but to a genuinely objective difficulty. And the same will be found to be the case in all kinds of departments of thought.

For more than a hundred years philosophers have been chewing the old saying of Kant's with which he tried to rescue the conception of God from the dilemma in which he found it. If we merely think of a hundred coins,¹² they are not a coin less than a hundred real coins. A hundred imagined, possible coins are supposed to be exactly the same as a hundred real coins! Upon this idea that conceptually a hundred possible coins contain everything that a hundred coins contain, upon this idea Kant bases the whole of his refutation of the so-called Ontological proof of the existence of God. Now, if our thinking is mobile, we shall immediately hit upon the objection: a hundred imaginary coins are for one with a mobile mind exactly a hundred coins less than a hundred real ones. Exactly a hundred coins less. The point is not merely to ask for a logical proof of what we are thinking, but to pay attention to how we are thinking. The web of Kant's ideas is, of course, so closely woven that it needs the utmost acumen to point to any logical error it may contain. The point is not only to bear in mind what arises within certain accustomed streams of thought, but to be so well drilled in thought that one remains firmly planted in the objective world. We must stand, not only with our thinking within ourselves, not only inside our own world of thought, but in the objective world outside us, so as to capture on the wing the instances that will refute the idea before us. The mind must be thoroughly trained, must have thought things out thoroughly before the instances will stream towards it. And only in this way will man attain to a certain kinship with the great Thought that animates the objective world.

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that we must think of the soul in its activity. If we want to grasp what the soul is, it is not enough to draw conclusions from the premise that it is impossible to develop the life of the soul from the brain and its processes. No, we must have immediate experience of the life of the soul independently of the life of the brain; then only can we speak of the life of the soul. This inner activity is what people nowadays regard as merely the work of fantasy. But the genuine Seeker knows exactly where fantasy ends and where in the development of his soul something else begins which he does not spin from fantasy but which binds him with the spiritual world, so that he can draw from this spiritual world that which he then coins into words or concepts, ideas or images. Only in this way will the soul attain to some knowledge of itself.

I now propose to develop what may seem to be a very paradoxical view. But it is a view which must be expressed, because it can throw so much light upon the essential nature of Spiritual Investigation. You will have noticed that the Spiritual Investigator is and can be in no way inimical to the assumption that the brain can of itself produce certain images, so that what arises as soul life devoid of any inner co-operation can be regarded as merely a product of the brain. And a certain mental habit, due mainly to modern methods of education, causes men and women to behave in the following manner. They are unwilling—for the reasons given above—to seek for anything that they hold to be true by means of inner activity. This they condemn as fantasy or dreaming. And they not only apply this opinion theoretically, but also give it practical effect in that they seek to eliminate what the soul has formed within itself, in that they do their utmost to suppress this element in the attempt they are making to give a picture of the world. Once the soul life has been thus cut off the materialistic world view becomes the ideal sought for. For what happens exactly when man rejects his inner life? Why, much the same as if one were to cut off one's own bodily life from the life of the soul. Just as the watch into which the watchmaker has worked his ideas, once it is finished and left to itself, will produce the same manifestations that were at first introduced into it by the watchmaker's ideas—so the life of the soul can continue in the brain, without the soul being there at all. And the education of to-day forms this habit in people. They grew accustomed not only to deny the soul, but to eliminate it altogether, that is to say, instead of seeking after it with inner activity, they sink back, as on to a pillow, into the purely cerebral life. And the paradox I want to utter is that the materialistic view of the world is literally a brain product, it has actually been automatically produced by the self-moving brain. The external world mirrors itself in the brain, sets it in passive motion, and this gives rise to the world picture of the materialist. The curious thing is, that if and when he has eliminated the life of the soul, the materialist is, on his own ground, perfectly right. Having gone to sleep on the pillow of purely cerebral life, all he can see is this purely cerebral life which has produced the life of the soul; then, in Karl Vogt's¹³ coarse simile, the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile.¹⁴ These ideas, which arise in the field of materialism, do not, however, admit of being thought out. The simile is coarse, but they have literally come out of the brain as bile comes out of the liver. Hence the errors to which they give rise. For errors do not come about simply through people saying something false, but when they say something that is true, that holds good within a limited field, namely in the one and only field they will allow, the field of materialism.

From this tendency to make no mental effort, this inability to intensify our thinking as was shown in the last lecture,¹⁵ this failure to achieve any liveliness in the soul—from this general inclination merely to trust to what the body can do comes the materialistic view of the world. The materialistic conception does not arise from a logical error, it comes from the mental tendency to shun all inner activity and to give oneself up to the dictates of the corporeal. And herein lies the secret of the difficulty of refuting materialism. For a man who refuses to bestir his soul cannot answer the objections that are raised against him except by undertaking this very inner activity; and if he shuts it out from the first and prefers the far more convenient alternative of producing simply what his brain produces, well, it is hardly to be wondered at if he remains firmly stuck in the closed circle of materialism. One thing he will never see, and that is that this brain of his (he may thank Heaven that he has one; he could not for all his materialistic philosophy have provided himself with one!)—that this brain of his has itself been created by the Wisdom of the World and that it can, therefore, go on working like a watch, that it is entirely material and can go on reproducing itself. This Wisdom is a sort of phosphorescence; a phosphorescence that is present in the brain itself brings out what is already placed there spiritually. But the materialist need have nothing to do with all this; he simply gives himself up to that which, from being spiritual, has, as it were, condensed into matter, and which now, like the watch, simply grinds out spiritual products. As you see, ladies and gentlemen, the Spiritual Investigator stands so firmly on the foundations of legitimate Natural Science that he is obliged to assert what to many will seem as paradoxical as what I have just been saying. But this will show you that if we want to pass judgment on Spiritual Science, we must reach down to the central nerve of the matter. And since what can be repeated is so well established, it is easy to see why so very many objections and misunderstandings have arisen. Genuine Spiritual Investigation, that takes itself seriously, is all too easily identified with all the dilettante activities that bear a superficial resemblance to the real thing. I have often been reproached with the fact that the books I have written and the lectures I have delivered on Spiritual Science were not sufficiently on popular lines—as the common phrase goes. Now, I do not write my books nor do I deliver my lectures in order to please people and give them the heart-to-heart talks that they enjoy. I write my books and deliver my lectures in the manner best fitted to present Spiritual Science to the world at large. Spiritual Science existed in the past, as I have often had occasion to point out,¹⁶ although it arose from sources that differ from those of the Spiritual Science of to-day, which has inevitably been altered by human progress. In the olden days only those were admitted to the places where Spiritual Science was taught who were considered sufficiently ripe. Such a procedure would be quite meaningless to-day. Nowadays our life is public and it goes without saying that all subjects of investigation must be brought out into the open and that it would be folly to practise any sort of secrecy. The only secrecy which can be admitted is that which is already customary in public life. Namely, that to those who have already begun to study the opportunity be given of hearing more in lectures addressed to smaller audiences. But this is done in Universities; it is what is practised in ordinary life. And it is as unwarrantable to speak of secrecy in this respect as it would be in connection with University lectures. But the books are written and the lectures are delivered in such a way that a certain effort is needed on the part of those to whom they are addressed, and a certain amount of thought is required of them in their approach to Spiritual Science. Otherwise, anyone who shirked the trouble of going into the matter seriously could understand, or rather imagine he understood it, from reading those popular works that are so palatable to him. I am well aware that much of what I say must seem bristling with scientific terms to those who do not want that sort of thing. But this has to be in order that Spiritual Science may take its place in the mental and spiritual culture of the day. And if here and there Spiritual Science is being cultivated by large or small groups of men and women who, having no conception of the advances of modern science, yet claim to speak with a certain authority, it is little wonder if Spiritual Science incurs the contempt and misunderstanding and calumny of men of science. Something special, something significant must, therefore, be felt even in the manner in which the subject is imparted. And it must be felt in the fact that inner activity and doing of the soul is necessary in order to grasp how the essential part of the soul really lives as something which can use the body as an instrument but is not one and the same as the body.

If, then, we see things aright, how are we to account for the misunderstandings that have arisen? Well, when the soul begins to grow, when its dormant powers begin to awake, then the first of these powers which has to be developed is Thought, and it must be developed in the way we have often indicated and to-day again repeated. And for this a certain inner force, a certain inner strength is required. The soul must strive within itself. And this inner effort is just what, under the influence of the times, people do not want. Unless it be the artists. But in the realm of art, things have reached the point that people prefer simply to copy nature and have no inkling of the fact that, in order to add anything exceptional and new to nature pure and simple, the soul must be strengthened from within, must work upon itself a little. The power of Thought is, therefore, the first thing that has to be fortified. And then Feeling and Will, as was shown in the lectures of the last week.¹⁷ And this process of fortifying is only described by people saying that in Spiritual Science everything happens inwardly. People shrink from this, and from the idea of anything being strengthened inwardly, and they fail to grasp the obvious distinction which is required here between the conception of external nature and that of the spiritual world.

Let us try to grasp this distinction more vividly. What exactly is it? With regard to external nature, our organs are already given. Our eyes have been given us. Goethe has said very beautifully, "Were not the eye sunlike, how could we behold the light?"¹⁸ Just as it is a fact that you would not hear me when I speak unless you met me half-way by listening in order to understand me so, in Goethe's view, it is a fact that the eye has been created out of the light of the sun by a devious path of hereditary and other complicated processes. And by this is meant, not merely that the eye creates light in Schopenhauer's sense, but that it is itself created by light. This must be firmly borne in mind. And those who are inclined to be materialists may, we suggest, thank God! They no longer need to create their eyes, for these eyes are created from the Spiritual. They already have them, and in taking in the world around them they are using these ready made eyes. They direct these eyes towards the outer impressions and the outer impressions mirror themselves, completely mirror themselves in the sense organs. Let us imagine that man could, with his present degree of consciousness, experience the coming into being of his eyes. Let us imagine him entering nature as a child with only a predisposition for eyes. His eyes would first reveal themselves to him through the action of the sunlight. What would happen in man's growth? What would happen would be that by means of the sun-rays, invisible as yet, the eyes would be called forth out of the organism. And when a man feels "I have eyes," he feels the light inside his eye; when he knows his eyes to be his own, he feels them as part of his own organisation, he feels his eyes living inside the light. And, fundamentally, sense-perception is as follows: Man experiences himself by experiencing light, by experiencing with his eyes what has been developed in sense-perception, where we already have eyes for which possession we, as was said above, may thank God!

And so it must also be with Spiritual Science. There, too, the organic must be called forth from the as yet unformed soul. Spiritual hearing, spiritual vision must be called forth, to use Goethe's expressions¹⁹ once again: the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear must be called into being from within. Through the development of the soul we actually feel our way into the spiritual world, and as we do this, the new organs will come into being. And with these organs we shall experience the spiritual world in exactly the same way as we experience the physical world of sense with the organs of the physical body. Thus we must first create something analogous to that which man already possesses, for the purpose of sense perception. We must have the strength to begin by creating new organs of perception in order to experience the spiritual world with them.

The obstacle to this—and there is no other—is what may be called the inner weakness of man, resulting from modern education. It is weakness that prevents man from so taking hold of his inner life (the expression is clumsy, but it will serve) that it becomes as active as it would if man had to create his own hands in order to touch the table before him. He creates his inner powers in order to touch that which is spiritual; with spirit he touches spirit. Thus it is weakness that holds man back from pressing forward in the pursuit of true Spiritual Investigation. And it is weakness that calls forth the misunderstanding which Spiritual Investigation is faced with, fundamental weakness of soul, the inability to see that we are still caught in the Faustian doom, powerlessness to transform the reality within into organs which will lay hold upon the spiritual world. That is the first point.²⁰

And there is a second point, which will also be understood by those who wish to understand it. Man, in the face of the unknown, always experiences a peculiar feeling, primarily a feeling of fear. People are afraid of the unknown. But their fear is of a peculiar sort: it is a fear that does not become conscious. For what is the source of the materialistic, mechanistic world-view, or, as the more scholarly would have us say, what is the source of the monistic world conception? (Though even under this name it is still materialistic.) It arises from the fact that the soul is afraid of breaking through sense-perception, afraid that if it breaks through the sensuous into the spiritual, it will come into the unknown, into "Nothing," as Mephistopheles says to Faust. But, "In the Nothing," answers Faust, "I hope to find the All."²¹ It is fear of that which can only be guessed at as Nothing. But it is a masked fear. For we must become familiar with the fact that there is a luxuriant growth of hidden or unconscious processes in the depths of the soul. It is remarkable how people deceive themselves over this. A frequent example of such self-deception is that of people who, while animated by the grossest selfishness, refuse to admit it and invent all sorts of subterfuges to show how selfless, how loving they are in what they do. Thus do they put on a mask to cover their selfishness. This is very frequently the case with societies that are formed with the object of exercising love in the right way. One often has occasion to make a study of this masking of selfishness. I knew a man who was always explaining that what he did, he did against his own aims and inclination; he did it only because he deemed it necessary for the welfare of humanity. Again and again I had to say, "Don't deceive yourself! Pursue your activities from selfish motives and because you like doing it." It is far better to face the truth. One stands on a foundation of truth if one simply owns to oneself that one likes the things one wishes to undertake and if one ceases to hold a mask before one's face. It is fear which leads nowadays to the rejection of Spiritual Knowledge. But people will not own to this fear. It is in their souls, but they will not let it come into their consciousness, and they invent proofs and arguments against Spiritual Knowledge. They try to prove, for instance, that to leave the firm ground of sense-perception is inevitably to indulge in fantasy, etc. They invent the most complicated proofs. They invent whole philosophical systems which may be logically incontestable but which for anyone who has any insight in such matters go to show no more than that every one of these inventions misses the mark when it comes to Reality—and this, whether it calls itself Transcendental Realism, Empirical Realism, more or less Speculative Realism, Metaphysical Realism, or any other kind of "ism." People invent these "isms," and a lot of hard thinking goes to their making. But at bottom they are nothing but the soul's fear of embarking upon that which I have often characterised as "Feeling the Unknown in its Concreteness." These, then, are the two chief reasons for the misunderstandings which arise in relation to Spiritual Knowledge—weakness of soul and fear of what is presumed to be the unknown. And whoever possesses some knowledge of the human soul can analyse the modern world conceptions in the following way: on the one hand, they arise from men's inability so to strengthen their thought that all the relevant examples will at once occur to them; on the other hand, there is the fear of the unknown. And it often happens that because people are afraid of venturing into the so-called Unknown, they prefer to leave it as such. We grant, they will say, that behind the world of sense there is another, spiritual world. But man cannot enter into it. We can prove this, prove it up to the hilt. And most of them, when they wish to adduce these proofs, begin by saying, "Kant said," on the assumption, of course, that the person whom they are addressing understands nothing about Kant. Thus people invent proofs to show that the human spirit cannot enter into the world that lies beyond what is given in sensation. But these are simply subterfuges—clever though they be, they are attempts to escape from fear. It is assumed that something exists behind the world of sensation. But they call it the Unknown and prefer to lay down a form of Agnosticism of the Spencerian,²² or any other type, rather than find the courage really to lead the soul into the spiritual world.

A curious philosophy has arisen of late—the so-called "World-Conception of the As-If." It has found root in Germany. Hans Vaihinger²³ has written a large volume on the subject. According to the "World-Conception of the As-If," we cannot speak as though conceptions like "the unity of consciousness" actually corresponded to anything real, but must regard the appearances of the world "as if" there existed something which could be thought of as one undivided soul. Or again, the As-If philosophers cannot deny the fact that none of them has ever seen an atom or that an atom must be conceived precisely as something which cannot be seen. For even light itself is supposed to arise from the vibrations of atoms, and atoms would, therefore, have to be seen without light, since light first happens through the vibration of atoms! Thus the As-If philosophers do at least go the length of accepting atoms as real only in an intellectual sense (not to speak of the fantastic nonsense about atoms that dances about in some quarters). What they say, however, is this: It makes the world of sense easier to understand if we think of it "as if" there were atoms in it.²⁴ Now whoever, ladies and gentlemen, has an active inner life, will notice that it is one thing actively to live and move as an individual soul within a realm of spiritual reality, and another quite different thing to apply outwardly and realistically the idea that human activities can be made to appear "as if" they belonged to an individual soul. At any rate, if we take our stand on the firm ground of practical experience, we shall not find it easy to apply the Philosophy as As-If. To take an example. Fritz Mauthner²⁵ is to-day a highly esteemed philosopher, regarded by many as a great authority because he has out-Kantianised Kant. Whereas Kant still regards concepts as something with which we grasp reality, Mauthner sees in language alone that wherein our conception of the world actually resides. And thus he has been fortunate enough to complete his "Kritik der Sprache," (Critique of Language) to write a fat Philosophisches Wörterbuch²⁶ (Dictionary of Philosophy) from this point of view, and, above all, to collect a following who look upon him as the great man. Now, I do not wish to deal with Fritz Mauthner to-day. All I want to say is that it would be a hard task to apply the As-If philosophy to this gentleman. One might say: Let us leave it an open matter whether the gentleman has or has not intelligence and genius. But let us examine his claim to be intelligent "as if" he had intelligence. And if we set about the task honestly we shall find, ladies and gentlemen, that it cannot be done. The "As-If" cannot be applied where the facts are not there.

In a word, we must, as I have said before, reach the mainspring of Spiritual knowledge, and we must know what this teaching can regard as legitimate in the field in which misunderstandings can arise. For, while these misunderstandings really are misunderstandings, it is equally true that they are justified if the Spiritual Investigator is not fully capable of sharing the thought of the man of science. The Spiritual Investigator must be in a position to think along the same lines as the man of science, he must even be able to test him from time to time, especially if the man of science is one of those who are always insisting upon the necessity of standing firmly rooted in the data of empirical fact. At any rate, if one submits to a purely external test a philosophy that seems to be entirely positivistic and that rejects everything spiritual, the results are very remarkable. As you know, I in no wise underrate Ernst Haeckel.²⁷ I fully recognise his merits. But when he begins to talk about World-Conception, he shows precisely that weakness of soul which renders it impossible for him to follow any current of thought except that upon which he has already embarked. We are here up against that extremely significant fact which is so baffling when one meets it in serious contemporary works. I mean the widespread superficiality of men's thought and the downright lie in their life. We find, for example, that one of the great men to whom Ernst Haeckel refers as one of his authorities is Carl Ernst von Baer.²⁸ The name is always introduced as decisive in support of the purely materialistic World-Conception which Haeckel drew from his own researches. Now, how many people will take the trouble to acquire a real insight into what actually goes on in scientific thought and activity? How many people will pause and reflect when they read in Haeckel that Carl Ernst von Baer is one from whom Haeckel has deduced his own views? So, naturally, people think that Carl Ernst von Baer must have said something which led to Haeckel's views. And now, let me read you a passage from one of von Baer's works. "The terrestrial body is simply the breeding ground on which the spiritual part of man vegetates and grows, and the history of nature is nothing but the history of the continued victory of spirit over matter. This is the basic idea of creation, in virtue of which or rather for the attainment of which, individuals and species are allowed to vanish and the present (future) is built up upon the scaffolding of an immeasurable past."²⁹ The man whom Haeckel is always quoting in support of his theories has a wonderfully spiritual conception of the world! The development of scientific thought should be carefully watched. If those whose business it is to trace this development only kept their eyes open, we should not have such a struggle to wage against that superficiality of thought that produces the innumerable prejudices and errors which as misunderstandings constitute an obstacle to such aspirations as those embodied in Spiritual Knowledge.

Or again, ladies and gentlemen, let us take an honoured figure in the arguments about World-Conception in the nineteenth century, David Friedrich Strauss.³⁰ An honourable man—so are they all, all honourable men! Having started from slightly different views he finally takes his stand quite firmly on the opinion that the soul is merely a product of matter. Man has arisen completely out of what modern materialism calls nature. When we speak of the will, there is no real willing present. All that happens is that the brain molecules spin round in some way or other and will arises as a sort of vapour. "In man," says Strauss, "nature has not only willed upwards, she has willed beyond herself."³¹ Thus, nature wills. We seem to have reached the point where the materialist, in order to be one, no longer takes his own words seriously. Man is denied will because he must be like nature, and then it is said that "Nature has willed." One can, of course, dismiss such things as unimportant, but any earnest seeker after a true World-Conception will see that herein lies the source of innumerable mistakes and errors with which public opinion becomes, as it were, inoculated. And from this inoculation arise the many ways in which true Spiritual Science and Spiritual Investigation are misunderstood.

From another quarter we have those objections which are raised by the followers of this or that religious denomination, from those who think that their religion will be imperilled by the advent of a Spiritual Science. I must point out here once again, that it was people of exactly the same mentality who opposed Galileo and Copernicus on the ground that religion would be in danger if one had to believe that the Earth went round the Sun. And to such people there is always the retort: How timorous you are within the limits of your religion! How little you have grasped your own religion if you are so quickly convinced that it must be endangered by any fresh discovery! And, in this connection, I wish once again to mention the name of Laurenz Müllner,³² a good theologian, and one who, as he pointed out on his death-bed, remained to the end a faithful member of his church. When, in the 'nineties of last century, this theologian, whom I knew as a friend, was appointed Rector of the Vienna University, he said, in the inaugural address on Galileo³³ which he held on this occasion: There were once men and women (within a certain religious body they continued to exist until the year 1822, when permission was granted to believe in the Copernican Cosmology)³⁴—there were once men and women who believed that the religions could be imperilled by such views as those of Galileo or Copernicus. But nowadays—thus spoke this theologian, and priest, who remained within his church till the day of his death—nowadays, we must have reached the point where we find that religion is strengthened and intensified by the fact that men have looked into the glory of the divine handiwork, and learnt to know it better and better.³⁵ These were deeply religious, these were Christian words indeed.

And yet men will always rise up and say: This Spiritual Science says this or that about Christ, and it ought not to say it. We have our own conception of what Christ was like. Now, we would like to say to these people: We grant you everything that you hold about Christ, exactly as you put it; only we see in Him something more. We accept Him not only as a Being, as you do, but also as a cosmic Being, giving sense and meaning to the place of the Earth in the universe. But we must not say this. We must not go a step beyond what certain people regard as true. Spiritual Science gives knowledge. And knowledge of truth will never serve as the foundation for the creation of religion, although there will always be fools who say that Spiritual Science has come to found a new religion. Religions are founded in quite a different manner. Christianity was founded by its Founder, by the fact that Christ Jesus lived on earth. And Spiritual Science can no more found anything which is already there, than it can found the Thirty Years War through knowing facts about it. For religions are founded on facts, on events which have taken place. All that Spiritual Science can claim to do is to understand these facts differently—or rather not so much in a different, as in a higher sense—than can be done without its help. And just as in the case of the Thirty Years War, however lofty the standpoint from which we understand it, we do not found something by tracing it back to the Thirty Years War which was first merely known to us as a fact—so, in the same way, no religion is ever founded through that which is at first known to Spiritual Science as a fact. Here again it is a question of that superficiality which limits itself to sentiment and prevents the mind from really going into the matter in hand. If one really goes into the question of Spiritual Science, one will see that while the materialistic philosophy may very easily lead people away from religious feeling, Spiritual Science establishes in them the foundations of a deeper religious experience, because it lays bare the deeper roots of the soul, and thus leads men in a deeper way to the experience of that which outwardly and historically has manifested itself as religion. But Spiritual Science will not found a new religion. It knows too well that Christianity once gave meaning to the world. It seeks only to give to this Christianity a deeper meaning than can be given it by those who do not stand on the ground of Spiritual Science. Materialism, of course, has led to such discoveries as those, for example, of David Friedrich Strauss, who looked upon the belief in the Resurrection as insane. This belief in the Resurrection, he says, had to be assumed. For Christ Jesus had said many true and noble things. But the speaking of truths makes no particular impression on people. It needs the trimming of a great miracle such as the miracle of the Resurrection.³⁶ There you have what materialism has to bring forward. But this will not be brought forward by Spiritual Science! Spiritual Science will endeavour to unearth and bring to light what is living in the mystery of the Resurrection so as to understand it, and place it in the right way before humanity, which has advanced with the years, and can no longer accept it in the old way.

But this is not the place for religious propaganda. All I want to do is to bring to your notice the meaning of Spiritual Science and the misunderstandings which it has to meet—misunderstandings which come from those who presumably lead a religious life. At present (1916) men have not yet reached the stage when materialism can have an evil social result on a large scale. But this could very soon happen if men and women do not once again, through the help of Spiritual Science, find their way back to the fundamental spontaneity of the soul's inner life. And also the social life of humanity may find through Spiritual Science something which will, on a higher scale, bring about its own rebirth.

We can only speak of these things in a general way. Time does not allow us to describe them in more detail. I have done my best to characterise some of the misunderstandings which are found again and again, whenever Spiritual Science is being judged. I do not really wish to discuss the results of the perfectly natural superficiality of our time—at any rate not in the sense of refuting anything. In many cases it is worth considering, as supplying material for amusement—even for laughter.³⁷ ...As I have said, one cannot discuss this type of superficiality, widespread and, in a sense, influential though it be, for printer's ink on white paper still has so potent a form of magic. But what must be discussed are the cases where the objections raised, even if they are unimportant in themselves, insinuate themselves nevertheless into the public mind. And the misunderstandings which arise from this mental inoculation are what must be combated step by step by those who take anything like Spiritual Science at all seriously. We are always meeting with objections that do not arise from any sort of activity of the soul, but which have been, as it were, injected into the minds of those who make them by the prevailing superficiality of the times. But he who is right inside Spiritual Science knows full well that, as I have so often explained, the same thing must and will happen to this teaching as has happened to any new element that is incorporated into the development of humanity. This reception was up to a point accorded to the philosophy of modern Natural Science, until the latter grew powerful, and could exercise its influence by means of external power-factors, and no longer needed to work through its own strength. And then the time comes when people, without any activity on the part of their own souls, can build philosophies upon these power-factors. Is there, ladies and gentlemen, much difference between these two views? Those who nowadays found elaborate Monistic systems regard themselves as very lofty thinkers, infinitely superior to those whose philosophy, coloured perhaps by theological and religious considerations, they consider to be narrowly dogmatic and hidebound by authority. But in the eyes of one who knows something of how misunderstandings arise, it matters little in the soul's achievement whether men swear by a Church Father such as Gregory, Tertullian, Irenus or Augustine and accept him as authority, or whether they look upon Darwin, Haeckel and Helmholtz as authorities, and in so far as these are really their Church Fathers, give them their allegiance. The point is not whether we have given our allegiance to one or the other of these two, but how far we have got in working out a philosophy of our own. And what was true of a mere abstract idealism is true in a higher, a far higher sense, of Spiritual Science. To begin with, it is misunderstood and mistaken on all sides, and then, later, the very thing that at first appeared to be moonshine and fantasy is taken for granted. This is what happened to Copernicus, it is what happened to Kepler, it is what happens to everything that has to be incorporated into the spiritual development of humanity. First it is regarded as nonsense, then it is taken for granted. And this, too, is what is happening to Spiritual Science.

But this Spiritual Science, as has been shown in previous addresses and re-stated in the present lecture, has a very important message. It points to that living reality which brings man to the fullness of his powers, not by offering itself to his passive contemplation, not by revealing itself to him from outside, but by requiring of him that he should seize hold of it alive so that through co-operation alone he may come to a knowledge of his own existence. He must overcome that weakness which makes him regard as fantasy everything whose existence cannot be felt by a mere passive surrender, but demands an inwardly active co-operation with the World-All. Only when man's knowledge is active will it tell him what he is and where he is going, what he is and what is his destiny. The spirit has strength enough of its own to fight its way through all the misunderstandings of the day, justifiable as they are in a certain sense, and it will fight its way through, especially in so far as these misunderstandings arise from the superficiality of the times. Very beautiful, in this connection, is Goethe's saying, uttered, on his own admission, in unison with the ancient sage:³⁸

Were the eye not sun-like
How could we look upon the light?
Were we not animate with God's own power
How could we be ravished with the divine?

The Spiritual-divine that lives, moves and has its being throughout the world is that from which we originate, that from which we have sprung. Even the material element in us is born of the spiritual. And it is because it is already born and no longer needs to be proved or brought forth that man, if he is a materialist, believes in it alone. The spiritual must be grasped in living activity. The Spiritual divine must first weave itself into man, the spiritual sun must first create its own organs in him. Thus, altering Goethe's words, we may say: If the inner eye does not become spiritually sun-like, it will never look upon the light which is the very essence of man.

To conclude these reflections. If the human soul cannot unite itself with that from which it has sprung from all eternity, with the Spiritual-divine whose being is one with its own, then it will never be able to rise as a gleam into the Spiritual; its spiritual eye will never come into being. The soul will then never be enraptured by the Divine, in the spiritual sense of the word, and human knowledge will find the world empty and desolate. For we can only find in the world that for which we have created organs of reception in ourselves.

Were the outer physical eye not sun-like, how could we look upon the light? And if the inner eye does not become spiritually sun-like, we shall never look upon the spiritual light of quintessential humanity. If man's own inner activity does not itself become really spiritual-divine, then never can there pulsate through the soul of man that which alone brings him for the first time to true manhood, to the fullness of his human stature, to be a true man and to that which fills and animates the world, working and weaving through the All until in him it reaches human—if not divine—consciousness, the future Spirit of the World.

• 1. The lecture is reprinted by kind permission of Frau Marie Steiner. By contrasting outstanding individual examples of one-sided thought with their opposites, the lecture gives an answer to the thesis with reference to the following names: Theodor Meynert, Kant, Hans Vaihinger, Fritz Mauthner, Ernst Haeckel, David Friedrich Strauss on the one hand, and Goethe, Carl Ernst von Baer, Laurenz Müllner on the other.
• 2. Healthy Soul Life and Spiritual Research (Gesundes Seelenleben und Geistesforschung). Lecture given in Berlin on 4th February, 1916.
• 3. As examples of such opponents see, amongst others, Karl Heyer, Dr. Phil. and Jur. Wie man gegen Rudolf Steiner kämpft, Stuttgart, 1932; and also Camille Schneider Eduard Schuré's Begegnungen mit Rudolf Steiner, Basel, 1933.
• 4. Herman Ulrici (1806-1884), German philosopher; John Ulrich Wirth (1810-1859), Protestant theologian and philosopher; Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1797-1879), German philosopher.
• 5. Ein vergessenes Streben nach Geisteswissenschaft innerhalb der deutschen Gedankenentwicklung. Lecture delivered in Berlin, 25th February, 1916. {RSA title: A Forgotten Support for Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought}
• 6. Theodor Meynert (1833-1892), born in Dresden, was active in Vienna from 1866 as psychiatrist and cerebral anatomist. Rudolf Steiner's early friend, Alfred Stross, was one of his patients. (See Fritz Lemmermeyer's Erinnerungen, Stuttgart, 1929) A collection of his writings is to be found in August Hirsch's Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragendsten Ärzte, Berlin, 1929. Vol. IV.
• 7. Theodor Meynert, Zur Mechanik des Gehirnbaues, a lecture delivered before the Vienna Anthropological Society, 1872. (See Theodor Meynert, Sammlung von populär-wissenschaftlichen Vorträgen über den Bau und die Leistungen des Gehirns, Vienna and Leipzig, 1892.)
• 8. See footnote 5
• 9. Literally: "Unconsciously and impelled from within I had pressed on untiringly to the discovery of archetypes, I had succeeded in building up an exposition of things that accorded with nature. There was, therefore, nothing to hinder me from embarking boldly upon the 'adventure of reason,' as the Sage of Königsberg has called it." (Goethe, Anschauende Urteilskraft, 1820) Kant, in the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, describes the attempt to explain the relationship in the structure of different animals through actual blood relationship as "daring to make an adventure in reason." "A priori, in the judgment of mere reason, this cannot be disputed. It is simply that experience gives no instance of it." (Ibid.)
• 10. See footnote 2
• 11. See footnote 7
• 12. "Thus the real contains no more than the possible. A hundred real coins contain no more than a hundred possible coins." "By whatever ... predicates I may cogitate a thing I do not in the least augment the object of my conception by the addition of the statement, this thing exists. Now, if I cogitate a being as the highest reality, without defect or imperfection, the question still remains—whether this being exists or not." Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
• 13. Karl Vogt (1817-1895), was a German scientist, philosopher and politician, an eager champion of Materialism and Darwinism, the well-known author of Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft, Giessen, 1855.
• 14. Literally, "Every scientist will, if he thinks with a certain amount of consistency, reach the view that all the faculties which we grasp under the name of activities of the soul are only functions of the brain matter; or to put it rather coarsely, that thoughts stand in the same relation to the cerebral substance as does bile to the liver, or urine to the kidneys. To assume a soul that uses the brain like an instrument with which it can work as it pleases, is sheer nonsense." (See Karl Vogt's Physiologische Briefe für Gebildete aller Stände, Stuttgart, 1847) The remark is made in refutation of Gall and C. G. Carns, and is repeated with especial emphasis in the fourth edition.
• 15. See footnote 5
• 16. See Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as a Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity
• 17. Lectures between 19 and 26 February 1916.
• 18. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, 1808-1810
• 19. "And with the eyes, not of the body, but of the spirit, I saw myself riding on horseback towards myself." (Dichtung und Wahrheit, Part III, Book XI) "The eye may indeed be called the clearest sense, but the inner sense is still clearer." (Shakespeare und kein Ende, 1813-1816) "We learn to see with the eyes of the spirit, without which we should in the realm of Natural Science, as everywhere else, be groping blindly about." (Zur Zoologie, 1795) "And the new-born day sounds already in our spirit's ear." (Faust II, V)
• 20. See Faust I, V. Cp. Hegel, History of Philosophy, Vol. II. "This is one of the foibles of our time, that we cannot endure the greatness, yea, the immensity of the claims of the human spirit, that we feel oppressed by it and flee from it like weaklings."
• 21. Faust, II, V
• 22. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.
• 23. Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933), German philosopher, author of The Philosophy of As-If, a system of the theoretical, practical and religious fictions of humanity, based on idealistic Positivism, with an appendix on Kant and Nietzsche. (English translation published by Kegan Paul.) The philosophy of "As-If" treads the same paths as the so-called Pragmatism whose most influential representatives are William James (1842-1910), born in America, and F. C. S. Schiller (born in England, 1864). Cp. Rudolf Steiner, Die Rätzel der Philosophie, Stuttgart, Dornach, 1924-26, Vol. II.
• 24. "The soul, too, is only a summary fiction without any reality of its own... We speak as if there were a soul. We insert this auxiliary conception (the atom) because it is convenient to us. It is literally a hypostatised non-existent.
• 25. Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923), was an Austrian philosopher and author of novels, satires, reviews and journalistic works. He was an exponent of philosophical scepticism derived from a critique of human knowledge and of philosophy of language.
• 26. Fritz Mauthner, Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache, Stuttgart, 1901-1902. Second edition, Stuttgart and Berlin, 1906-1913. Wörterbuche der Philosophie Neue Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, Munich, 1910-1911.
• 27. Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), was a German zoologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species and mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms.
• 28. Carl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876), was a Baltic German scientist and explorer.
• 29. Carl Ernst von Baer, Reden und Kleinere Aufsätze vermischten Inhalts. St. Petersburg, 1864-1875. Vol. I and Vol. II. For Haeckel's reference to Baer, see Haeckel's Anthropogeny.
• 30. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874), was a German liberal Protestant theologian and writer, who influenced Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus", whose divine nature he denied.
• 31. David Friedrich Strauss, The Old Faith and the New, Section IV. 'What is our rule of life?' English translation by Matthew Blind, 1873
• 32. Laurenz Müllner (1848-1911), professor of Christian philosophy at the University of Vienna.
• 33. Laurenz Müllner, Die Bedeutung Galilei's für die Philosophie. Inaugurationsrede, 1894, in Die feierliche Inauguration des Rektor's der Wiener Universität für das Studienjahr, 1894-5. Vienna, 1894.
• 34. Not till the year 1822 did the Holy Office at Rome declare that books dealing with the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun were no longer forbidden.
• 35. Literally: "Of the days when men regarded their most holy possessions as threatened through the heliocentric view of the world, we say with the Psalmist, Illic trepidaverunt timore, ubi non erat timor. 'They were afraid where no fear was.' There was no contradiction involved in the right understanding of the Christian view, which should see in the newly discovered stellar worlds fresh wonders of divine wisdom and power, through which the wonders of divine love accomplished on earth would only receive a higher meaning." Laurenz Müllner, (see note 33).
• 36. "Thus (through belief in the Resurrection) men were assured of the continuance of all that was new and profound in the religious life as lived by Jesus and imparted to his followers through precept and example. But from now on, the fantastic form of this recovery (the recovery of belief in Jesus which had been shaken by violent death) . . . became the accepted one . . . his whole life was shrouded in a shining cloud which raised it ever higher and higher above the human." Life of Jesus, by David Friedrich Strauss. Part I.
• 37. At this point the lecturer made brief mention of an article by Max Hachdorf which appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt, Feb. 9, 1916, on "Dreyfus, the Prophet Steiner and the deserters," and of two of its variants in other newspapers, all of which were distinguished by the wildest, almost ridiculous misrepresentations and errors.
• 38. "I am at the moment dictating something about the marked passage in the old mystic" (meaning Plotinus, Enneades, I, 6, 8). Goethe used the text of the Latin translation, Neque vero oculus unquam vederet solem, nisi factus solaris esset. Neque rursus animus, nisi factus sit puicher, si modo deurn sit et pulchritudinem inspecturus. Plotini Opera Salingiacum M.O. See Goethe's letter to Zalter, Sep. 1, 1805, and Goethe Jahrbuch, Vol. III, 1882, Zur Farbenlehre, 1808-1810.

It is strange that history became a science during a time that was really least suitable for this. You can see this if you look more closely. My position will therefore be somewhat different today from the way it was the day before yesterday, when I wanted to establish links between anthroposophy and psychology. With psychology it was a matter of extending the area of natural scientific thinking to the phenomena of the psyche at a time when the more recent way of scientific thinking entered into human evolution. It was a matter of covering a field of phenomena relating to the psyche which had been considered in a different way before. The reason was that many people who were particularly involved in working in the sciences gained the impression, quite rightly so, that the spirit which prevails in modern scientific research was the only truly scientific one.

Now we have to say that when the modern scientific method is applied to psychology it is certainly brought to bear on something which is given. A true psychology may have to find completely different ways of investigation, as we have seen, but the object of research is given directly in the human being even where the modern scientific method is applied to psychology.

This would seem to be very different in the science of history. If attention is drawn to the facts that need to be considered here, facts we might almost call paradoxical, consideration must be given to something that is relatively little known or considered, which is that the science of history, as it is called, is of fairly recent origin. In the 18th century, those who developed and represented the concept of science certainly did not accept history as a science. The science of history is essentially a 19th century creation. It thus arose at a time when scientific methods had come to be acknowledged as having reached a high point in their development. 18th century people did not see history the way we do today. Let me refer to a typical statement that the German philosopher Christian von Wolff made in the 18th century. One could cite many others to show that at the time scientists considered history to be the recording of events but not something that deserved to be called a science. Wolff wrote: ‘As historical works merely narrate what happened, it does not need much intellect and reflection to read them.’²⁷ Methods of explanation, to put historical events in some order that made sense really, only came to be used to any greater extent in the course of the 19th century.

Among those who had come to be more and more immersed in the modern scientific way of thinking, it was Fritz Mauthner who in his big dictionary of philosophy expressed the opinion that the nature of history is such that it cannot be a science in the most radical terms. The article on history in this work is written very much from the point of view that ‘science’ is only possible in the study of the natural world. Reading it you find that the study of what we call ‘history’ is firmly said to be no science, and that it is even considered a paradox that, seeing that the methods developed in natural science were highly specific, history was to be called a science as well.

So far as people who think in the modern scientific way are concerned, one of the main premises on which they base their ideas as to what science is does not apply. What is the natural scientist’s aim in his investigations? He mainly wants to establish such a configuration of the conditions under which a natural phenomenon occurs that the natural event follows from this and he will be able to say: If conditions are similar or identical, the same phenomena must recur.

This focus on the repeatability of phenomena is particularly important to modern scientific thinkers. In their view a proper experiment must be such that one is, in a way, able to predict the results one is going to see under specific natural conditions.

Now we might indeed say that when such demands are made on history as a science, it is bound to fare badly. Let me give just a few examples. A strange view developed recently among people who wanted to think in historical terms, and it was refuted in a strange way, I would say in a highly realistic way. People who thought they had a degree of profound historical insight into social and economic situations developed the view—especially so at the beginning of the present war—that under the present economic and social conditions the war certainly could not last longer than four to six months at the most. The facts have radically disproved their assumption! Many people believed it to be a view with a solid foundation in science. How often do we hear, when people consider present events that are important in the life of humanity and which they therefore want to evaluate: ‘History teaches this, or that, about these events.’ People consider the events, want to form an opinion as to how they should relate to them, how they should think about the possible outcome; and you then hear people who have done some study of history say: ‘History teaches this or that!’ How often do we hear these words today in the face of the profoundly disturbing, tragic events that have come into human evolution. Well, if history teaches what those people think it teaches, namely that it will be impossible for these events to continue for more than four or six months, we can say that this knowledge drawn from history is strangely contradicted by the facts.

Another example, perhaps no less typical, is the following. A person who is certainly not without significance became professor of history in 1789. It was a time which we might call the dawn of historical studies. Schiller started to teach history in Jena in 1789. He gave his famous inaugural address on the philosophical and the external mechanistic approach to historical events.²⁸ In the course of this address he said a strange thing, something he believed he had concluded from a philosophical approach to human history. He believed he had developed a view on what we can ‘learn from history’, saying: ‘The community of European states appear to have become one large family; sharing the same house they may bear malice towards one another, but one hopes they will no longer tear each other limb from limb.’ This was a ‘historical opinion’ given in 1789 by someone who had certainly made a name for himself. There followed the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars! And if the lessons history had to teach had been learned, we’d also have to consider the present time in wanting to verify the statement that the European states may bear malice towards one another but will no longer tear each other limb from limb! Again a strange refutation of what people meant when they said that we can learn from history in order to form an opinion on present or future events. It is possible to give countless instances of what is suggested here. This is the one thing people say.

The other is that history, the course of events, must be ‘scientifically penetrated’ from all possible points of view. Did the 19th century really fare well with these methods? People who thought of applying strict scientific methods to history would no doubt be least satisfied when they came to ask themselves if proved useful in any way to apply methods that have their full justification in natural science to historical developments, so that they might be considered ‘in the light of a science’.

We merely need to consider a few things. It will not be possible today—for it is certainly not my aim to criticize the science of history as such today—to go into every detail of the attempts that have been made to develop a method for history. There is the view that it is great men who make history; then the view that the great have been given their character and their powers by their environment. Another view is that historical facts can only be understood if we consider the economic and cultural background, thus letting events in human history emerge from that background, and so on.

Some examples of attempts to approach history with the way of thinking that has proved its value in natural science may serve to show how the attempt has really—well, if not failed completely at least given no satisfactory results. To start somewhere, let us take Herbert Spencer’s²⁹ attempt to apply the modern scientific approach to the evolution of human history. Spencer wanted to penetrate the whole of world evolution and the existing world with the thinking developed in natural science. He made a surprising discovery. He knew that the individual organism, a human organism, for instance, but also the organism of higher animals, develops from three elements of a cell—ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm. Three elements or parts of a cell, therefore, from which the organism develops.

Herbert Spencer saw a similar process in the organism of evolving humanity, as it were. He assumed that different organic systems would develop from these elements as the historical organism of humanity evolves, just as the organic systems of the human body develop from the three elements of the cell. Spencer said that in the historical organism, too, you have something like an ectoderm, an endoderm and a mesoderm. This English philosopher developed the unusual view that in the historical evolution of humanity the warrior people, anything warlike in the world, developed from the ‘ectoderm’; peace-loving, working people from the ‘endoderm’ and the traders from the ‘mesoderm’. A ‘historical organism’ thus evolved from the interaction of these three kinds of people. According to Herbert Spencer, the most perfect community organism develops from the ‘ectoderm’ in the course of history; this is because the nervous system develops from the ectoderm in the human organism. This English philosopher thus saw the warrior class, the military element in a state, as developing from the ‘ectoderm’, analogous to the element that holds the potential for developing the nervous system in the individual human organism, and to his mind the most perfect country was the one that had the best developed warrior class. Just as the brain derives from the nervous system which derived from the ectoderm, so Herbert Spencer said that in a community the ruling class should come entirely from among the warriors. I merely want to mention this strange approach, and in view of the current situation make no further critical comments on Herbert Spencer’s militaristic theory concerning the historical evolution of society.

Another attempt at bringing ideas taken from natural science into the study of history was made by Auguste Comte³⁰—I am limiting myself to the leading thinkers. He attempted to apply the laws of mechanics, of statics and dynamics, to developments in human history. Relationships between individual elements in a social system were considered under the heading of ‘historical statics’, whilst changes, movements or progression came under the heading of ‘historical dynamics’.

Many more such examples could be given. Taking a critical look at these and many other attempts it can be shown that it is hardly possible to get satisfactory results by transferring scientific ways of thinking, which are strictly controlled in their own fields, to a study of historical developments.

Individuals who lived in the dawn, we might say, of historical studies tried to bring something like explanatory principles to the subject. We only have to think of one of the most magnificent attempts from that period. It was made by Lessing in his famous small book, written when he was at the height of his mental powers.³¹ His attempt is particularly interesting because he tried to approach historical developments not in a natural scientific way but by using the concept of education, something, therefore, that also has an element of mind and spirit in it. Lessing thought that successive historical events could only be understood if one saw the way humanity lived in the progress of history as an education governed by historical powers that were active behind the developments we are able to perceive.

And it is interesting to see how Lessing established cohesion among successive historical phenomena. It was precisely because of the way he established this that people would say: ‘Ah well, Lessing was a great man, but he was past his best when he wrote his treatise on the education of the human race.’ This was because he tried to make the succession of historical events a kind of inner event, at least in theory to begin with. This led to the idea of repeated lives on earth for the human soul. He looked back into past periods of history and said: ‘The people who are alive today have lived many times before; in their souls they bring into this period the things they have taken up in earlier periods. The impulse which runs through historical evolution is something which lies in human souls.’

Taking this first of all as a hypothesis, we might at any rate say that infinitely many things in human evolution that would otherwise be riddles can be illuminated, even if only hypothetically, if we assume that human souls themselves take historical impulses from one period of history to the next. What has been a tissue of historical developments lacking in cohesion will then suddenly show itself to be a cohesive whole. This is the only way in which we can hope that individual historical data are no longer just there, side by side, but can truly be seen to arise one from the other, for we now have the principle that makes the one arise from the other.

The view Lessing expressed in his small book has not really been taken up, the reason being that the age of modern science was coming to its peak. For reasons which will be shown in the next lecture, people really had to be against the theory of repeated lives on earth in this age of modern science, and in this particular sphere it was quite right to be against it.

And so it happened that all kinds of attempts were made in the course of the 19th century. You need only think of Hegel’s attempt to see the whole of historical evolution as progressive awareness of human freedom, and so on.³² We could refer to hundreds of attempts, showing that people tried over and over again to bring explanatory principles into historical evolution and thus make history into a science. There were, of course, also people like Schopenhauer, for example, who believed that nothing repeated itself in history, so that one could not speak of a science. History, he said, could only refer to successive data but there were no impulses in history that might serve as explanatory principles as is the case with the facts on which the laws of nature are based.³³

The powerful protest Friedrich Nietzsche made against history as such is still fresh in our minds. He spoke of ‘historicism’, meaning the acquisition not of the ideas of history but of a historical way of thinking, acquiring a way of thinking where people insist on ‘what history establishes’, wanting to work with this in their souls. In his view historicism sucks the soul dry, as it were, whilst there is need for the human soul to be productive and active in the present time, dealing with events as they come in a fruitful way. For Nietzsche, therefore, someone who only felt historical impulses was rather like a creature that must always go without sleep, which would mean that it could never bring fruitful vital energies into its development but would always only be consumed and worn down by something as destructive and enervating as living in historicism. Nietzsche’s treatise on history’s benefits and disadvantages in life is one of the most significant works to have arisen from his whole way of thinking.³⁴

These introductory words should merely serve to demonstrate how much the idea of history as a science is in dispute today, from all kinds of directions, and is so to quite a different degree as yet than psychology is, for instance. The question which must arise from all this is: Where do such things come from? On the premises on which the anthroposophically orientated science of the spirit is based we have to say: Because initially attention was not directed to the important fundamental question: What aspect of the human being are we concerned with when we speak of historical developments? Which part of the human being is involved in these historical developments? To answer the question we will need to look at the nature of the human being from the anthroposophical point of view, for this essential nature goes much further than our ordinary conscious mind is able to encompass.

My starting point—you’ll see later why I have chosen it—will be a look at the inner life of the human being and the rhythmical way in which it again and again goes out of our ordinary state of conscious awareness. We must allow that state of conscious awareness to alternate with the sleep state. We’ll be considering the subject in more detail when we come to consider the natural world from the spiritual scientific point of view in the next lecture. Today I merely want to refer to the aspects that can provide a basis for the study of history.

When sleep comes in the inner life, our conscious awareness is reduced to a level where we may almost speak of unconsciousness, though to someone able to observe this exactly, we are certainly not completely unconscious in our sleep. The world of sensory perceptions we have in full daytime conscious awareness and our world of feelings and active will come to a halt, they go down into the darkness of unconscious or subconscious life. Between the two states—waking and sleeping—lies the dream state.

This dream state is something most remarkable. 19th century philosophers tried to apply their minds, more used to natural science, to penetrating the nature of this mysterious dream world, which rises from the unconscious sleep state and is so very different from the experiences we gain in the world in our ordinary state of consciousness. The philosopher Johannes Volkelt, for instance, who wrote a book on dream fantasies³⁵ in the 1870s, left the issue untouched as though it were a hot coal which one may pick up, only to drop it again immediately. Critics writing about his book who decided to take the matter seriously were actually accused of spiritualism.³⁶ It is amazing what things people can be accused of!

What is the nature of this dream world which rises from the depths of our sleep? What are those images that move and flow in our dreams? The question can really only be discussed if one has the level of conscious awareness of which I spoke the day before yesterday. Someone who progresses from ordinary conscious awareness to being able to gain insight in images, through inspiration and intuition, that is, someone who truly is able to let his soul be out of the body and live wholly in the world of the spirit, will be able to have insight into what happens in the human soul when it lives in dream images. I can, of course, only give a general idea today, referring to some of the results obtained in the science of the spirit. To take this further you will need to have recourse to my books.

Studying dream life with the methods we have been considering here you come to realize that the sphere in which the inner life finds itself during sleep—from going to sleep to waking up again—is indeed separate from our life in a physical body. This is something one gets to know with spiritual scientific methods. You come to know the condition of the soul when it is out of the body. We are therefore able to compare life in dream images to this state of being out of the body which can be scientifically investigated. And we then find that a dream is really much more of a composite than we tend to think.

Anything that lives in the soul when it is dreaming has nothing to do with our present time the way our waking daily life has to do with the present time. They are something which is developing in our organism, in the whole of our essential human nature, like a small seed in a growing plant. The seed developing in the plant is the physical cause of the next plant. Wrapped up in our dream images—if I may put it like that—something emerges from the dim depths of sleep in the human soul which is not physical but is the foundation in soul and spirit for the part of us that will go through the gates of death, entering into the spiritual world to live through a life between death and rebirth before it appears again.

This seed is weak, however, so weak that it does not find its inner content out of its own inherent powers. It therefore only contains things that relate to reminiscences, echoes of the world we have lived through in the present or in the past. Spiritual scientific investigation of dream life shows that as with many things, the feeling people have, though it may be superstitious, that the future may often be revealed in dreams, is indeed a truth which they can sense, yet it is also a dangerous superstition. It is dangerous because the soul as it develops for the future, that is, the eternal in our soul, actually lives in our dreams. We may have a feeling that the element in us which is dreaming may not hold the idea of, but certainly the living potential for, the future of the human being. The content of the dream is taken from reminiscences and so on which are interwoven in a chaotic way. It is therefore superstition to want to interpret the contents of a dream in any other way than by the spiritual scientific approach, yet we have to say that the principle in us which is dreaming does indeed have to do with the eternal nature of the human soul. It is therefore only the content of dream life which makes us cherish illusions.

Progressing from ordinary awareness to the awareness I called vision, we come to insights in images, to inspirations. With the contents of a mind that is gaining insight in visions we are in a world of the spirit. This is the world in which the soul lives when it is out of the body and dreaming. But it is there in a childlike way, I’d say, in a way that is not yet perfect. It is present in that world the way the seed is in the plant as the potential for the next plant. Through vision in images and inspiration a world shows itself to us in which the dreaming soul is also at home.

People usually think human beings dream only when they are asleep. This is the kind of error that must inevitably arise when one develops one’s ideas only in relation to the world outside the human being. But it is an error, an illusion. People who think more deeply, Kant among them,³⁷ have had some idea that the principle present in the soul in sleep and in dreams is there not only in sleep and in dreams but is present throughout life. When we wake up, part of our inner life does indeed enter into the realm where the concepts based on observations made by the physical senses are present. We are wholly taken up with these, giving them our attention, for it is like a powerful light that outshines everything else that lives in the soul. We see it as the only content of the mind in daytime waking consciousness, as it were. But that is an error. Whilst these contents fill our minds, other contents that are entirely the same as the dreams that emerge from sleep during the night live on in the subconscious depths of the soul. We dream on whilst awake, but are not aware that we are dreaming. And though it may sound odd, the following is also true: We do not only dream on; we also sleep on. In the waking state, our conscious mind is thus at three levels—up above, at the surface, as it were, waking daytime consciousness, down below, in the subconscious, an undercurrent of continuous dreaming; and still deeper down we go on sleeping.

We can also state with reference to what we dream and with reference to what we sleep! We dream with regard to everything that does not come to mind in ideas or in concepts that can be clearly stated, but is discharged in us as feeling. Feelings or emotions do not arise from a fully conscious, waking conscious state of mind; they rise up in us from a world where all is dream. It is not right to say that emotions arise from the interaction of ideas. Quite the contrary. Our ideas are filled with something that rises up from a deeper inner life where we dream on whilst in the waking state. Our passions and affects also rise from a life of waking dreams, though the fully conscious life of the mind makes this invisible. And our impulses of will continue to be such an enigma in the way they well forth from the inner life because they come from depths of soul where we are asleep even when we are in the waking state.

Our fully conscious ideas thus develop in waking consciousness up above; our feelings are like waves lapping up from a subconscious state, a daytime dream life; and our impulses of will rise up from a sleep life. The significance this has for the development of ideas in the sphere of social life and of rights, of ethical ideas, and the significance it has when it comes to freedom of will is something we will be considering in the last lecture.

Today the emphasis will be on something else, however. Some sharp minds have realized that we will never be able to explain passions, for example, unless we first seek an explanation for the dream world. Passions, even the best and noblest of them, only live in human beings because they dream even when awake, and what people dream does not come to conscious awareness but laps up into it from the region where dreaming takes place.

One feels some hesitation in the present-day climate in speaking about another finding made in the science of the spirit. It does rather go against accepted views, but then it is also a fact that many developments in science were initially controversial. They ultimately won through. Thus the Copernican view of the universe only came to be accepted by a certain element in our culture in 1822.³⁸ Perhaps the science of the spirit, or anthroposophy, may also have to wait a long time to gain recognition, this time not by that particular element but by modern scientists.

What is really going on, if we study the river of human life, cannot be reached with the concepts we go through in the waking mind, for it does not live there. It may sound controversial, but the impulses that billow and move in history are only dreamt by human beings. The principle that drives history is no more lucid than a dream in the human soul, nothing else. It is perfectly scientific to speak of the dream of evolution. We can see this clearly once we come to realize that it needs the capacity for perceptive vision to gain insight into the actual impulses that drive history. We need to penetrate those impulses with living research based on vision in images and on inspiration. The human being is part of history and plays a role in it. We are therefore dealing with something that cannot be observed in a way that allows concepts to be developed which are like the concepts we use in modern science. We are dealing with concepts that really only come to ordinary conscious awareness out of our dreams.

It would be easy to raise the objection that the science of the spirit lives out of fantasies, attributing important impulses to the products of sheer fantasy and indeed dreams. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that may well be so, but if the reality is something that must live as a dream in the human soul, we have to go and find this reality in the actual sphere where it can be perceived.

The objection which people who are dedicated to the thinking used in natural science have raised against considering history a science has in fact been that one is dealing with isolated facts in history but would never be able to understand what a historical fact actually is, and that one could not get the kind of clear picture of it which one does with the facts of nature, facts on which natural science is based.

This is perfectly correct, also from the point of view of spiritual science; but we need to take a much deeper view in spiritual science. We would first of all say: If you consider what historical impulses really are, they are not given if you direct your usual rational mind to them, an mind relating to facts in the physical world. Historical facts are only given if we direct image-based and inspired perception to nonphysical impulses that are not to be found in the facts of the physical world.

The insights brought to human awareness through the science of the spirit did not, however, arise entirely out of nothing in more recent times. People who have been wrestling with problems of gaining insight and have gone through inner dramas in the process, have already had to turn their attention, even if only for brief moments, to the things that are now given system and order in the science of the spirit. Again I could give many examples of how one individual or another has in a sense ‘divined’ one thing or another. One example which I have also given in the book³⁹ due to be published shortly is the following.

In lectures given in 1869 which have since been published,⁴⁰ the psychologist Carl Fortlage made a strange statement concerning the conscious mind and its connection with the phenomenon of death. He said: ‘If we call ourselves living creatures, ascribing a quality to ourselves which we share with animals and plants, we necessarily take the condition of being alive as one that never leaves us, continuing on in us whether we are asleep or awake. This is the vegetative life of nutrition in our organism, an unconscious life, a life of sleep. The brain is an exception in so far as during the intervals when we are awake this life of nutrition and sleep is dominated by the life of consumption. In those intervals the brain is exposed to a powerful process in which it is consumed. It therefore enters into a condition which would mean absolute debilitation or even death if it were to extend to all the other organs in the body.’

This is a magnificent flash of insight. Fortlage is saying no less than that if the processes that influence the human brain were to take hold of the rest of the body in full waking consciousness, they would destroy it. We are thus truly dealing with destructive processes in the human being when it comes to conditions relating to everyday conscious awareness. Fortlage had deep insight. He continued: ‘Conscious awareness is a lesser, partial death; death is a great, total state of conscious awareness, with the whole of our essential nature awakening in its inmost depths.’

Here we see the connection between death and conscious awareness intuited in a truly magnificent way. Fortlage knew that if we divide the event which happens once, when death comes upon us, into ‘atoms’, as it were, ‘atoms of time’ in this case, these ‘atoms’ would be the events that happen continually in our waking consciousness. In developing conscious awareness we develop an ‘atomistic’ dying process; death is the same process as the one which affects the brain at every moment of conscious awareness, only on a larger scale. For Fortlage, too, death thus was nothing but conscious awareness of the spiritual world awakening all at once. Conscious awareness is all the time killing us off in small steps, and this dying process is necessary for our ordinary daytime conscious awareness. So if we have a human being before us we can say—and Fortlage’s feeling is fully confirmed on the basis of spiritual science—that the element of soul and spirit in this person is really something that consumes and destroys him. The vegetative life he has will hold destruction at bay until death comes. Once death comes, we have on the large scale what develops slowly, atom by atom, we might say, in life. Death is always in us, but we also have the vitality that fights death in us, and the soul enters into this vitality.

If we therefore consider the individual, living human being who stands before us in his body, this body is an outcome of the inner life. We are going to consider this in more detail in the third lecture. We have death; but for as long as the vital energies are active, death is continually prevented from coming in. It might be said to be lurking behind the phenomena and is indeed an important element in life, for life would only be at plant level if death did not kill this life off all the time, with conscious awareness arising in the body exactly because of this.

Once we get to know this peculiar relationship which death has to the vital energies in the human body, our perceptive vision grows sufficiently clear to allow us to form an opinion and indeed find meaning in the course of historical events. Normally they are told in history the way they have happened in the world, which is how history is usually presented.

What do events, fact following fact in the world, actually represent? Again I have to say something that may sound highly controversial. The facts of history do not relate to their soul content—which human beings only dream in the process of historical evolution—the way a body does that bears death within it, but rather like a body that is already dead, with the soul outside it. This means that historical facts no longer have soul in them. In human life, death comes when life in the body has run its course. The soul had been present everywhere in bodily life and then the body is alone, without the soul element. When it comes to historical facts the whole organism is mere dead body, a dead outer form compared to the historical impulses that are alive and active from one age to the next. This can only be perceived if we do not focus on the external facts but on the living principle, which is so alive that we cannot derive it from outer facts.

Let me use an analogy to make this still clearer. Let us assume someone believes—many people do believe this—that he only has to understand the facts of history as clearly as possible, the way we understand the facts in natural science, and he will be able to produce a science of history from the succession of such historical insights. Someone who believes this is like one who—however strange this may sound—if he had a dead human body before him would believe he should be able to extract the life of the soul from it in some way. It is not in there! Nor do historical facts hold the soul of history in them. We perceive historical facts with the rational mind which is bound to sensory perception and evolves from it. Yet we only see what is dead in historical developments when we use the rational mind. Human beings can only penetrate into historical evolution with their common awareness when they are dreaming; they can only see through historical evolution, through the actual inner life of history with imaginative and inspired awareness. Because of this, all available historical facts can only be presented in anecdotes and accounts. It is really true what the great Jacob Burckhardt⁴¹ said: Philosophy is non-history, for philosophy sees one fact subordinate to another; and history is non-philosophy—this is the term he used—because it only has to do with coordination, with facts being put side by side.

This gives rise to a particular attitude in historical thinking. To arrive at truly historical thinking we must use the awareness in vision of spiritual science to gain a clear view of something which definitely can not be learned in the ordinary course of history, something which is there in the process but does not reveal itself at all in the external facts, just as the soul does not show itself in a dead body.

The question then is whether it is really possible to see, using imaginative and inspired insight, what truly lives in historical evolution. Well, having referred to so many peculiar things already, I will not hesitate to speak of some of the realities. One of them is the kind of vision which I characterized the day before yesterday and also dealt with in more detail in my books. With this vision, this imaginative, intuitive and inspired conscious awareness, we gain a view of human evolution that is to the external facts as the soul is to the dead human body. I want to speak in the most real terms possible, for I am after all giving an example.

When someone tries to enter into the things which the mind in its ordinary awareness only dreams of, he will above all be able to delimit the historical process by finding important nodal points in historical life, just as one also finds specific sections in the individual human organism. Children get their second teeth in about their seventh year; they reach puberty at about 14. We can record such nodal points in an individual human life if we consider human physiology. These important changes mean a great deal more in the science of the spirit than they do in ordinary physiology, a science that never comes to an end in its studies. Similar insights are gained in history if one considers it from the spiritual scientific point of view. Thus—now quite apart from external facts, but merely by considering what happens in the spirit—we find that there was a period in European history, and human history in general, that started in about the 8th century BC and came to a conclusion in the 15th century AD. Events between these two points in time form a whole, in a certain respect, just as the life of the child does from his seventh year, when he gets his second teeth, to the time when he reaches puberty. One can establish a whole there, until a change occurs that makes a greater difference in the human organism than the events that happened in between. In the same way we can say that such major changes occurred in the 8th century BC and in about the 15th century AD. Seen from the point of view of historical study based on the science of the spirit, the period between them seems to have had a specific nature, special characteristics with regard to the spiritual reality that lay behind historical facts. This made the period a whole if we consider history from the points of view of spiritual science, something that belongs together.

I can, of course, only mention some aspects. Characterizing such things on the basis of spiritual science one can discover all kinds of details, and indeed things as real as the realities you get if you follow the system of plants in botany, and so on. Let me just present some general aspects.

During that period the life of humanity in general—to perceive this we have to consider the inner life of human beings, leaving aside physical facts—was such that the mind was still working much more by instinct than it does today. Anything people did in full awareness was still much more also an action of the body; it was still much more closely bound up with the living body. The mind still worked more by instinct. If you study the different things said in my books⁴² you will find that the inner life is classified, if I may use this rather academic term, into the life of the sentient soul, which is at a very low level of consciousness, still almost unconscious; the rational or mind soul, which nevertheless works in such a way that its life does not develop in full conscious awareness but still has instinctive character; and then the spiritual soul, which has full conscious self-awareness of the I, emancipating the I from the life of the body, the rational mind being no longer instinctive but taking an independent, critical approach to things. The rational soul was especially active in the people of the period we are considering, that is, people living at the time when the Greek and then the Roman civilization was evolving. And the inner life of people at that time, which led to developments in social life, history, the sciences, the arts and religious life—all this took the course it did because the soul life was characteristically such that the rational mind was still acting by instinct.

These are the general principles, but we can see the truth of it in individual details. Inwardly, in the spirit, one can actually describe how the difference had to come. In Greece, the instinctive mental life developed more in the direction of the living body. Ancient Greeks would see the body as ensouled, and also understood the way in which such an ensouled body was part of social life. In Roman times, the impulse for Roman citizenship arose from this specific constitution of the soul, and so on.

Living through this in an inward way one comes to the significant moment of change that can be so clearly seen in the 15th century. Events naturally happen gradually. The impulses only emerge bit by bit. The change that came in the 15‘ century is clearly evident, however. Human nature was truly revolutionalized then. This is something which only someone who looks at things in such a way will discover; others will always think of a succession of events when in reality history moves in leaps and bounds. The mind then came to relate to human nature in a very different way. It became emancipated, gaining greater self-awareness. Thinking only became more materialistic and sensual because the rational mind had lost its connection with the subconscious. Human beings sought relationships at national level, structures of community life and relationships between countries, and developments in the other areas of civilization that would arise from this peculiar separation from the instinctive life, something we are not aware of in our ordinary conscious minds, only dreaming of the rational mind growing independent of the life of instincts.

Let me just mention some more general aspects. With the approach used in spiritual science it is possible to go back to the time before the 8th century BC. This takes us to a different major period which extends back as far as the 3rd millennium BC, a period that also had its special characteristics, details of which can be established.

We thus gradually find something behind the physical facts that can only be observed in form of images, with a mind inspired and able to perceive in visions. If we are able to do this—something which facts can never give us, gaining insight into things that people normally only dream as they observe the facts and use the thinking based on the observation of physical facts—we come to the process aspect of history. This lives in the human dream level of consciousness and can only be seen more clearly if we have imaginative and inspired awareness. It is this alone which can show the facts in their true light.

Looking at a dead body you have to say that it had significance when the soul was still in it. Just as the soul casts its light, as it were, on the dead body, so we live in the light that illumines the facts when we approach things of the spirit with perceptive vision. Individual facts find an explanation if we illuminate them out of what we have gained in this way.

History thus cannot develop as a science unless we develop perceptive vision. If you think it would be possible without it, you are like someone who lets a light fall on an object, then, using some kind of mechanism to rotate the light, lets it fall on a second object, and a third, and then says: The second object is illuminated as a consequence of the first being luminous; the third object is illuminated as a consequence of the second object being luminous. This would not be true. It is the same light which illuminates each object.

That is how it is with historical facts. Someone who tries to explain facts through other facts, coordinating them, putting them side by side is, as Jacob Burckhardt said quite rightly, like someone who deduces that the light which falls on the second object comes from the first. He should see that it is in fact the same light which falls on the first, the second and then the third object. The explanation for the historical fact lies in the world of the spirit, and it is from this world that we must throw light on facts that will otherwise remain dead, just as objects will not be luminous unless we let the light fall on them that shines on all.

This does call for a radical change in our approach to history, but that should not surprise us. History became a subject at a time when natural scientists were, quite rightly, rejecting anything subjective. People did at first apply the methods of natural science in a study of history that may be said to have evolved at the wrong time—which, of course, is not such a good thing to say—but history can only prosper if natural science is complemented with the science of the spirit.

Then, however, we will no longer search through history in an ethical way, nor in the way many others have done, using abstract ideas. Ideas cannot make things happen; ideas are entirely passive. We must look for the truly real spiritual entities and powers that are behind historical developments. These can only be studied if we have awareness in images.

Now it is remarkable—once you have this guideline, light is indeed cast on what people might sense from a sequence of events, whilst someone who merely looks at things side by side will not find an explanation. Historical development becomes a science when the science of the spirit strikes like lightning from above. If it is unable to strike, people will be presenting progressively more anecdotal, which is not scientific.

It is interesting to note that Jacob Burckhardt wrote that it was approximately at the point in time when in the science of the spirit we would put the beginning of the period of which I spoke today—except that these are not exact points in time, just as puberty, for example, continues for some years—in the 6th or 7th century BC that a common element showed itself that extended from China through Asia Minor to Europe, and this was a general religious movement. Outer history has the facts: Because there was such a change, those events happened! Light is thrown on them. And concerning the end of the period, for what happened after the 15th century, Jacob Burckhardt spoke of the religious movement connected with the name of Martin Luther—again very strange. Once again there were major changes, showing themselves in Europe and at the same time also in India. With the science of the spirit we can see how something which is beheld in the spirit creates a mirror image for itself in the facts, for it illuminates the facts. History changes from being an enumeration of facts to being a genuine science.

We have to say that in this respect, too, many people have been longing to find the right way. Herman Grimm⁴³ tried to take a spiritual approach to history but did not reach the point where one sees into the world of the spirit with perception in images. He used all possible means to discover some kind of historical impulses behind the events that had happened. It was as if he was feeling his way and arrived at a classification which he would repeat many times in his lectures at the university. He said that such historical developments as there had been so far should be divided into a first millennium—starting approximately at the time I have given for the period I have been describing—and then a second and third millennium. You see, he was feeling his way. His ‘first two millennia’ covered everything I included in the Graeco-Latin period, which ran from the 8th century BC to the 15th century AD. And our present life, which will continue for many centuries and can be seen to be a coherent whole if one uses perception in images, he considered to be the ‘third millennium’. He tried to have at least a surrogate, I would say, for the vision that can be had in the spirit by saying that history is the ‘work of the nations’ creative imagination’.⁴⁴ Unable to find the spiritual reality that is the driving power in historical developments he believed ‘creative imagination’ to lie behind historical events. He thus made it an illusion, but reminded us that the real impulses in history are only dreamt through by human beings in their ordinary state of conscious awareness.

Anything we are able to grasp with the rational mind with regard to history can only be the dead aspect. Again it is interesting to consider historians who may be said to have still been using their rational minds in an instinctive way and who did not seek to bring in all kinds of ideas from natural science in an artificial way, the way Herbert Spencer did, but were like Gibbon,⁴⁵ for instance, who did use the rational thinking which is also used in natural science, and were still doing so in an instinctive way. They were able—and this was something which puzzled Herman Grimm⁴⁶—to observe and describe the periods of decline particularly well; those were periods when little soul quality remained. Gibbon thus wrote of a time which did in fact have much by way of soul quality, inner development and growth to it, which was the period from the beginning of Christianity and throughout Roman history, but described the aspect which he called ‘decline’. Bringing his rational mind to bear, he described this whole evolution in the early Christian centuries as a decline. This is only natural, for when the rational mind is applied in the way in which it has to be applied in the study of nature, we can only see the decline in historical events. Gibbon was unable to see how something else, which had come into history out of the Christian impulses, was showing healthy growth in the midst of that decline. The way this works cannot be seen directly in historical events, however. It needs to be illuminated by the light provided through the science of the spirit.

Something else is also of interest, for example. Of course it is only possible to make history a science through the evolving science of the spirit. But the knowledge gained in the science of the spirit has always also come up in flashes of light in the heads of enlightened people, people of discernment. There is one really interesting phenomenon. In his historical and sociological lectures given at Basel University in the 1860s, Jacob Burckhardt would repeatedly refer to a historian, a historical philosopher from the first half of the 19th century who must have made quite an impression on him, even if he, Jacob Burckhardt, often went against his views. This was the philosopher Ernst von Lasaulx. He has never become widely known. Lasaulx wrote a strange book, and Burckhardt frequently spoke of this in his lectures.⁴⁷ Lasaulx did have some feeling for the historical impulses that human beings normally only dream through, but since it was the age of modern science, he concerned himself with what I might call interpretation of the facts.⁴⁸ Since he used his rational mind which was trained in modern science, he mainly focussed on the element of decline in the 19th century. There were, of course, also new developments in the 19th century. But these can only be seen with inspired and imaginative perception. At the very end of his book Lasaulx showed that he had some inkling of this. The things he said in his book are interesting beyond anything—forgive the words, but it is so. He considered European history from its beginning to the 19th century. And because of his modern scientific approach he was all the time describing decay, decline, the powers that really lead into the dying process. There are chapters in this book—if you read them they are like a description of powers of decline someone made prophetically in the 1850s, speaking of the powers that inevitably had to lead to the present situation, where the European nations of today are tearing each other limb from limb. We can say that no one else foresaw intuitively in such a deeply moving, magnificent way—his mind being focused on the element of decline—what has now proved itself to be such an outcome in the process of decline.

This kind of direct evidence is such that if you leave the sphere where you have direct vision of or dream the true historical impulses and instead consider only the separate external facts, it is as if you abandon waking consciousness and fall asleep, no longer seeing the element of growth and development, the pulse of which beats in history as the element that truly takes humanity forward. Once this principle of growth and development is recognized, history is lifted out of mere natural causality and assumes the rank of a science. We might say, therefore, that what Lessing felt dimly in his work, putting it clumsily, if you will forgive the expression, at the time and indeed incorrectly, is thus given a secure foundation. External facts show no cohesion. The element in which the human soul lives, lives as in a dream, becomes a continuous organic life in the spirit. I mean a life of spirit, however, if it is seen as the substance of history in the light of the science of the spirit.

You will then also discover, however, that the ordinary student is deceived if he considers historical development to be an organism. Doing this, one must often compare it with the development of an individual human life. In my young days I had a teacher who liked to compare the successive historical periods with human life—Persian and Chaldean history with the life of a young man; Greek life with the later part of youth; dawning full maturity with Roman life. The progression of history is often considered in analogy to human life. This is a distinct source of illusion regarding history. For if we come to see the evolution of the human soul in the course of historical development for humanity as a whole, that is, actually enter into the spiritual reality of historical developments, we can never perceive it the way we perceive the development of a human soul from childhood through youth to adult life and finally old age. The spiritual life which lies behind the facts of history does not develop in this way. It develops in another way. Once again we face a paradox. It seems paradoxical if it is put like this, though it is deeply rooted in the genuine spiritual scientific approach to which I am referring in these lectures.

It is possible to compare what shows itself, lives and can be observed as a whole in a given time in history with the periods in human life. Oddly enough, however, one should not compare the historical development with the development that goes from infancy and childhood through youth to adulthood but the reverse. You have to think of historical life going in the opposite direction. If you take the general state of mind for the period from the 8th century BC to the 15th century AD, for instance, this may be compared to the thirties in a human life. We can say that when people are in their thirties, the inner life connects with the body the way it did in the Graeco-Roman age that continued on into the 15th century (the constitution and inner relationship to essential human nature was different, of course). What followed in history cannot be compared to what follows on the thirties but to what went before. Compared to the life of a human individual, historical life thus goes from back to front.

In the course of its emancipation in our time, the rational mind does indeed relate to bodily life in a way that can be compared to the way the rational mind relates to bodily life for someone in his late twenties. A later period in history relates to the one that preceded it in such a way that we might dare to say the following. A young child learns from an older person who may well have worked in a more instinctive way through the things which the child is receiving in a later form. We always learn from people who have themselves been learning in their childhood. It is the same with successive periods of time when mind and spirit move on from one age to another. This progression in history becomes a phenomenon in the mind, though still at a dream level. Using Lessing’s idea of educating the human race, we are dealing not with education from childhood through youth and adulthood to ripe old age, but rather with retrograde education of the human race. And it is because of this that progress, as we may call it, is able to enter into historical development. Human beings are younger, as it were, in their inner approach to such things than they were in earlier times, and this also gives them a greater degree of freedom and of unawareness, a more childlike approach to other people, and this brings everything we normally call progress into world evolution.

In conclusion let me draw your attention to one phenomenon—we have been considering many things today—to demonstrate what I have been discussing—and that is the strange, significantly progressive relationship which came when Christianity spread from the nations of the Roman Empire, who had received it first, to the youthful Germanic nations. A strange phenomenon arose. How can we explain it? It can only be explained as follows. Throughout the historical evolution of Graeco-Roman life, which was the first to be taken hold of by the great impulses of Christianity, experience of life was at a later stage. Christianity therefore took the form we see in Gnosis and the development of other dogmas. When Christianity came to people whose experience of life was at a younger level—entirely in accord with the way the mind evolved in the course of history, as I have shown—it assumed other forms. It became more inward; religious awareness emancipated, as it were, from the instinctive rational mind; religion as Christian religion became more independent; and later on the religious and scientific ways of thinking and awareness separated completely.

The whole process becomes explicable if we take it as a phenomenon relating to conscious awareness, so that the German mind, which has its foundation in a different soul constitution, took over Christianity from the Roman one, we might say as a child does take something from an older person. Roman predecessors, not Roman ancestors, of course.

I have only been able to touch on some points, and I know as well as anyone else how many objections may be raised to these brief indications. To gain insight and understanding of what is meant here, it will be necessary to take up the development of spiritual science in a serious way, and on the other hand give serious consideration to all the mysteries and sphinx riddles that come up in the young science of history. In my fourth lecture, which will be next Wednesday, I will add the things needed for practical life, for social life, intervention in social life, and understanding of the things that touch us so deeply in immediate experience, bringing pleasure and pain, and events that are so much on our minds at the present time with all its tragic events. We will then consider the consequences for these things as they arise from the historical point of view.

I would like to conclude today’s discussion by pointing out how certain people with prophetic gifts instinctively also had this spiritual scientific thinking at an earlier time. They would instinctively come to the right conclusions regarding history. I am thinking of Goethe. He only considered historical problems occasionally, for instance in his history of the theory of colour, but he had a profound comprehension of history. Intuiting things, he formulated his perceptions in a different way from the one we have used here today. He was, however, able to gain the right approach to history because he had a feeling that humanity is really only going through historical developments in a dream, that is, experiencing them in the regions where feelings, affects, passions and emotions also arise. Goethe knew that all the concepts people produce relating to history, concepts similar to those used in natural science, cannot prove fruitful in human life, for they come from the region in our inner life where waking consciousness lives. This waking consciousness exists only for the world of nature, however. People live through historical events in the dream regions where passions, affects and emotions arise.

Before a human being thus comes alive in imaginative and inspired perception, and for as long as he considers historical developments in his ordinary state of mind, his soul and inner feelings can only be taken hold of by experience of history arising from the dream level of awareness. Abstract concepts and ideas coming from the rational approach used in natural science cannot really touch the human being. All this cannot bear fruit. The only fruitful perceptions are those that come from the same regions and are effective in the same regions where they are gained from history. This is the best thing about history. Because we dream it—Goethe did not conclude this but he sensed it—anything coming from history can also only take effect in the dream region of enthusiasm and the life of emotions. Goethe said that the best thing history is able to give us is the enthusiasm it arouses.⁴⁹ This is significant as a way not of formulating the science of history but of real understanding, born from a poet’s mind; this is something the science of the spirit must make its approach. For as long as we live in history with our ordinary way of thinking, we are not really involved in it. But if we meet it with enthusiasm and approach its phenomena in the way one does out of enthusiasm, we become involved in the life of history itself.

We shall only be able to learn from history the way we do from nature once we look at historical development with imaginative and inspired perception. To develop these thoughts further and apply them to nature and to social life will be our task in the lectures that follow.

Questions and answers

Following the lecture given in Zurich on 7 November 1917

Question. What is the situation as regards the materialistic view of history, with Marx, for example?

Well, with regard to this I have to say that in the science of the spirit, when we base ourselves on this science, the things I said in my previous lecture are and need to be taken very seriously. Speaking about the gradually developing inner approach to concepts as they are understood in relation to reality. I said that in our ordinary way of thinking we are satisfied once we have a concept that may be said to reflect reality. In the approach based on perception in images, we always have to seek to develop a whole number of concepts, which are like photographs taken from various angles. Anything established as a concept can never show the whole of reality, if we take the point of view of the spiritual world. Concepts can always only give one aspect of reality. That is also how it is with the most sublime philosophical ideas. In the ordinary way of thinking one is a pantheist or one is a monadist, to give you just two opposites. You recognize a divine principle that is alive and active in everything; this means you are a pantheist. Or, like the followers of Leibniz, for example, you recognize individual real monads; these interact to give the world as a whole.

A spiritual investigator cannot be a pantheist nor a monadist. Pantheism simply gives him a sum of concepts, and so does monadism. Both illuminate reality from different angles. Perhaps I may risk an analogy: a pantheist only concentrates on breathing out, a monadist on breathing in. Now we can’t keep life going if we only breathe either in or out, but need to have both. In the same way the spiritual reality can only be grasped if we come alive in our ideas and know how to let both pantheism and monadism illuminate reality for us. If someone is just a monadist, like Leibniz, this is to a spiritual investigator like someone who asphyxiates from too much air he has inhaled. You asphyxiate. And if someone is just a pantheist, this is to a spiritual investigator like someone who wanted to breathe in a room that has no air in it. If you take up the science of the spirit, the life of concepts comes alive to you. You have to think of this relationship to the world of concepts as being as alive as possible. For when such a living relationship is established, you are wholly and in a very real way inside the mutual conflict and harmonious reconciliation of concepts, entering into spiritual reality. With our ordinary way of thinking we live in our concepts in an abstract way. Even the simplest of concepts will thus relate to reality in a new way.

Let me give you an example. Today we learn at school that solids are impenetrable. The definition given is that they are impenetrable because a solid body occupies a space which no other body can occupy. A spiritual scientist cannot say this. He can never base himself on definition of concepts but only on characterization. In this case he would say that something which occupies a space in such a way that no other entity can be in that space is a material body. He therefore looks at things the other way round, and because his concept is a living one he only applies it within the limits where it can be applied. He does not state things in absolute terms. This happens with the simplest lines of thought if one really takes the leap which I would like to call the leap across the threshold to the spiritual, non-material world. This must be taken very seriously. People still want to talk in abstract terms today when they speak of the spiritual world. But the whole of our inner life, the way of thinking, changes its constitution when we enter into reality. You enter into the reality of concepts and live it through. You see, for someone who thinks in an abstract way a rose he has put in water in his room is, of course, something real. But it is not real at all. For in real life no rose can exist unless it grows on a rose bush and lives wholly in the context of that rose bush. A spiritual investigator is therefore always aware that things have to be considered in their existing context. He will know that a cut rose is unreal as a concept.

Now consider this extended to the whole shaping, the whole structure of our thinking and you’ll have an idea of the significant change experienced on crossing the threshold to the world of the spirit. There you find reality. There you get an inner idea of the full implications of concepts, an idea that comes alive to you. Messing around in the abstract world, which is what has to be done in natural science, you never realize how unreal the concepts are which you develop there.

On this kind of occasion I like to remember a lecture Professor Dewar gave in London at the beginning of the 20th century.⁵⁰ From the point of view of natural scientific thinking, it was a brilliant lecture. Taking the point of view of natural science, thinking in physical terms, he construed the end state of earth’s existence. This would come when so and so many million years had passed, temperatures had gradually changed, and so on. If you consider certain facts that present themselves today it is fairly easy to paint a picture of such an end state if you just draw the logical conclusions. Professor Dewar was quite ingenious in describing the way in which some substances which are not luminous today would then be luminous. If people applied certain substances to their walls, those walls would be giving off enough light that you could read your paper by them. It will be so cold by then, however, that one cannot imagine anyone printing papers then. Here we immediately come up against reality. But Dewar gave that picture. Things that would tear off today if you attached just a small weight, would have such powerful cohesion then that you could suspend tons of stuff from them, and so on. The whole had been properly thought through and it is certainly possible to construe an end state of the earth, with everything exactly described in physical terms. The lecture did of course make a great impression, for a physicist who was utterly familiar with physical concepts was here giving a descriptive picture of the earth’s end state that seemed very real indeed.

A spiritual scientist’s experience is that on hearing such a description he finds himself immediately guided towards concepts where a different light is thrown. What Professor Dewar was doing when he described this end state of the earth after millions of years, was arrived at in the same way as if you consider the consecutive states of the stomach and heart of a young person of 12, 13, 14 and 15 as it gradually changes, and then come to a logical conclusion as to what it will all be like in 200 or 300 years—the heart, the stomach, and so on. Now this may all be perfectly correct in natural scientific terms, that is, in abstract thinking. Only the individual will long since have been dead by then, and the stomach no longer there!

If we approach reality like this, side by side with the other view, which is truly ingenuous, and if we have living concepts, we can come to see that Professor Dewar’s description of the earth’s end state in some millions of years may be perfectly correct, but the earth will be dead by then and no longer in existence.

And it is the same thing if we go back 13, 12, 11 years and so on, to say how it was 150 years ago. Only the person was not yet alive then! This is the basis of Kant’s and Laplace’s theory,⁵¹ for they construed the beginnings of the earth quite brilliantly from the physical data, saying it was a nebula, and so on, from which everything arose. But the fact is that none of it existed at the time which one would have to assume for this.

This is where we move from abstract thinking to thinking in real terms. Having given a general characterization I may now say that the materialistic view of history with its concepts arose from a degree of necessity, considering that historical events were really only based on class struggles, with material interests brought into play. The concept of materialism does not have the same meaning in the materialistic view of history as it does in natural science. It developed because certain, entirely feasible concepts were created. One would, however, have to maintain a point of view where one asks: How much of historical development is covered by those concepts? They cover one stream only, a stream which in fact only came up in the 16th century.

People do not believe in authority today, of course they don’t! They have done away with that. Yes, but ‘science’ is a powerful authority at the least. And if you swear by a number of dogmas, everything else is folly and miserable nonsense. Years ago I used to lecture to working-class people, giving many lectures over the years, including lectures on history. I tried to characterize history the way it shows itself, using an undogmatic approach.⁵² However, when I had gained a fairly faithful audience, which continued to grow—I can say this without boasting—some leading social democrats realized that I was not teaching orthodox Marxism, the orthodox materialistic view of history, but actually presented the peculiar view that the concepts of the materialistic approach to history only came to be used from the 16th century onwards. They actually could not be used before that. They came to be used out of the undercurrents in history itself, for that was the time when the rational mind emancipated, as I have shown. It was the time when human beings first emancipated from a more instinctive life and so on, with material interests providing the necessary counterthrust. We thus arrive at the materialistic view of history—even if only as one of the historical ingredients—which does allow us to throw a light on some of the phenomena. However, if we make this materialistic view the only one, we’ll not have history as a result, for many other impulses have not been taken into account. The concepts developed in Marxism must therefore be seen as one aspect, providing a snapshot of reality from one angle. This has to be complemented with views taken from other angles. - Those leading social democrats then stopped the lectures.

It is characteristic of the science of the spirit that it can do justice to impulses that have inner validity, impulses arising in one sphere of culture or another, and is able to perceive their relative value. Error will immediately arise if we make a one-sided aspect absolute, basing all our explanations on it. This is indeed the point.

Life is such, of course, that people will stick to a concept. People altogether prefer to live in concepts rather than reality, in abstractions rather than reality. They are much happier if they have some concepts, and all kinds of things can then be pegged into these. But reality is not like this. Just as to have a tree you need to photograph it from one point of view to get one aspect, and another point of view for another aspect—I have to keep coming back to this analogy—so it is with reality as a whole, if we really want to take it the way it really is.

It has to be said that with material interests having entered so powerfully into historical developments in the last three or four centuries it is only natural that a materialistic view of history developed, representing the view that the outer course of history can be studied using the crudest concepts which are only appropriate for the natural world. However, everything you get that way is dead, non-living. I will be speaking of this again in my fourth lecture when I will mainly be considering ethical and social life. The lack of reality would soon be evident if reality were approached solely with such concepts. Then you would see that such concepts, if they were to take root, would kill reality; they can prove fruitful, however, if we consider them to be merely one aspect.

This is what I wanted to say with reference to this question. I could of course go on for hours on the subject.

Rudolf Steiner was asked to speak again on the process on which the recall of memories is based. He had described this in his first lecture.

I’ll be coming to this again in my next lecture and can therefore be fairly brief now. Above all I’d like to say that people are mistaken in thinking that an idea I have gained now from something perceived—let us say I see an object and form an idea of it at the same time—will remain. All I gain, the after effect which remains when I turn my eyes away from the object, is mere mirror image and not something that will come back again. Something is there and it is then truly lost, just as a mirror image of me is lost once I have walked past the mirror. It is wrong, therefore, to imagine a reservoir in the soul into which the ideas might go, to be fetched up again later from this reservoir. Ideas do not remain, they are gone!

Yet when I form an idea, a subconscious process happens at the same time. This is subconscious where our ordinary conscious awareness is concerned but can be observed imaginatively. This process is responsible for what happens in the organism when occasion arises for something to be recalled. If I gain an idea of an object because it influences my senses, the idea arises; if I have an idea that arises from memory, it is exactly the same, except that it is not the material object out there which makes am impression on me, letting me develop the idea on the basis of that object. Instead I am looking inside, as it were, at what has been taken in unconsciously, and develop my idea from this.

Let me present it in a schematic way. I form the idea ‘ten’; after some time the idea ‘ten’ comes up again; but it is not true that it is the same idea, that it has gone away and then come back again. What has remained is an unconscious engram. This unconscious engram, which has developed in parallel to the process of forming an idea, will remain. This is what I perceive when I have the idea again. So if ‘ten’ comes up, it is the result of an outside stimulus; when it comes up again, it is the result of an inner stimulus. Anything I remember I perceive from within. It is a process we can observe very well in the science of the spirit and which is very useful in education. Attentive teachers can observe it; all they need to do is to give their powers of attention the right direction.

Just consider how we learn things by heart. Observe it carefully. And you will simply see all the things people do to make sure the parallel process takes place! The idea is taken in, but they want the parallel process to go in such a way that it is drummed into something that remains subconscious. Observe when things are drummed in: the ideas will not lead to memory in some way, but a process which must arise to support the mere forming of an idea and does indeed lie in the subconscious sphere. And this way of working in the subconscious—just watch someone learning a poem by rote, all the things that are done to help the process—is something which a spiritual scientist observes directly. The light which is thus gained makes us see. Some people do all kinds of things when they learn by rote, striking their foreheads, and so on, and this certainly has nothing to do with their experience of the idea. If you go into the matter you’ll find that this is an important border region between psychology and physiology. The next time we meet we will see how physiology with a spiritual scientific orientation can discover things there.

Just to indicate the direction, therefore I would say that ideas are first of all formed in a primary process under the influence of something perceived outside, stimulated by an object on the outside; or else as a memory, with the stimulus coming from inside. On the one occasion I am reading with my eyes looking outwards, as it were, and the other time I am looking inwards. If I read a book twice in succession, the idea is gained from the same book, but these are successive acquisitions.

Perhaps this will serve to characterize the situation. More will be added when I speak of the human being as part of the natural world in my third lecture.

Question. Surely the higher forms of conscious awareness must differ between individuals?

As I said the last time, it is easy to think this way—that one person develops these states of higher awareness in a different form than someone else does. This should not let us shy away from entering into what I have called the drama of perceptive insight. The individual aspect is only an intermediate state. One does indeed go through a powerfully individualistic period, but one is aware of this and overcomes it. After this one comes to the objective inner aspect. It is only if we do not observe accurately that we may say that one person says one thing, another something else. It is not like that. The differences are no greater than the differences you get, for example, when two travellers describe the same region. One of them concentrates on one thing, the other on something else. The descriptions do not seem similar at all; yet they describe the same region, and it would be nonsense to think that the descriptions are therefore not leading to objectivity, or that the travellers themselves had not considered things objectively. I would therefore say that certainly, one may easily think of an individualized experience in higher states of awareness. But that is only an intermediate state. In reality we come to the objective spirit if we are able to exclude the subjective element in an imagination, just as we overcome subjectivity in the study of nature and come to see it objectively. Read in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Occult Science how this subjective element is excluded as one comes to live in higher states of conscious awareness. You will see that this leads to an objective spiritual view in the inner life just as we come to gain an objective view of nature in the outside world. It truly is the case that in natural science, the subjective element is excluded as we consider the outside world, and in the science of the spirit, the subjective element is excluded as we consider the realm of the spirit.

• 27. Wolff, Christian (1679–1754), German philosopher. Rudolf Steiner was quoting from Fritz Mauthner’s Wörterbuch der Philosophy, 1. Bd., München & Leipzig 1910, S. 403.
• 28. Schiller, Friedrich von (1759–1805), German poet, historian and dramatist. Inaugural address, Jena 26 & 27 May 1789: What is universal history and what is the purpose of studying it?
• 29. Spencer, Herbert (1820–1923), English philosopher. See among other things his Principles of Biology, London 1864 ch. VI, par. 288f, and Principles of Psychology, London 1870-72, ch. IV, par. 238.
• 30. Comte, Auguste (1798–1857), French philosopher. Cours de Philosophic positive, Paris 1830-42; Système de politique positive, Paris 1851-54. Comte was a mathematician and also relied on mathematics and mechanics in structuring the body social. See above all ch. 16 in the second work.
• 31. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–81), German writer and dramatist. Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780), see paragraphs 94-100 concerning the idea of repeated lives on earth.
• 32. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831), German philosopher. See his 'Vorlesungen über die Philosophic der Geschichte’ in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Werke, Berlin 1845, 9. Band, 3. Auflage, S. 24 (Introduction) and S. 546f. (Conclusion).
• 33. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860), German philosopher. See Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung II, para. 38 ‘Ueber Geschichte’ in Arthur Schopenhauers sämtliche Werke in zwölf Bänden. Mit Einleitung von Dr Rudolf Steiner. Stuttgart o.J. (1894), Bd 5, S. 286-295.
• 34. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844–1900), German philosopher and writer. Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historic für das Leben. Zweite unzeitgemässe Betrachtung, Leipzig 1874.
• 35. Volkelt, Johannes (1848–1930). Die Traum-Phantasie, Stuttgart 1875.
• 36. Vischer, Friedrich Theodor (see note 4). He was accused of being a spiritualist because he gave consideration to Volkelt’s book. Altes und Neues. ‘Der Traum. Eine Studie zu der Schrift: Die Traumphantasie von Dr. Johann Volkelt’, Stuttgart 1881.
• 37. Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), German philosopher. See Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1789), par. 5 ‘Von den Vorstellungen, die wir haben, ohne uns ihrer bewusst zu sein.’
• 38. The Roman Catholic Church authorities resolved on 11 September 1822 and the Pope confirmed on 25 September 1822 that the printing and publication of works that teach the movement of the earth and non-movement of the sun would no longer be banned. The Index Congregation had resolved as early as 1757 to omit the decree which banned such books, without expressly permitting their printing and publication.
• 39. Von Seelenrätseln (see note 1).
• 40. Fortlage, Carl. Acht psychologische Vorträge, Jena 1869, S. 35 (Erster Vortrag).
• 41. Burckhardt, Jacob Christopher (1818–1879), Swiss historian. See his published lectures Ueber das Studiuni der Geschichte, publ. posthumously by J. Oeri, Berlin and Stuttgart 1905, ch. 1 ‘Einleitung’, 1. ‘Unsere Aufgabe’.
• 42. Steiner R. Theosophy (various translations), chapter on the essential nature of the human being.
• 43. Grimm, Herman (1828–1901), German historian. Goethe, Vorlesungen, Berlin 1876, 8. Auflage Stuttgart und Berlin 1903, 2. Bd, S. 7ff (16. Vorlesung).
• 44. In the story of his life (GA 28, various translations), chapter 14, Rudolf Steiner told of a talk with Herman Grimm: ‘He spoke to me of his idea of a “history of German creative imagination”, something which lived in his soul. I gained the impression at the time that he intended to write this. He did not get round to it. But he told me most beautifully how the continuous stream of historical evolution had its impulses in the creative imagination of the people, which in his view assumed the character of a living, active, supersensible genius.’ See also Steiner’s lecture ‘Die Weltanschauung eines Kulturforschers der Gegenwart, Herman Grimm, und die Geistesforschung’, Berlin, 16 January 1913, in Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung, GA Bibl.-Nr. 62, S. 249-285.
• 45. Gibbon, Edward (1737–1794), English historian. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols, 1776-88.
• 46. Grimm Herman (see note 43). Wrote on Gibbon in 15 Essays, 1. Folge, 1. Auflage, Berlin 1874, S. 80.
• 47. Burckhardt (see note 41). Probably referring to his lectures Ueber das Studium der Geschichte.
• 48. Lasaulx, Ernst von (1815–1861). Neuer Versuch einer alien, auf die Wahrheit der Tatsachen gegruendeten Philosophic der Geschichte, Muenchen 1856.
• 49. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832). See Sprüche in Prosa (aphorisms in prose) in Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften (see note 10), [Tr.: possibly in Goethean Science, Spring Valley: Mercury Press 1988. See also in Maxims and Reflections].
• 50. Dewar, Sir James (1842–1923), Scottish chemist and physicist. Inventor of thermos flask. It has not proved possible to trace the lecture to which Rudolf Steiner was referring.Dewar, Sir James (1842–1923), Scottish chemist and physicist. Inventor of thermos flask. It has not proved possible to trace the lecture to which Rudolf Steiner was referring.
• 51. Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) considered the shape of nebulous stars representing other universes to be due to their rotation. Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis de (1749–1827) developed the nebular hypothesis of planetary origin.
• 52. See Rudolf Steiner’s story of his life (note 44), ch. 28, and the volume of lectures entitled Über Philosophic, Geschichte and Literatur (GA 51).

During these last days we have taken leave of a dear friend and loyal collaborator who has left the physical plane, Herman Joachim. He could be seen here in our circle practically every week during the war years. When we contemplate the event of death of someone near to us—filled with sentiments engendered by knowledge which we seek through spiritual science—we may find through this event also our own relation to the spiritual world. We look back on the one hand to the time we were privileged to share with him, but we also look forward into that world which is receiving the soul of the one with whom we were together. We remain united with him, for the bonds that bind us together are spiritual and cannot be severed through the event of physical death.

The name Herman Joachim is like a beacon, throwing its light far and wide, ahead of the one we have lost as far as the physical plane is concerned. It is a name that is very much connected with the development of art in the 19th century; particularly in the sphere of aesthetic interpretation of music. Indeed there is no need for me to explain here what this name stands for in recent cultural achievements. However, if Herman Joachim—who has gone into the spiritual world with all his incomparable and beautiful qualities—had come among us as someone unknown, even then, those whose good fortune it was to know him and share with him their endeavours, would have counted him among the most valuable personalities of their lives. The strength of his personality, the greatness and radiance of his soul would ensure it.

There came to expression in his human relationships with others a cultural artistic quality of a high order, passed on to him from his father. One could say that on the one hand this artistic influence came to expression in everything Herman Joachim thought and did, but it was carried and enhanced by the spirituality of his own will, his own feelings and by his striving for spiritual insight. While his father's great influence held sway in the blood so was there something in Herman Joachim's spiritual makeup which had a beautiful beginning in his life by the fact that Herman Grimm—this distinguished and unique representative of Central European cultural life—held his hand in blessing over him when a child. For Herman Grimm was godfather to Herman Joachim. I was very pleased to learn this as you will understand after the many things I have said, especially in this circle, in appreciation of Herman Grimm's contributions to cultural life in recent times. When a dear friend of his, the unique personality Walter Robert Tornow died, Herman Grimm wrote: “He departs from the society of the living and is received into the society of the dead. One feels one ought to announce to the dead just who it is that joins their ranks.” Herman Grimm did not intend these words to apply only to the one for whom he spoke them. He meant them in the sense that they express a feeling which is present in human beings in general, when someone near departs from the physical into the spiritual world.

When we look back to characteristic experiences which we were privileged to share with someone who has died, then these experiences become windows through which we can follow the further life of a now infinite being. For every human individuality is an infinite being and the experiences we shared can be compared to windows through which we look out on an unlimited landscape. However there are moments in a human life which are of special significance, it is then possible to look deeper into a human individuality. In such moments the secrets of the spiritual world reveal themselves with particular power. It is also in such moments that much of what in ordinary life is the goal of noble, intense striving, is revealed in comprehensive thought pictures permeated with feeling.

I venture to describe a moment of this kind because I consider it symptomatic of Herman Joachim. He had been connected with our movement for years when in Cologne, not long after we had become personally acquainted, we had a conversation. During this conversation it was revealed to me how this man had related his innermost soul to the spiritual powers which live and weave through the cosmos.—Perhaps I can put it in these words: I was able to recognize that he had discovered that there is an important link between responsible human souls and those Divine-spiritual powers whose wisdom governs worlds. In significant moments of his life an individual may come face to face with these powers. In such moments when he puts to himself the question: How do I unite with the world-guiding spiritual powers that are revealed to my inner sight? How can it become possible for me to think of myself as a responsible link in the world's spiritual guidance which, in my innermost self, I know I am meant to be?—Thus it was revealed to me what Herman Joachim consciously felt and experienced with all the deep seriousness of his being in such moments when man's relation to the spiritual world becomes manifest to him.

Herman Joachim had gone through many difficulties. When this endless calamity under which we all suffer broke out^* it brought him great hardship. He was in Paris where he had lived for years and where he had found his dear life companion. But now his duty obliged him to return to his former profession as a German officer. Nevertheless it was a duty with which he also had a deep inner connection. He had already fulfilled his task as officer on important occasions, doing his duty not only with expertise but with compassion and self-sacrifice. There are many who have grateful memories because they have benefitted from the true humaneness and social friendliness with which he fulfilled his calling. For myself I often remember the conversations we had during these three years of grief and human suffering, conversations in which he revealed himself as a man who was able to follow with far-reaching understanding the events of our time. There was no question of his objective judgement being clouded by thoughts of either hatred or love for the one or the other side. His intelligent assessment made him fully aware of the gravity of the situation facing us all. Nevertheless, because of his trust in the spiritual guidance of the world he was full of hope and confidence.

Herman Joachim belongs to those who accept spiritual science in a completely matter-of-fact way as something self-evident; while at the same time this matter-of-factness protects them from superficial surrender to anything of a spiritualistic nature. Such souls are not easily led astray into what can be the greatest danger: fanciful illusions and the like. After all, such illusions have their roots in a certain self-indulgent egoism. Herman Joachim had no inclination whatever towards egotistical mysticism but all the more towards great ideals, towards powerful, effective ideas of spiritual science.

He was always concerned about what each individual can do in his own situation in life, to make spiritual science effective. As a member of the Freemasons he had looked carefully into the nature of masonic practices and had resolved to do all he could to bring the life of spiritual knowledge into masonic formalism. His high position within Freemasonry enabled him to make his own, to an exceptional degree, all the profound but now formalized and rigidified knowledge accumulated over centuries. Just because of his high position he saw the possibility to bring the life and spiritual power which can only come from spiritual science into this rigidified knowledge. His aim was to enable it to enter rightly into the stream of human culture. Anyone who is aware how hard he worked towards this goal during these difficult years, how he pursued it with earnestness and integrity; anyone who realizes the strength of his will and the volume of his work in this sphere will also know how much the physical plane has lost with Herman Joachim.—I am often reminded in cases like this of someone, regarded as belonging to the intelligentsia, who is recorded as saying: No man is irreplaceable; if one goes, another steps forward to take his place. It is obvious that such an expression reveals a gross ignorance of real life; for real life shows in fact the opposite. The truth is rather that in regard to what a man accomplishes in life no one can be replaced. This truth strikes us all the more in exceptional cases such as the present one. The death of Herman Joachim strongly reminds us of the working of karma in human life. Only an understanding of human karma, the comprehension of the great karmic questions of destiny, enables us to come to terms with the death of someone, at a comparatively early age, leaving behind an important and necessary life task.

I have followed day by day the soul of our dear friend slowly leaving this realm, in which he was to accomplish so much, and entering another realm where we can find him only through the strength of our spirit, a realm from which he will be an even stronger helper than before. During this time of taking leave I was strongly aware of something else; namely, that human beings themselves demand the necessity of karma; demand it with all their inner courage and strength of spirit. It becomes evident to one's inner sight when experiencing a death of this kind. In these circumstances things must often be spoken of which can be spoken of only in our circles, but then, it is also within our spiritual movement, that human beings can find the great strength which reaches beyond death, the strength that encompasses both life and death.

Herman Joachim's soul stands clearly before me. So it stood clearly before me when, out of his own free will, he took on a spiritual task. And it comes vividly before me how he is taking hold of this task now. His death is revealed to me as something he freely chose because, from that other world his soul is able to work more actively and with stronger forces; forces more appropriate to what is necessary. Under these circumstances one may even speak of the death of an individual as a necessity, as a duty, at a quite specific moment. I know that not everyone will find what I am saying a consoling or a strengthening thought; but I also know that there are souls today to whom these thoughts can be a support when they are faced with the kind of difficulties which in our time must be endured with pain and sorrow, difficulties that one comes up against when trying to solve important and necessary tasks, difficulties that arise from the fact that we are in the physical world, incarnated in physical bodies in a materialistic environment. Yet in all our pain and sorrow we may gradually come to value the thought that death, as far as the physical plane is concerned, was chosen by someone in order to be better able to fulfill his task.

We may balance this thought against the pain which our dear friend, the wife of Herman Joachim, is suffering. We may balance it against the pain we ourselves feel over our dear friend, we may attempt to enoble our pain by thinking of him in the light of a sublime thought such as the one I have just put before you. This thought may not ease or tone down the pain, but its spiritual insight can shine like a sun into the pain and illumine our understanding for the necessity that governs man, the necessity of human destiny. Thus the event of the death of someone near to us can become an experience which brings us into contact with the spiritual world. For if our thoughts about him strengthen our soul's propensity towards the realms in which the departed sojourns then we shall not lose him; we shall remain actively united with him. Furthermore, if we grasp the full implication of the thought that someone who loved his life more than most, nevertheless accepted death because of an iron necessity, then that thought will truly express our spiritual-scientific view of the world. If we honor our friend in this way we shall remain united with him. And his life companion, left here on the physical plane, shall know that we remain united with her in thoughts of the loved one; that we, her friends, remain close to her.

The death of our dear friend Herman Joachim is one of several bereavements suffered within our society during this difficult time, one which was for me especially sad, one I have not yet been able to speak about. The great personal loss and close involvement prevents me from touching on many aspects of this bereavement.

A great many of those present will remember with love a dear and loyal member whom we have also lost from the physical plane in recent months, Olga von Sivers, the sister of Marie Steiner. She was not a personality one would come to know immediately at first encounter; she was a thoroughly modest and unassuming person. But my dear friends, setting aside the pain Marie Steiner and I suffer over this irreplaceable loss I venture to say something else about Olga von Sivers. She belongs to those among us who, from the beginning, went straight to the root of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. She took it up with deep understanding and warmth of soul. When Olga von Sivers devoted herself to such matters she did so with her whole being for that was her nature. And she was indeed a human being in the fullest sense as everyone connected with her will know. She strongly rejected everything which nowadays, as a kind of mystical Theosophy, distorts man's inner path and leads spiritual life into wrong channels. She had a keen sense of discernment when it came to distinguishing between those spiritual impulses which belong to our time and advance man's inner progress; and others which arise from quite different impulses. The latter are often disguised as theosophical or other mystical striving. Olga von Sivers is an outstanding example of someone taking hold, in a fundamental way, of the spiritual truths which we in our movement especially strive to attain. Despite her full participation in our work it was not in her nature to neglect or disregard in any way the many and often difficult duties imposed upon her by external life. She absorbed the content of spiritual science from the start with complete understanding and was able to pass it on to others. Whenever this was granted her she undertook the task in exemplary fashion. She knew how to endow the ideas she conveyed to others with the kindness and enormous good will of her nature.

Her work continued also when she was separated from us by the frontiers which today so often and so cruelly come between human beings who are close to one another. But no frontiers prevented her from working for our cause also in regions which are now, in Central Europe, considered to be enemy country. She knew tragic experiences, all the horror of this frightful war in which she carried out truly humanitarian work right up to her last illness. She never thought of herself but was always working for others whom the horrors of war had brought into her care. She carried on this Samaritan work in the noblest sense, permeating all she did with the fruits of what she herself had accomplished within our spiritual movement. Although she is closely related to me I venture to speak with deep feeling about this aspect of Olga von Sivers, who, ever since the founding of our movement was a self-sacrificing member. To Marie Steiner and myself it was a beautiful thought that she should be physically with us once more when better times had replaced our bleak present. But here too iron necessity decided otherwise.

This again is a case when death of someone near can clarify and illumine life if we seek to understand it with spiritual insight. Certainly there are things in our society which are open to criticism, often they are things which the society itself brings to light. But we also see all around us other things which are direct results of the strength that flows through our Anthroposophical Movement, things which belong to our most beautiful, loftiest and significant experiences. Today I venture to speak of examples of this kind.

Many of you will also remember someone who, though she did not belong to this branch, I would nevertheless like to remember today because, together with her sisters she often did appear here and will be known to many of you: our Johanna Arnold who not long ago went from the physical plane into the spiritual world. One of her sisters who was equally a loyal and devoted member of our movement died two years ago.

I have in these days been working on a pamphlet to answer the spiteful attacks on our movement by professor Max Dessoir, and I constantly come across statements to the effect that I know nothing of science and that my supporters have to renounce all thoughts of their own.—Well, a personality like Johanna Arnold is a living proof that such statements coming from this ignorant professor are utter lies. Johanna Arnold's deep devotion to spiritual science contributed to the nobility of her life and also to the nobility with which she died. She is indeed a living proof that the most valuable people are among those who recognize and cultivate spiritual science. Her life brought many trials but it was also a life that developed strength of personality and brought out all the greatness of her soul. During the years in our movement she was a vigorous supporter in her branch and neighbouring circles. She did in fact, together with others, a most valuable work throughout the Rhine region. One of the others was Frau Maud Künstler who also died recently. She too was much appreciated and was also intimately connected with our movement.

Not only in her work within our movement did Johanna Arnold give evidence of her strong vigorous character. At the age of seven she, with great courage, saved her older sister from drowning. Part of her life was spent in England. She gave ample proof that not only is life a great teacher but it can also make a soul strong and powerful. Moreover in her case life revealed to her the divine spiritual for which the human soul longs. Through her inner mobility and strength Johanna Arnold became a benefactress to the Anthroposophists whose leader she was. To us who saw the extent of her commitment to our movement she became a dear friend. During these last years since the beginning of this dreadful war—in her attempt to understand what is happening to mankind—Johanna Arnold would ask me significant questions. She was constantly occupied with the thought as to the real meaning of this most difficult trial of the human race and concerned about what each one of us can do in order to go through it in a positive way. None of the daily occurrences of the war escaped her notice. But she was also able to see them in their wider context, bringing them into relation with mankind's spiritual evolution in general. In her attempt to solve the riddle of mankind she made a close study of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Robert Hamerling.

There are indeed many examples in our movement which can show how spiritual science affects man's whole life, his way of working, his inner development. And Johanna Arnold is a living proof, if such is required, that it is a blatant lie to say that individual thought must be renounced in our movement. She was looked up to as an example by those who knew her, not only through her devotion and loyalty to our spiritual-scientific movement but also because she sought through earnest independent thinking, to fathom the secrets of man's existence.—I am personally grateful to all those who so beautifully expressed their appreciation at the funeral of our friend. Her sister who is with us today has witnessed within a short time the death of Johanna Arnold as well as that of another sister; to her we would say that we shall remain united with her in loyal thoughts of those who have gone from her side into the spiritual world. We shall cherish their memory and retain a living connection with them.

These thoughts concerning departed friends, linked as they are with sorrowful experiences, also belong to our studies—using the word here free from all pedantry. We know that for the human soul there is survival and new beginning, but does the same apply to the many hopes and expectations we witness that come to nothing especially in our times? Why is it, we may ask, that even those who have a measure of insight into mankind's evolution nurture unjustified hopes and expectations? The answer is that we must nurture them, for they are forces, effective forces. Any doubt we may have as to whether they will be fulfilled should not prevent us from cherishing them because while we do they act as forces and produce effects whether they are fulfilled or not. We must accept it if, for the time being, they come to nothing. How gladly we set our hopes on many a person when he shows the first signs of warm understanding for the spiritual world. One has such hopes despite the fact that in our materialistic age they are often shattered. In recent lectures I have described deeper reasons as to why such hopes are shattered.

In this connection we must be clear that what we call human courage, which we see today in such abundance in many spheres of external life, is very seldom found in relation to spiritual life. This is why the personalities I spoke of today are really models even in regard to more external aspects of our society and movement. It is dawning on many people today that materialism will not do. But what I have often referred to as man's love of ease prevents them from committing themselves to spiritual science. Yet nothing else can save human civilization from plunging into disaster. There are people who are often quite near the point of crossing the threshold into spiritual science; that they do not is basically due to indolence. It is love of ease that prevents them from making their soul receptive and pliable enough to grasp ideas that quite concretely explain the spiritual world. There are many today who enthuse in general about the mystical unity of worlds, vaguely declaring that science alone does not explain everything; faith must come to its aid. But the courage to penetrate earnestly into the descriptions and explanations of the spiritual world that lies at the foundation of the sense world, that courage is greatly lacking.

Last winter I spoke about Hermann Bahr, about his path of knowledge. His latest books, “Expressionism” and the novel “Ascension,” suggested that he was at the point of becoming conscious of the spiritual world. There is no doubt that despite his vacillations and changes of direction he was at last striving towards the spirit. But his very latest writing which he has just sent me is very curious. Its title is “Reason and Knowledge”^* and it deals with the way modern humanity, in contrast to former times, relies more on reason when seeking spiritual insight, when trying to understand the World Order. Hermann Bahr begins by asking what reason has achieved. In the 18th Century, striving to develop reason was synonymous with so-called enlightenment which also played a decisive role in the 19th Century. He begins by saying that: “Before the war the West imagined that its peoples shared a feeling of community. They were cosmopolitans or else ‘good’ Europeans. There was the glittering world of millionaires, there were the dilettante and the aesthetes and also the international set, the uprooted vagabonds, spending their lives in sleeping cars and in grand hotels by the sea. And there were the proud communities of scientists and artists. Furthermore we had people's rights, we had humanitarianism. Internationally we shared the fruits of industry, commerce, money, thoughts, taste, morals and humour. All the nations in the West had aims and goals in common. They even thought they had also a means in common by which to attain these shared goals: the means of human reason! The hope was that, through united effort and human reason, mankind would attain what was perhaps beyond the reach of single individuals: ultimate truth. We have been robbed of all this by the war; it has all vanished.”

Thus Hermann Bahr, looking at the state of the world, concludes that modern man places a one-sided emphasis on reason. He recalls an interesting episode in Goethe's life. In Bohemia Goethe observed a strangely shaped mountain, the Kammerbühl and he concluded that the mountain must be of volcanic origin. He was convinced it had been formed in an ancient volcanic eruption. But others did not share his view; they presumed the mountain had originated through sedimentation which had been driven upwards by the force of water. Goethe was unable to convince these people that his assumption was the right one. He felt an inner impulse which convinced him that the mountain was of volcanic origin. The others were equally certain it had come about through sedimentation. This argument suggested to Hermann Bahr that impulses, quite different from reason, influence man's judgments; he saw them as impulses at work behind reason. Hermann Bahr concedes that not everyone is a Goethe; nevertheless, it seems to him that while people think they are following reason they are in fact determined by impulses. Earlier, in the Middle Ages, people were exhorted to have faith, to base their thoughts about the world on faith. But faith has become a mere phrase, it has lost its influence except in aspects of life in which science plays no role. Thus to Hermann Bahr man seems to be determined by his impulses. He asks: What kind of impulses are at work in modern man? He goes on to enumerate some impulses and emotions which delude people into believing they are following solely their reason. He says that Americans for example have a particularly strong impulse towards pragmatism. They want what is useful and practical, hence the famous pragmatism of William James.¹⁴ However Hermann Bahr now asks: What has come of this urge toward the useful? He is of the opinion that: “there are two main urges in Western man.” He then points to the much quoted expression that in the Middle Ages science was the handmaid of Theology; looking at modern culture he concludes that reason is certainly not the handmaid to Theology, rather has it become the handmaid of Greed. He then goes into still deeper problems; the individual, he says, cannot exist by himself, he must live in a community. This community is the State in which the individual has his place. This observation inevitably leads Hermann Bahr to ask if, here again, are not emotions the determining factors within the various States? At this point he attempts to link a spiritual element to the individual human soul. This spiritual element he tries to find first in Goethe and Kant; and he finally comes to the following thought: We see inner impulses at work in our lower life, impulses which draw reason along with them. It is therefore not reason which proves to us whether something is true or untrue. We judge things according to our inner impulses, according to what we want them to be. Thus Goethe wanted the Kammerbühl to be of volcanic origin while his opponents wanted it produced by sedimentation. Hermann Bahr came to the conclusion that there must be impulses in man other than those which stem from the lower nature. This thought brings him to the idea of Genius. What is done by a genius is also done out of impulse, but not a lower one. A genius is someone who is influenced by an element of a cosmic nature. However, the word genius almost makes Hermann Bahr split hairs. He consults Grimm's dictionary to get to the bottom of what the word Genius means; he familiarizes himself with what Goethe, Schiller, the Romantics and others, meant by it. He comes to see that the word genius cannot be applied indiscriminately. For example, if it is used to denote the highest impulse in the pursuit of knowledge then all professors would claim to be geniuses and there would be as many of them to venerate as there were professors. Hermann Bahr had no wish for that, so he looks for another way out. He comes to the conclusion that Goethe was quite right in applying the word genius only to a few special individuals. If applicable only to a few then it cannot be considered as an impulse for scientific endeavour. In short Hermann Bahr reaches a point where he senses that the soul of man has a connection with the spiritual world. He says: “You may tear me to pieces but I cannot explain the logical connection between the impact on the human soul of the hymn: ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ (‘Come Holy Ghost’) and the meaning of genius in the Goethean sense. The connection is there and is sublime, powerful and real, yet I cannot explain it.”

However, there is one thing that Herman Bahr does want to explain; namely, that relying merely on reason does not help; reason as such, he says, does not lead man to truth. He rejects what in the age of enlightenment had been seen as the supremacy of reason, had been seen as reason's ability to explain everything observed and investigated. He wants to dethrone reason for in his view it has become subservient to external trade and technology and it simply follows man's impulses.

One thing these inner impulses of man do demonstrate is how a man like Hermann Bahr is able to reach the portal of spiritual science and then, because of lack of initiative to get to grips with spiritual science he holds back. He remains at the point of view that reason on its own is helpless, faith must step in to guide it. Thus the impulses that are to guide man must come, not from his lower nature but from God. He must receive them through faith. Knowledge must be guided by faith, reason alone can attain nothing. Hermann Bahr makes great effort to find confirmation of this idea. For example he makes an interesting reference to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi¹⁵ who in a letter once expressed the perceptive idea that when it comes to the human soul's ability to grasp truth it is as if it were capable of elasticity, of expansion. This is a very ingenious idea of Jacobi's. I expressed the same thing somewhat differently in my Philosophy of Freedom where I spoke of an organism of thought, wherein one thought grows out of the preceding one. Whenever one arrives at the "elasticity" of man's inner nature, thinking continues, through its own power, the line of thought. When this happens one is experiencing the power of the spirit in one's own soul. Both Jacobi and Hermann Bahr point to the fact that something of a spiritual nature lives and acts in the human soul. What is so remarkable about Hermann Bahr is that he attempts to find in man the higher, the divine man, by demonstrating that reason is subservient to faith. In so doing he denies validity to the very impulse, i.e., reason that governs modern scientific endeavour.

One impulse Hermann Bahr does not discover: the Christ impulse which lives, or at least can live, in modern man. He points to Christ in only one place—two other places where he mentions Christ have no significance—and what he says there does not come from him but is a quotation from Pascal.¹⁶ It comes from Cascali “Pensus” when he says that “we human beings only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; that we know life and death only through Jesus Christ; through ourselves alone we know nothing either of our life or our death; nothing of either God or ourselves.”—Here Pascal is pointing to an impulse that comes from within man yet does not stem from himself; i.e. the Christ impulse. To understand it a sense of history is needed, for it has only been on earth since the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus Hermann Bahr gets no further than Harnack and others. He comes as far as the idea of a universal God who speaks through nature, but not to a living understanding of Christ. This, once more, is an example of someone who is striving for truth yet cannot find the Christ and is unaware that he does not find Him. Hermann Bahr is at pains to show that throughout the evolution of the world man's striving is in evidence. He says beautiful things about Greek and Roman culture and even about Mohammed. The only thing he leaves out is the Mystery of Golgotha. He speaks of Christianity only in a reference to St. Augustine. But no amount of preoccupation with reason and the like can lead to Christ; it can lead only to a universal God. Christ, the God who descended from cosmic heights into earthly life, lives in us as truly as our own highest being lives in us. As Pascal indicated, we can attain knowledge of life and death; of God and ourselves only through being permeated by Christ. This truth can be recognized and understood only through spiritual science.

Goethe did pave the way to spiritual science. But when Hermann Bahr—in order to justify why he finally turned to faith—tries to explain the value of all kinds of statements by Goethe, all he says is: “It will not be necessary for me to testify that I acknowledge the teaching of the Vatican and the views of Goethe and Kant.” Here we see the influence of an external power which at present clearly indicates its intention to increase that power. Yet people remain deaf and blind to the signs of the times; they let what can explain the signs of the times pass them by. Hermann Bahr in his own way is well able to read these signs. He knows of the many things that induce modern man to say things like: “It will not be necessary for me to testify that I acknowledge the teachings of the Vatican and the views of Goethe and Kant.” It is a supreme example of how indolence can make a man come to a standstill in his endeavour. I love Hermann Bahr and have no wish to say anything against him. I only want to indicate what in such a characteristic way can influence a talented and significant personality of our time.

It is easy enough to blame reason, much can be said against it. It can be accused of not leading man to truth. However, blaming reason simply shows that the matter has not been thought through. Sufficient exploration will reveal that it is only when reason is permeated by Ahriman that it leads away from truth. Similarly if faith is permeated by Lucifer it also leads away from truth. Faith is in danger of being saturated with Lucifer, reason with Ahriman. But neither faith nor reason as such lead to untruth or error. In the religious sense they are gifts of God to man. When they follow their rightful path they will lead to truth, never to either error or untruth. Deeper insight reveals how Ahriman comes to insinuate himself into reason and bring about confusion. This knowledge can be obtained however, only by penetrating into the actual spiritual world. To do this requires one to make the effort to grasp the ideas, the descriptions which depict the spiritual world. If man persists in living in arid abstractions he sins against reason and remains ignorant of the fact that through the development of reason in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch man's ‘I’ is to enter the consciousness soul. People talk about man's relation to the spirit like the blind talk about colors. However, no matter how much the ignorant accuse one of contradictions—when speaking from the point of view of spiritual science—it is essential, as already explained, to stand by the results obtained when the spirit is investigated by spiritual means. One has a personal responsibility for the spirit.

This is the kind of responsibility I was able to speak about earlier in connection with special personalities whose example illustrates man's greatness when he feels responsible, not only for his actions, but also for his thoughts and feelings. By contrast you here have someone with no feeling of responsibility; without trying to discover what the present needs, he links onto influences in man's evolution which belong in the past. Consequently Hermann Bahr can say: “If anyone is interested in the path that led me to God, he may refer to my publication ‘Taking Stock’ and ‘Expressionism’ but I must ask the reader not to generalize my personal experiences; they have helped me but may not necessarily help others” and “Should the reader come upon any passage which deviates from the fundamental issue I must ask him to balance it against my good intentions. Any unfortunate ambiguous phrase caused by negligence is against my will and to my regret.” In other words if one simply accepts whatever decree that goes out from the Vatican there is no need to be personally responsible for one's actions.

It may be a good thing when someone openly and sincerely makes such a confession. However what it implies could not be further from the attitude of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. What Hermann Bahr is confessing actually expresses a fundamental condition demanded by that spiritual stream which is again trying to assert itself. A condition one could sum up by saying: “The authority of the Vatican decrees what the world in general should believe and profess. And I concede from the start that what as a single individual I hold dear, my belief, my view of things are not the concern of the world in general. I may add my voice but only to the extent it finds approval with the Vatican.”

I do not know to what extent it is still fashionable to make confessions of this kind. What I do know is that spiritual science must rest on its own independent research and take full responsibility for that research. It must also accept disillusions and shattered hopes no matter how often they occur, also when they are, as in the case of Hermann Bahr, completely unexpected.

• *. The first World War
• *. “Vernunft and Wissenschaft”
• 14. William James 1842–1910 American Philosopher, founder of Pragmatism
• 15. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi 1743–1819 Philosopher and Novelist.
• 16. Blaise Pascal 1623–1662 French Natural Philosopher

This evening, too, I would like to take a look at the more general conditions of the German essence within this lecture cycle, because it seems to me that in our great, but also painful and sorrowful time, spiritual-scientific considerations have a kind of ethical obligation in a certain respect, and because, in addition, the truly human feeling is to illuminate the horizon of the fateful events within which we stand from a spiritual-scientific point of view. This evening, however, it will be more a matter of allowing the “light of feeling” given by spiritual science to fall, as it were, on certain processes in German intellectual life and on the understanding that is brought to bear on this intellectual life. Tomorrow I will again take the liberty of dealing with a more specific spiritual-scientific topic.

If we look at those phenomena in German intellectual life that can particularly express the whole character of this intellectual life to us, one of them is the one that has already been these lectures: Herman Grimm, the great German art historian, who viewed art from the deepest sources of what German intellectual life, with all its impulses, has poured into his soul. In one of the lectures this winter, I took the liberty of calling Herman Grimm, so to speak, “Goethe's governor in the second half of the nineteenth century.” In the way he lived with everything he produced, in what – concentrated in Goethe – was contained as German essence, as essence in the German folk soul, and what then poured into the stream of German intellectual life – in this way Herman Grimm is, in a certain respect, a representative personality of German intellectual life from the second half of the nineteenth century.

Not quite two years before Herman Grimm's death, essays from the last period of his life appeared, which he gave the collective title “Fragments”. In the preface to these fragments, he says something extraordinarily characteristic. He points out that these individual, sometimes very short essays on this or that question of German or foreign culture arise from a whole of his intellectual world view. And Herman Grimm mentions that he had intended to combine the lectures he had given on this subject over fifty years at the University of Berlin into a single book, which would present the growth and development of the German spirit. But at the same time, he points out how, each time he moved on to the next lecture, he found himself compelled to rework what he had already written. And now he says that this would have to be done for the last time if these lectures were to be combined into a book on German intellectual life as a whole; he does not know whether he will live to do so, because this reworking requires a lot of effort and time. But – and this is the characteristic thing – this whole of German intellectual life stands before his soul, and he wants the individual essays that he publishes to be understood as if they were individual parts, taken from the whole, that stands before his soul.

Herman Grimm did not live to write the book he had in mind. He died in 1901, not quite two years after publishing these “Fragments”. He had actually planned to write an entire spiritual history of the development of the European peoples during his youth. And if we now consider how he in turn – as he often emphasized – wanted the individual main parts that he had given to be understood from this overall presentation of European intellectual life – his great work on Homer, his biographies or monographs on Michelangelo and Raphael and finally his work on Goethe – if we take this into account, we are confronted with something extraordinarily characteristic. We are actually dealing with something that lived in Herman. . Grimm's soul, which was never really portrayed by him in the form in which it lived in his soul, but from which, one might say, every single line he wrote and every single word he spoke in his life emerged. And if we now consider the whole way in which Herman Grimm speaks about art and German cultural life, something else in addition to what has just been said emerges. Herman Grimm always endeavors to advocate with all his soul, with his entire undivided personality; and anyone who has the urge to have all things clearly “proven,” who loves a line of argument that advances from judgment to judgment in a demonstrative manner, will not find what he is looking for in Herman Grimm's presentation. One would like to say: everything he has written springs directly from his entire soul, and one has nothing as proof of the truth but the feeling that overcomes one: the man, this personality, has experienced a great deal in the broadest sense in the things he presents; and he presents his experience. Thus the individual thing he presents springs from a whole that is not really there at all.

What is it, then, that lives in Herman Grimm? What is it that teaches us the conviction that every single thing arises out of a whole? What do we sense, as it were, as a shadow of the spirit behind all the details that Herman Grimm presents, that he has given to the world?

I would like to describe what one senses and what permeates one as one turns the pages of his books: it is the sustaining power of the German spirit, that German spirit which, for those who truly understand it fully, is not just some abstraction that one categorizes with concepts , with ideas, that one expresses in images, but which is really felt like a living being through all of German history; like a being that one feels as if one were holding a dialogue in one's soul with this being and allowing oneself to be inspired by it for everything one has to say. So that basically, once you have such an experience, you need nothing more than the certainty that this spirit is behind it as an inspirer – and you have given something that has good “proven” reason. This being, which one can say is the living German spirit, is slowly and gradually approaching German development; but it is entering the consciousness of the best minds in the most definite way.

We can find this German spirit, this fundamental German spirit, particularly characteristic in one remarkable place. It is there where one of the best, one of the most brilliant Germans, Johann Gottfried Herder, has tried to depict the overall life of humanity in its development. Herder, this great predecessor of Goethe, basically set out early on to let his gaze wander over all the development of the peoples in order to get an overall picture of the forces, of the entities that live in this development of the peoples. And what he was then able to accomplish as a presentation of his ideas about this process of development, he summarized in his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity”. In these “Ideas” we encounter a tableau, a journey through the development of humanity in such a way that we sense that in all the individual phenomena and events, beings and forces live that all have a fully vital effect on Herder's soul. Already in his early youth, Herder turned against Voltaire's historical approach. He fully recognized that Voltaire was one of the most ingenious men; but what he found in his view of history was that this whole view ultimately culminated in a sum of ideas that prevail throughout history, as it were. In contrast to this, Herder objected that ideas only ever give rise to ideas. Herder did not want people to speak only of the “ideas” that are effective in history. He wanted to speak of something less abstract, something more alive and more concrete than the ideas of history. He wanted to speak of how invisible living beings are behind all historical events. He once said, for example: What the outer historical events are is actually only of value to the observer if one takes into account the spirits and spiritual forces at work behind them, from which what can be perceived through the senses first clearly emerges; for what takes place externally is only like a cloud that arises and passes away, but behind which lies the whole activity of the spirit that runs through human history, which one has to observe.

Slowly and gradually, German development rose to such a grandiose historical perspective. It can be said that such a historical perspective was already present in ancient Greece. We find there already echoes of it, longings to give such an overall picture of human development. But such efforts then receded again; and only later, as in Italy in the fifteenth century, do we find new attempts in this direction, as well as in the rest of Western Europe, in France and England. People began to seek connections in the historical development of humanity. But these connections were conceived in a certain materialistic sense. What happens in the course of history is made dependent on climate, geographical conditions and all sorts of other factors. It was only when the German mind took hold of this comprehensive view of history that it was truly brought to life, one might say. And in Herder's soul arose an image that synthesizes natural events and the crowning human events that take place upon them. Herder first turned his attention to how the beings of nature develop and how the spirit, which works in nature at a subordinate level, comes to be more characteristically expressed in man. This spirit, which Herder consciously lets emerge from the essence of the All-Divinity, works in nature, but it also interweaves the human soul. And what man accomplishes in history is not for him merely a sum of successive events, but it has significance in that man on earth himself continues the coherent plan of the divine spiritual entities through what he does.

There is greatness in Herder's calling man an “assistant of the deity” in his earthly work. In this there is again something of the ideas and intuitions and feelings of German mysticism, which seeks God directly in the human soul itself. Herder seeks God in history, as He manifests Himself in the deeds that take place in historical development. God Himself does what historical development is; and man, insofar as he is imbued with God, is God's assistant. For Herder, the whole of nature is built upon the next, then the human kingdom and on that the kingdom of higher spirits; and he makes the significant statement: Man is a middle creature between animal and angel. Herder thus places man in the overall development in such a way that man appears as a direct expression, as a revelation of divine spirituality. And when one examines how Herder, who was not a systematizing philosopher and was far from constructing any abstract ideas, came to sketch out an overall picture of development with inexpressible diligence and truly ingenious foresight, through which the deeds of man can be summarized with the deeds in nature, then one must say: It is a divine power that inspires Herder himself. He is aware that the divine powers that rule in history live in himself. It is the sustaining power of the German spirit in Herder that creates an overall picture of human development and also of natural development.

“Evolution” has become the magic word that seems so significant for the world view of our time. In the days when Herder lived and when Goethe spent his youth, he rose through Herder and others to the world view supported by the German spirit. The idea of evolution entered into German intellectual life. This idea of development was more profound and more profound than it is taken from the materialistic world view. For in what is regarded as “developing”, the German mind saw the mind at work; and in every single natural product, insofar as development is considered, he saw mind as the architect, the carrier, the accomplisher of development. Thus he was able to introduce the idea of the spirit as developing, shown in the becoming of man, fruitfully into the history of ideas, into the whole history of development.

And standing beside Herder as one of the great signposts in the spiritual life is Winckelmann, who first brought art history into that current which can be called: the world view based on the history of development and carried by the German spirit. Goethe says of Winckelmann, the first German art critic: “Winckelmann, a second Columbus, discovered the evolution and destiny of art as bound to the general laws of evolution, keeping pace with the rise and fall of civilization and the destinies of the people.

Thus we see how, through these minds – it has already happened through Lessing – mind is seen in all becoming as the actual bearer, as the actual substance of development. And this world view leads directly to a sense of being carried by the mind, to being carried by the mind. And this permeates the soul with confidence and inner strength. One is tempted to say that all this already contained an inkling that this German spirit, with all its idealism, contains the seeds of a truly scientific spiritual world view that humanity must move towards. For when we consider that spiritual science strives for knowledge of the world, which is attained through the soul developing its inner powers slumbering in its depths, so that it comes to see with the organs of the spirit or — to use Goethe's words — with the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, to see what, as the invisible, works and lives behind the visible. If one considers this and then recalls a certain saying of Herder's, then a feeling of confidence comes over the soul: humanity will one day partake of spiritual world-view. For how beautifully Herder's saying resounds: “The human race will not pass away until the genius of enlightenment has passed through the earth.” Herder's gaze was always directed towards the intimate weaving and essence of the spiritual that prevails in all sensuality. Herder regards every human being – not just the great historical figures – as thoughts that are not merely thoughts grasped by our brain, but as something living, existing and weaving. And when they are suited to be seized by the spirit of the age and incorporated into the stream of events, then Herder speaks of those people who, through such thoughts, have a formative effect on an entire era: often these people – the geniuses – live and work in the greatest silence; but one of their thoughts, grasped by the spirit of the times, brings a whole chaos of things into good form and order.

When we consider these things, we can never say that they arose out of mere abstract philosophical reflection; for they do not stand in isolation as the impressions of a personality, but stand as if organically with the continuous stream of German intellectual life, and always in such a way that one must regard the personalities who express them, who thereby reveal their convictions, as inspired by the sustaining power of the German spirit. And this sustaining power of the German spirit is deeply felt even in the most recent times by those who have an inkling of it. What is felt as this sustaining power of the German spirit is not only taken up in an abstract philosophy; it is taken up in the deepest feeling of souls.

Thus, for example, when the late Paz! de Lagarde (who died in 1891) – another of the most German minds – once said the following, which is quite characteristic of his whole attitude to this fundamental force of the German spirit: “On one occasion I was requested by a relative of a friend whom I was accompanying to the grave to deliver the funeral oration, and to do so first at the cemetery.” Apparently, Lagarde then spoke of what connects the human soul with the eternal, with the spiritual, what passes through the gate of death as a living being, for now he continues: “Now I actually felt ashamed. What was I then actually? What am I then actually, that I dare to speak of that which is connected with the eternal-spiritual? I was ashamed, but I found that what I had said found fertile soil in the minds that had escorted the dead to the grave.” And now Lagarde says, drawing the conclusion, as it were: “That is how it is for the German when he speaks of love of country: he feels that this speaking of love of country is basically such an intimate, sacred thing that he feels ashamed to speak of it; but he also feels: if he speaks of it, it can fall on receptive minds.”

One need only recall this saying, which truly captures the essence of the German character in the most eminent sense, and one can see from it how the German, when he feels truly at home within the German national character, must to the spirit of his nation, in which he perceives the expression of the divine spirituality of the world in general, and how he feels it to be a living being, which he approaches — even with knowledge — only in reverence. Lagarde is one who, in the second half of the nineteenth century, out of deep learning but also out of deep, soulful feeling, spoke about Germanness in many ways, about the sources of Germanness, about the prospects of Germanness. He is one of those who never tire of pointing out again and again that the essence of Germanness resides in the spiritual, in that which, as the spirit common to all, permeates the entire German evolution. He who wishes to grasp the essence of Germanness at its root is not satisfied with what a materialistic view designates as “blood” or “race” in the nature of a people. Lagarde was not satisfied with this; for he felt that the essence of Germanness can only be expressed through spiritual ideas, through spiritual perceptions. Thus Lagarde says: “Germanness lies not in the blood but in the soul. Of our great men, Leibniz and Lessing are certainly Slavs, Handel, a son of a Halloren, is a Celt, Kant's father was a Scot: and yet, who would call these un-German?” — In which Lagarde, one of the most German of Germans, seeks the German essence, that is the supporting force of the German spirit, in which the one can immerse himself who understands German essence within himself and how to realize it. Time and again, the best Germans never tire of explaining how the essence of the German can only be expressed and revealed through the spiritual.

When one reflects in this way, the German spirit takes on an ever more concrete and real essence. One feels it flowing through the stream of German life, especially through the stream of German intellectual life; and one then understands how the German, in the course of his development, felt the need to enrich his own being in the present more and more with what the German spirit had already allowed to flow from its sources into the German nation in older times.

Thus we find, as the German Romantics, leaning on Goethe, as it were, renewing the old German essence, delving not only into the folk song but into the entire German spiritual being, in order to absorb it and revive it in their souls, so as to allow what is peculiar to Germanness as a whole to take effect in their own souls. And then we see again how the German development in the Brothers Grimm is inspired by what German essence produced in ancient times. We see how the Brothers Grimm descend to the people and have the old fairy tales told to them in order to collect them. And what lies in this collection of German fairy tales, which really convey such a hundredfold impression, taken directly from the people's minds? Nothing else lies in them but the fundamental power of the German spirit!

And how does this fundamental power of the German spirit continue to work?

We have been able to see it particularly in the achievements of the already mentioned Herman Grimm. Often, when one allows these fine, elegant, comprehensive artistic characteristics of Herman Grimm to take effect on the soul, when one especially visualizes some of the extremely intimate subtleties that lie in these writings, one must ask oneself: How did this personality manage to make the soul so elastic, so pliable that it could delve into the deepest secrets of artistic work and artistic creation? And I believe there can be no other answer than the one that follows from the clues as to how Herman Grimm, before he began to contemplate the art of humanity, expressed himself poetically and artistically. For this expression is particularly characteristic of the supporting force of the German spirit. I would like to point out only a few.

The first of the stories and poems collected in the volume Novellen is Herman Grimm's The Songstress. This is a story that, as is usually the case when presenting novellas, is used only to depict events that take place before the eyes of people, that can be grasped directly with the imagination that is tied to the body. Herman Grimm also masterfully presents what takes place in the external world: he presents a female personality that is deeply attracted to a male personality; but through her character and her whole being, this female personality rejects the male one. It would take too long to go into the details now. So it comes about that the male personality commits suicide. The female personality remains behind. And now, after the death of the man who loved her, she feels not only pain and suffering; no, something intervenes in her soul life that is directly supersensible. She spends a night at a friend's house, the friend at whose house the suicide of her lover had taken place. She feels disturbed. At first she does not know the reason for it. But then she says that she cannot sleep alone in the room; the friend should watch over her. And as he watches over her, it turns out that she has a vision, which the poet clearly shows that he wants to express more than a mere play of the imagination. At the door of the bedroom, the ghostly figure of the deceased enters. And if one investigates what Herman Grimm actually wants to express with this apparition, it is that he wants to say: with what is happening here before the eyes of man on earth, the event is not yet exhausted; but spiritual factors, spiritual entities intervene in physical events; and when death has occurred, what has passed through the gate of death is present there in the spiritual world and is effective for those who are receptive to it.

Herman Grimm is thus a novelist who allows the spiritual world to shine through his artistic portrayal. What actually appears to the bereaved lover has often been described in these lectures. It is what the etheric body of the deceased in question can be called, which can show itself in the form of the deceased to those who are receptive to it. But not all people are receptive to this.

Herman Grimm also wrote a novel, “Unüberwindliche Mächte” (Insurmountable Forces), which is of great importance as a cultural-historical novel and also otherwise in the spiritual history of humanity, but unfortunately it has been neglected. Here too, the lover dies. And when she seeks healing in a place in the south, she wastes away more and more in the memory of her lover and finally dies. Herman Grimm describes her death in a very unique way in the final chapter of 'Unüberwindliche Mächte'. He describes how a spiritual figure rises out of her body and rushes towards her lover. Again, Herman Grimm does not conclude the account with the events visible on earth, but brings together what is visible to the senses, what is visible to the mind, with the supersensible, which continues beyond death.

I would not cite such examples if they did not correspond entirely to what spiritual science has to say about these things. Of course one cannot cite artists as proof of spiritual science. But if one cites such examples as proof of what spiritual science has to offer humanity, it can be done to the extent that the nascent spiritual science lies in a spirit like Herman Grimm, who was artistically active in the second half of the nineteenth century. He is not yet able to express spiritual science as such, but artistically he presents things in such a way that one perceives: spiritual science wants to make its entry into the spiritual culture of humanity out of the supporting power of the German spirit.

Herman Grimm — this emerges from his entire literary work — never wanted to admit to himself what actually formed the basis for his giving such descriptions. He was somewhat shy about bringing these things, which he only wanted to approach in the most intimate, artistic and spiritual way, into ordinary concepts. But if he was not able to approach these things in the way that spiritual science can speak about them today, and yet these things are properly – one might say “expertly” – presented by him, then what lived in him? The inspiring force was the sustaining power of the German spirit! And so we find this sustaining power of the German spirit to be a very real entity, and we must turn our spiritual gaze towards it if we want to get to know the German character at all.

Now Goethe once spoke a very significant word, which should be taken into account when speaking of the relationship between the German spirit and the individual German, when speaking of how German essence lives directly in German lands – one might say – lives before the eyes of people when they have fixed their eyes on any personalities and any people within the German lands. In a confidential conversation in recent years, Goethe said to his secretary Eckermann: “My works cannot become popular; anyone who thinks and strives for that is mistaken. They are not written for the masses, but only for individual people who want and seek something similar and who are moving in similar directions.”

This is a significant statement. One would like to say: it is in the nature of Germanness — to use this word of Fichte's — to really feel the German spirit as a living thing and to still experience the totality of the German essence, the unity of the German spirit, as something special alongside what appears externally as German life. The totality of the German essence is no less real for that; it can at least be present for each individual. Hence the urge of the German to consider the individual phenomena of the world in connection with the whole development of the world and of humanity. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a poet living in the German-speaking districts of Austria went, one might say, around the whole world to understand the individual human being from the perspective of the overall spirit, despite the most diverse cultural influences. I refer to Robert Hamerling, who in his poem 'Aspasia' attempts to make the collective Greek spirit speak through an individual human being; who then attempts to portray the intensely personal German character in his 'King of Zion'; who further tries to express the actual spirit of the French revolutionary hearth in his drama “Danton and Robespierre” and finally wants to express the spirit of our time in his “Homunculus” in a grandiose, comprehensive way through poetry. Hamerling always feels the need to depict the individual in connection with what, as a spiritual weaving and becoming and as a sum of spiritual entities, animates and permeates the stream of human events. The view of the whole, of a living spiritual reality, interweaves the German intellectual work through the individual phenomena where it appears in its most intense manifestations.

Therefore, for someone who—one might say—does not look much further than a few meters beyond his own nose and considers something in a limited area of German life, it is extremely difficult to grasp the German character; for it can only be grasped by really considering the connection between the German soul and the spiritual entities that are weaving through the world and bringing themselves to revelation in the German spirit. And this is, in addition to much that has already been mentioned in these lectures, the reason why this German spirit, why this fundamental German spirit can be so misunderstood, why it is now so reviled and so insulted. One must ask oneself: How does this German spiritual life relate to the spiritual life of other nations?

I would like to discuss a characteristic example today, tying it in with a specific occasion when it became clear how difficult it is for a German who feels connected to the German spirit to make himself fully understood when the application of what he feels from the German spirit is to be applied to a single phenomenon. Recently, there has been much talk of the fact that the aging, somewhat decadent French intellectual life has undergone a kind of rejuvenation, that there are young French people who no longer go along with official Frenchness. And in many circles, which will hopefully have their eyes opened more by this war than they were previously open, people had begun to see something in this young Frenchness that would now understand the German mind much better than official Paris and official Frenchness. People had pointed to characteristic phenomena within young Frenchness. Indeed, there is much to be found there that one might say is quite significant. There are young French intellectuals who are not satisfied with official France itself – but that is the France that is currently at war with Germany.

What do such young Frenchmen say? – I would like to give just one brief example by quoting what Leon Bazalgette has said:

You can see how they swell with satisfaction when they utter the words: “French Renaissance” (three years of existence – they announce – the child is chubby-cheeked and already playing with little soldiers), “Awakening of national pride”,

These are the men who would divert the entire energy of a people to pour it into the enthusiasm of that still unknown virtue: hatred. In an age when the whole world trembles with activity, ambitious endeavors, dreams and new desires that cross borders, their only thought and aspiration, of which they are proud, is to settle an old neighborhood dispute with a fist fight. Oh, poor conceited people, who are incapable of conjuring up other forms of heroism than the “revenge”. Poor little fools of passion, who have no more appropriate desires to satisfy your hunger for action...

... In the name of what great idea – one of those ideas for which almost no one at all times has hesitated to give up his life – would we go to war with Germany? Is it about our freedom? Do we live under the yoke or are we threatened by it? Is it about countries that need to be civilized by being annexed, or about peoples that need to be snatched from slavery? No, it is solely about trying to reconquer territories that belonged to us and that we lost in a war, territories of which a good half are no more French than German...; and even less is it about reconquering these territories as such as it is about satisfying an old desire for revenge. That is the “idea in the name of which this country, which likes to give itself the title of ‘fighting for noble causes,’ would start a war.

One was — one would like to say — somewhat touched by the charity in certain circles at the sound of some voices that came from the young Frenchmen, those young Frenchmen of whom it was said that they wanted to found a new France. And one of those who, especially before the war, was also counted among these young Frenchmen by certain Germans who would create a new France, is Romain Rolland, who wrote a great novel, “great” in the sense of spatial expansion, because it has very many volumes. It is interesting to note how certain circles here, albeit perhaps smaller ones, viewed this particular novel by Romain Rolland.

One critic could not refrain from saying that this novel “Jean Christophe” — the German name is Johann Christof Kraft — is the most significant act that has been done since 1871 to reconcile Germany and France. In fact, there were quite a number of those who said: This novel 'Jean Christophe' shows how one of those young Frenchmen looks at Germany with love, with intimate love, and how he is one of those who will make it impossible for these two nations to live in discord in the future.

Not only has this proved to be a deceptive hope, but something else has emerged: Romain Rolland is one of those who, with Maeterlinck, Verhaeren and so on, immediately expressed themselves in a rather unmodest way about Germany and the German character when the war began. But now it is interesting to see a little how this man, Romain Rolland, of whom so many of us said that he could understand the German character so well, that he really grasped from the innermost core of the German national soul and the German spirit what is the supporting force of the German spirit – how this man understood the German character. I am well aware that I am not offending any true aesthetic sensibilities by saying what I must say, uninfluenced by the many judgments that have been passed on this novel, especially in the direction I have indicated.

What particularly excited people is that the Frenchman portrays a German, Johann Christof Kraft, who has outgrown the German way of being — we will see in a moment how — and who, after spending his youth in Germany, goes to France to find his further development there. In this, one sees a very special bridging of the contrast between the German and French way of being. Now, in order to fully understand what is to be said, we must first visualize the basic structure of this Jean Christophe.

I know how highly the critics regard this novel, and they have expressed their opinions as follows: the character of Jean Christophe is one that has been taken directly from life; no trait—so they feel—could be different in this drawing. But I must say: this Jean Christophe seems to me to be a rather indigestible ragout, his character welded together rather disharmoniously from the traits of the young Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Karl Marx. The admirers of Jean Christophe may forgive me, but that is the impression. This Jean Christophe grows up – he is simply transported to the present – in much the same way as Beethoven grew up. One recognizes all the traits of the young Beethoven – but distorted into caricature – down to the last detail, but in such a way that the life of the young Beethoven appears everywhere as a grandiose work of art, while the life of Jean Christophe appears as a caricature. Now, it is not the poet's task, when he alludes to history, to be faithful to that history. I can make all the objections that critics make in this regard myself; nevertheless, I must say this: Jean Christophe grows up in an environment that, in the opinion of many people, provides a picture of the German character. His grandfather, grandmother, uncle and other friends are presented. He grows up in such a way that the German character, which he outgrows, is perceived as the greatest obstacle to his developing genius. German character, for example, is presented as follows. Like Beethoven, young Jean Christophe is a kind of early composer; he makes compositions at a young age. His father, who is a drunkard, feels compelled to show off this precocious talent to the world. This father is a secretary, servant to a small German prince. The particular Germanic nature of this father is presented in cultural-historical terms when, while planning a concert with the young, seven- to eight-year-old Jean Christophe, at which the prince is also to be present, he reflects on how he should dress the boy. In the end, he comes up with a very clever idea, which is described as “a culturally historical idea of genuine, true Germanism”: he has him put on long trousers and a tailcoat, along with a white bandage, so that the boy looks like an eight-year-old little man. I will not recount how this German undertaking later unfolds, because that would take us too far afield. I will also not describe in detail how he feels disgust for everything that the entire German environment offers, this environment that is marked with “love” — according to some people — and that is supposed to give a true picture of the German character. But when he can no longer stand this environment, he feels compelled — as it says in the book — to be inspired by the Latin spirit. So he goes to Paris. There he finds a friend who is a clear reflection of Romain Rolland himself in many ways. This is the person who expresses what the young, newly emerging French identity promises for the future; it is he who teaches this confused mind, this doll welded together from the young Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss and others, some order of mind. That is the “love” with which, according to certain people, a German character, Jean Christophe, is drawn. Jean Christophe then also goes through various experiences in Paris – we now notice some traits of Richard Wagner. And when he loses his friend, he turns further south, undergoes many experiences that border on the criminal, which even lead him to suicide, which then only fails. And now, after Jean Christophe, who has not been able to flourish in his German surroundings, has gone through Latin ways, he comes to himself, as it were, in a lonely old village; he conquers his own spirit. Eternity opens up for him.

Now let us just take in a few examples of the truly loving immersion in the German character, taken from the novel. For example, the father, who is portrayed as Beethoven's father, Melchior, is characterized. Of course I know that someone might say: You are taking words out of a novel that may not actually reflect the author's opinion. But the artistic composition of this novel is entirely in line with what Schiller demanded in the beautiful words he wrote about “Wilhelm Meister” and what really belongs in the artistic composition of a novel. When Goethe was criticized for the fact that certain traits of the personalities in his novel did not appear entirely morally, Schiller said: “If people can prove to you that the immorality comes from your own soul, then you have made an aesthetic mistake; but if it comes from the characters, then you are justified in every respect.” This golden rule of art is also something that was later incorporated into the sustaining power of the German spirit. The best works of art that we find in Germany were truly written under the influence of this Schiller-Goethe attitude. But in Romain Rolland's work, one constantly encounters, almost on every third page, statements that clearly show that it is the author speaking and not the characters. Therefore, it is only an excuse in this case if one objects that one should not find what the author says on occasion – one cannot even say that it is the characters who express it – but what the author says on occasion of the characterizations characteristic of the way in which the author has immersed himself in the German essence. For example, Father Melchior is described in the following way:

“He was a smooth-talker, well built, if a little plump, and the type of what is considered classical beauty in Germany: a broad, expressionless forehead, strong regular features and a curly beard: a Jupiter from the banks of the Rhine.”

Then, to characterize Melchior's friends, how they gathered at the father's house and played and sang there together:

“Occasionally they would sing together in a four-part male choir one of those German songs that, one like the other, move along with solemn simplicity and in flat harmonies, ponderously, as it were, on all fours.”

What a loving description of the German character! I will only quote it as a characterization. Then there is an Uncle Theodor in the novel who is actually the grandfather's stepson; he is described in the following way. I have nothing to say against the fact that individual persons are presented in this way, but I do object to the fact that this description is supposed to be a cultural image of the German character; for one notices that Romain Rolland continually mixes in what itches him so that he can say it about the German character. Of this Uncle Theodor it is said:

What a loving description! Then Jean Christophe falls in love with a young noblewoman, who is portrayed as the epitome of a young German girl. Her name is Minna:

“Minna, for all her sentimentality and romanticism, was calm and cool. Despite her aristocratic name and the pride that the little word ‘von’ instilled in her, she had the mind of a little German housewife –” and then it continues:

“Minna, this naively sensual German little girl, knew some strange games.”

And now, to explain in cultural-historical terms what is supposed to be particularly characteristic of the German character, it is stated that she also understood how to spread flour on the table and put certain objects in it, which one then had to search for with one's mouth.

Now it will be shown why the German character becomes so unpleasant for Christof; and again, one can only say that the author is itching to express how he himself feels about the Germans. He wants to describe the dishonesty and hypocrisy in German idealism, the idealism that Romain Rolland believes was invented because people find the truth uncomfortable and therefore look to the ideal. They lie about the truth and call it idealism. Thus the Germans have the characteristic of not looking at people calmly, but of “idealizing” them, of lying to themselves about their true characteristics. Christof had also appropriated this characteristic, but it had become increasingly distasteful to him:

“Once he had convinced himself that they” — certain people — “were excellent and that he should like them, he, as a true German, tried hard to believe that he really liked them. But he didn't succeed at all: he lacked that compliant Germanic idealism that doesn't want to see and doesn't see what it would be embarrassing to discover for fear of disturbing the comfortable calm of their judgment and the comfort of their lives.” ‘German idealism’ invented for the sole reason of not disturbing the comfort of life! Now, once again, a young girl is described, with whom Jean Christophe naturally falls in love, an archetype of ugliness, “little Rosa.” One can literally feel from the novel how her nose is hardly in the right place on her face, and much more; but from a loving cultural description of her, it is said:

"The Germans are very indulgent when it comes to physical imperfections: they manage not to see them; they can even come to embellish them with a benevolent imagination, finding unexpected relationships between the face they want to see and the most magnificent examples of human beauty. It would not have taken much persuasion to get old Euler – Rosa's grandfather – to declare that his granddaughter had the nose of Juno Ludovisi.

But after he had tested the mendacity of German idealism on his own person – we have experienced this again and again with well-known “geniuses”; but we did not believe that it should be characteristic of the German character, that it should be a special characteristic of the Germans, that they 'idealize' people, was not believed earlier – he now also comes to the conclusion that basically all German musicians have a catch, something is wrong somewhere; this is also connected with German idealism! And now he comes to the conclusion that he must be more significant than all the rest. As a characteristic example, a few words about Schumann:

Now that he is only a: returned Beethoven – who of course lives according to Wagner – and is supposed to become a genius the like of which has never been seen, he must also vent his anger on Wagner. And so all kinds of affectionate things are then put into his mouth – you really can't say, “Johann Christof,” which would be forgivable; instead, they are always expressed in such a way that they are separate from the person of Johann Christof and become something that the author himself gives the absolute coloration to. So, with reference to Lohengrin and Siegfried, it is said about Richard Wagner:

“Germany revelled in this art of childish maturity, this art of wild beasts and mystically quacking maidens.”

Well, I would like to say that the German character is characterized even more profoundly in such a loving way. Here is another example:

"Especially since the German victories, they did everything to make compromises, to bring about a disgusting mishmash of new power and old principles. They did not want to renounce the old idealism: that would have been an act of courage that they were not capable of; in order to make it subservient to German interests, they contented themselves with falsifying it. They followed the example of Hegel, the cheerfully duplicitous Swabian, who had waited for Leipzig and Waterloo to adapt the basic idea of his philosophy to the Prussian state,” – it may perhaps be said that Hegel's fundamental work, ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’ – but Romain Rolland probably knows very little about this when he says that Hegel's philosophy was created after Leipzig and Waterloo – was written during the cannonade of the Battle of Jena, that is, in 1806, and already contains Hegel's entire philosophy –

"And now, after the interests had changed, the principles were also changed. When they were defeated, they said that Germany's ideal was humanity. Now that they were beating the others, they said that Germany was the ideal of humanity. As long as the other countries were the more powerful, they said with Lessing that patriotism was a heroic weakness that could very well be dispensed with, and they called themselves citizens of the world. Now that victory had been achieved, there was no lack of contempt for “French” utopian dreams: world peace, brotherhood, peaceful progress, human rights, natural equality; it was said that the strongest nation had an absolute right over the others, while the others, as the weaker ones, had no rights over it. It seemed to be the living God and the incarnate spirit, whose progress was achieved by war, violence and oppression. Now that it was on their side, might was canonized. Might was now the epitome of all idealism and all reason. To give honor to the truth, it must be said that Germany for centuries...

perhaps the only thing people seek in Germany, to do honor to the truth! — “had suffered so much from having idealism without power that after so much trial it was well justified in now making the sad confession that it needed power above all, however it might be constituted. But how much hidden bitterness lay in such a confession of the people of a Herder and a Goethe! And what renunciation, what humiliation of the German ideal lay in this German victory! — And, alas, this renunciation found only too much compliance in the lamentable tendency of all the best Germans to subordinate themselves.

“What characterizes the German,” said Möser more than a century ago, “is obedience.”

And Frau von Stael:

"They obey well. They use philosophical reason to explain the most unphilosophical thing in the world: respect for power and the habituation to fear that transforms respect into admiration.” Christof found this feeling in Germany at all levels, from the greatest to the smallest – from Wilhelm Tell, the deliberate, small-minded bourgeois with the muscles of a porter, who, as the free Jew Börne says, in order to reconcile honor and fear, walks past the post of “dear Mr. Geßler” with his eyes downcast, so that he could appeal to the fact that he who did not see the hat was not disobeying – “up to the honorable seventy-year-old Professor Weiße, one of the most respected scholars in the city, who, when a lieutenant passed by, quickly left the footpath to him and went down to the road.”

And further it says:

“Moreover, Germany did indeed bear the heaviest burden of sins in Europe. When one has won the victory, one is responsible for it; one has become the debtor of the vanquished. One tacitly assumes the obligation to lead the way for them, to show them the way. The victorious Louis XIV brought the splendor of French reason to Europe. What light did the Germany of Sedan bring to the world?”

This is the loving description. But I must not forget anything, and in order not to be unjust, I must not conceal the fact that at one point something of the loving description of the German character from this novel shines through clearly and distinctly. It is where a German professor in a small town – his name is, of course, Schulz – is enthusiastic about the early works of Johann Christof, which are misunderstood by everyone else. Johann Christof is once able to visit the old professor. Two other acquaintances turn up, and then there is – in addition to Johann Christof demonstrating his works to the delight of the three people – a feast, a huge midday feast. Salome (!), the old professor's cook, who has been a widow for a long time, takes particular pleasure in how everyone can eat. And now a piece of German character is described in a truly “historically accurate and loving” way.

Salome, to see how they were enjoying a piece of German culture inside, looked through the crack in the door; and what she saw is described as:

It is not surprising that Johann Christof, after having gone through all that, wants to get out of this environment, because his genius cannot flourish in this environment. But he doesn't really know anything about France, this Johann Christof. He is completely uneducated, just a great musician. But since he knows nothing, his going to France is characterized in the following way:

“Instinctively (since he didn't know France!) his eyes looked towards the Latin south. And first of all towards France. Towards France, the eternal refuge from German confusion.”

In France, he meets his friend Olivier, who enlightens him about the young French. And perhaps it is what these young French say about the Germans that is so appealing on this side of the Rhine. Olivier tells Johann Christof about the young French's particular view of the nature of official Paris and about what he used to polemicize against like the others:

"The best among us are shut out, imprisoned on our own soil... Never will they know what we have suffered, we who cling to the genius of our race, who, like a sacred trust, guard the light we have received from it and desperately defend it against the hostile breath that would extinguish it; and yet we stand alone, feeling the polluted air of those metics all around us, who, like a swarm of mosquitoes, have attacked our thinking and whose disgusting larvae gnaw at our reason and defile our hearts; we are betrayed by those whose mission it would be to defend us, our superiors, our stupid or cowardly critics; they flatter the enemy to obtain forgiveness for being of our generation; we are abandoned by our people, who do not care about us, who do not even know us... What means do we have to make ourselves understood? We cannot reach them... And that is the hardest part. We know that there are thousands of us in France who think the same; we know that we speak on their behalf, and there is nothing we can do to be heard! The enemy occupies everything: newspapers, magazines, theaters... The press shuns every thought or only allows it if it is an instrument of pleasure or a party weapon. Intrigues and literary cliques only leave room for those who throw themselves away. Misery and overwork crush us to the ground. The politicians, who are only concerned with enriching themselves, are only interested in the corruptible proletariat. The indifferent and self-interested citizens watch our dying. Our people do not know us; even those who fight with us, who are shrouded in silence like us, know nothing of our existence, and we know nothing of theirs... Unhappy Paris! It is true that it has also done good by organizing all the forces of French thought into groups. But the evil it has created is at least equal to the good; and in an epoch like ours, good itself turns into evil. It is enough for a pseudo-elite to usurp Paris and ring the immense bell of the public to stifle the voice of the rest of France. Far more than that: France confuses itself; it remains silent in dismay and fearfully pushes its thoughts back into itself... I used to suffer greatly from all this. But now, Christof, I am calm. I have understood my strength, the strength of my people. We just have to wait until the flood has passed. It will not gnaw away at France's fine granite. I will let you feel it under the mud it carries with it. And already, here and there, tall peaks are emerging...

You don't really need more than that to characterize the French character that is now waging war against Germany. But now, I would like to say, there is something even more beautiful. So this novel was published. It has also been translated into German. I would now like to read you a few words from a German critic of this novel, addressed to Romain Rolland in the form of a letter printed in a Berlin newspaper.

"For me, the completion of your 'Jean Christo is even more of an ethical event than a literary one... Gobineau, Maeterlinck, Verhaeren and even Verlaine have had their greatest impact and achieved their greatest fame in Germany rather than in France, and it would be only fair if you too were appreciated earlier in our country than in your homeland, because your book belongs in Germany, in the land of music, more than any other book. In many ways it is a German book, a coming-of-age novel like Green Henry or Wilhelm Meisten. German music, which Germany has given the world, has also made you its advocate. It was music that led you to the German language and made you love Goethe, whom you have memorialized many times in your work with love and admiration.

I find myself at a loss as to how many times I should actually thank you. The human being, the connoisseur, the artist, the German, the world-joyful in me, each of them wants to come forward and say a word to you. But another time the artist will say a word about this novel, another time the connoisseur, and the human being will wait until he can shake your hand again. Today only the German should thank; because I have the feeling that French youth has become closer to us through this book, which has done more than all the diplomats, banquets and associations."

This is a prime example of how the sustaining power of the German spirit can be misunderstood, and how the painfully great events we are having to live through must have an eye-opening effect in many respects, truly: must have an eye-opening effect. And please forgive me if I bring up something at the very end that seems personal, but which only ties in with personal matters because I have only just learned about it today.

The spiritual science movement to which we belong was for many years connected with a theosophical movement based in England and India. This movement gradually became so absurd that anyone with a sense of truth could no longer have any connection with much of this Anglo-Indian theosophical movement. Therefore, many years before this war, we completely separated from it. At that time we were reviled enough, even by German followers of that movement; perhaps stronger words could be used. But one would have thought that the matter was now over and that there would be no reason to return to it now. But the president of this Anglo-Indian movement has found it necessary to refer to this matter again and to characterize us Germans. And she does so with the following words, which are not mentioned here out of personal considerations, but to show how, from a certain point of view, one is capable of characterizing in such a way what we as Germans had to do out of our sense of truth:

”... Now, looking back, in the light of German methods as revealed by the war, I realize that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I frustrated those efforts, the complaint that I had spoken about the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace, instead of giving the honor to the Kaiser – that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, skillfully used by German agents here – in India – to push through their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into a weapon against the British government and trained it to look to Germany as its spiritual leader – instead of standing, as it has always done, for the equal alliance of two free nations – then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India.

So that is what we are, seen through English-Theosophical eyes, in our spiritual scientific movement. But I may say – forgive this remark; you know that I do not like to make personal remarks – I can give the assurance that I had no intention of doing all this, and especially had no intention of leaving the German spiritual scientific movement. For such a thing did not live in me and, I believe, did not live in many others either, who know that they are connected with the German spirit and its sustaining power – something that lived in Johann Christoph Arnold, who was driven out of Germany by his instinct. For even if it is difficult to find the immediate manifestations of the sustaining power of the German spirit in the immediate phenomena that Rolland, the traveler, with his uncomprehending eye, has focused on, it must be said that the truthfulness of the German spirit will make it more and more possible, especially through the experiences of our fateful time, to build a bridge between what we experience in everyday life and what is the fundamental force of the German spirit. And when we are presented with all the figures in Johann Christian's environment, from which his “genius” drives him out, then perhaps, in conclusion, and without arrogance, something may be said.

I don't want to quote a foreigner now. But I may quote someone who has been dead for a long time, who died in 1230 and who, for his part, also expressed an opinion on whether a German genius must necessarily be driven out of all that lives in it by its environment, out of all the Minnas and Rosas with crooked noses, which German idealism knows as the nose of Juno Ludovisi. Perhaps not with a genius like Johann Christoph, but with one of whom we know from the context with the supporting power of the German spirit that he was a German genius. With such a German genius we may perhaps, without arrogance, think for a moment: with Walther von der Vogelweide. And we may admit to ourselves: it is not with Johann Christof, the hero that Romain Rolland has drawn, that we judge how German men and German women affect a genius, but rather with a spirit like Walther von der Vogelweide. With his words, then, let these reflections be closed, to be followed tomorrow by a special lecture on the humanities.

Walther von der Vogelweide is not driven out of Germany by his instinct; he must think differently about those among whom he lives. I don't know how they would be described if they were to fall under Romain Rolland's fingers; but Walther von der Vogelweide says of them – and this seems to me to indicate a better understanding than Romain Rolland reveals –:

German men are well-bred,
their women are as pure as angels.
He who scolds them is deceived,
I could never understand it otherwise.
Virtue and pure love,
Whoever seeks them
Shall come to our land, where there is much bliss.
Long may I live in it!

Although I already touched on Goethe's “Faust” in this space this winter, in a consideration of Goethe's world view in the context of German idealism, I will take the liberty today of coming back to you with a consideration of Goethe's “Faust” as a kind of introduction to the six lectures I have announced. I believe that in connection with Goethe's Faust, the world view that I am representing here yields so many insights that some light will fall on the following, which will be spoken here in the near future. Of course, today I will only be able to make aphoristic remarks about the topic I have set myself, because this topic is so extensive in itself that one can never get further than highlighting this or that point of view from a wealth of points of view. And of course it also follows that one must be one-sided with each such consideration of Goethe's “Faust”. But that is a risk one must be willing to take.

After a consideration of Goethe's “Faust” that lasted more than half a century, my old friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer completed the third edition of his “Faust” edition 1892 with a preface in which the words are found: “Only the German way of thinking was able to solve the Faust problem.” And it is essentially on these words that I would like to base my reflections today.

According to a certainly justified opinion of Herman Grimm, who was so deeply involved in all that Goethe had striven for and experienced, the Faust problem will be the starting point for recurring reflections on Goethe's “Faust” through the centuries, even millennia, which will certainly differ considerably from one another in the succession of times. In this regard, Herman Grimm already spoke a very significant word in the 1870s, which I would now also like to mention in my introduction. Herman Grimm said at the time: “We are still too deeply immersed in the world that Goethe wanted to depict allegorically and symbolically in the second part of the play; here, too, only later times will gain the right point of view.” It may be said that the standpoint which Herman Grimm assumes here is as modest as it is lofty, for he speaks from a deep consciousness of all that has been poured into this Faustic poetry, which was given to the world through Goethe. And Herman Grimm continues: “We would do an injustice to Goethe's Faust if we took it only for what his many-colored experiences make it appear, and the time will yet come when the interpreters of this poem will occupy themselves more with what lies in it than with what merely clings to it.”

Of course, such statements must still apply in many respects today. Nevertheless, decades have passed since Herman Grimm wrote these words, and today, we may perhaps already entertain the hope, from the many insights that spiritual life has experienced, that we can get more into what lies in Faust than what hangs on Faust, as Herman Grimm puts it.

And so today I would like to draw your attention to how the world wandering that Faust undertakes from his study to the world, in which people more or less live, came about, and how through this world wandering, he gradually rises to the point of view of a worldview in the broadest sense of the word, which represents a kind of rebirth of Faust out of German intellectual life, insofar as Goethe himself participated in this German intellectual life. I believe that we shall only be able to arrive at a full understanding of the figure of Faust and its significance for life if we seek from the outset to delve into what is actually living in Faust's soul at that moment when we have him before us as a poetic figure at the beginning of the Faustic poetry, as it has now been completed by Goethe. What lives in Faust, as expressed in the opening monologue, “Have now, alas, philosophy...” and so on, speaks in a deeply significant way. But a kind of light must also be cast on what lives in Faust's soul at the moment that the poetry presents to us at its beginning, from a deepening into all that takes place later in the course of the events that the Faust epic represents. Faust stands there in opposition to the sciences that he lists as the sciences of the four faculties, and we see quite clearly from what he expresses how unsatisfied he is with the sciences that have affected his soul. We may ask: What does Faust really want? And perhaps this question can only be answered adequately if we bear in mind in the further course of the first monologue that Faust, despite having absorbed the sciences of the four faculties, has devoted himself to magic, that is, to what he has been able to learn as traditional, conventional historical magic from the various writings about this magic.

I would like to point out right away that a misunderstanding of the first Faust monologue can easily arise from the fact that one might believe that the moment in which Faust surrenders to magic coincides with the moment in which he speaks this monologue, and that Faust had not yet surrendered to magic before those feelings that live in this monologue go through his soul. That would be a misunderstanding and would make understanding the whole state of Faust's soul extremely difficult. Rather, we must assume that Faust, at the very moment when he expresses his feelings in that monologue, is already deeply immersed in what he addresses as magic; that he has done a great deal of study on this magic. And we can prove this from the Faustian legend itself. When the poodle that accompanies Faust on his Easter walk later takes on different forms and Faust does not know what is in this poodle, Faust reaches for a magical-occult book and now knows exactly, at least in his opinion, how he can use all sorts of incantations from these books to get to the bottom of the secret of this poodle and how he should behave towards this spiritual manifestation that he believes he has before him. We must therefore assume that Faust has already, to a certain extent, familiarized himself with these things.

Now we learn that Faust takes a book of magic and that he wants to assuage his dissatisfaction by first turning to the spirit of the great world, to the spirit of the macrocosm, as he puts it. What does he actually want? Perhaps we shall only be able to see what he wants if we delve a little into Goethe's soul itself, which indeed placed its feelings in the Faust character, at least during the time when the first Faust monologue and the first parts of “Faust” were created.

What world and worldview did Goethe actually face? Goethe was confronted with a worldview that could be built on the basis of what had been recognized about natural and spiritual life. He was in the midst of a worldview that fully took into account the scientific revelations made by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and so on. Goethe was confronted with what, in the spirit of Kant, could be called the world view of the Enlightenment, the penetration into the secrets of nature by means of the mind, which synthesizes the experiences of the senses and the experiences of history. What presents itself to the human soul in the way of ideas, which, as we would say today, are grasped in a healthy way by the normal mind and which arise above and beyond what can be investigated by the normal experience of the outer senses, it was such a world view that surrounded Goethe. How could he and his needs live into the world view that could give such a world view? He could not completely live himself into such a world view; for what Goethe constantly wanted, and what he now lets his Faust want, is a direct growing together of the innermost soul with what weaves and lives through the world outside, a growing together of the soul itself with the world secrets present in the world, with the deeper revelations and the revealing powers and entities of the world.

Now Goethe's Faust faced the view of the Enlightenment of nature and the spirit of the world in such a way that what could result in the way just characterized a world view seemed far removed from being able to grasp the entities that pervade the world and that he wanted to grasp with the innermost powers of the soul, with which he wanted to live together. For what this world view, based on the science of the time, could give him, at most it gave him knowledge, something that filled his head, his mind, but which could not identify so closely with human inner experience that one could really have entered with this inner experience into the forces that live and weave in nature and the spirit world. “Thus must I seek,” says Goethe's Faust, ”to get at the inmost powers and entities of the world in such wise that, by grasping them, my soul may be partaking in the spiritual-natural weaving and living of the world. But if I grasp only that which can be grasped from the present standpoint of a scientific world-view, then I grasp only in a dry, sober way with the knowledge these mysterious connections of the world, that which moves the world in its inmost being. And this knowledge can never give me that fullness which lies in grasping that which lets me live together with the secrets of the world.

And so Goethe's Faust wants to delve into what permeates and gives life to the world, into the world of nature and the spirit, in a different way. And since Goethe was certainly never of the opinion held by many people today and in the past, that what is current and has been achieved in their own time is necessarily right — in contrast to which one can say how gloriously far we have come — Goethe wants to tie in with what has gone before, from which the present has developed. And so he also lets his Faust tie in with the world view from which the world picture surrounding him has developed, with a world view that certainly had the belief that with what it gained, it entered into an experience of the secrets of existence. What kind of world view was that?

Well, you only need to pick up something like the works of Agrippa von Nettesheim or some other similar medieval philosopher, and you will be able to gain an insight into what Goethe's Faust actually means when it invokes the spirit of the macrocosm. Such concepts, such ideas, as surrounded Faust in the philosophy of the Enlightenment — I am referring to Goethe's Faust, not the sixteenth-century Faust — did not yet exist at the time when Agrippa von Nettesheim wrote. At that time, people did not yet form a picture of the world in such abstract terms as in the Age of Enlightenment. Instead, by developing philosophical worldviews, they lived, I would say, in images, in imaginations. But one also lived in the belief that one could bring about something through which nature and the spiritual world would express themselves intimately about what they actually are. And what one now got as a world view was at the same time interwoven with the feelings and perceptions of the soul, was in a certain way the same as what the soul experienced within itself. Today one would say: it was very anthropomorphic. That is certainly true; it was the case that in what he abstracted from the world, man felt forces that were related to the forces of his own soul. One spoke of sympathies and antipathies of things and similar forces in the natural world, as one experienced them in one's own soul existence. But further: In the time in which Agrippa von Nettesheim wrote, little was believed that could be attained by man through himself, that man could simply achieve by developing the powers of his soul life, by developing those powers of cognition in order to give them a higher form than that which man has by nature. They did not believe in the power of research of the human soul itself; they rather believed that through all kinds of external activities, these or those experiments — but not experiments in our present sense — they would, so to speak, give the spiritual that lives in nature the opportunity to show how it lives in natural facts. Through all kinds of events, it was thought that the secrets of nature could be discovered. It was not believed that consciousness can directly penetrate nature through the powers it acquires. It was believed that one had to perform certain actions or events in order to, as it were, by means of magic, make nature speak and express its spirit. Man's consciousness itself was to seek this separately. They wanted to do something in the external world that would cause nature to reveal its secrets and finally express how the forces in nature are arranged, from which man himself then builds himself out of nature and the spiritual world. So they wanted just what Goethe's Faust craves: to live together with the weaving and essence of nature itself; and they believed they could achieve it.

What stood before man as nature and spiritual world had been thoroughly permeated by spirit. And the development necessitated by the world had to set in place an outer image of nature, precisely the image of nature of a Copernicus, a Kepler, a Galileo, or what has come from that, an image of nature from which precisely that which these medieval philosophers wanted to seek out of nature has been removed. In this world view of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, and in what has been created from it, it was precisely these ideas that were the decisive, the decisive, the justified ones, which Goethe's Faust did not perceive closely enough, were not inwardly full enough to face the world with them in such a way that one can fully experience this world in one's own soul.

And so, in the moment in which the first monologue transports us, there lives in Faust's soul the urge to experience the secrets of the world through that ancient magic, to connect the laws and essence of the world with the experiences of his own soul. And he believed that he could achieve this by devoting himself to the formulas and images that were supposed to represent the macrocosm from the book he picked up.

But Faust – I emphasize this expressly – Goethe's Faust, not the sixteenth-century one – is precisely the human being, the personality of his time. Humanity advances precisely in its organization, even if it is not visible to a rough observation. In this time, one could no longer get behind the secrets of existence in the same way as Agrippa von Nettesheim, for example. One could no longer indulge in the belief that what one attains, whether through imagination or external influence, through magical experimentation, really has something to do with the innermost workings of the world. And so Faust is finally faced with the realization: Yes, I try it the way these ancients did, to connect with the spiritual, with the natural forces of existence - but what does it give me? Does it really lead me into what lives and moves in nature and the spiritual world? No, it gives me a spectacle - what a spectacle! But alas, only a spectacle!

And in this sense, Goethe's Faust is truly representative of the Goethean period. It has become impossible to reach the sources of existence in this way, to grasp infinite nature, not merely to penetrate it with ideas or with laws of nature, but to experience it. He cannot succeed because the time when one could believe that real knowledge of nature and the spiritual world could be attained in this way is past. What a spectacle! And he turns away from what the contemplation of the signs of the macrocosm can give him. He turns to the microcosm, to the earth spirit.

What is this earth spirit? Well, if you take the whole of what is presented in Goethe's “Faust” in connection with the appearance of the earth spirit, you find that this earth spirit is the representative of everything that, in the course of historical development, flows over the earth in the broadest sense flows over the earth, which works in such a way that what lies in our deepest drives, what, as it were, orbits the earth and places us human beings with our innermost selves into its currents, comes out of it into our soul, into our heart, into our very innermost being. In a sketch that he later made for his 'Faust', Goethe himself summarized the idea of this earth spirit, as it were, as a world and deed genius. This reminds us that what Goethe actually addresses in his poetry as the earth spirit is something that lives in the course of historical development, that has an effect on our soul, insofar as we are children of a particular age, insofar as certain impulses live in us, a certain form of that which can be achieved in existence in one way or another lives in us. But this depends on how we are placed in a particular epoch in relation to what flows out of the earth spirit that has been ruling over the earth throughout the ages. So this earth spirit, as it is written in Faust, may say:

... in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
Woe to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So I create at the whirring loom of time
And work the living garment of the Godhead.

Now, I would like to say, a word is uttered in “Faust” that is often misleading when given a slightly exaggerated explanation. I do not want to fall into the trap that many all too easily fall into, of reading all kinds of things into a poem like the Faust poem. And I know very well that almost every explanation that one can dream up fits, if one twists it skillfully, almost everything. I would like to try to derive everything I have to say from the Faust legend itself. I now mean at this moment the word:

Two souls, alas! dwell in my breast,
The one seeks separation from the other...

One of these characterizes Faust as if it lived in all the impulses of this earthly life. He explicitly says of the other soul that it wants to rise from the dust of earthly life to the realms of the high ancestors. Now, I think it is an oversimplified explanation when one simply says that this is the lower and that the higher nature of man. Of course, with such abstractions one always comes close to the truth. One cannot go wrong, because the more abstract one is, the more correctly one will express oneself as a rule. But with a work of fiction such as Faust, it is important to accurately and specifically capture the feelings that are embodied in the work of fiction. And it seems to me, in fact, when Faust speaks of his two souls, that one soul is the one that experiences, above all, what the human inner being is, that experiences the influx of the forces, the impulses of the earth spirit, the one soul that perceives how impulses rise up from the deep foundations of human existence of the individual human individuality and fill the soul life. The other soul seems to me to be the one that has been active in striving for what the spirit of the macrocosm is to reveal, that wants to rise from the mere dust of earthly existence to the realms of high ancestors, that is, to all the spiritual that lives in the natural and spiritual world and from which the human being not only as a historical being, but from which he has emerged as a complete, as a whole being, as a natural and historical being, to the universe as it has gradually developed over the centuries, millennia, millions of years, into which the spirits of the centuries, millennia and millions of years have laid their impulses. It is to this universe, then, to the spiritual ancestors from whom this human being on earth has developed, that this soul wants to rise. Of course, as soon as one expresses such things in such sharply defined words as I have just done, one again makes the meaning somewhat one-sided. That too should certainly not be denied. But nevertheless, I believe that the two directions of feeling that live in Faust's soul and that he describes as his two souls are these: one of them goes out into the macrocosm, into the universe, and encompasses spiritual beings, as a whole, as a great thing, and nature at the same time, the whole cosmos, insofar as man is grounded in this cosmos as a microcosm. And in the other direction of feeling, I believe I must recognize that which flows from the current of historical becoming into the human soul and makes man a member, a child of a very specific time; so that we are Earth Spirit, as the opposite of the spirit of the great world, we are led to that which stirs in our own soul as the striving to embrace the full human being, in contrast to the individual expressions, which must always remain in the individual human life. Faust believes he can feel at one with this spirit, which makes man a whole human being, and indeed now as a historical being, by confronting the Earth Spirit. But the Earth Spirit rejects him. He refers him to the spirit that he understands. And at the same time he makes it clear to him how he, Faust, is not the same as the Earth Spirit itself. What is the underlying reason for this?

Now, we can perhaps recognize what is at the root of this if we consider the further progress of Goethe's Faustian poetry. Where does Faust feel he is placed immediately after he is rejected by the Earth Spirit? Wagner is the one he feels himself confronted with! And one may look for so much of the most noble humor in Goethe's world literature that one can, to a certain extent, be of the opinion: By the Earth Spirit rejecting Faust and pointing to the spirit that he understands, he is actually pointing him in a certain respect to the spirit of Wagner, whom Faust will face in the very next moment. Thus the Earth Spirit is actually saying to Faust: First become aware of how similar what lives in your inner being, what you have been given out of the spirit of the earth, is to the whole formation of Wagner's soul! And what emerges from this Wagnerian soul in the course of Goethe's poem? Yes, we see how Wagner lives on in the poem up to a certain point in time, which is precisely indicated to us in the second part of Goethe's “Faust” in the classical Walpurgis Night, where that which Wagner has brought forth out of his world view, the homunculus, must dissolve in the weaving and ruling of the whole world, as Goethe characterizes it in the various figures of the classical Walpurgis Night. And so we are led, I would say, to the ideal, to the ultimate goal of Wagner's striving. We may well call this the creation of the homunculus.

What then is this homunculus? Certainly, Goethe's Faustian poetry - and this is the incomparably great thing about it - presents in a magnificent, dramatic way these things that are otherwise often only the subject of abstract philosophical consideration. But that is precisely the great thing, that for once in the world it has been possible to bring that which other people can only approach in philosophical ideas to a truly poetic, genuinely artistic form. What then is this homunculus, this homunculus idea, when we present Goethe's world view, interwoven with his artistic sensibilities? Wagner is steeped in the world view that had developed by the time the young Goethe felt he was stepping into it, a world view that, so to speak, only takes into account the mechanistic view of nature and history, which emerged as the first product of what Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler - certainly out of necessity - had to make of the old world view. In place of the living, organic element, which in the pre-Copernican world view was interwoven into the human world view, into the world view of the philosophers, there now arises a world view that is more and more interwoven only with concepts and ideas that represent the world as a mechanical one. And so Wagner was still able to cling to the habit of deriving an understanding of the human being from the world as a whole, from the cosmos as a whole. Thus he was able to come to the view that man, too, could be created through a correspondingly complicated mechanistic juxtaposition of the mechanical laws that permeate and animate the world. And this creation of man, which brings only that into the image, into the conception of man, into that which one can feel and prove and experience about man, which flows from the mechanistic world view, we see this in what the ideal of Wagner represents, in the Homunculus.

Thus, the Earth Spirit clearly shows Faust the direction in which he would actually end up if he remained at the level of the world view at which he is currently standing. He points the way clearly, and one is tempted to say: Don't we see, when we want to dig deeper into the feelings and emotions that underlie the Faustian legend, that if Faust stops where he is before his world wandering, he would come to where Wagner comes: to grasp the human being as a mechanism that is only capable of life, even as an idea, if it can merge with what the world itself lives through and surges through, and where Faust's soul in particular wants to pour out into a higher, experienced knowledge, in contrast to the knowledge that Wagner can achieve, who is completely immersed in the world view of the Enlightenment.

Now we have to look a little into Goethe's soul itself if we want to discover what the role of Homunculus actually is in the whole of “Faust”. We know, if we have explored Goethe's world view a little, how Goethe sought knowledge in his own way, how he wanted to get behind the appearances of nature. Over many years, I have tried to show how Goethe worked in this direction in the introductions to my edition of Goethe's scientific writings and also in my book “Goethe's World View”. Goethe tried to find out for himself what lives in the processes and beings of external nature. And in a certain contrast to what surrounded him as science, he developed his metamorphosis doctrine, his ideas of the primal plant, the primal animal, of the primal phenomenon. What did he actually want with that? What he wanted with it is closely related to what he wanted to pour into his Faust, and what really shows how Goethe strove from a completely different attitude to knowledge than the science around him. In a passage in which Goethe seeks to describe what became clear to him during his travels through Italy, his idea of the archetypal plant, the mental image he sought to see in every plant and which would explain all plant life and every individual plant , he says: If you have this original plant, if you have truly grasped what this original plant should be, then you have something from which you can even invent individual plant forms that could live quite well. This goes to the very heart of Goethe's scientific endeavour. Through his scientific endeavour, Goethe did not want to arrive at ideas such as the world view of the Enlightenment around him. Goethe wanted to arrive at ideas that, so to speak, only represent in the soul, but activate the same forces that we have outside in plants, in animals, in all of nature itself. Goethe wanted to unite what grows and happens in the plant, and he did not want to have an idea that appears as an abstraction compared to what lives and weaves out there in nature; he wanted to have an idea that one can say lives in the imagination as something that is of the same nature as what lives out there in the plant. Goethe did not want to gain ideas that could be said to represent what is out there in the world, but in reality what is out there in the world is quite different. Goethe wanted to gain ideas through which what lives outside in a natural way would come to life in the soul in a way that is appropriate to the soul. That was his whole endeavour. Goethe wanted a kind of knowledge that can be described as living knowledge, as living together with nature. That is to say, he wanted to be able to walk through nature and its formations with the ideas he had in such a way that these ideas relate to the inner life of nature and its formation. As the forms of nature change, so should what lives in the soul change. There should be nothing living in the soul that the soul has merely abstracted from nature, but the soul should have merged with nature, lived together with it. Goethe strove for a knowledge that he really presents in a wonderful and artistic way in the fate of the homunculus in the classical Walpurgis Night. Homunculus is an idea derived from the human being, which must therefore remain with mere mechanism, with mere abstraction. Just as Goethe's ideas, Goethe's metamorphosic ideas, are not supposed to be such ideas, but rather represent the forces and living essence of nature itself, so this homunculus, instructed by a view of nature , which was even closer to nature than that which surrounded Goethe, taught by the natural philosophy of the ancient Greek philosophers, Thales, Anaxagoras, but also taught by the transformative being Proteus, must dissolve. Just as Goethe's metamorphic ideas should unite with nature itself, so should the homunculus unite with world events. He cannot live as he has emerged from Wagner's views. He is a mere idea, a mere thought. He must connect with existence. When the homunculus is seized by the living, the role of Wagner is played out.

Faust must begin a world wandering that takes him beyond what he could have achieved, but which must play out in this way, as the role of Wagner played out with the creation of the homunculus. And to this end, Goethe shows us how Faust now develops not those powers as his powers of knowledge that lead him to the macrocosm in the sense in which the macrocosm can only be grasped in the Copernican, Keplerian, Galilean way; but Goethe shows us how Faust now wills just that which the Earth Spirit can give out of the realm of the innermost, one might also say, the lowest forces of soul existence. With the forces that can come from this, Faust is to begin his journey through the world. And now we see Faust going through this journey through the events that are first presented in the first part of Goethe's “Faust”. There we see how Mephistopheles confronts Faust. I do not want to get involved here in all possible explanations of what this Mephistopheles actually is; but I want to go into what necessity shows us, that Goethe must go beyond what is presented in the first part of “Faust”. According to what we have just considered, Goethe has, to a certain extent, initially presented Faust as powerless in the face of the spirit of the macrocosm. But he does not immediately present him as powerless in the same way in relation to the spirit of the earth. But Faust – and this must certainly be emphasized – initially still stands by what a bygone age, from which humanity had in turn come to a more developed world view, still regarded as something right or at least as something possible. I will not go into what Mephistopheles becomes in his relationship with Faust in terms of the soul, nor into how Mephistopheles is more or less a realistic, more or less a mythological figure. I just want to draw attention to what happens to Faust under the influence of Mephistopheles.

On the one hand, in ancient times, magic, imagination or external actions were used to uncover the secrets of nature. Faust cannot be associated with this, as we will see. On the other hand, however, there was something else connected with the search for the secrets of the world in ancient times, something that has been preserved to our times: the belief that something could be learned about the secrets that prevail in man by, as it were, — we shall speak about this healthy power of the soul in particular tomorrow in connection with spiritual research — and that one exposes something in man that is less than this healthy power of the soul, which one can perhaps call, improperly but with a word that is understandable to us at this moment, the normal power of the soul. We need only recall words such as hypnotism, somnambulism, all the forms of superstitious clairvoyance, and we have the whole wide area into which we are led, perhaps in a not immediately transparent way, by the events of the first part of Goethe's Faust. And Mephistopheles is simply, I might say, such an emissary of the Earth Spirit, who for a while brings Faust to become really similar to the medieval Faust, be it the real historical Faust, who received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1509, who is really an historical personality, be it the Faust of the folk book or one of the other numerous figures, or the Faust of the puppet show that Goethe got to know. This Faust of the puppet theater, this Faust of the sixteenth century, as he then continued to live on through the centuries, cannot be understood without taking into account unhealthy, morbid forces of the human soul, as we must call them today, forces of the human soul that are achieved by a damping down, a paralyzing of the human consciousness, as it is present in normal life. Whether one reads the life story of Faust — the Faust who received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1509 — or delves into the book Faust, which appeared in 1589, one encounters on the one hand a real personality on the one hand and on the other a poetic personality, who is to the highest degree what today, with a more or less apt word, is called “medial”, “medial” with all the morbid, abnormal phenomena associated with it.

Now it is not immediately apparent that Goethe wanted to show Faust, for example, the mediality of the appearance of the earth spirit until the end of the first part of his “Faust”, but what happens really leads us into this realm. And one would like to describe Mephistopheles as the spirit who, in Faust's nature, evokes such a world view that people can believe that it solves deeper secrets of existence, namely, people who do not really trust in human full consciousness and therefore believe that one must first paralyze and cloud this consciousness in order to get behind the secrets of existence. In a book that is certainly one-sided but by no means undeserving, Kiesewetter has portrayed Mephistopheles as a kind of second ego of Faust, not as a higher ego, but as the ego that one recognizes if one disregards the part that expresses itself in a person's normal higher mental life and descends into the regions of the soul, where the instinctive nature, where, I might say, the sub-sensible — by no means the supersensible! — comes to expression. In a way that is not immediately apparent, but which becomes quite clear to anyone who follows the events in the first part of “Faust” with understanding, it now becomes apparent that Faust, in his wanderings through the world, really can be believed to be attained by the path of such an abnormal, subdued, somnambulant consciousness, or in the ordinary, trivial sense, by one who is not clear-minded. But something else is also made clear to us, something that is extraordinarily important for understanding both the human soul and the “Faust” poem. While Faust is becoming familiarized with everything that can be recognized with deeper, but only sub-sensuous, driving forces, which then expresses itself in the witches' kitchen, in Walpurgis Night and so on, he is at the same time becoming familiarized, we may say, with tragic-moral aberrations, with the rule of impetuous drives. Of course, what we encounter, for example, in the “Gretchen” poem is one of the perfect flowers of world literature. But it is perhaps one of the perfect flowers of world literature precisely because the poet has succeeded in depicting the tragedy that flows from human drives that are not clarified by what one can call higher human nature in the true sense of the word. And Mephisto throws together for Faust a certain world knowledge, a satisfaction of knowledge, with this emergence of blind instinct from the depths of the soul, where man abandons himself to his nature without accompanying his life with a moral judgment of the world. This is portrayed in Goethe's poetry in a grandiose and tragically manner. But at the same time it shows us how everything that is realized in the field of what is so often referred to as clairvoyance - we will talk about these things again in more detail tomorrow - what could be called somnambulistic clairvoyance, which arises from the consciousness being , that in addition to the powers of cognition, the corporeality of the human being is altered and used in this, even if it is a subtle change; how all that is achieved in this area is on exactly the same level of human nature as the blind nature of drives and passions. This result, which for many people is a terrible one, emerges from the way in which Goethe presents the aforementioned clairvoyance, somnambulism, as arising when one transforms into powers of knowledge what lives in the drives of the human being, in those instincts that have not yet been clarified into normal human cognitive ability, in the blind, unconscious instincts that follow impulses, but impulses not interwoven with the realm of moral judgment. And Goethe wants to show that such a view of the world, as expressed in the witches' kitchen on Walpurgis Night, is only the opposite of the blind rule of the drives, where man rules with his morbid soul life. This intimate connection between the lower human instinctual life and what is often seen as clairvoyance and which is believed to lead to higher knowledge of human nature, because one has no trust in normal human nature, is dramatically characterized in the first part of Faust. And it is stated with sufficient clarity that the person who attains such clairvoyance does not rise above normal people, but sinks below what are ordinary scientific powers of knowledge, into the same regions of human existence where blind drives prevail. If one wishes to study the physiology of blind instincts in greater detail, one can delve into the revelations of somnambulists, hypnotized subjects, and mediums. But if one wants to penetrate to the real higher secrets of existence (and we will talk about this in more detail tomorrow), one must realize that with such clairvoyance one does not rise above normal people, but sinks below them human being, — a clairvoyance that Goethe, not preaching morality but artistically depicting, dramatically interweaves into the aberrations of the human subconscious being. This is what Faust had to go through during that world wandering, which is presented to us in the first part.

And now we see how Goethe, in a remarkable way, at the very beginning of the second part, has Faust face both natural and spiritual life. He interprets this very clearly, I might say magnificently clearly, not, of course, with philosophically abstract words, but through the power of creation. We shall not concern ourselves today with the question, which has also been raised by some commentators on Faust, as to whether a personality such as Faust can really recover from the serious crimes he has committed in the events depicted in the first part when, as has been said, he goes out into the wide expanse of nature and experiences what is depicted at the beginning of the second part. To what extent the guilt that he has incurred continues to prevail in Faust's soul is not something we want to dwell on today. It can continue to prevail. What Goethe wants to show, however, is how Faust rises out of his entanglement in the sub-sensible humanity. And there we see Faust at the beginning of the second part, I might say, placed in the healthiest way in nature and see the spiritual world working on him in the healthiest way. For what Goethe presents by having the chorus of spirits act on Faust is really only an external dramatic representation of a process that can be described, more or less accurately, as an internal process that takes place in exactly the same way as it does when the genius seizes the poet, when it is not something in the external sense that has a magical effect on the person, when it is not human consciousness is dulled, as in some kind of somnambulistic vision, but rather where something flows into human consciousness, which is indeed a spiritual influence, but which does not flow into a consciousness that is tuned down, into a consciousness that is dulled, but into the consciousness that is most healthily immersed in the natural and historical life of humanity. And has Faust progressed on his journey through the world since he beheld the sign of the Macrocosm and addressed the world as a spectacle? Yes, Faust is further along, quite considerably further! And Goethe wants to show that Faust's healthy nature has withstood the temptations that Mephistopheles has brought upon him so far, and which have consisted in his wanting to push him down into the sub-sensible, into that which lives in man when instinctive forces and not elevated powers of knowledge are brought to some world-view. At the moment depicted at the beginning of Part One, Faust has opened the book of Nostradamus. The sign of the macrocosm appears before his soul. He tries to put himself in the place of that which can be represented to him through the words and signs of this macrocosm. “What a spectacle! But alas! Only a spectacle!” At this moment, one might say, Faust aspires to a kind of morbid mental life, in which he then also remains, although the word “morbid” should not be understood here in a philistine sense.

Now that Faust has been placed in the midst of a healthy experience of nature and spirit, and the spirit has had its effect on his normal consciousness, he utters another word, a parallel word, I would say, to the word “What a spectacle! But alas! Only a spectacle!” Faust confronts the phenomena caused by the sunshine; but he turns away and turns to the waterfall, which reflects in colors what the sun can do. “So let the sun remain behind me,” says Faust. He wants to look at the reflection of what the sun causes. ‘We have life in the colored reflection’ – a wonderful intensification compared to the first word: ”What a spectacle! But alas! Only a spectacle!” Now Faust can grasp how what appears to him as nature is truly spiritual, because he knows how to relate to what lives in nature in the sense of the word with which the second part of Faust concludes: “All that is transitory is but a parable” - grasping in the parable what lives spiritually in nature. And so we see how, at the beginning of the second part of Faust, through an effect of the spiritual world on normal consciousness, Faust is brought to a healthy position in relation to the world; how he is now really no longer, I would like to say, in the belief that one can achieve something by going back to the old magic, and how he has now also learned that one can achieve nothing with all that is false clairvoyance, that is somnambulism. Now he faces the world as a healthy person. He can nevertheless attain life in a colorful reflection, that is, attain what lies behind the world of nature and history.

And truly, we now see how Faust develops more and more into what Goethe himself wanted to develop into. Of course, when we look at Goethe's development of world view, everything appears to us, I might say, more in an abstract, philosophical form. But that is precisely, as I said, the great thing that Goethe has succeeded in doing, to shape it dramatically on the outside, which other people can only rise to in philosophy. And so we see that Faust is now able to place himself in the world of historical development, that he is able to find the eternal-meaningful, the spiritual-real in this historical development. But for this it is necessary that Faust now really experiences in his soul an increase of his powers of knowledge. Through what he has experienced with Mephistopheles, he has not experienced an increase, but a damping down of his power of knowledge; he is not seeing, he has been blinded. Now, out of historical becoming, he longs to have a figure like Helen of Troy brought to life before him again. How can he achieve this? Precisely by developing something within himself, which is so beautifully and profoundly portrayed in the scene that represents the “walk to the mothers”. Goethe himself confessed to Eckermann that he got the inspiration to include this mother scene in the second part of “Faust” from reading Plutarch, where it is described how a personality of ancient times, who went around in a difficult situation as if he were insane and spoke of the “mothers,” of those mothers who were referred to as goddesses, who were deeply revered in the secrecy of ancient mysteries. Why should Faust descend to these mothers? Goethe speaks to Eckermann in a strangely mysterious way. He says that with regard to this scene, he betrayed himself the least. We may well assume that Goethe did not express this in full, clear, abstract terms, but that which really lived in his soul as his path to the mothers in full, clear realization. I have often spoken about this path to the mothers, but today I would just like to hint: When we immerse ourselves in the ancient world view into which Goethe places Faust, into the classical age of Greek civilization, into which he has already placed us when he encounters Helen, when we immerse ourselves in this ancient world, into which Faust is now also supposed to plunge, we find that this ancient world brought forth something out of itself with the powers that were still peculiar to ancient man: powers of knowledge that, one might say, penetrate more deeply into the workings of the world because they were even more deeply connected to the nature of existence than the powers of knowledge of the souls of the time in which Goethe lived, which had already become more separated from the direct life with the natural existence and had to find the way back into the natural existence. But it has already been indicated that when man delves into the life of his soul, he can find something that is not the same as what was indicated earlier as the sub-sensible driving forces, as those impulses that leave a person blind, but still work as impulses; but that a person can dive down into the depths of their soul life with full consciousness, with nothing other than their normal consciousness, which only dives deeper into their soul. Then, through this immersion in his deeper soul powers, he attains something quite different from the sub-sensible soul powers of somnambulism or hypnotism or similar phenomena of human life, as just described. He has the possibility of descending so deeply into his soul that he really brings up powers that are just as conscious and that he masters just as much as the powers of normal consciousness, to which he is not a slave as in somnambulism or in ordinary mediumship. And that Faust descends to the mothers, after he has recovered as far as it has been indicated, that is precisely the dramatic representation of this descent to those powers of the soul, which, when we grasp them in our soul, bring an inner higher man to the outer world, so that we can also see more in the outer world than what the mere senses or the mind bound to the senses see.

And now we see how Faust can continue his journey through the world by consciously descending into the depths of the soul; and how, in contrast to this, Wagner is presented with his Homunculus , who only arrives at the abstract idea of humanity, which must merge with life, which cannot sustain itself, which, before an insight, if it merely remains mechanistic, is scattered. This is contrasted with what Faust achieves in the ascent of his world wanderings. But there is something else! We are also clearly shown how Mephistopheles really brought those forces to Faust that are below the senses, in that Mephistopheles, one might say, morally ends, if the word may be applied here in the classical Walpurgis Night, when he unites with the Phorcys, with those entities that are born out of the darkness and the abyss, out of that abyss that represents the lower human nature. If we really go into what Goethe, in his own words, has incorporated into 'Faust', it is presented to us quite clearly and distinctly. The forces that Mephistopheles now feels are with him on the classical Walpurgis Night are not superhuman, they are subhuman. One cannot arrive at a different view of the world with those powers of perception that go beyond the ordinary powers of perception, except by enhancing and enriching what one has in the ordinary powers of perception. But with the supersensible powers of perception, one arrives at something that is fundamentally poorer than normal human life. And it cannot be emphasized often enough that it was also said in Faust that the life that is attained through a dimming of human consciousness, whether through somnambulism or mediumship, is poorer than what man attains with his normal consciousness of the world. When man looks at the world with his normal consciousness, he has his two eyes through which he looks out into the world. This is a certain richness in the sensory world. Where Mephistopheles is with the spirits of darkness, they have only one eye between them and have to pass it from one to the other. They are poorer. Mephistopheles belongs to a world — at least he feels a kinship with this world — that is poorer than the normal human world. This world has nothing more to offer Faust, now that he has begun the descent to the mothers, that is, to the deeper forces of the human soul, to which Mephistopheles can still pass the key, but to which Mephistopheles himself cannot lead him.

And now we see how Goethe, at a higher level of his world wanderings, is able to place Faust in the right way in relation to the real, truly surviving spirit of the past. Indeed, Goethe has the following written next to the title of the third act of the second part: Classical-Romantic Phantasmagoria. This is not presented as reality, but he has life “in a colorful reflection”. He grasps it with the deeper but conscious powers of the human soul and then strips it away again, as we are shown in the fourth act of part two. And so, if time allowed, we could still teach many more things that would make it clear to us how Goethe lets his Faust undergo a world journey, out of the aberrations that arise when one has no faith in normal human consciousness. The old magic that Faust first falls prey to and surrenders to has no trust in what consciousness is able to give, and separates the events that are supposed to take place magically out there in all kinds of ceremonies from consciousness. What takes place in the weaving and working of the spirits outside of full consciousness is supposed to reveal the spiritual world; but not what takes place in normal consciousness, but what takes place in the subconscious, in the dark drives, is supposed to explain what flows through the world as a secret. From this Goethe had to lead his Faust to that which can be recognized as the spiritual world without any impairment of normal consciousness, through a further development of normal consciousness. This is, it seems to me, very clear, if not as an idea - Goethe himself said this - but as an impulse that is shaped entirely artistically, in Goethe's “Faust” among many others, it is also embodied. From this point of view, if I may use the trivial word, it really appears to be entirely in the role of Goethe's Faust when, after he has found the deepening of normal consciousness, he has really come to has really come to the point of rejecting all false seeking along false, magical, somnambulistic paths, and wants to face the world as a human being who seeks to know the higher only through an elevation of the soul forces.

Thus we read in the second part of “Faust”:

Unhappy phantoms! Thus you treat
The human race a thousand times over;
Even indifferent days you transform
Into hideous confusion of web-enmeshed torments.
Demons, I know, are hard to get rid of,
The spiritual bond cannot be severed...

And further: I have not yet fought my way into the open.
If I could remove magic from my path,
Unlearn the spells altogether,
I would be a man alone in front of you,
Then it would be worth the effort to be human.

Faust wants to be a person who, through neither outer magic nor inner clouding of consciousness, faces the world of the spirit and is also able to introduce this world of the spiritual from this consciousness into social human life, into the life of 'deed'. And this is portrayed towards the end of the second part of 'Faust' in such a wonderful, in such a grandiose way. So Goethe has tried in his own way to show how man, through a development of the powers within him, can truly penetrate to the secrets of existence, by also clearly and dramatically portraying the aberrations that stand in man's way.

One would like to say that the human being who wants to come out of human forces themselves to a coexistence with the spiritual world really stood in a Faustian form - not by being called Faust, but really in a Faustian form - already opposite Augustine, who indeed attributes to the Manichean bishop Faustus the possibility of coming close to the secrets of the world through an inner elevation of human powers of knowledge. Goethe, in allowing the medieval Faust to have an effect on him, found himself in a world that had already passed judgment on this kind of Faust. The judgment was that a person who wanted to come to the secrets of existence out of his own powers in such a way must fall away from the stream of humanity as an evil element. Goethe could not agree with this view. Goethe was clear about the fact that a human being can only be a complete human being when he is capable of realizing the striving of Faust, even if not in the old way in which the Faust of the folk tale or that of the sixteenth century wanted to realize it. And Goethe was able to arrive at this view because he was deeply imbued with what, as I have often said here, can be called idealism, world-view idealism in the development of German thought.

In these lectures, I have tried to present figures such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in their - albeit only philosophical - striving to grasp the spiritual world. I have also sufficiently emphasized that one need not be a dogmatic adherent of any one of the Fichtean, Schellingian, or Hegelian schools in order to be truly impressed by the greatness of these figures, who stand at the center of German idealism. One should take them as seekers of knowledge, as human beings with a certain kind of inner life. Disregarding the details of their specific world-view, But they do stand there in a striving for a world-picture that is closely akin to Goethe's striving for a world-picture and that, when it is seen in its deeper inter-connections, shows itself to be fundamentally the same as the striving for a world-picture in Germany at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. This striving is destined to continue to work within the process of German evolution.

We know that Kant developed a world view that was not related to Goethe's. I have often pointed this out. It cannot be justified here, I just want to mention it. Kant came to the view that, fundamentally, man cannot see into the deeper sources of nature and spirit. And he stated that if man really wanted to delve into the workings of the world with his ideas, he would need a completely different faculty of perception than he actually has. Then, not only concepts and ideas that depict things would have to flow into his knowledge, but the living stream of existence itself. We can see that Goethe felt this, for example, in his idea of metamorphosis with the primal plant, the primal animal, which Kant excluded from human cognition. And Kant said: “The one who wanted to embrace faith – I am quoting inaccurately, but it roughly corresponds to the wording – that he really looks into the sources of existence, would have to embark on an adventure of reason, to a kind of contemplative judgment; he would have to not only comprehend, but inwardly experience and contemplatively experience the stream of world existence itself.

In the beautiful little essay on “Contemplative Judgment,” Goethe expounds on this Kantian idea, and explicitly says: If one can rise to a higher region with regard to the ideas of freedom and immortality, why should one not also dare to take on the adventure of reason with what the human soul can otherwise experience in nature, in itself? What does Goethe actually want? That means nothing other than: Goethe wants to stir up such knowledge in himself that makes it possible for him, with what he has in his soul, to truly immerse himself in the living world, not just to know the world, but to experience it. Goethe himself strove for such knowledge and for such a position in relation to world phenomena, as he dramatically embodies them in his “Faust”. And Goethe had developed within himself the conviction that man can not only acquire knowledge that reflects a world outside of him, but that he can also awaken within himself a world of ideas that experiences the stream of the existence of the world; but that this is possible only by undertaking what Kant still calls an adventure of reason: to draw up from the depths of the soul the powers that can cognize more than the senses and the understanding limited to the senses. And that is the great thing, that Goethe, who regarded what he did as the nerve of his own cognitive faculty, at the same time understood as a vital impulse, that he felt compelled to solve the problem of knowledge not only philosophically, but as a living man; that for him the question of what can be known of the world and how one can work within the world of deeds, what one can hold in one's soul as the content of knowledge and as an impulse for action in the world of deeds, becomes a life problem. That is the great and significant thing, that for him the happiness and ruin of man depends on it; that for him the satisfaction of a longing depends on it, which concerns the whole person. But it is through this that the problem of knowledge could become for Goethe an artistic, a dramatic, a vital problem in the widest sense of the word. And because Goethe conceived knowledge as something that really leads to life, Faust, in his presentation, was truly satisfied in what he sought by growing together, as it were, with Goethe's world-view itself. For has not his soul, from the very beginning, sought to live in communion with what is spread out spiritually in nature? In Faust it is a quest from the very beginning. In order to realize it to some extent within himself, he needed his wanderings in the world. While he is still in his world, in the “cursed, dull wall-hole,” what kind of longing does he have there?

Oh, would you, full of moonlight,
For the last time on my pain,
Which I so many a midnight
At this desk herangewacht:
Then, over books and paper,
Trübsel'ger friend, you appeared to me!
Ah! could I but on mountain heights
In thy dear light go,
Around mountain caves with spirits hover,
On meadows in thy dawn weave,
From all knowledge smoke unburden,
In thy dew healthy me bathe!

He wants to get out with his soul, to unite with what lives in nature. He has come there, he has been reborn after his world wandering in that which Goethe has imbued with his soul and lives through as what can be called: the highest, most beautiful flowering of German intellectual life.

Therefore, it can be said that Goethe really did incorporate into his “Faust” what he had gained for himself in a struggling life of knowledge and the world throughout his entire life, for “Faust” accompanied him throughout his entire life. Many secrets are still contained in this “Faust”. But it also contains the fact that Faust's journey through the world has brought him to the point where, through the experiences of his own life, he has matured to take in what Goethe had acquired for himself, not as an adventure of reason, but as something that can be attained by descending to the 'Mothers', that is, by attempting in a healthy way to develop the normal spiritual powers already present in one's soul. In this way one finds not something below the soul nor something outside of it, but something truly super-sensuous. And the fact that within the development of the German soul a work like Faust has become possible characterizes the whole of this development, and determines the position which it must hold in the evolution of the world.

There was always an awareness that more is given with “Faust” than merely that which lived in Goethe. Of course, there were always Mephistopheles-like natures in the outer world as well; they cannot comprehend anything like that which lives in Goethe's Faust. And finally, I would like to point out to you just such an external Mephistophelean nature. I would like to read a critique of Goethe's “Faust” that was written in 1822, from which you can see that “Faust” was also judged differently from the way it is judged by those who try to immerse themselves in it selflessly. One would like to say, a criticism that comforts one that so very often the Mephisto natures in the world confront that which honestly and convincingly seeks the sources and reasons for existence. For such natures as that which wrote on Faust in 1822 are not so rare in the present day either. Now that I have tried to lead you on a journey through Faust's experiences, let us also hear something of the echo that Faust has found in a Mephistophelean nature. I shall omit those passages that are not suitable for a public lecture because they are too cynical. The prologue in heaven, where the Lord discusses Faust's nature with Mephisto, shows this man, after he has established “that Mr. von Goethe is a very bad versifier,” the following:

“This prologue is a true model of how one should not write in verse.”

And now the critic continues – in 1822, ladies and gentlemen! –:

"The ages that have passed have nothing to show that could be compared to this prologue in terms of presumptuous wretchedness... But I must be brief because I have taken on a long and unfortunately also boring piece of work. I shall show the reader that the infamous Faust enjoys an usurped and undeserved celebrity only due to the corruptive collective mind of an associatio obscurorum vivorum... I am not motivated by any rivalry for fame to pour out the lye of strict criticism on Mr. von Goethe's Faust. I do not walk in his footsteps to Parnassus and would be glad if he had enriched our German language with a masterpiece... Among the crowd of bravos, my voice may indeed fade away, but it is enough for me to have done my best; and if I manage to convert even one reader and bring him back from worship of this monster, then my thankless effort will not be regretted... Poor Faust speaks a completely incomprehensible gibberish, in the worst rhyming nonsense ever written in Quinta by any student. My preceptor would have beaten me if I had made verses as bad as the following:

Oh, full moon, thou that dost sow
On me my punishment,
For many a midnight
At this desk I have watched.

I will not dwell on the inferiority of the diction or the wretchedness of the versification; the reader has enough evidence from what he has seen that the author cannot compete with the mediocre poets of the old school when it comes to verse construction.

Mephistopheles himself recognizes that Faust was already possessed by a devil before the contract. But we believe that he does not belong in hell, but in the madhouse, with all that is his, namely hands and feet, head and so on. Many poets have given us examples of sublime gibberish, nonsense in grandiose words, but I would call Goethe's gallimathias a genre nouveau of popular gallimathias, because it is presented in the most vulgar and bad language...

The more I think about this long litany of nonsense, the more likely it seems to me that it is a bet that if a famous man comes up with the shallowest, most boring nonsense, , there will still be a legion of silly writers and gullible readers who will find and exegize profound wisdom and great beauties in this flat-footed nonsense.

And so it goes on. Finally, he says:

"In short, a miserable devil who could learn from Marinelli in Lessing. After him, I, in the name of common sense, reverse the judgment of Mrs. von Staël in favor of the aforementioned Faust and do not condemn him to hell, which could cool this frosty product, since even the devil feels wintery inside, but to be hurled into Cloaca Paranassus. By rights.

The world ignores such judgments. And the world sees in Faust one of the deepest attempts of the human spirit, not only in a philosophical way, but in a dramatic, very lively way, to present the problem of knowledge and humanity in the broadest sense to people, to fathom it at all. And there was always an awareness that Goethe succeeded not only in expressing the Goethean world view and Goethean sentiments in his Faust, but, as Herman Grimm says so beautifully, the entire world view of the entire century. And Herman Grimm was right to use this word. “We have,” he says, “a literature of our own, the purpose of which is not only to prove Goethe's credo, but also the credo of his entire century in Faust.”

I could also point out how deeply rooted the rebirth of Faust is in the entire German intellectual life after his world wandering. The depth to which this German spiritual life itself has sunk is shown by the fact that the whole wealth of this spiritual striving could find expression in a work such as Goethe's Faust, and Herman Grimm's words will certainly prove true: not only Goethe's Weltanschhauung, but the Weltanschhauung of the whole century. And a Weltanschhauung such as will live on in the coming centuries in the very broadest sense has been expressed in Goethe's Faust. That German intellectual life was able to produce this work will be a fact for all future times, which, despite all prejudices about German intellectual life, will be recognized by those who can grasp this German intellectual life impartially and objectively. By expressing the deepest striving of the German spirit through Goethe in Faust in such a great way, this German spirit has spoken for all time to all people of the development of the earth an imperishable word of knowledge of human life in being and in free will and in work, a word that will remain, just as will remain that which is the true, deep fruits of German spiritual life. Among these deepest, truest, most imperishable fruits will be found what we can find in Faust. And so we may say: by immersing ourselves in Goethe's Faust, we become acquainted with a part of the imperishable nature of the German spirit itself. And this German spirit has spoken to the whole world by being able to express such things as are hidden in an obvious secret in Faust, to use another of Goethe's words – obvious if one only seeks it. In the face of Faust, we may apply Goethe's own saying: “All that is transitory is but a parable.” But we may also expand on this saying: in works that, out of the transitory, incline towards the eternal, as Goethe's Faust does, the immortal speaks at the same time in an eternal way to the eternity of human existence.

We speak in the correct sense, as it were, of the spiritual forces which are driving forward; we speak of the different hierarchies and we know that certain of the beings of these hierarchies remain behind. Then when they reach a later stage, in so far as they remained behind at an earlier stage, they do not unfold that activity which they would have unfolded if they had progressed in the right way, but they develop an activity which corresponds to an earlier stage of world development. We call those beings the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings, beings who exercise their activity for the earth, and beings who in a normal way exercised their activity during the Moon existence. From various points of view, we have mentioned what the significance is of the inter-weaving of such Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings in the whole world development.

You see, my dear friends, centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, there was something very immense which proceeded from ancient India, a teaching which is indicated in the Bhagavad Gita and in other writings of the Orient. At that time you had something great, something full of significance, and nothing of our spiritual science ever attempted to belittle the immense significance of such phenomena. You can realize this from the cycle I gave about the Bhagavad Gita in Helsingfors where I pointed to the immensity of the deep truths which exist in the Bhagavad Gita. It is also very good for present day man to deepen himself in that which at that time was very great and important for mankind. However, since then, the Mystery of Golgotha has come over mankind and the importance of this Mystery of Golgotha is indicated by the fact that we divide history into two parts, that which preceded the Mystery of Golgotha and that which came afterwards. But the Orient does not possess this historical concept, because it is unable to acquire a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. As far as the Orient is concerned, you have one absolute truth which is valid for all age, and they do not ascribe to an evolution of truth.

It is still very difficult in our time for human beings to understand and think about the development of knowledge. This proceeds from the fact that we have not yet been able to completely permeate ourselves with the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us assume that someone appeared in our time and wanted to speak in the same way as the author of the Bhagavad Gita spoke or as Buddha spoke in his time; that person would do something which would be perfectly valid for a time dating back centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. One could say that if the person in question said that at that time when the Bhagavad Gita was brought forward, then it would be a correct deed in the evolutionary sense. However, if he appears today and tries to speak in the same sense as the Bhagavad Gita speaks, that is a Luciferic act and something which really was valid for an earlier period has been brought over into our time. A person who does that would extinguish the whole development of the intellect, of the power of conceptualization which has developed in the evolution of thinking. Now, I am not speaking about something abstract, but about all this because I want to bring a very significant concrete phenomena to your attention. A book appeared in 1912 entitled The High Goal of Knowledge, The Aranada Upanashad written by a man who signs his name as Omar al Rashid Bey. This Omar al Rashid Bey is really a very good German. We see that this book really belongs to the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha and therefore today we have to grasp it as a Luciferic phenomenon.

Now, in the very near future a book by me will appear which contains a great many of the ideas which I have put forth in the public lectures over the last two winters. There will be much in this book. However, of that which goes beyond what one can find in ancient India, because it belongs to the world conception idealism appropriate to the times after the Mystery of Golgotha. As a matter of fact, my dear friends, that which Fichte, Hegel, Schelling and the others who I have mentioned in this book, what they have done is far superior to that which is contained in the oriental wisdom, contained in Brahmanism and the fact that human beings today do not recognize it is the result of the following. Usually it is very difficult for people to grasp the ideas in this book, and for that reason I have written about it in my book, The other reason is that we, in the main, do not have a talent to appreciate and look up to knowledge in the way possessed by the oriental. In this book entitled The High Goal Of Knowledge you will find not only that knowledge is imparted, but from the beginning to the end people are made to remember that what is being dealt with here is an elevated knowledge, and you have to reverence this knowledge highly and realize that it is available to specially selected people and is known by the highest masters of wisdom who have deigned to stoop down to enable you poor people to have this knowledge available to you. This sort of approach is what people like to get hold of, they think this is really good, especially when it starts off with something like this: “Peace and blessings be to you, oh dear ones.”

When you compare this with the writings of the German classical philosophers who you will read about in this book which will appear shortly, you will find those people who have developed the new world conception idealism and that they put the main emphasis an man's ability to live in the ego, to experience the ego; for this is what it must be after the Mystery of Golgotha. But the oriental wisdom goes not only towards being able to experience the ego, but actually to overcoming it, to extinguishing it. This selbstsucht, this egotism, this searching for the self, this actually exists before the finding of the ego. As long as a person is looking for his “I”, so long does he develop this selbstsucht, this egotism and in order to free himself from this seeking for the self, this egotism, he must find the ego. Once you have found the ego, then you are no longer afflicted by the seeking for the self, therefore finding the ego is the only real possibility of overcoming this egotism. That person today who after the Mystery of Golgotha wants to flee away from the ego and says that which was said in ancient India, that all that is thrown back out of the ego into the seeking of the ego, that person is really fostering egotism. Hence, such books make an egotistical impression on us today, an impression which shows us that those very people want to draw away from the world, and do not really want to seek for their immortal part; they do not in reality want to seek for the spiritual, but want to withdraw from the reality of the spiritual in order in an egotistical way to try in their own dreamingness try to seek for knowledge. This is egotism of knowledge and this egotism of knowledge which does not notice itself is the worst form of egotism. Hence the book entitled The High Goal of Knowledge written by Omar al Rashid Bey, who really is a very good German, is reproducing all that ancient Indian stuff which is the worst type of egotism.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha when the ego had not entered into the development of mankind through Christ, then the way that the oriental spoke was not too dangerous, but to speak in that way today is to try to push the ego away and you really get sucked in by Lucifer and do not notice that you get, into an egotistical state of mind. This same book furthermore states: “The person who seeks for salvation in this world remains a victim of this world.” Now, on the other hand we say that since the Mystery of Golgotha, the person who does not seek for his salvation in the spiritual of the world but wants to draw himself from the world, actually falls victim to the world, he falls a victim to that part of the world which is dreaming in him. We say that after the Mystery of Golgotha, the person who unites himself with the eternal nature of this world and seeks the eternal within the time aspect, does not fall a victim to this world. One can take every sentence in this book and reverse it and then you will find the right thing. I have noted the following in the margins of this book: The person who flees from the ego falls a victim to the search for the ego, since the search creates the “I” for itself. The finding of the ego frees you from the searching for the ego, frees you from egotism. That person who is able to see through this world can win this world, whereas the book itself says: “Whoever is not able to lift himself out of this world lives and falls a victim to this world.” Today, after the Mystery of Golgotha we say that the person who today is able to see through this world is the person who can become a victor over this world. You can see from all this how such a book is a very Luciferic book. These people are trying to teach something in the present which really was valid thousands of years ago; hence we can call it Luciferic.

The person who has vision permeated with reality is passed by by most of our contemporaries; they are not able to come to terms with people who are trying to share reality with them. A person who, from a certain point of view, could be called a real seer is Robert Hammerling, the great modern poet of Central Europe. Now I will not speak of Robert Hammerling's poetry nor about his philosophy in general. You can read about that in the book I have recently written. What I would like to bring to your attention is Hammerling's seer vision, how he really is able to see through what is happening in this world and therefore wrote the great satire entitled Homunculus shortly before his death. Homunculus typifies the people of today who say everything that exists is subject to and stands under mechanistic materiality; also all spiritual phenomena and experiences are subject to mechanistic materialistic laws of force and substance. Hammerling responds to this question with a real artistic poetical power in so far as he presents a person to us such as Homunculus which mankind must become if they consider the world purely in this materialistic way.

Now this Homunculus achieves a great deal. The brain, in a certain sense, is really a mechanical tool and can itself be produced out of mechanical action; therefore the brain can produce a very, very strong wisdom. So Homunculus, Hammerling is very wise and is able to know what exists in the world and combines it all together, he founds a universal newspaper and becomes a billionaire. You can do that sort of thing in a world in which the spiritual is neglected. But he goes further. He produces a school of apes, because naturally materialistic Darwinism has the idea that man descended from apes. Therefore, all they have to do is handle the apes in a very pedagogical way and naturally they would turn into men. This school of apes is a very fine chapter in Hammerling's Homunculus. He also shows the type of people who write rubbish in their articles. In the 1880's Hammerling really had a good sense of seership and wrote his Homunculus out of the reality of his seership. Homunculus finds a soulless woman and Homunculus, whose knowledge is not accessible to soul and spirit, becomes the typical man without a soul.

Hammerling had an inkling that in the future people would come along and say: “Thank God we have overcome all this Goethean classicism and everything connected with it. We have overcome this belief in homo sapiens, this belief of the wise man who can find something in his spirit and therefore establishes human ordering. However, we know that all of human ordering is purely conditioned by external economic relationships; therefore man depends only upon these external economic relationships and fortunately we have overcome this ancient classicism which emphasizes and looks upon men as men of wisdom, as homo sapiens and replaces that by homo economicus. Actually today we have a real homunculism which Hammerling prophesied in the 1880's. We have homunculism in our philosophical world conception; Homunculus becomes not only a billionaire; he establishes a universal newspaper; he writes the book The Renewal of Austria Political Programs by Dr. Karl Renner. Hammerling was a seer. He could visualize what was going to come. It is very important for us to realize that and to obtain an understanding of the greatness of such an artistic creation as Homunculus. The greatness of such a creation consists in the fact that without spiritual science, Hammerling said to himself: What would happen to the human being if he considered that all he has is a physical body? Therefore he depicted Homunculus as a person who, in the main, brought nothing with him as heredity from Saturn, Sun and Moon developments, but only has that which Earth evolution has given him. The significant parts of the ego, astral body and the ether body are lacking. Therefore we can understand Hammerling's Homunculus correctly precisely from the point of view of spiritual science.

The last time I told you that the science of the spirit brings together three things in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. First Jesus as He is incarnated as Zarathustra in the Solomon Jesus Child and how he brings through this Solomon Jesus Child that which mankind has experienced through its historical development since he himself has passed from incarnation to incarnation. I have told you about the Nathan Jesus Child who has within him that which was actually predestined for the earth but never went through this earth evolution; it was held back. I have showed you how the Nathan Jesus Child was completely described in the Koran to the point where it says that the Nathan Jesus Child actually spoke when he was born. The Christ Being incarnates in the Nathan Jesus Child with the Solomon Jesus Child, the Christ Being Who comes from beyond the super-earthly, Who draws into the personality of this Solomonic Nathanic Jesus in the 30th year so that we can recognize in Christ a union of the spiritual worlds external to the earth with that which has occurred upon the earth. And I have brought to your attention the fact that it is necessary in our time to become able to understand the concept of the immensity of the greatness of the Jesus figure, and with that the greatness of the Mystery of Golgotha, since our time has certainly developed the intellect, the intellectual thinking in its 5th post-Atlantean period. However, the spiritual comprehension of the would has to be added to this intellectual thinking. Then it will be possible to understand the Mystery of Golgotha again as it was understood many, many years ago but understood now in a very advanced way. I might say that before the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could have been acquired, that which was inserted into human understanding through the Ahrimanic powers had to occur. As a matter of fact, I can say that all the good spirits are really waiting for mankind to understand the Mystery of Golgotha; yet in spite of that people are fighting against this understanding. They do not want to enter into the understanding of this Mystery of Golgotha and therefore deny it in an unconscious way. They also unconsciously deny the figure who stands in the centerpoint of this Mystery of Golgotha. You know that when a very intellectual person tests the Gospels in a critical way, he finds contradictions in them which show that these refer at the most to the fact that a good man lived in Nazareth. He says that a reasonably intelligent man cannot believe that other things are contained in the Gospels, only a weak-minded person can say: I follow the Christ Jesus.

I would like to bring a book to your attention entitled The Fool in Christo Emanual Quint, a novel by Gerhard Hauptmann which contains what I have just indicated to you. Now, I am not going to say that Gerhard Hauptmann had not written a very fine drama at an earlier time, however our time is ripe for that which this great poet of the present applies as a weak mind in order to represent Christ. I know very well that many will come to me and say: You are condemning this Fool in Christo Emanual Quint by Gerhard Hauptmann because you are looking at it from the religious or philosophical aspect and do not have any understanding for the purely esthetic. But I might say this: From the purely esthetic point of view, this work is just an imitation, a very bad reproduction of Dostoevski's Brothers Karamasov. I prefer to read Dostoevski and I advise everyone to read him rather than reading this weak imitation of his work which Gerhard Hauptmann has written. (Rudolf Steiner reads portions from this book to show that it resembles the things found in the Brothers Karamasov, but not in an artistic way.)

This book, The Fool in Christo Emanual Quint by Gerhard Hauptmann is highly praised by the critics and they say that because of its popularity many editions will have to be printed, also it will be translated into many languages. Both young and old will appreciate it; it will become a classic. It really is a novel of the religious battles of our age in which a person who was a son of the people rises up to become a son of God. Every religious person will be able to appreciate what is involved in this novel. This can be an example of how we are permeated by sick thought and this is why I emphasized time and again in the course of the winter's lectures how one of the functions of the spiritual science is to make our thinking healthy, to enable our thought forms to be constructed along the correct paths. When one abstractly states that today the classical time of homo sapiens is passed and that we must put homo economicus in its place, then you should be sufficiently awake to see that this man is an idiot even though he does not think so. He thinks he is the great culture bringer of our age who is solving the great riddle of our life. So much around us is trying to prevent people from developing the sort of thinking that deals with reality. You will be able to find what I mean when I say “Thinking according to reality” when you read my book in which these ideas are clearly presented. The book which will appear shortly.

Remember that we have Emanuel Kant who has written the book The Critique of Pure Reason in which he makes very clear that everything is only an appearance, that one can never arrive at the reality of the thing in itself behind the phenomena. We also have a Critique of Language who wants to foster the fame of this Critique of Language. You get all sorts of journalists who consider it to be the monumental world of the present time; whereas it is nothing more than frightful philosophical dilettantism. Fritz Mauthner cannot advance to a single real concept. All he can do is to say that the word has nothing in it. All the word is is just a gesture, a pointer. Mauthner does not have the slightest inkling of language of words. He criticizes the word, believes that people themselves have created words and that the words are really hiding reality. Indeed, you cannot criticize reality because you are criticizing the word. I will try to make this clear to you through a drastic example.

Just think what this Fritz Mauthner does. He has written Critique of Language which comprises three thick volumes, a Dictionary of Philosophy comprising two think volumes in which he has gathered together the concept of existence, the concept of knowledge, and so on. All of this is handled according to the words: Where words proceed from; where words first appear; how one word changes from one language into another. And in so far as he does all this describing of how the word changes itself from one language into the other, then he believes that he can say something about these things. I will try to make this clear with a drastic example. Let us assume that Fritz Mauthner traveled through Austria and found a word which has been formed there, the word Boehmishe Hoffrat—Bohemian privy counselor. This word is used all over Austria; every other person is a Boehmishe Hoffrat. What would this critic of speech, this Fritz Mauthner make out of this word using his method? Naturally he would look under ‘B’ in his philosophical dictionary, analyze the word Boehmishe in an orderly way and discover that it is a part of the concept berman. Then he would look under the letter ‘H’ to find Hoffrat and would then take that concept and analyze it in an orderly fashion and in this way he tried to discover the reality of what Boehmishe Hoffrat means. However, the singular fact is that in Austria, a Boehmishe Hoffrat is neither a Bohemian nor is he a privy counselor. On the contrary, most of the Boehmishe Hoffrate in Austria are neither one nor the other. It is only an accident when one is a privy counselor or a Bohemian. In Austria, a Boehemishe Hoffrat indicates a person who is an intriguer, who has the talent for displacing those above him, climbing the ladder into their place at the top. It has nothing to do with the Bohemian nor with the privy Counselor. A person can be an office attendant born in the Steimark and still be a Boehmishe Hoffrat. So you see how words are formed and how they relate to reality. All words are formed that way. When you want to seek the reality behind words, then you find very little of it behind the word Boehmishe Hoffrat if you do not have the ability to penetrate deep within the words and find out how there content was arrived at and what the word signifies.

You see, my dear friends, our present age has reached this degree of confusion and people have arrived at a point in their confusion where they look on a book such as Fritz Mauthner has written as an epoch making creation. It is not really without significance to know that the tasks of people arise out of works in which the fantasy of human beings is poisoned as is done by Gerhard Hauptmann in his book The Fool in Christo Emanual Quint. It is not really an arbitrary thing when the thinking of the human being is confused by a book such as Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Language or something like it. These are the outflow of the intellectual pride which places itself against acquiring a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, that understanding which is so necessary for the present time. I might say the following: Just as the crucifixion had to enter for Christ Jesus, so also must the concept of Christ as it appears at the present time in mankind also be crucified. And this concept of Christ is crucified through books such as The Fool in Christo Emanual Quint by Gerhard Hauptmann. Surely Gerhard Hauptmann feels himself especially clever because he points to the fact that bishops, pastors and officials have thrown out the fool, Quint when he came and announced that he was Christ. But Hauptmann in an eloquent way adds that eventually this fool could actually be Christ, then the people would have thrown Christ out.

There is so much of what is happening in the present time which prevents people from penetrating to the threefold understanding of the Christ, to the historical Christ, to the Zarathustra Child in which the Christ Being entered, to the earthly Christ, namely, to the Nathan Jesus Child who, however has not worked into the earth; to the Christ understanding, to that Power which descended out of the spiritual heights and has fructified all earth life. This threefold understanding must be acquired, my dear friends. It will be acquired when spiritual science is able to permeate through all the egotism and pride of those who say that they have reached the highest goal of knowledge. In spite of all that, there will be people who are able to enter to an understanding of this threefold Christ. When we come together again, I will be able to attach something else to what I have said today.

The theme of this cycle of lectures was not chosen because it is traditional within academic or philosophical disciplines, as though we thought epistemology or the like should appear within our courses. Rather, it was chosen as the result of what I believe to be an open-minded consideration of the needs and demands of our time. The further evolution of humanity demands new concepts, new notions, and new impulses for social life generally: we need ideas which, when realized, can create social conditions offering to human beings of all stations and classes an existence that seems to them humane. Already, to be sure, it is being said in the widest circles that social renewal must begin with a renewal of our thinking.¹ Yet not everyone in these widest circles imagines something clear and distinct when speaking in this way. One does not ask: whence shall come the ideas upon which one might found a social economy offering man a humane existence? That portion of humanity which has received an education in the last three to four centuries, but particularly since the nineteenth century, has been raised with certain ideas that are outgrowths of the scientific world view or entirely schooled in it. This is particularly true of those who have undergone some academic training. Only those working in fields other than the sciences believe that natural science has had little influence on their pursuits. Yet it is easy to demonstrate that even in the newer, more progressive theology, in history and in jurisprudence—everywhere can be found scientific concepts such as those that arose from the scientific experiments of the last centuries, so that traditional concepts have in a certain way been altered to conform to the new. One need only allow the progress of the new theological developments in the nineteenth century to pass before the mind's eye. One sees, for example, how Protestant theology has arrived at its views concerning the man, Jesus, and the nature of Christ, because at every turn it had in mind certain scientific conceptions that it wanted to satisfy, against which it did not want to sin. At the same time, the old, instinctive ties within the social order began to slacken: they gradually ceased to hold human life together. In the course of the nineteenth century it became increasingly necessary to replace the instincts according to which one class subordinated itself to another, the instincts out of which the new parliamentary institutions, with all their consequences, have come with more-or-less conscious concepts. Not only in Marxism but in many other movements as well there has come about what one might call a transformation of the old social instincts into conscious concepts.

But what was this new element that had entered into social science, into this favorite son of modern thought? It was the conceptions, the new mode of thinking that had been developed in the pursuit of natural science. And today we are faced with the important question: how far shall we be able to progress within a web of social forces woven from such concepts? If we listen to the world's rumbling, if we consider all the hopeless prospects that result from the attempts that are made on the basis of these conceptions, we are confronted with a dismal picture indeed. One is then faced with the portentous question: how does it stand with those very concepts that we have acquired from natural science and now wish to apply to our lives, concepts that—this has become clearly evident in many areas already—are actually rejected by life itself? This vital question, this burning question with which our age confronts us, was the occasion of my choosing the theme, “The Boundaries of Natural Science.” Just this question requires that I treat the theme in such a way that we receive an overview of what natural science can and cannot contribute to an appropriate social order and an idea of the kind of scientific research, the kind of world view to which one would have to turn in order to confront seriously the demands made upon us by our time.

What is it we see if we consider the method according to which one thinks in scientific circles and how others have been influenced in their thinking by those circles? What do we see? We see first of all that an attempt is made to acquire data and to order it in a lucid system with the help of clear concepts. We see how an attempt is made to order the data gathered from inanimate nature by means of the various sciences—mechanics, physics, chemistry, etc.—to order them in a systematic manner but also to permeate the data with certain concepts so that they become intelligible. With regard to inanimate nature, one strives for the greatest possible clarity, for crystal-clear concepts. And a consequence of this striving for lucid concepts is that one seeks, if it is at all possible, to permeate everything that one finds in one's environment with mathematical formulae. One wants to translate data gathered from nature into clear mathematical formulae, into the transparent language of mathematics.

In the last third of the nineteenth century, scientists already believed themselves very close to being able to give a mathematical-mechanical explanation of natural phenomena that would be thoroughly transparent. It remained for them only to explain the little matter of the atom. They wanted to reduce it to a point-force [Kraftpunkt] in order to be able to express its position and momenta in mathematical formulae. They believed they would then be justified in saying: I contemplate nature, and what I contemplate there is in reality a network of interrelated forces and movements wholly intelligible in terms of mathematics. Hence there arose the ideal of the so-called “astronomical explanation of nature,” which states in essence: just as one brings to expression the relationships between the various heavenly bodies in mathematical formulae, so too should one be able to compute everything within this smallest realm, within the “little cosmos” of atoms and molecules, in terms of lucid mathematics. This was a striving that climaxed in the last third of the nineteenth century: it is now on the decline again. Over against this striving for a crystal-clear, mathematical view of the world, however, there stands something entirely different, something that is called forth the moment one tries to extend this striving into realms other than that of inanimate nature. You know that in the course of the nineteenth century the attempt was made to carry this point of view, at least to some extent, into the life sciences. And though Kant had said that a second Newton would never be found who could explain living organisms according to a causal principle similar to that used to explain inorganic nature, Haeckel could nevertheless claim that this second Newton had been found in Darwin, that Darwin had actually tried, by means of the principle of natural selection, to explain how organisms evolve in the same “transparent” terms. And one began to aim for just such a clarity, a clarity at least approaching that of mathematics, in all explanations, proceeding all the way up to the explanation of man himself. Something thereby was fulfilled which certain scientists explained by saying that man's need to understand the causes of phenomena is satisfied only when he arrives at such a transparent, lucid view of the world.

And yet over against this there stands something entirely different. One comes to see that theory upon theory has been contrived in order to construct a view of the world such as I have just described, and ever and again those who strove for such a view of the world called forth—often immediately—their own opposition. There always arose the other party, which demonstrated that such a view of the world could never produce valid explanations, that such a view of the world could never ultimately satisfy man's need to know. On the one hand it was argued how necessary it is to keep one's world view within the lucid realm of mathematics, while on the other hand it was shown that such a world view would, for example, remain entirely incapable of constructing even the simplest living organism in thought of mathematical clarity or, indeed, even of constructing a comprehensible model of organic substance. It was as though the one party continually wove a tissue of ideas in order to explain nature, and the other party—sometimes the same party—continually unraveled it.

It has been possible to follow this spectacle—for it seems just that to anyone who is able to view it with an unprejudiced eye—within the scientific work and striving of the last fifty years especially. If one has sensed the full gravity of the situation, that with regard to this important question nothing but a weaving and unraveling of theories has taken place, one can pose the question: is not the continual striving for such a conceptual explanation of phenomena perhaps superfluous? Is not the proper answer to any question that arises when one confronts phenomena perhaps that one should simply allow the facts to speak for themselves, that one should describe what occurs in nature and forgo any more detailed accounting? Is it not possible that all such explanations show only that humanity is still tied to its mother's apron strings, that humanity in its infancy sought a kind of luxury? Would not humanity, come of age, have to say to itself: we must not strive at all for such explanation; we get nowhere in that way and must simply extirpate the need to know? Why not? As we become older we outgrow the need to play; why, if we were justified in doing so, should we not simply outgrow the need for explanations?

Just such a question could already emerge in the most extraordinarily significant way when, on August 14, 1872, du Bois-Reymond stood before the Second General Meeting of the Association of German Scientists and Physicians to deliver his famous address, “The Boundaries of Natural Science” [“Grenzen des Naturerkennens”], an address still worthy of consideration today. Yet despite the amount that has been written about this address by the important physiologist, du Bois-Reymond, many still do not realize that it represents one of the important junctures in the evolution of the modern world view.

In medieval Scholasticism all of man's thinking, all of his notional activity, was determined by the view that one could explain the broad realms of nature in terms of certain concepts but that one had to draw the line upon reaching the super-sensible. The super-sensible had to be the object of revelation. They felt that man should stand in a relation to the super-sensible in such a way that he would not even wish to penetrate it with the same concepts he formed concerning the realms of nature and external human existence. A limit was set to knowledge on the side of the super-sensible, and it was strongly emphasized that such a limit had to exist, that it simply lay within human nature and the order of the universe that such a limit be recognized. This placement of a limit to knowledge was then renewed from an entirely different side by thinkers and researchers such as du Bois-Reymond. They were no longer Schoolmen, no longer theologians, but just as the medieval theologian, proceeding according to his own mode of thinking, had set a limit to knowledge at the super-sensible, so these thinkers and researchers set a limit at the sensible. The limit was meant to apply above all to the realm of external sensory data.

There were two concepts in particular that du Bois-Reymond had in mind, which to him established the limits natural science could reach but beyond which it could not proceed. Later he increased that number by five in his lecture, “The Seven Enigmas of the World,” but in the first lecture he spoke of the two concepts, “matter” and “consciousness.” He said that when contemplating nature we are forced, in thinking systematically, to apply concepts in such a way that we eventually arrive at the notion of matter. Just what this mysterious entity in space we call “matter” is, however, we can never in any way resolve. We must simply assume the concept “matter,” though it is opaque. If only we assume this opaque concept “matter,” we can apply our mathematical formulae and calculate the movements of matter in terms of the formulae. The realm of natural phenomena becomes comprehensible if only we can posit this “opaque” little point millions upon millions of times. Yet surely we must also assume that it is this same material world that first builds up our bodies and unfolds its own activity within them, so that there rises up within us, by virtue of this corporeal activity, what eventually becomes sensation and consciousness. On the one hand we confront a world of natural phenomena requiring that we construct a concept of “matter,” while on the other hand we confront ourselves, experience the fact of consciousness, observe its phenomena, and surmise that whatever it is we assume to be matter must also lie at the foundation of consciousness. But how, out of these movements of matter, out of inanimate, dead movement, there arises consciousness, or even simple sensation, is a mystery that we cannot possibly fathom. This is the other pole of all the uncertainties, all the limits to knowledge: how can we explain consciousness, or even the simplest sensation?

With regard to these two questions, then—What is matter? How does consciousness arise out of material processes?—du Bois-Reymond maintains that as researchers we must confess: ignorabimus, we shall never know. That is the modern counterpart to medieval Scholasticism. Medieval Scholasticism stood at the limit of the super-sensible world. Modern natural science stands at the limit delineated in essence by two concepts: “matter,” which is everywhere assumed within the sensory realm but nowhere to be found, and “consciousness,” which is assumed to originate within the sense world, although one can never comprehend how.

If one considers this development of modern scientific thought, must one not then say to oneself that scientific research is entangling itself in a kind of web, and only outside of this web can one find the world? For in the final analysis it is there, where matter haunts space, that the external world lies. If this is the one place into which one cannot penetrate, one has no way in which to come to terms with life. Within man one finds the fact of consciousness. Does one come at all near to it with explanations conceived in observing external nature? If in one's search for explanations one pulls up short at human life, how, then, can one arrive at notions of how to live in a way worthy of a human being? How, if one cannot understand the existence or the essence of man according to the assumptions one makes concerning that existence?

As this course of lectures progresses it shall, I believe, become evident beyond any doubt that it is the impotence of the modern scientific method that has made us so impotent in our thinking about social questions. Many today still do not perceive what an important and essential connection exists between the two. Many today still do not perceive that when in Leipzig on August 14, 1872 du Bois-Reymond spoke his ignorabimus, this same ignorabimus was spoken also with regard to all social thought. What this ignorabimus actually meant was: we stand helpless in the face of real life; we have only shadowy concepts; we have no concepts with which to grasp reality. And now, almost fifty years later, the world demands just such concepts of us. We must have them. Such concepts, such impulses, cannot come out of lecture-halls still laboring in the shadow of this ignorabimus. That is the great tragedy of our time. Here lie questions that must be answered.

We want to proceed from fundamental principles to such an answer and above all to consider the question: is there not perhaps something more intelligent that we as human beings could do than what we have done for the last fifty years, namely tried to explain nature after the fashion of ancient Penelope, by weaving theories with one hand and unraveling them with the other? Ah yes, if only we could, if only we could stand before nature entirely without thoughts! But we cannot: to the extent that we are human beings and wish to remain human beings we cannot. If we wish to comprehend nature, we must permeate it with concepts and ideas. Why must we do that?

We must do that, ladies and gentlemen, because only thereby does consciousness awake, because only thereby do we become conscious human beings. Just as each morning upon opening our eyes we achieve consciousness in our interaction with the external world, so essentially did consciousness awake within the evolution of humanity. Consciousness, as it is now, was first kindled through the interaction of the senses and thinking with the outer world. We can watch the historical development of consciousness in the interaction of man's senses with outer nature. In this process consciousness gradually was kindled out of the dull, sleepy cultural life of primordial times. Yet one must only consider with an open mind this fact of consciousness, this interaction between the senses and nature, in order to observe something extraordinary transpiring within man. We must look into our soul to see what is there, either by remaining awhile before fully awakening within that dull and dreamy consciousness or by looking back into the almost dreamlike consciousness of primordial times. If we look within our soul at what lies submerged beneath the surface consciousness arising in the interaction between senses and the outer world, we find a world of representations, faint, diluted to dream-pictures with hazy contours, each image fading into the other. Unprejudiced observation establishes this. The faintness of the representations, the haziness of the contours, the fading of one representation into another: none of this can cease unless we awake to a full interaction with external nature. In order to come to this awakening which is tantamount to becoming fully human—our senses must awake every morning to contact with nature. It was also necessary, however, for humanity as a whole to awake out of a dull, dreamlike vision of primordial worlds within the soul to achieve the present clear representations.

In this way we achieve the clarity of representation and the sharply delineated concepts that we need in order to remain awake, to remain aware of our environment with a waking soul. We need all this in order to remain human in the fullest sense of the word. But we cannot simply conjure it all up out of ourselves. We achieve it only when our senses come into contact with nature: only then do we achieve clear, sharply delineated concepts. We thereby develop something that man must develop for his own sake—otherwise consciousness would not awake. It is thus not an abstract “need for explanations,” not what du Bois-Reymond and other men like him call “the need to know the causes of things,” that drives us to seek explanations but the need to become human in the fullest sense through observing nature. We thus may not say that we can outgrow the need to explain like any other child's play, for that would mean that we would not want to become human in the fullest sense of the word—that is to say, not want to awake in the way we must awake.

Something else happens in this process, however. In coming to such concepts as we achieve in contemplating nature, we at the same time impoverish our inner conceptual life. Our concepts become clear, but their compass becomes diminished, and if we consider exactly what it is we have achieved by means of these concepts, we see that it is an external, mathematical-mechanical lucidity. Within that lucidity, however, we find nothing that allows us to comprehend life. We have, as it were, stepped out into the light but lost the very ground beneath our feet. We find no concepts that allow us to typify life, or even consciousness, in any way. In exchange for the clarity we must seek for the sake of our humanity, we have lost the content of that for which we have striven. And then we contemplate nature around us with our concepts. We formulate such complex ideas as the theory of evolution and the like. We strive for clarity. Out of this clarity we formulate a world view, but within this world view it is impossible to find ourselves, to find man. With our concepts we have moved out to the surface, where we come into contact with nature. We have achieved clarity, but along the way we have lost man. We move through nature, apply a mathematical-mechanical explanation, apply the theory of evolution, formulate all kinds of biological laws; we explain nature; we formulate a view of nature—within which man cannot be found. The abundance of content that we once had has been lost, and we are confronted with a concept that can be formed only with the clearest but at the same time most desiccated and lifeless thinking: the concept of matter. And an ignorabimus in the face of the concept of matter is essentially the confession: I have achieved clarity; I have struggled through to an awakening of full consciousness, but thereby I have lost the essence of man in my thinking, in my explanations, in my comprehension.

And now we turn to look within. We turn away from matter to consider the inner realm of consciousness. We see how within this inner realm of consciousness representations pass in review, feelings come and go, impulses of will flash through us. We observe all this and notice that when we attempt to bring the inner realm into the same kind of focus that we achieved with regard to the external world, it is impossible. We seem to swim in an element that we cannot bring into sharp contours, that continually fades in and out of focus. The clarity for which we strive with regard to outer nature simply cannot be achieved within. In the most recent attempts to understand this inner realm, in the Anglo-American psychology of association, we see how, following the example of Hume, Mill, James, and others, the attempt was made to impose the clarity attained in observation of external nature upon inner sensations and feelings. One attempts to impose clarity upon sensation, and this is impossible. It is as though one wanted to apply the laws of flight to swimming. One does not come to terms at all with the element within which one has to move. The psychology of association never achieves sharpness of contour or clarity regarding the phenomenon of consciousness. And even if one attempts with a certain sobriety, as Herbart has done, to apply mathematical computation to human mental activity [das Vorstellen], to the human soul, one finds it possible, but the computations hover in the air. There is no place to gain a foothold, because the mathematical formulae simply cannot comprehend what is actually occurring within the soul. While one loses man in coming to clarity regarding the external world, one finds man, to be sure—it goes without saying that one finds man when one delves into consciousness—but there is no hope of achieving clarity, for one swims about, borne hither and thither in an insubstantial realm. One finds man, but one cannot find a valid image of man.

It was this that du Bois-Reymond felt very clearly but was able to express only much less clearly—only as a kind of vague feeling about scientific research on the whole—when in August 1872 he spoke his ignorabimus. What this ignorabimus wants to say in essence is that on the one hand, we have in the historical evolution of humanity arrived at clarity regarding nature and have constructed the concept of matter. In this view of nature we have lost man—that is, ourselves. On the other hand we look down into consciousness. To this realm we want to apply that which has been most important in arriving at the contemporary explanation of nature. Consciousness rejects this lucidity. This mathematical clarity is entirely out of place. To be sure, we find man in a sense, but our consciousness is not yet strong enough, not yet intensive enough to comprehend man fully.

Again, one is tempted to answer with an ignorabimus, but that cannot be, for we need something more than an ignorabimus in order to meet the social demands of the modern world. The limit that du Bois-Reymond had come up against when he spoke [about] his ignorabimus on August 14, 1872 lies not within the human condition as such but only within its present stage of historical human evolution. How are we to transcend this ignorabimus? That is the burning question.

• 1. “... that social renewal must begin with the renewal of our thinking.” The original German (“... dass die soziale Erneuerung vom Geiste ausgehen musse”) might be translated alternately “that social renewal must proceed from the spirit.” The German word “Geist”—bane of all who would translate German into English—embraces two meanings that remain in English quite distinct “mind” and “spirit.” The translator must choose one, even though the German always implies both. If he chooses the former, he runs the risk of seriously distorting the author's intentions (as did the man who translated Hegel's Phanomenologie des Geistes as The Phenomenology of Mind). If he chooses the latter, he flies in the face of the dubious connotations that “spirit” and “spiritual” convey—no doubt as a result of the basically empirical cast of English thought. Although “Geist” as Steiner uses it should almost invariably be translated “spirit” (which of course comprehends “wind”), here the context has led us to choose the more restricted meaning.